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<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p /> <p>9:15 p.m.</p> <p>President Donald Trump is predicting his administration will win an appeal of a judge&#8217;s ruling temporarily halting his refugee and immigration ban.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>The Justice Department filed a notice of appeal Saturday night as it took a step toward asking the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to lift the judge&#8217;s stay.</p> <p>Asked about the appeal effort, Trump told reporters: &#8220;We&#8217;ll win. For the safety of the country, we&#8217;ll win.&#8221;</p> <p>Trump is staying at his private club in Florida, Mar-a-Lago, for the weekend and attending the annual gala of the American Red Cross at the club&#8217;s ballroom.</p> <p>___</p> <p>9 p.m.</p> <p>About 3,000 demonstrators have marched near President Donald Trump&#8217;s Florida estate to protest his now-blocked executive order temporarily limiting immigration.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>The Saturday protest began with a rally outside Trump Plaza, twin 30-story waterfront condo buildings in West Palm Beach. The march headed two miles to Trump&#8217;s Mar-a-Lago resort, where the International Red Cross is holding a fundraiser.</p> <p>Protesters shouted anti-Trump slogans and set up a flag-draped coffin that they said represented the death of democracy.</p> <p>A federal judge in Seattle on Friday temporarily invalidated Trump&#8217;s ban on travel to the U.S. from seven primarily Muslim nations. The Justice Department on Saturday night alerted a court in Washington state that it&#8217;s appealing the judge&#8217;s ruling.</p> <p>___</p> <p>8:05 p.m.</p> <p>The Justice Department is asking a federal appeals court to set aside a judge&#8217;s order that temporarily blocked the Trump administration&#8217;s travel ban.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>The Justice Department has alerted a court in Washington state that it is appealing the judge&#8217;s ruling from a day earlier.</p> <p>The appeal is to be filed Saturday night with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.</p> <p>The ruling from U.S. District Judge James Robart temporarily halted a Trump administration executive order that suspended America&#8217;s refugee program and halted immigration to the U.S. from seven Muslim-majority countries.</p> <p>The administration on Saturday moved to suspend enforcement of the travel ban as the Justice Department readied its legal challenge.</p> <p>President Donald Trump has lashed out at Robart on Twitter, calling him a &#8220;so-called judge.&#8221;</p> <p>___</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>8 p.m.</p> <p>Visa holders from seven majority-Muslim countries affected by President Donald Trump&#8217;s travel ban are hurrying to board U.S.-bound flights following a federal judge&#8217;s order temporarily blocking the ban.</p> <p>Those who could travel immediately were being urged to do so Saturday because of uncertainty over whether the Justice Department would be granted an emergency freeze of the order issued Friday.</p> <p>An immigration lawyer in Djibouti, Africa, said it wasn&#8217;t until well after midnight local time that stranded Yemeni citizens with visas at Djibouti-Ambouli International Airport were finally allowed to board planes. Julie Goldberg says about 40 out of 240 people were able to board their Qatar Airways flights.</p> <p>On Saturday night, the Justice Department asked a federal appeals court to set aside a judge&#8217;s order that temporarily blocked the Trump administration&#8217;s travel ban.</p> <p>___</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>6:30 p.m.</p> <p>About 1,000 protesters are holding a rally outside Trump Plaza, a luxury waterfront condo building in West Palm Beach, Florida.</p> <p>Protesters shouted &#8220;We want a leader, not an angry tweeter,&#8221; Saturday evening and set up a flag-draped coffin that they said represented the death of democracy.</p> <p>They&#8217;re expected to march two miles to President Donald Trump&#8217;s Mar-a-Lago resort, where he&#8217;s staying this weekend.</p> <p>Demonstrations were held Saturday in cities around the country including in Denver, Colorado, where thousands gathered for a rally in support of the Muslim community. Participants carried signs, heard speeches, sang and chanted.</p> <p>In New York City, thousands of LGBT Americans gathered outside the New York City bar where the gay rights movement was born, demanding that the president suspend his immigration ban.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>___</p> <p>6:15 p.m.</p> <p>Vice President Mike Pence says he doesn&#8217;t believe President Donald Trump&#8217;s reference to the &#8220;so-called judge&#8221; who ordered a stay of his refugee and immigration ban undermines the separation of powers in the Constitution.</p> <p>Trump turned to Twitter on Saturday to mock U.S. District Judge James Robart as a &#8220;so-called judge&#8221; and dismiss his ruling as &#8220;ridiculous&#8221; and one that could allow &#8220;many very bad and dangerous people&#8221; into the U.S.</p> <p>In an interview for ABC&#8217;s &#8220;This Week,&#8221; Pence said Robart had the authority to stay Trump&#8217;s executive order. But, Pence added, the administration will go through the process in the courts of getting a stay so that Trump&#8217;s action can be implemented.</p> <p>As far as Trump&#8217;s reference to the &#8220;so-called judge,&#8221; Pence tells ABC that &#8220;the American people are very accustomed to this president speaking his mind and speaking very straight with them.&#8221;</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>___</p> <p>6 p.m.</p> <p>Thousands of LGBT Americans have raged against President Donald Trump outside the New York City bar where the gay rights movement was born. They&#8217;re demanding that the president suspend his immigrant ban.</p> <p>The activists gathered outside the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village on a chilly Saturday afternoon, chanting &#8220;Resist, resist!&#8221;</p> <p>The president issued an executive order a week ago barring travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. A judge temporarily blocked the ban on Friday.</p> <p>Activist Cathy Renna says LGBT Americans have been deeply affected by what she calls &#8220;the horrible things Trump has been doing&#8221; because their community includes gay Muslim men, immigrants and women hurt by rollbacks on reproductive rights.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>In 1969, Stonewall Inn was raided by police, sparking riots.</p> <p>___</p> <p>5:25 p.m.</p> <p>President Donald Trump is criticizing anew the judge who has suspended enforcement of his refugee and immigration ban from seven predominantly Muslim countries.</p> <p>Trump&#8217;s latest tweet says: &#8220;Because the ban was lifted by a judge, many very bad and dangerous people may be pouring into our country. A terrible decision.&#8221;</p> <p>The tweet is one of several Trump has issued since U.S. District Judge James Robart&#8217;s Friday ruling, putting a nationwide hold on Trump&#8217;s executive order.</p> <p>The Justice Department says it will challenge Robart&#8217;s action, which has led federal agencies to unwind enforcement of Trump&#8217;s executive order.</p> <p>___</p> <p>4 p.m.</p> <p>Demonstrators have once again taken to the streets around the country to protest President Donald Trump&#8217;s ban on travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries.</p> <p>Washington demonstrators walked from the White House chanting &#8220;No hate, no fear, refugees are welcome here.&#8221;</p> <p>Rosalie Kendall, of Virginia, held a sign that read &#8220;We can do this every weekend,&#8221; referring to the demonstrations. She said people need to stand up and say what they will and won&#8217;t tolerate.</p> <p>Marchers also carried signs in Salt Lake City from the federal building to the state capitol building.</p> <p>At Los Angeles International Airport, about 150 people gathered in front of the international terminal to protest the ban and other Trump policies. A handful of women in Muslim headscarves chanted: &#8220;This is what America looks like.&#8221;</p> <p>___</p> <p>3:40 p.m.</p> <p>German airline Lufthansa is cautioning passengers that rules for travel to the U.S. for people from seven countries could change &#8220;at any time.&#8221;</p> <p>The airline told passengers Saturday on its website that a judge had halted the ban on travelers from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. People with those passports and holding a valid visa &#8220;are again allowed to travel to the USA.&#8221;</p> <p>The airline&#8217;s statement warns that &#8220;short notice changes to the immigration regulations may occur at any time. &#8220;</p> <p>The airline said the final decision regarding immigration lies with the US authorities.</p> <p>The airline&#8217;s hub in Frankfurt is a major transit point for international travelers heading to the US.</p> <p>___</p> <p>3:30 p.m.</p> <p>A Yemeni national ended his trip to Turkey to see his fiancee earlier than scheduled for fear he wouldn&#8217;t be allowed to return to the United States.</p> <p>Ammar Alnajjar is a green card holder and student at Southwest Tennessee Community College in Memphis. He said he was in Istanbul visiting his fiancee, who is a citizen of Uzbekistan. Alnajjar moved to USA from Turkey in 2015 to escape civil war.</p> <p>When he heard a U.S. district judge put a nationwide hold on President Donald Trump&#8217;s travel ban Friday night, he paid $1,000 to return immediately to the states. He said he was held for about an hour for questioning at JFK and his phone and email were checked.</p> <p>Alnajjar called Trump a racist and says he broke his future.</p> <p>___</p> <p>2 p.m.</p> <p>Some airlines are honoring the temporary halt on President Donald Trump&#8217;s travel ban but some immigrants are still having trouble boarding planes to the United States.</p> <p>Royal Jordanian is resuming flights from Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Iran and Somalia to the US as long as people present valid visas or green cards.</p> <p>But an immigration lawyer in Djibouti, Africa, wasn&#8217;t having much luck Saturday arranging flights at Djibouti-Ambouli International Airport for stranded Yemeni citizens with visas. Julie Goldberg said she was told by a Qatar Airways representative and Turkish Airlines supervisor that immigrants from those seven countries are still not being allowed to fly.</p> <p>One person who finally was allowed to board was a 12-year-old Yemeni girl whose family are U.S. citizens. She is flying with her father.</p> <p>___</p> <p>Noon</p> <p>A Somali refugee says about 140 refugees whose resettlement in the United States was blocked by President Donald Trump&#8217;s executive order on immigration have been sent back to their refugee camp.</p> <p>Nadir Hassan says the group of Somali refugees was relocated to Dadaab camp in eastern Kenya on Saturday. They had been expected to settle in the U.S. this week and had been staying at an International Organization for Migration transit center in Nairobi.</p> <p>It was not immediately clear how a new U.S. court order blocking Trump&#8217;s ban on travelers and immigrants from seven predominantly Muslim countries would affect the group of Somali refugees.</p> <p>Organization officials could not be reached for comment.</p> <p>Hassan said he was hoping to start a new life in the U.S.</p> <p>___</p> <p>11:30 a.m.</p> <p>The Homeland Security Department says it&#8217;s no longer directing airlines to prevent visa-holders affected by President Donald Trump&#8217;s executive order from boarding U.S.-bound planes.</p> <p>That word follows a State Department announcement that it had reversed the cancellations of visas for foreigners after a federal judge put on hold Trump order on immigration. The department had said up to 60,000 foreigners had their visas &#8220;provisionally revoked&#8221; to comply with Trump&#8217;s order.</p> <p>The two departments have not suspended enforcement of the president&#8217;s order as the administration promises a legal appeal to the judge&#8217;s ruling.</p> <p>Homeland Security says it has &#8220;suspended any and all actions&#8221; related to putting in place the terms of Trump&#8217;s order.</p> <p>___</p> <p>11 a.m.</p> <p>Uber CEO Travis Kalanick says his company is buying plane tickets for stranded drivers now that a federal judge has put a hold on President Trump&#8217;s ban on travel to the United States by migrants from seven Muslim-majority countries.</p> <p>Kalanick tweeted Friday night that the head of litigation for the ride-hailing app is &#8220;buying a whole bunch of airline tickets ASAP!&#8221;</p> <p>U.S. District Judge James Robart in Seattle put a nationwide hold on Trump&#8217;s executive order Friday night.</p> <p>It&#8217;s not clear whether the ruling means that people from the affected countries will immediately start flying to the United States.</p> <p>Trump tweeted Saturday that the ruling &#8220;is ridiculous and will be overturned!&#8221;</p> <p>Kalanick quit Trump&#8217;s council of business advisers Thursday.</p> <p>___</p> <p>10:20 a.m.</p> <p>The State Department says it&#8217;s reversed the cancellations of visas for foreigners after a federal judge put on hold President Donald Trump&#8217;s executive order on immigration.</p> <p>The department had said up to 60,000 foreigners from seven majority-Muslim countries had their visas &#8220;provisionally revoked&#8221; to comply with Trump&#8217;s order blocking them from traveling to the United States.</p> <p>The department says it acted to reinstate the visas after getting word from the Justice Department about the judge&#8217;s ruling Friday in Washington state.</p> <p>For now, the department says people covered by the order and holding a valid visa may now travel to the United States.</p> <p>___</p> <p>9:30 a.m.</p> <p>Seventy-two Iranian professors in Sharif University of Technology, one of the most reliable universities in Iran, have requested in a letter to the Iranian government to react in a different way to Trump&#8217;s &#8220;improper action&#8221; on the visa ban.</p> <p>They proposed to President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif allow U.S. citizens come to Iran without obtaining a tourist visa and related formalities in the country and to issue visas for them at the Iran&#8217;s airport with two-weeks validity during the next 90 days.</p> <p>They said that Americans can see the hospitality and goodwill of Iranians for themselves.</p> <p>___</p> <p>9:30 a.m.</p> <p>The Middle East&#8217;s biggest airline has joined its smaller Gulf rivals in confirming passengers from seven previously banned countries would be allowed to travel to the United States.</p> <p>Dubai-based Emirates said in a statement Saturday that under the direction of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, nationals of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Yemen holding valid visas or green cards could fly to the U.S. It says all refugees with visas would also be allowed to fly.</p> <p>It cautioned that &#8220;entry requirements to the U.S. may change, and Emirates will continue to comply with guidance provided by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.&#8221;</p> <p>Emirates offers daily flights from Dubai to several U.S. cities. Its rivals Qatar Airways and Abu Dhabi-based Etihad Airways issued similar guidance to passengers earlier Saturday.</p> <p>___</p> <p>9:30 a.m.</p> <p>An Iraqi official at Baghdad international airport says the travel terminal was particularly crowded Saturday following news that U.S. President Donald Trump&#8217;s travel ban on Iraqis and six other majority Muslim nations was blocked by a federal judge&#8217;s ruling.</p> <p>Haider al-Rubaie, an official with the state-run Iraqi airways said flights from Baghdad to Dubai, Istanbul and Cairo were booked solid Saturday afternoon. While there are no direct flights to the US from Baghdad, al-Rubaie said many of the passengers were holding transit tickets to the US.</p> <p>Iraqi member of parliament Ibrahim Bahr Uloom praised the U.S. judge who ruled against Trump&#8217;s ban and admonished the Iraqi leaders who were unable to achieve the same ends through diplomatic channels.</p> <p>&#8220;The U.S. justice system is better than Iraqi diplomacy,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Today we thank the American judiciary.&#8221;</p> <p>___</p> <p>9 a.m.</p> <p>In Egypt, Cairo airport and airlines officials say they have received instructions from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection to suspend President Trump&#8217;s executive order to ban travel to the United States by migrants from seven Muslim-majority countries: Somalia, Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya and Yemen.</p> <p>They say on Saturday there have not been any U.S.-bound migrants from those countries going through Egyptian airports since a federal judge on Friday blocked President Donald Trump&#8217;s ban on admitting travelers from the seven countries or any refugees.</p> <p>___</p> <p>7:30 a.m.</p> <p>President Donald Trump isn&#8217;t happy that a federal judge has put on hold his executive order that applies to refugees and people from seven predominantly Muslim countries who want to enter the United States.</p> <p>The White House has promised a quick appeal and Trump has taken to Twitter to vent his frustration with the ruling.</p> <p>He says &#8220;the opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned!&#8221;</p> <p>Trump also tweets that &#8220;when a country is no longer able to say who can and who cannot come in &amp;amp; out, especially for reasons of safety &amp;amp; security &#8212; big trouble!&#8221;</p> <p>___</p> <p>8 a.m.</p> <p>Etihad Airways says it will begin accepting U.S.-bound passengers from the seven previously banned countries this week.</p> <p>The United Arab Emirates&#8217; national carrier said Saturday its decision follows guidance from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection unit at its hub in Abu Dhabi.</p> <p>The airline says it is monitoring developments in the U.S. and that passengers will be subject to screening measures in place before Trump&#8217;s executive order was issued.</p> <p>U.S. border officials stationed in Abu Dhabi carry out passport and customs screenings before passengers board U.S.-bound flights under an existing pre-screening program.</p> <p>___</p> <p>6:15 a.m.</p> <p>The U.S. embassy in Baghdad says they are still awaiting guidance following news of a court order blocking President Trump&#8217;s ban on travelers from Iraq and six other predominantly Muslim countries.</p> <p>&#8220;We don&#8217;t know what the effect will be, but we&#8217;re working to get more information,&#8221; the embassy told The Associated Press in a statement, adding that embassy staffers have received a large number of phone calls and inquiries from Iraqis eager to see if the visa restrictions had changed.</p> <p>Iraq&#8217;s government spokesman says the prime minister&#8217;s office is also waiting for the &#8220;official position of the U.S. administration.&#8221;</p> <p>In a largely symbolic move, the Iraqi parliament called for a reciprocity measure last week increasing pressure on the country&#8217;s government as it attempts to balance Iraq&#8217;s alliance with the U.S. and powerful Iraqi political blocks with close ties to Iran.</p> <p>___</p> <p>3:40 a.m.</p> <p>Qatar Airways has issued an advisory to passengers saying citizens of the seven Muslim-majority countries previously barred from entry who hold a valid U.S. visa or green card will be allowed to travel to the U.S.</p> <p>The airline cited a directive by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.</p> <p>Government-backed Qatar Airways is one of a handful of Mideast airlines operating direct daily flights to multiple American cities. Like other Gulf carriers, many of its customers are transit passengers whose journeys originated elsewhere.</p> <p>Its U.S. destinations from its Doha hub include New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami and Washington.</p> <p>___</p> <p>3 a.m. Cairo</p> <p>Foreign airlines operating in Iran have instructed travel agencies not to sell U.S.-bound flight tickets to Iranians holding U.S. visas in the wake of President Donald Trump&#8217;s executive order banning visas for seven Muslim countries, including Iran.</p> <p>The move comes even though a U.S. judge on Friday temporarily blocked the ban, siding with two states that urged a nationwide hold on the executive order that has launched legal battles across the country.</p> <p>The directive does not come from U.S. airlines.</p> <p>In Tehran, the Kowsar travel agency told The Associated Press they had been instructed by foreign airlines not to sell tickets to Iranians with visas to enter the U.S.</p> <p>The agency said there was no problem for those who have a permanent resident card or a U.S. passport.</p>

The Latest: Trump predicts administration will win appeal

https://abqjournal.com/943544/the-latest-trump-predicts-administration-will-win-appeal.html

2017-02-06

2least

915 pm President Donald Trump is predicting his administration will win an appeal of a judge8217s ruling temporarily halting his refugee and immigration ban ADVERTISEMENT The Justice Department filed a notice of appeal Saturday night as it took a step toward asking the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals to lift the judge8217s stay Asked about the appeal effort Trump told reporters 8220We8217ll win For the safety of the country we8217ll win8221 Trump is staying at his private club in Florida MaraLago for the weekend and attending the annual gala of the American Red Cross at the club8217s ballroom ___ 9 pm About 3000 demonstrators have marched near President Donald Trump8217s Florida estate to protest his nowblocked executive order temporarily limiting immigration ADVERTISEMENT The Saturday protest began with a rally outside Trump Plaza twin 30story waterfront condo buildings in West Palm Beach The march headed two miles to Trump8217s MaraLago resort where the International Red Cross is holding a fundraiser Protesters shouted antiTrump slogans and set up a flagdraped coffin that they said represented the death of democracy A federal judge in Seattle on Friday temporarily invalidated Trump8217s ban on travel to the US from seven primarily Muslim nations The Justice Department on Saturday night alerted a court in Washington state that it8217s appealing the judge8217s ruling ___ 805 pm The Justice Department is asking a federal appeals court to set aside a judge8217s order that temporarily blocked the Trump administration8217s travel ban ADVERTISEMENT The Justice Department has alerted a court in Washington state that it is appealing the judge8217s ruling from a day earlier The appeal is to be filed Saturday night with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals The ruling from US District Judge James Robart temporarily halted a Trump administration executive order that suspended America8217s refugee program and halted immigration to the US from seven Muslimmajority countries The administration on Saturday moved to suspend enforcement of the travel ban as the Justice Department readied its legal challenge President Donald Trump has lashed out at Robart on Twitter calling him a 8220socalled judge8221 ___ ADVERTISEMENT 8 pm Visa holders from seven majorityMuslim countries affected by President Donald Trump8217s travel ban are hurrying to board USbound flights following a federal judge8217s order temporarily blocking the ban Those who could travel immediately were being urged to do so Saturday because of uncertainty over whether the Justice Department would be granted an emergency freeze of the order issued Friday An immigration lawyer in Djibouti Africa said it wasn8217t until well after midnight local time that stranded Yemeni citizens with visas at DjiboutiAmbouli International Airport were finally allowed to board planes Julie Goldberg says about 40 out of 240 people were able to board their Qatar Airways flights On Saturday night the Justice Department asked a federal appeals court to set aside a judge8217s order that temporarily blocked the Trump administration8217s travel ban ___ ADVERTISEMENT 630 pm About 1000 protesters are holding a rally outside Trump Plaza a luxury waterfront condo building in West Palm Beach Florida Protesters shouted 8220We want a leader not an angry tweeter8221 Saturday evening and set up a flagdraped coffin that they said represented the death of democracy They8217re expected to march two miles to President Donald Trump8217s MaraLago resort where he8217s staying this weekend Demonstrations were held Saturday in cities around the country including in Denver Colorado where thousands gathered for a rally in support of the Muslim community Participants carried signs heard speeches sang and chanted In New York City thousands of LGBT Americans gathered outside the New York City bar where the gay rights movement was born demanding that the president suspend his immigration ban ADVERTISEMENT ___ 615 pm Vice President Mike Pence says he doesn8217t believe President Donald Trump8217s reference to the 8220socalled judge8221 who ordered a stay of his refugee and immigration ban undermines the separation of powers in the Constitution Trump turned to Twitter on Saturday to mock US District Judge James Robart as a 8220socalled judge8221 and dismiss his ruling as 8220ridiculous8221 and one that could allow 8220many very bad and dangerous people8221 into the US In an interview for ABC8217s 8220This Week8221 Pence said Robart had the authority to stay Trump8217s executive order But Pence added the administration will go through the process in the courts of getting a stay so that Trump8217s action can be implemented As far as Trump8217s reference to the 8220socalled judge8221 Pence tells ABC that 8220the American people are very accustomed to this president speaking his mind and speaking very straight with them8221 ADVERTISEMENT ___ 6 pm Thousands of LGBT Americans have raged against President Donald Trump outside the New York City bar where the gay rights movement was born They8217re demanding that the president suspend his immigrant ban The activists gathered outside the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village on a chilly Saturday afternoon chanting 8220Resist resist8221 The president issued an executive order a week ago barring travelers from seven Muslimmajority countries from entering the US A judge temporarily blocked the ban on Friday Activist Cathy Renna says LGBT Americans have been deeply affected by what she calls 8220the horrible things Trump has been doing8221 because their community includes gay Muslim men immigrants and women hurt by rollbacks on reproductive rights ADVERTISEMENT In 1969 Stonewall Inn was raided by police sparking riots ___ 525 pm President Donald Trump is criticizing anew the judge who has suspended enforcement of his refugee and immigration ban from seven predominantly Muslim countries Trump8217s latest tweet says 8220Because the ban was lifted by a judge many very bad and dangerous people may be pouring into our country A terrible decision8221 The tweet is one of several Trump has issued since US District Judge James Robart8217s Friday ruling putting a nationwide hold on Trump8217s executive order The Justice Department says it will challenge Robart8217s action which has led federal agencies to unwind enforcement of Trump8217s executive order ___ 4 pm Demonstrators have once again taken to the streets around the country to protest President Donald Trump8217s ban on travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries Washington demonstrators walked from the White House chanting 8220No hate no fear refugees are welcome here8221 Rosalie Kendall of Virginia held a sign that read 8220We can do this every weekend8221 referring to the demonstrations She said people need to stand up and say what they will and won8217t tolerate Marchers also carried signs in Salt Lake City from the federal building to the state capitol building At Los Angeles International Airport about 150 people gathered in front of the international terminal to protest the ban and other Trump policies A handful of women in Muslim headscarves chanted 8220This is what America looks like8221 ___ 340 pm German airline Lufthansa is cautioning passengers that rules for travel to the US for people from seven countries could change 8220at any time8221 The airline told passengers Saturday on its website that a judge had halted the ban on travelers from Iran Iraq Libya Somalia Sudan Syria and Yemen People with those passports and holding a valid visa 8220are again allowed to travel to the USA8221 The airline8217s statement warns that 8220short notice changes to the immigration regulations may occur at any time 8220 The airline said the final decision regarding immigration lies with the US authorities The airline8217s hub in Frankfurt is a major transit point for international travelers heading to the US ___ 330 pm A Yemeni national ended his trip to Turkey to see his fiancee earlier than scheduled for fear he wouldn8217t be allowed to return to the United States Ammar Alnajjar is a green card holder and student at Southwest Tennessee Community College in Memphis He said he was in Istanbul visiting his fiancee who is a citizen of Uzbekistan Alnajjar moved to USA from Turkey in 2015 to escape civil war When he heard a US district judge put a nationwide hold on President Donald Trump8217s travel ban Friday night he paid 1000 to return immediately to the states He said he was held for about an hour for questioning at JFK and his phone and email were checked Alnajjar called Trump a racist and says he broke his future ___ 2 pm Some airlines are honoring the temporary halt on President Donald Trump8217s travel ban but some immigrants are still having trouble boarding planes to the United States Royal Jordanian is resuming flights from Iraq Syria Libya Yemen Iran and Somalia to the US as long as people present valid visas or green cards But an immigration lawyer in Djibouti Africa wasn8217t having much luck Saturday arranging flights at DjiboutiAmbouli International Airport for stranded Yemeni citizens with visas Julie Goldberg said she was told by a Qatar Airways representative and Turkish Airlines supervisor that immigrants from those seven countries are still not being allowed to fly One person who finally was allowed to board was a 12yearold Yemeni girl whose family are US citizens She is flying with her father ___ Noon A Somali refugee says about 140 refugees whose resettlement in the United States was blocked by President Donald Trump8217s executive order on immigration have been sent back to their refugee camp Nadir Hassan says the group of Somali refugees was relocated to Dadaab camp in eastern Kenya on Saturday They had been expected to settle in the US this week and had been staying at an International Organization for Migration transit center in Nairobi It was not immediately clear how a new US court order blocking Trump8217s ban on travelers and immigrants from seven predominantly Muslim countries would affect the group of Somali refugees Organization officials could not be reached for comment Hassan said he was hoping to start a new life in the US ___ 1130 am The Homeland Security Department says it8217s no longer directing airlines to prevent visaholders affected by President Donald Trump8217s executive order from boarding USbound planes That word follows a State Department announcement that it had reversed the cancellations of visas for foreigners after a federal judge put on hold Trump order on immigration The department had said up to 60000 foreigners had their visas 8220provisionally revoked8221 to comply with Trump8217s order The two departments have not suspended enforcement of the president8217s order as the administration promises a legal appeal to the judge8217s ruling Homeland Security says it has 8220suspended any and all actions8221 related to putting in place the terms of Trump8217s order ___ 11 am Uber CEO Travis Kalanick says his company is buying plane tickets for stranded drivers now that a federal judge has put a hold on President Trump8217s ban on travel to the United States by migrants from seven Muslimmajority countries Kalanick tweeted Friday night that the head of litigation for the ridehailing app is 8220buying a whole bunch of airline tickets ASAP8221 US District Judge James Robart in Seattle put a nationwide hold on Trump8217s executive order Friday night It8217s not clear whether the ruling means that people from the affected countries will immediately start flying to the United States Trump tweeted Saturday that the ruling 8220is ridiculous and will be overturned8221 Kalanick quit Trump8217s council of business advisers Thursday ___ 1020 am The State Department says it8217s reversed the cancellations of visas for foreigners after a federal judge put on hold President Donald Trump8217s executive order on immigration The department had said up to 60000 foreigners from seven majorityMuslim countries had their visas 8220provisionally revoked8221 to comply with Trump8217s order blocking them from traveling to the United States The department says it acted to reinstate the visas after getting word from the Justice Department about the judge8217s ruling Friday in Washington state For now the department says people covered by the order and holding a valid visa may now travel to the United States ___ 930 am Seventytwo Iranian professors in Sharif University of Technology one of the most reliable universities in Iran have requested in a letter to the Iranian government to react in a different way to Trump8217s 8220improper action8221 on the visa ban They proposed to President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif allow US citizens come to Iran without obtaining a tourist visa and related formalities in the country and to issue visas for them at the Iran8217s airport with twoweeks validity during the next 90 days They said that Americans can see the hospitality and goodwill of Iranians for themselves ___ 930 am The Middle East8217s biggest airline has joined its smaller Gulf rivals in confirming passengers from seven previously banned countries would be allowed to travel to the United States Dubaibased Emirates said in a statement Saturday that under the direction of US Customs and Border Protection nationals of Iran Iraq Libya Somalia Sudan Syria Yemen holding valid visas or green cards could fly to the US It says all refugees with visas would also be allowed to fly It cautioned that 8220entry requirements to the US may change and Emirates will continue to comply with guidance provided by the US Customs and Border Protection8221 Emirates offers daily flights from Dubai to several US cities Its rivals Qatar Airways and Abu Dhabibased Etihad Airways issued similar guidance to passengers earlier Saturday ___ 930 am An Iraqi official at Baghdad international airport says the travel terminal was particularly crowded Saturday following news that US President Donald Trump8217s travel ban on Iraqis and six other majority Muslim nations was blocked by a federal judge8217s ruling Haider alRubaie an official with the staterun Iraqi airways said flights from Baghdad to Dubai Istanbul and Cairo were booked solid Saturday afternoon While there are no direct flights to the US from Baghdad alRubaie said many of the passengers were holding transit tickets to the US Iraqi member of parliament Ibrahim Bahr Uloom praised the US judge who ruled against Trump8217s ban and admonished the Iraqi leaders who were unable to achieve the same ends through diplomatic channels 8220The US justice system is better than Iraqi diplomacy8221 he said 8220Today we thank the American judiciary8221 ___ 9 am In Egypt Cairo airport and airlines officials say they have received instructions from the US Customs and Border Protection to suspend President Trump8217s executive order to ban travel to the United States by migrants from seven Muslimmajority countries Somalia Iraq Syria Iran Sudan Libya and Yemen They say on Saturday there have not been any USbound migrants from those countries going through Egyptian airports since a federal judge on Friday blocked President Donald Trump8217s ban on admitting travelers from the seven countries or any refugees ___ 730 am President Donald Trump isn8217t happy that a federal judge has put on hold his executive order that applies to refugees and people from seven predominantly Muslim countries who want to enter the United States The White House has promised a quick appeal and Trump has taken to Twitter to vent his frustration with the ruling He says 8220the opinion of this socalled judge which essentially takes lawenforcement away from our country is ridiculous and will be overturned8221 Trump also tweets that 8220when a country is no longer able to say who can and who cannot come in ampamp out especially for reasons of safety ampamp security 8212 big trouble8221 ___ 8 am Etihad Airways says it will begin accepting USbound passengers from the seven previously banned countries this week The United Arab Emirates8217 national carrier said Saturday its decision follows guidance from the US Customs and Border Protection unit at its hub in Abu Dhabi The airline says it is monitoring developments in the US and that passengers will be subject to screening measures in place before Trump8217s executive order was issued US border officials stationed in Abu Dhabi carry out passport and customs screenings before passengers board USbound flights under an existing prescreening program ___ 615 am The US embassy in Baghdad says they are still awaiting guidance following news of a court order blocking President Trump8217s ban on travelers from Iraq and six other predominantly Muslim countries 8220We don8217t know what the effect will be but we8217re working to get more information8221 the embassy told The Associated Press in a statement adding that embassy staffers have received a large number of phone calls and inquiries from Iraqis eager to see if the visa restrictions had changed Iraq8217s government spokesman says the prime minister8217s office is also waiting for the 8220official position of the US administration8221 In a largely symbolic move the Iraqi parliament called for a reciprocity measure last week increasing pressure on the country8217s government as it attempts to balance Iraq8217s alliance with the US and powerful Iraqi political blocks with close ties to Iran ___ 340 am Qatar Airways has issued an advisory to passengers saying citizens of the seven Muslimmajority countries previously barred from entry who hold a valid US visa or green card will be allowed to travel to the US The airline cited a directive by US Customs and Border Protection Governmentbacked Qatar Airways is one of a handful of Mideast airlines operating direct daily flights to multiple American cities Like other Gulf carriers many of its customers are transit passengers whose journeys originated elsewhere Its US destinations from its Doha hub include New York Chicago Los Angeles Miami and Washington ___ 3 am Cairo Foreign airlines operating in Iran have instructed travel agencies not to sell USbound flight tickets to Iranians holding US visas in the wake of President Donald Trump8217s executive order banning visas for seven Muslim countries including Iran The move comes even though a US judge on Friday temporarily blocked the ban siding with two states that urged a nationwide hold on the executive order that has launched legal battles across the country The directive does not come from US airlines In Tehran the Kowsar travel agency told The Associated Press they had been instructed by foreign airlines not to sell tickets to Iranians with visas to enter the US The agency said there was no problem for those who have a permanent resident card or a US passport

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<p>Less than a week before Mardi Gras, which this year coincided with &#8220;Super Tuesday,&#8221; I was on the phone with Donald Harrison, jazz saxophonist and Big Chief of the <a href="http://www.afropop.org/multi/feature/ID/476/LIVING+IN+NEW+ORLEANS:+Mardi+Gras%20" type="external">Congo Nation</a>. In that latter role, Harrison keeps alive what is perhaps the most elemental and least understood New Orleans tradition: <a href="http://www.houstonculture.org/cr/indians.html%20" type="external">Mardi Gras Indian culture</a>. He didn&#8217;t have much to say about Super Tuesday primaries or presidential candidates, who, aside from John Edwards and until the Democratic delegate count got especially tight, had equally little to say about New Orleans residents like him. That&#8217;s just fine, Harrison said: He was busy still rebuilding his home and, just then, sewing beads onto fabric.</p> <p>All politics is local, Tip O&#8217;Neill famously said. Hell, every single thing is local in New Orleans &#8212; the city that <a href="http://www.afrocubaweb.com/nedsublette.htm%20" type="external">author Ned Sublette</a> calls &#8220;an alternative American history all in itself.&#8221; Big Chief Harrison figures in the coda to Sublette&#8217;s new book, &#8220;The World That Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square.&#8221; &#8220;They refused to cooperate in their own erasure,&#8221; Sublette writes of Harrison and his fellow chiefs in their elaborate beaded and feathered suits during the first Mardi Gras following Hurricane Katrina. &#8220;They were still men, and these were still their streets.&#8221;</p> <p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html%3FASIN=1556527306%26tag=truthdig20-20%26lcode=xm2%26cID=2025%26ccmID=165953%26location=/o/ASIN/1556527306%253FSubscriptionId=0P6YZRHNJFV404XJNNG2" type="external" /></p> <p>By Ned Sublette</p> <p /> <p>Lawrence Hill Books, 368 pages</p> <p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html%3FASIN=1556527306%26tag=truthdig20-20%26lcode=xm2%26cID=2025%26ccmID=165953%26location=/o/ASIN/1556527306%253FSubscriptionId=0P6YZRHNJFV404XJNNG2" type="external" /></p> <p>Make no mistake, what&#8217;s happening in New Orleans today &#8212; often by virtue of what&#8217;s not happening or despite what mustn&#8217;t &#8212; is an erasure, growing increasingly willful-seeming as the disaster grows more manmade and less natural. If things go as HUD has ordered and as the New Orleans City Council approved late last year, most public housing units in the city will be bulldozed away. Gone, at least for now. Among the striking images in my two years of post-Katrina reporting from New Orleans was the black Ninth Ward family I came upon during the second anniversary of the storm who stood by and watched as a TV anchorwoman held her microphone in front of their devastated home. &#8220;The producer said he doesn&#8217;t want us in the picture,&#8221; the father told me, holding his baby in his arms. Most Americans can&#8217;t see what&#8217;s actually in the frame in New Orleans anyway, and how could they without a working knowledge of local culture steeped in history? Where is the outrage down there, the resistance? Listen to Mardi Gras Indians chant &#8220;We won&#8217;t bow down!&#8221; Or fall in behind a brass band as part of a Sunday <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_line%20" type="external">second-line</a> parade. These are the protests, assertions of future and past in a present barely there at all. New Orleans is two cities now &#8212; one inching toward renewal, the other still caught in what, shortly after Katrina, David Winkler-Schmidt of the local Gambit Weekly called &#8220;the horrible unending of not knowing.&#8221;</p> <p>Sublette, keenly knowing the role of music and culture in explaining the city&#8217;s past, animating its present and foretelling its future, puts it this way: &#8220;The destruction of buildings in 2005 was fearful, but so was the loss of something intangible: African America took a blow when the collective knowledge of black New Orleans was scattered to the four winds. Dispersing that population was like tearing up an encyclopedia in front of an electric fan. This book is dedicated to the people who are trying to put that book back together.&#8221;</p> <p>I&#8217;m not sure that encyclopedia had been adequately distributed to anyone outside New Orleans in the first place, or maybe it&#8217;s just been too long hidden away. Meanwhile, Sublette has created an essential, heretofore nonexistent supplemental text. Those Mardi Gras Indians are a suitable place to begin or, in Sublette&#8217;s case, to end. What one takes away from witnessing Mardi Gras Indian masking rituals &#8212; the intricately hand-sewn feathered-and-beaded finery, the Congo and West African-derived drumbeats, the chants of pride, power and purpose, the mock battles (once, these were real fights) and the overwhelming sense of radiant love (unconditional, familial, the kind that carries both promise of protection and a sense of responsibility) &#8212; can&#8217;t be clutched and then easily possessed like the beads thrown from uptown Mardi Gras floats: It&#8217;s far subtler, as easy to miss as an Indian&#8217;s &#8220;coming out&#8221; is hard to find, and generally difficult to grasp without generations of bred-in knowledge. And it applies to all aspects of life and music, or to the very musical life, of New Orleans.</p> <p>Sublette unpacks a good bit of that knowledge, much of it centering on the bloodlines and machinations of history behind that very breeding. His previous book, &#8220;Cuba and Its Music&#8221; (2004), took 600 pages just to get to 1952, when mambo was still a craze and Fidel Castro just a rabble-rousing lawyer. But it was worth the journey: Sublette, a musician, music producer and, above all, crafty and diligent scholar, constructed a social history that fleshed out &#8212; through facts, not myths &#8212; both the primacy and allure of Cuban music. &#8220;Popular music history written in the second half of the twentieth century typically described American music in terms of black and white,&#8221; he wrote, &#8220;but mostly failed to see the elephant in the room: Cuba.&#8221; Sublette identified the island as a primary source for a wide range of Western music: the &#8220;Habanera&#8221; in <a href="http://w3.rz-berlin.mpg.de/cmp/bizet.html%20" type="external">Bizet&#8217;s</a> &#8220;Carmen&#8221;; the &#8220;danzon&#8221; implied by <a href="http://www.incwell.com/Biographies/Joplin.html" type="external">Scott Joplin&#8217;s</a> &#8220;The Entertainer&#8221;; the cha-cha underpinning the rock&amp;#160;&#8216;n&#8217; roll classic <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louie_Louie" type="external">&#8220;Louie Louie.&#8221;</a> Sublette argued for Cuban music as &#8220;the Other Great Tradition, a fundamental music of the New World,&#8221; and made a convincing case. More than any other guiding principle, his detailed prehistory of Cuban music was staked to the course of the slave trade in the Western Hemisphere.</p> <p>And so it is too here, his new book telling interlaced tales of cultural development and colonial slave trades that, as one, interlace again with that of Sublette&#8217;s previous volume (and reflect the complexity, not duality, of race in America). I remember a Time magazine piece, not long after Katrina, by <a href="http://www.jazzworld.com/Artist_Info/wyntonmarsalis/%20" type="external">trumpeter Wynton Marsalis</a>, perhaps this generation&#8217;s most visible icon of New Orleans culture. &#8220;We should not allow the mythic significance of this moment to pass without proper consideration,&#8221; Marsalis wrote. &#8220;Let us assess the size of this cataclysm in cultural terms, not in dollars and cents or politics. Americans are far less successful at doing that because we have never understood how our core beliefs are manifest in culture &#8212; and how culture should guide political and economic realities.&#8221; In an interview with BBC-TV, the trumpeter went further, describing the black faces on CNN looking for lost mothers and fathers as calling up a historical memory of Southern slave families torn apart. Sublette details precisely how and why those families were torn apart and what&#8217;s threatened by a fresh severing, making of Marsalis&#8217; allusion much more than the metaphor it seemed then. For his book on Cuba, Sublette took as his starting point Cadiz circa 1104; he ended up in the mid-20th century. He&#8217;s tempered such ambition a bit here: &#8220;My story begins in 1492,&#8221; he writes, &#8220;in Roman Catholic Europe.&#8221; His goal? To explain &#8220;how New Orleans got to 1819,&#8221; drawing that date from a traveler&#8217;s description: &#8220;On Sabbath evening, the African slaves meet on the green, by the swamp, and rock the city with their Congo dances.&#8221; Along the way, Sublette details just how those Africans got to that green, what their dances probably looked and sounded like, why it&#8217;s both interesting and significant that the dances were identified as &#8220;Congo,&#8221; and how we came to say that they &#8220;rocked&#8221; in the first place.</p> <p>Sublette&#8217;s Cuba book would have caused great injury had it landed on your head. This one, at 360 pages (with notes), would be more likely to cause pain from inside the skull &#8212; density, not heft, lends power to its impact. There&#8217;s a meticulousness that comes at you without pause in long stretches. Still, Sublette brings genuine humor to the task too. &#8220;By 1744, Britain and France had resumed their normal status of being at war with each other,&#8221; he writes at one point. In describing the French and Indian War, he begins: &#8220;The twenty-one-year-old George Washington started a world war. At least, the French said he started it.&#8221; And throughout, he projects wonder enough to summon up questions such as, &#8220;Did a slave &#8212; or a free person of color &#8212; ever get to play a clavichord?&#8221; His keen eye for detail occasionally dovetails nicely with a deadpan delivery: After noting that New Orleans has thoroughfares named for slave-owning presidents Washington, Jefferson, Jackson and Taylor, he reports: &#8220;Lincoln Avenue in the adjacent, unincorporated town of Metairie is a double dead-end, three blocks long.&#8221;</p> <p>Sublette&#8217;s history of New Orleans focuses on the city&#8217;s three colonial eras, which occurred in rapid succession: French, Spanish, Anglo-American. Each, through its approaches to the slave trade, brought a distinct black population, creating &#8220;an increasingly cosmopolitan African culture of New Orleans,&#8221; he writes, &#8220;which from the earliest days of slavery in Louisiana had its own personality.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;Brief though it was, the Spanish period in New Orleans was crucial to the creation of Afro-Louisianan culture, and constitutes a singular moment in African American history,&#8221; he explains. In part this is due to the repeal of the <a href="http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/335/%20" type="external">French Code Noir</a>, which allowed enslaved Africans greater rights and privileges. &#8220;They could speak in their ancestral languages and play their drums: they had a past. With the right of self-purchase, they had a future. Enslaved people in English-speaking America were not permitted to have either one.&#8221;</p> <p>Sublette is right to elevate the significance of the <a href="http://www.albany.edu/~js3980/haitian-revolution.html%20" type="external">Haitian revolution</a>: It forced France&#8217;s hand with respect to the Louisiana Purchase; set the stage for a fresh wave of Africans of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Kongo%20" type="external">Kongo</a> descent to come to Louisiana; and, Sublette argues, set in motion both abolitionist sentiments in the North and harsh, paranoid treatment of slaves in the South. In Sublette&#8217;s telling, the fear of a slave uprising gave rise to a protectionist strategy in the United States. Perhaps Sublette goes too far in calling Jan. 1, 1808, &#8220;one of the most important dates in American history&#8221;; still, there&#8217;s little doubt that the Slave Trade Act, enacted that day, closed the door on African imports of human capital and set off a speculative bubble in the domestic slave trade for the following half-century, fed in large part by the needs of Louisiana plantation owners. This was big business for New Orleans, Sublette writes, &#8220;and greatly affected the demographics and culture of the city.&#8221; Those demographics would change yet again upon the arrival of exiles from Saint-Domingue in the wake of the Haitian uprising, exiles who arrived largely via a stay of several years in Cuba. And this rapid and unique transformation of the population of New Orleans in the first half of the 19th century, involving slaves shipped from the upper South and more &#8220;recent&#8221; Africans from the Caribbean, has a lot to do with the drum, the dance and the rhythm of justice and daily life in the city even today.</p> <p>Sublette cracks the whip of scholarly re-evaluation with particular force on Thomas Jefferson, whose annexation of Louisiana made him a key figure in American slavery&#8217;s expansion, creating, as Sublette puts it, &#8220;a major industry in domestically raised humans.&#8221; He quotes Jefferson&#8217;s only book, &#8220;Notes on the State of Virginia,&#8221; published in 1784, on how black-white relations &#8220;produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or other race,&#8221; and argues beyond defenses of historical context and any romantic notion of the former president as a conflicted soul. &#8220;He disseminated blatantly racist ideas,&#8221; Sublette writes, &#8220;and as a politician, he fought to secure the grand expansion of the institution of slavery.&#8221;</p> <p>Yet elsewhere Sublette generally avoids diatribes or polemics, and his analysis of demographic shifts in New Orleans &#8212; at one point he cites not just census figures but accounts of slave populations by African ethnicity &#8212; serves to explain and delineate differences between the black population of the city and rest of the country. The uniquely horrific characteristics of the sugar plantation business, which didn&#8217;t exist further north, distinguish the black experience in New Orleans as yet more stark and atypical.Early on, Sublette explains that his book &#8220;is not about music per se, but music will be a constant presence in it, the way it is in New Orleans.&#8221; Changing colonial flags and subtle shifts in slave populations are indeed guiding forces in this narrative too: What, for instance, was the effect of the drum, which was prohibited everywhere else slaves were held in America, on social and political organization, not to mention the force and direction of American musical innovation? It&#8217;s no accident, Sublette argues, that jazz grew from this muddy soil or that <a href="http://www.history-of-rock.com/jump_artists.htm" type="external">Roy Brown&#8217;s &#8220;Good Rockin&#8217; Tonight,&#8221;</a> which he identifies (arguably) as the first rock&amp;#160;&#8216;n&#8217; roll record, was recorded at Cosimo Matassa&#8217;s rudimentary studio on the edge of the French Quarter. These are hardly new ideas, but rarely are they advanced in such hardy detail. Less well understood is the &#8220;bamboula&#8221; rhythm that was the heartbeat of the dances of enslaved Africans at Congo Square, along with being the name of <a href="http://www.louismoreaugottschalk.com/%20" type="external">pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk&#8217;s</a> signature 19th-century composition. (Bamboula can be located clearly in nearly every modern variant of New Orleans music). Sublette walks us through this lineage and its connections to the four-note habanera, or &#8220;tango,&#8221; rhythm that is the signature Antillean beat to this day.</p> <p>Inevitably, Sublette&#8217;s story leads us back to Congo Square, &#8220;the only place in the antebellum United States where enslaved African Americans were allowed to hold public gatherings to dance, play ancestral drums, and sing in ancestral languages, albeit under police supervision,&#8221; he writes. &#8220;Those Sunday dances must have been avant garde, if you will: a site not only of memory and tradition, but of culturally encrypted communication, and a laboratory where a new musical and lyrical vocabulary evolved.&#8221;</p> <p>But the site of the former Congo Square, just off the present North Rampart Street, on the fringe of the French Quarter, sits behind a gate that&#8217;s been nearly always locked since Katrina. Sublette quotes Christian Shultz, a traveler who in 1808 noted Congo Square slave dances: &#8220;These amusements continue until sunset, when one or two of the city patrol show themselves with their cutlasses, and the crowds immediately disperse.&#8221; As Sublette accurately observes, &#8220;the last sentence would have been almost perfectly applicable in New Orleans as I knew it in 2004, when the Sunday afternoon second lines were closed down at five on the dot by squads of police who were sometimes downright rude, even provocative, in doing so.&#8221;</p> <p>Things have grown far worse. In April 2007, a federal lawsuit on behalf of a consortium of social aid and pleasure clubs, assisted by the American Civil Liberties Union, protested the city&#8217;s hiking of police security fees &#8212; triple or more from pre-Katrina rates &#8212; for second-line parades held September through May. The suit invoked the First Amendment right to freedom of speech and expression, claiming that parade permit schemes &#8220;effectively tax&#8221; such expression. &#8220;Should the law not be enjoined,&#8221; the complaint stated, &#8220;there is very little doubt that plaintiff&#8217;s cultural tradition will cease to exist.&#8221; The task force found itself back in court &#8212; victorious again &#8212; when a restraining order threatened a parade planned for Lundi Gras, the day before Mardi Gras.</p> <p>A little more than a year earlier, on St. Joseph&#8217;s Night, one of three times each year that Mardi Gras tribes gather en masse, the intersection of Washington Avenue and La Salle Street was packed with Mardi Gras Indians, decked out in feathers and beads. Across the street, A.L. Davis Park, named for a minister and civil rights activist, was filled with FEMA trailers housing displaced families. Looking fierce in his African-inspired green-and-red mask, Big Chief Victor Harris of the Fi-Yi-Yi shouted: &#8220;They spit us all over this land. They told us we had to evacuate. But they didn&#8217;t say we had to stay away.&#8221; Spy boys led the way. Flag boys bore identifying colors. Chiefs haltingly greeted fellow chiefs. Suddenly, sirens and flashing lights overpowered drums and feathers. Police cars drove straight through the procession, enacting their own now annual ritual. Some officers wore uniforms emblazoned with SWAT team logos. Representatives of the ACLU and the National Lawyers Guild signified too, with armbands marked &#8220;Legal Observer.&#8221; It was true that post-Katrina street life had been punctuated by shootings and that each en masse gathering might well pose risks, but there was also growing opinion that the city&#8217;s hard-line challenges to these assemblies just then meant to send a message to participants: You&#8217;re not welcome back.</p> <p>Were they ever welcome, or valued? Sublette&#8217;s book suggests not, and hints that they may well never have been more embattled, or more essential as both historical record and empowering act, than in the present moment &#8212; not even at the height of the plantation business or the interstate slave trade. Erosion of our coastal wetlands may have paved the way for the natural disaster that hammered New Orleans. But the least-mentioned aspect of the resulting devastation &#8212; the erosion of what ethnographer Michael P. Smith once called &#8220;America&#8217;s cultural wetlands&#8221; &#8212; need be of primary concern. Erasure of these wetlands exposes many to the types of ill winds that shatter souls and negate past truths. Sublette&#8217;s scholarship lends sturdiness and cohesion to a historical record that otherwise might be washed away through carelessness or intentionally erased. The secrets of history contained in Congo Square may be locked away behind the gates to Armstrong Park for now. Yet they hold keys to both the past and future of a city stuck in an uneasy present.</p> <p>Larry Blumenfeld is working on a book about cultural recovery in New Orleans based on his research as a Katrina Media Fellow with the Open Society Institute. His writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Village Voice and Salon and in the essay collection &#8220;Music in the Post-9/11 World&#8221; (Routledge). He is editor at large of Jazziz magazine.</p>

Larry Blumenfeld on New Orleans' Refusal to Vanish

https://truthdig.com/articles/larry-blumenfeld-on-new-orleans-refusal-to-vanish/

2008-02-22

4left

Less than a week before Mardi Gras which this year coincided with 8220Super Tuesday8221 I was on the phone with Donald Harrison jazz saxophonist and Big Chief of the Congo Nation In that latter role Harrison keeps alive what is perhaps the most elemental and least understood New Orleans tradition Mardi Gras Indian culture He didn8217t have much to say about Super Tuesday primaries or presidential candidates who aside from John Edwards and until the Democratic delegate count got especially tight had equally little to say about New Orleans residents like him That8217s just fine Harrison said He was busy still rebuilding his home and just then sewing beads onto fabric All politics is local Tip O8217Neill famously said Hell every single thing is local in New Orleans 8212 the city that author Ned Sublette calls 8220an alternative American history all in itself8221 Big Chief Harrison figures in the coda to Sublette8217s new book 8220The World That Made New Orleans From Spanish Silver to Congo Square8221 8220They refused to cooperate in their own erasure8221 Sublette writes of Harrison and his fellow chiefs in their elaborate beaded and feathered suits during the first Mardi Gras following Hurricane Katrina 8220They were still men and these were still their streets8221 By Ned Sublette Lawrence Hill Books 368 pages Make no mistake what8217s happening in New Orleans today 8212 often by virtue of what8217s not happening or despite what mustn8217t 8212 is an erasure growing increasingly willfulseeming as the disaster grows more manmade and less natural If things go as HUD has ordered and as the New Orleans City Council approved late last year most public housing units in the city will be bulldozed away Gone at least for now Among the striking images in my two years of postKatrina reporting from New Orleans was the black Ninth Ward family I came upon during the second anniversary of the storm who stood by and watched as a TV anchorwoman held her microphone in front of their devastated home 8220The producer said he doesn8217t want us in the picture8221 the father told me holding his baby in his arms Most Americans can8217t see what8217s actually in the frame in New Orleans anyway and how could they without a working knowledge of local culture steeped in history Where is the outrage down there the resistance Listen to Mardi Gras Indians chant 8220We won8217t bow down8221 Or fall in behind a brass band as part of a Sunday secondline parade These are the protests assertions of future and past in a present barely there at all New Orleans is two cities now 8212 one inching toward renewal the other still caught in what shortly after Katrina David WinklerSchmidt of the local Gambit Weekly called 8220the horrible unending of not knowing8221 Sublette keenly knowing the role of music and culture in explaining the city8217s past animating its present and foretelling its future puts it this way 8220The destruction of buildings in 2005 was fearful but so was the loss of something intangible African America took a blow when the collective knowledge of black New Orleans was scattered to the four winds Dispersing that population was like tearing up an encyclopedia in front of an electric fan This book is dedicated to the people who are trying to put that book back together8221 I8217m not sure that encyclopedia had been adequately distributed to anyone outside New Orleans in the first place or maybe it8217s just been too long hidden away Meanwhile Sublette has created an essential heretofore nonexistent supplemental text Those Mardi Gras Indians are a suitable place to begin or in Sublette8217s case to end What one takes away from witnessing Mardi Gras Indian masking rituals 8212 the intricately handsewn featheredandbeaded finery the Congo and West Africanderived drumbeats the chants of pride power and purpose the mock battles once these were real fights and the overwhelming sense of radiant love unconditional familial the kind that carries both promise of protection and a sense of responsibility 8212 can8217t be clutched and then easily possessed like the beads thrown from uptown Mardi Gras floats It8217s far subtler as easy to miss as an Indian8217s 8220coming out8221 is hard to find and generally difficult to grasp without generations of bredin knowledge And it applies to all aspects of life and music or to the very musical life of New Orleans Sublette unpacks a good bit of that knowledge much of it centering on the bloodlines and machinations of history behind that very breeding His previous book 8220Cuba and Its Music8221 2004 took 600 pages just to get to 1952 when mambo was still a craze and Fidel Castro just a rabblerousing lawyer But it was worth the journey Sublette a musician music producer and above all crafty and diligent scholar constructed a social history that fleshed out 8212 through facts not myths 8212 both the primacy and allure of Cuban music 8220Popular music history written in the second half of the twentieth century typically described American music in terms of black and white8221 he wrote 8220but mostly failed to see the elephant in the room Cuba8221 Sublette identified the island as a primary source for a wide range of Western music the 8220Habanera8221 in Bizet8217s 8220Carmen8221 the 8220danzon8221 implied by Scott Joplin8217s 8220The Entertainer8221 the chacha underpinning the rockamp1608216n8217 roll classic 8220Louie Louie8221 Sublette argued for Cuban music as 8220the Other Great Tradition a fundamental music of the New World8221 and made a convincing case More than any other guiding principle his detailed prehistory of Cuban music was staked to the course of the slave trade in the Western Hemisphere And so it is too here his new book telling interlaced tales of cultural development and colonial slave trades that as one interlace again with that of Sublette8217s previous volume and reflect the complexity not duality of race in America I remember a Time magazine piece not long after Katrina by trumpeter Wynton Marsalis perhaps this generation8217s most visible icon of New Orleans culture 8220We should not allow the mythic significance of this moment to pass without proper consideration8221 Marsalis wrote 8220Let us assess the size of this cataclysm in cultural terms not in dollars and cents or politics Americans are far less successful at doing that because we have never understood how our core beliefs are manifest in culture 8212 and how culture should guide political and economic realities8221 In an interview with BBCTV the trumpeter went further describing the black faces on CNN looking for lost mothers and fathers as calling up a historical memory of Southern slave families torn apart Sublette details precisely how and why those families were torn apart and what8217s threatened by a fresh severing making of Marsalis8217 allusion much more than the metaphor it seemed then For his book on Cuba Sublette took as his starting point Cadiz circa 1104 he ended up in the mid20th century He8217s tempered such ambition a bit here 8220My story begins in 14928221 he writes 8220in Roman Catholic Europe8221 His goal To explain 8220how New Orleans got to 18198221 drawing that date from a traveler8217s description 8220On Sabbath evening the African slaves meet on the green by the swamp and rock the city with their Congo dances8221 Along the way Sublette details just how those Africans got to that green what their dances probably looked and sounded like why it8217s both interesting and significant that the dances were identified as 8220Congo8221 and how we came to say that they 8220rocked8221 in the first place Sublette8217s Cuba book would have caused great injury had it landed on your head This one at 360 pages with notes would be more likely to cause pain from inside the skull 8212 density not heft lends power to its impact There8217s a meticulousness that comes at you without pause in long stretches Still Sublette brings genuine humor to the task too 8220By 1744 Britain and France had resumed their normal status of being at war with each other8221 he writes at one point In describing the French and Indian War he begins 8220The twentyoneyearold George Washington started a world war At least the French said he started it8221 And throughout he projects wonder enough to summon up questions such as 8220Did a slave 8212 or a free person of color 8212 ever get to play a clavichord8221 His keen eye for detail occasionally dovetails nicely with a deadpan delivery After noting that New Orleans has thoroughfares named for slaveowning presidents Washington Jefferson Jackson and Taylor he reports 8220Lincoln Avenue in the adjacent unincorporated town of Metairie is a double deadend three blocks long8221 Sublette8217s history of New Orleans focuses on the city8217s three colonial eras which occurred in rapid succession French Spanish AngloAmerican Each through its approaches to the slave trade brought a distinct black population creating 8220an increasingly cosmopolitan African culture of New Orleans8221 he writes 8220which from the earliest days of slavery in Louisiana had its own personality8221 8220Brief though it was the Spanish period in New Orleans was crucial to the creation of AfroLouisianan culture and constitutes a singular moment in African American history8221 he explains In part this is due to the repeal of the French Code Noir which allowed enslaved Africans greater rights and privileges 8220They could speak in their ancestral languages and play their drums they had a past With the right of selfpurchase they had a future Enslaved people in Englishspeaking America were not permitted to have either one8221 Sublette is right to elevate the significance of the Haitian revolution It forced France8217s hand with respect to the Louisiana Purchase set the stage for a fresh wave of Africans of Kongo descent to come to Louisiana and Sublette argues set in motion both abolitionist sentiments in the North and harsh paranoid treatment of slaves in the South In Sublette8217s telling the fear of a slave uprising gave rise to a protectionist strategy in the United States Perhaps Sublette goes too far in calling Jan 1 1808 8220one of the most important dates in American history8221 still there8217s little doubt that the Slave Trade Act enacted that day closed the door on African imports of human capital and set off a speculative bubble in the domestic slave trade for the following halfcentury fed in large part by the needs of Louisiana plantation owners This was big business for New Orleans Sublette writes 8220and greatly affected the demographics and culture of the city8221 Those demographics would change yet again upon the arrival of exiles from SaintDomingue in the wake of the Haitian uprising exiles who arrived largely via a stay of several years in Cuba And this rapid and unique transformation of the population of New Orleans in the first half of the 19th century involving slaves shipped from the upper South and more 8220recent8221 Africans from the Caribbean has a lot to do with the drum the dance and the rhythm of justice and daily life in the city even today Sublette cracks the whip of scholarly reevaluation with particular force on Thomas Jefferson whose annexation of Louisiana made him a key figure in American slavery8217s expansion creating as Sublette puts it 8220a major industry in domestically raised humans8221 He quotes Jefferson8217s only book 8220Notes on the State of Virginia8221 published in 1784 on how blackwhite relations 8220produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or other race8221 and argues beyond defenses of historical context and any romantic notion of the former president as a conflicted soul 8220He disseminated blatantly racist ideas8221 Sublette writes 8220and as a politician he fought to secure the grand expansion of the institution of slavery8221 Yet elsewhere Sublette generally avoids diatribes or polemics and his analysis of demographic shifts in New Orleans 8212 at one point he cites not just census figures but accounts of slave populations by African ethnicity 8212 serves to explain and delineate differences between the black population of the city and rest of the country The uniquely horrific characteristics of the sugar plantation business which didn8217t exist further north distinguish the black experience in New Orleans as yet more stark and atypicalEarly on Sublette explains that his book 8220is not about music per se but music will be a constant presence in it the way it is in New Orleans8221 Changing colonial flags and subtle shifts in slave populations are indeed guiding forces in this narrative too What for instance was the effect of the drum which was prohibited everywhere else slaves were held in America on social and political organization not to mention the force and direction of American musical innovation It8217s no accident Sublette argues that jazz grew from this muddy soil or that Roy Brown8217s 8220Good Rockin8217 Tonight8221 which he identifies arguably as the first rockamp1608216n8217 roll record was recorded at Cosimo Matassa8217s rudimentary studio on the edge of the French Quarter These are hardly new ideas but rarely are they advanced in such hardy detail Less well understood is the 8220bamboula8221 rhythm that was the heartbeat of the dances of enslaved Africans at Congo Square along with being the name of pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk8217s signature 19thcentury composition Bamboula can be located clearly in nearly every modern variant of New Orleans music Sublette walks us through this lineage and its connections to the fournote habanera or 8220tango8221 rhythm that is the signature Antillean beat to this day Inevitably Sublette8217s story leads us back to Congo Square 8220the only place in the antebellum United States where enslaved African Americans were allowed to hold public gatherings to dance play ancestral drums and sing in ancestral languages albeit under police supervision8221 he writes 8220Those Sunday dances must have been avant garde if you will a site not only of memory and tradition but of culturally encrypted communication and a laboratory where a new musical and lyrical vocabulary evolved8221 But the site of the former Congo Square just off the present North Rampart Street on the fringe of the French Quarter sits behind a gate that8217s been nearly always locked since Katrina Sublette quotes Christian Shultz a traveler who in 1808 noted Congo Square slave dances 8220These amusements continue until sunset when one or two of the city patrol show themselves with their cutlasses and the crowds immediately disperse8221 As Sublette accurately observes 8220the last sentence would have been almost perfectly applicable in New Orleans as I knew it in 2004 when the Sunday afternoon second lines were closed down at five on the dot by squads of police who were sometimes downright rude even provocative in doing so8221 Things have grown far worse In April 2007 a federal lawsuit on behalf of a consortium of social aid and pleasure clubs assisted by the American Civil Liberties Union protested the city8217s hiking of police security fees 8212 triple or more from preKatrina rates 8212 for secondline parades held September through May The suit invoked the First Amendment right to freedom of speech and expression claiming that parade permit schemes 8220effectively tax8221 such expression 8220Should the law not be enjoined8221 the complaint stated 8220there is very little doubt that plaintiff8217s cultural tradition will cease to exist8221 The task force found itself back in court 8212 victorious again 8212 when a restraining order threatened a parade planned for Lundi Gras the day before Mardi Gras A little more than a year earlier on St Joseph8217s Night one of three times each year that Mardi Gras tribes gather en masse the intersection of Washington Avenue and La Salle Street was packed with Mardi Gras Indians decked out in feathers and beads Across the street AL Davis Park named for a minister and civil rights activist was filled with FEMA trailers housing displaced families Looking fierce in his Africaninspired greenandred mask Big Chief Victor Harris of the FiYiYi shouted 8220They spit us all over this land They told us we had to evacuate But they didn8217t say we had to stay away8221 Spy boys led the way Flag boys bore identifying colors Chiefs haltingly greeted fellow chiefs Suddenly sirens and flashing lights overpowered drums and feathers Police cars drove straight through the procession enacting their own now annual ritual Some officers wore uniforms emblazoned with SWAT team logos Representatives of the ACLU and the National Lawyers Guild signified too with armbands marked 8220Legal Observer8221 It was true that postKatrina street life had been punctuated by shootings and that each en masse gathering might well pose risks but there was also growing opinion that the city8217s hardline challenges to these assemblies just then meant to send a message to participants You8217re not welcome back Were they ever welcome or valued Sublette8217s book suggests not and hints that they may well never have been more embattled or more essential as both historical record and empowering act than in the present moment 8212 not even at the height of the plantation business or the interstate slave trade Erosion of our coastal wetlands may have paved the way for the natural disaster that hammered New Orleans But the leastmentioned aspect of the resulting devastation 8212 the erosion of what ethnographer Michael P Smith once called 8220America8217s cultural wetlands8221 8212 need be of primary concern Erasure of these wetlands exposes many to the types of ill winds that shatter souls and negate past truths Sublette8217s scholarship lends sturdiness and cohesion to a historical record that otherwise might be washed away through carelessness or intentionally erased The secrets of history contained in Congo Square may be locked away behind the gates to Armstrong Park for now Yet they hold keys to both the past and future of a city stuck in an uneasy present Larry Blumenfeld is working on a book about cultural recovery in New Orleans based on his research as a Katrina Media Fellow with the Open Society Institute His writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal Village Voice and Salon and in the essay collection 8220Music in the Post911 World8221 Routledge He is editor at large of Jazziz magazine

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<p>ISTANBUL, Jan 23 (Reuters) - Turkish police arrested 42 people including a pro-Kurdish politician overnight for &#8220;spreading terrorist propaganda&#8221; on social media about Turkey&#8217;s military operation against a Kurdish militia in Syria, state media reported on Tuesday.</p> <p>The police raids, which state-run Anadolu news agency said were focused on the Western province of Izmir, brought the number of such detentions to around 70 since &#8220;Operation Olive Branch&#8221; was launched at the weekend.</p> <p>The incursion into the Afrin region targets the U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish YPG, viewed by Ankara as a terrorist group and an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has fought an insurgency in Turkey&#8217;s largely Kurdish southeast since 1984.</p> <p>Counter-terrorism squads launched simultaneous raids in various parts of Izmir and the nearby provinces of Denizli and Manisa, Anadolu said.</p> <p>It said among those detained was the Izmir head of the pro-Kurdish Peoples&#8217; Democratic Party (HDP), the second biggest opposition party in parliament and also accused by Ankara of being an extension of the PKK. It denies the accusation.</p> <p>Among those arrested were also six suspects accused of spreading propaganda on the streets, which amounted to &#8220;harassing people&#8221;, the agency said, adding that they were planning to hold a protest in a park.</p> <p>Police carried out similar arrests related to social media posts across the country, detaining 14 suspects in the eastern provinces of Van, Igdir and Mus, and another five in the Mediterranean province of Mersin.</p> <p>Ankara has enforced a crackdown since a failed coup in 2016 that critics say has unjustly targeted pro-Kurdish politicians. HDP lawmakers are in jail on terrorism charges, which they deny.</p> <p>More than 50,000 people have been jailed and face trial since the attempted putsch and 150,000 have been sacked or suspended from their jobs. The government says the moves were necessary given the security threats Turkey faces.</p> <p>On Monday, authorities in Ankara banned all rallies, protests, meetings and concerts across the capital, for as long as the Afrin operation continues. (Writing by Daren Butler; editing by Ralph Boulton; Editing by Dominic Evans and Ralph Boulton)</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON/BEIJING (Reuters) - Top Trump administration officials are asking China to cut tariffs on imported cars, allow foreign majority ownership of financial services firms and buy more U.S.-made semiconductors in negotiations to avoid plans to slap tariffs on a host of Chinese goods and a potential trade war.</p> FILE PHOTO - U.S. President Donald Trump and China's President Xi Jinping shake hands after making joint statements at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, November 9, 2017. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj/File Photo <p>A person familiar with the discussions said these were among the asks from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer as they pursue talks with Beijing.</p> <p>The Wall Street Journal first reported the demands from U.S. officials, saying they came in a letter sent to Beijing last week.</p> <p>White House trade adviser Peter Navarro confirmed that President Donald Trump asked Mnuchin and Lighthizer to try to resolve trade differences with China.</p> <p>&#8220;We&#8217;re hopeful there that China will work with us to basically address some of these practices,&#8221; Navarro told CNBC television.</p> <p>U.S. stocks surged on Monday on the news that the two sides were talking, after a massive rout last week when Trump announced plans to impose tariffs on up to $60 billion of Chinese imports over alleged misappropriation of U.S. intellectual property.</p> <p>The Dow Jones Industrial Average <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.DJI" type="external">.DJI</a> posted its third biggest point gain ever, rising 669.4 points, or 2.8 percent, to close at 24,202.6 while the broader S&amp;amp;P 500 <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.SPX" type="external">.SPX</a> rose 2.7 percent after a nearly 6 percent drop last week.</p> <p>Chinese Premier Li Keqiang earlier on Monday said that China and the United States should maintain negotiations and repeated pledges to ease access for American businesses to China&#8217;s markets.</p> <p>Li told a conference that included global chief executives that China would treat foreign and domestic firms equally, would not force foreign firms to transfer technology and would strengthen intellectual property rights, repeating promises that have failed to placate Washington.</p> <p>Despite a steady stream of fierce rhetoric from Chinese state media lambasting the United States for being a &#8220;bully&#8221; and warning of retaliation, Chinese and U.S. officials are busy negotiating behind the scenes.</p> TARIFFS TO PROCEED WITHOUT AGREEMENT <p>In an interview aired on Sunday, Mnuchin told Fox News that he was pursuing an agreement with the Chinese &#8220;for them to open up their markets, reduce their tariffs, stop forced technology transfer. These are all the things we want to do.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;We are proceeding with these tariffs, we&#8217;re not putting them on hold unless we have an acceptable agreement that the president signs off on,&#8221; Mnuchin added.</p> Slideshow (2 Images) <p>China has offered to buy more U.S. semiconductors by diverting some purchases from South Korea and Taiwan, the Financial Times reported, citing people briefed on the negotiations. China imported $2.6 billion of semiconductors from the United States last year.</p> <p>Chinese officials are also working to finalize rules by May - instead of the end of June - to allow foreign financial groups to take majority stakes in Chinese securities firms, the Financial Times said.</p> <p>&#8220;I anticipate that for political reasons it would be logical for China to respond, because countries do,&#8221; Blackstone Group ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=BX.N" type="external">BX.N</a>) Chief Executive Stephen Schwarzman told Reuters on Monday on the sidelines of the Beijing conference where Li spoke.</p> <p>&#8220;That&#8217;s why I view this more as a skirmish, and I think the interests of both countries are served by resolving some of these matters.&#8221;</p> <p>China called on World Trade Organization members on Monday to unite to oppose Trump&#8217;s proposed tariffs targeting alleged intellectual property theft, saying they should &#8220;lock this beast back into the cage of WTO rules.&#8221;</p> <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.DJI" type="external">Dow Jones &amp;amp; Company Inc</a> 24202.6 .DJI Dow Jones Indexes +669.40 (+2.84%) .DJI .SPX BX.N AAPL.O MSFT.O <p>On Friday, China responded to the U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum by declaring plans to levy additional duties on up to $3 billion of U.S. imports, including fruit, nuts and wine.</p> <p>China could also inflict pain on U.S. multinationals that rely on China for a substantial - and growing - portion of their total revenues, said Alex Wolf, senior emerging markets economist at Aberdeen Standard Investments.</p> <p>&#8220;This could put U.S. companies such as Apple ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AAPL.O" type="external">AAPL.O</a>), Microsoft ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=MSFT.O" type="external">MSFT.O</a>), Starbucks ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=SBUX.O" type="external">SBUX.O</a>), GM ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=GM.N" type="external">GM.N</a>), Nike ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=NKE.N" type="external">NKE.N</a>), etc in the firing line,&#8221; Wolf said in a note.</p> <p>China can increase the regulatory burden on U.S companies through new inspections and rules; ban travel; stop providing export licenses of key intermediate goods; raise the tax burden on U.S. multinationals in China; or block U.S. companies from the government procurement market, he said.</p> CAR TARIFF DIFFERENTIAL <p>The Trump administration has demanded that China immediately cut its $375 billion trade surplus with the United States by $100 billion.</p> <p>China has a 25 percent tariff on U.S. cars and has talked recently of lowering it, while Trump has often complained that the U.S. import tariff on passenger vehicles is only 2.5 percent. China&#8217;s imports of U.S.-built motor vehicles totaled $10.6 billion in 2017, about 8 percent of the country&#8217;s overall U.S. imports by value, according to U.S. government data.</p> <p>On the reported offer to increase U.S. semiconductor imports, it is unclear how U.S. chips would replace South Korean and Taiwanese chips, since there is minimal overlap between U.S. chips and those of the two Asian producers.</p> <p>China is heavily dependent on foreign semiconductors, one of its biggest import categories by value. That said, the United States accounted for just 1 percent of China&#8217;s total semiconductor imports last year by value, according to Reuters calculations based on Chinese customs data.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Matthew Miller, Ben Blanchard, Elias Glenn and Stella Qiu in Beijing and Eric Beech in Washington; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Leslie Adler</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>SEOUL (Reuters) - General Motors said its loss-making South Korean operations would file for bankruptcy if its union did not make concessions by April 20, the union said on Tuesday.</p> The logo of GM Korea is seen at its Bupyeong plant in Incheon, South Korea March 12, 2018. Picture taken March 12, 2018. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji <p>The comments were made by Barry Engle, President of GM International, during a meeting with GM Korea&#8217;s union leader on Monday, the union said in a document reviewed by Reuters.</p> <p>The U.S. automaker announced in February it would shut down a factory in Gunsan, southwest of Seoul, and that it was mulling the fate of its three remaining plants in South Korea.</p> <p>Engle said the South Korean government should also promise to provide support for GM Korea by April 20.</p> <p>GM Korea, which needs $600 million in operational funds by the end of April, may consider more voluntary redundancies for the remaining 680 workers at the Gunsan factory, Engle said according to the union, adding that layoffs were the last option.</p> <p>A GM Korea spokesman was not immediately available for comment.</p> <p>The union said earlier this month that it will not demand a pay rise and bonuses this year, but instead wants the U.S. automaker to provide a future production plan and job security.</p> <p>GM Korea still wants the union to agree to cut benefits, a union official said.</p> <p>Earlier this month, GM Korea&#8217;s second-largest shareholder, state-funded South Korean Development Bank ,began a due-diligence review of GM&#8217;s South Korean unit as part of its decision whether to inject more capital into the money-losing operation.</p> <p>GM Korea, which employs nearly 16,000 people, has previously said that without new funding from its major shareholders it would have a first-quarter &#8220;cash crisis&#8221;.</p> <p>Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin; Editing by Lincoln Feast</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Stormy Daniels sued Donald Trump&#8217;s lawyer Michael Cohen on Monday for defamation, according to court documents, escalating a legal battle between the American president and the porn star that the White House was struggling to contain.</p> <p>Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, made the claim a day after her widely watched TV interview on &#8220;60 Minutes&#8221; on CBS. Daniels said she was threatened with violence to keep quiet about her alleged 2006 tryst with Trump.</p> <p>At the White House, a spokesman in a briefing with reporters cast aspersions on her account. The White House has denied allegations that Trump had a sexual relationship with Daniels.</p> <p>CBS Corp said the show drew its biggest audience in more than eight years, with 21.3 million Americans tuning in, more than double the previous week&#8217;s edition of &#8220;60 Minutes.&#8221;</p> <p>Presidential spokesman Raj Shah told the briefing, &#8220;The president doesn&#8217;t believe any of the claims Ms. Daniels made in the interview last night were accurate.&#8221;</p> <p>Asked if Trump believed Daniels was threatened, Shah said, &#8220;No, he does not. ... There&#8217;s nothing to corroborate her claim.&#8221;</p> <p>Daniels&#8217; &#8220;60 Minutes&#8221; appearance also drew a denial from the president&#8217;s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, that he was involved in the alleged threat of violence against her.</p> <p>Daniels originally sued Trump on March 6, saying he never signed an agreement for her to stay silent about what she called their &#8220;intimate&#8221; relationship. Monday&#8217;s filing in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles amended the original lawsuit to say Daniels was defamed.</p> <p>Her attorney, Michael Avenatti, said Cohen &#8220;meant to convey that Ms. Clifford is a liar, someone who should not be trusted, and that her claims about her relationship with Mr. Trump&#8221; were not true.</p> <p>Daniels&#8217; defamation allegation was based on a Feb. 13 statement by Cohen that she said hurt her reputation.</p> Stormy Daniels is interviewed by Anderson Cooper. CBSNews/60 MINUTES/via REUTERS <p>The latest filing also said $130,000 Cohen paid Daniels in October 2016 just before the presidential election to secure her silence amounted to an illegal campaign contribution, and that the agreement should be declared void.</p> <p>Cohen has said he paid Daniels out of his own pocket, but has not explained why or if Trump was aware of the payment.</p> <p>In filings with the Justice Department and Federal Election Commission, watchdog groups have said the $130,000 may have exceeded campaign contribution limits, violating U.S. law. Cohen has denied this.</p> <p>California attorney Michael Overing, who specializes in defamation law, said it would be difficult for Daniels to prevail on her defamation claim because she is a public figure.</p> Slideshow (2 Images) <p>To prove libel, she would have to show that a false statement was made with either reckless or purposeful disregard for the truth, Overing said.</p> <p>Trump attorney Cohen&#8217;s denial of involvement in the alleged threat against Daniels came in a &#8220;cease-and-desist&#8221; letter sent to Avenatti shortly after &#8220;60 Minutes&#8221; aired that demanded a retraction and an apology. A copy of the letter was seen by Reuters on Monday.</p> <p>The letter said, &#8220;Mr. Cohen had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with any such person or incident, and does not even believe that any such person exists, or that such incident ever occurred.&#8221;</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-usa-trump-daniels-defamation/stormy-daniels-suing-trump-lawyer-michael-cohen-for-defamation-idUSKBN1H22QN" type="external">Stormy Daniels suing Trump lawyer Michael Cohen for defamation</a> <p>Daniels said the threat of harm was made by a stranger in a Las Vegas parking lot in 2011.</p> <p>Avenatti said on NBC on Monday that the man who threatened her while she was with her infant daughter was not Cohen, but &#8220;had to be someone that is related to Mr. Trump or Mr. Cohen.&#8221;</p> <p>Last week CNN interviewed former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who described a 10-month affair with Trump starting in 2006.</p> <p>Trump was married to his wife, Melania, during both alleged relationships. In addition to denying Trump had sex with Daniels, the White House has said he denies having an affair with McDougal.</p> <p>Reporting by Lisa Lambert and Makini Brice; Additional reporting by Jan Wolfe; Editing by Jonathan Oatis</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - America&#8217;s most sweeping expulsion of Russian diplomats since the Cold War may have seemed like a dramatic escalation in Washington&#8217;s response to Moscow, but the groundwork for a more confrontational U.S. posture had been taking shape for months &#8212; in plain sight.</p> U.S. President Donald Trump and Russia's President Vladimir Putin talk during the family photo session at the APEC Summit in Danang, Vietnam November 11, 2017. REUTERS/Jorge Silva <p>While President Donald Trump&#8217;s conciliatory rhetoric toward Moscow has dominated headlines, officials at the U.S. State Department, Pentagon and White House made a series of lower-profile decisions over the past year to counter Russia around the world - from Afghanistan to North Korea to Syria.</p> <p>The State Department earlier in March announced plans to provide anti-tank missiles to Ukraine to defend against Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. Trump&#8217;s predecessor as president, Barack Obama, had declined to do so over fears of provoking Moscow.</p> <p>In Syria last month, the U.S. military killed or injured as many as 300 men working for a Kremlin-linked private military firm after they attacked U.S. and U.S.-backed forces. The White House, meanwhile, firmly tied Russia to deadly strikes on civilians in Syria&#8217;s eastern Ghouta region.</p> <p>Both the White House and Pentagon&#8217;s top policy documents unveiled in January portrayed Russia as an adversary that had returned to the center of U.S. national security planning.</p> <p>That was all before the United States said on Monday it would expel 60 Russian diplomats, joining governments across Europe in punishing the Kremlin for a nerve agent attack on a former Russian spy in Britain that they have blamed on Moscow.</p> <p>Russia has denied any involvement.</p> <p>With Monday&#8217;s announcement, however, it was unclear whether Trump is promoting - or just acquiescing to - the tougher U.S. stance developed by his advisers and generals.</p> <p>Trump&#8217;s critics sought to portray him as a reluctant actor in any get-tough approach to Russia, even though one senior administration official described him as involved &#8220;from the beginning&#8221; in the expulsions of Russian diplomats.</p> <p>&#8220;It is disturbing how grudgingly he came to this decision,&#8221; said U.S. Representative Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee.</p> <p>Still, the Trump administration&#8217;s actions run counter to widespread perception, fueled by the president&#8217;s own statements, that Trump has softened America&#8217;s stance toward Russian President Vladimir Putin amid a U.S. investigation into Moscow&#8217;s meddling in the 2016 presidential election.</p> A sign is seen on the exterior of the Consulate-General of the Russian Federation in Manhattan. REUTERS/Mike Segar <p>Regardless of the tough actions, the inconsistent messaging may undermine Washington&#8217;s strategy to deter Moscow&#8217;s aggressive behavior, experts warn.</p> <p>&#8220;U.S. signaling is all undercut by Trump&#8217;s lack of seriousness about Russia,&#8221; said Andrew Weiss, a Russia expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.</p> <p>Just last Tuesday, Trump congratulated Putin on his re-election, drawing sharp criticism from fellow Republicans.</p> <p>But in another sign of mixed messaging, Trump two days later named John Bolton, a strident Russia hawk, to become his national security adviser.</p> DOWNWARD SPIRAL <p>Although the nerve agent attack was the official trigger for the U.S. expulsions, Trump administration officials warned that the attack should not be viewed in isolation, citing a series of destabilizing and aggressive actions by Moscow.</p> <p>In Afghanistan, Trump&#8217;s top commander on the ground accused Russia again last week of arming Taliban militants.</p> <p>On North Korea, Trump himself told Reuters in January that Russia was helping Pyongyang evade United Nations sanctions.</p> <p>And less than two weeks ago, the Trump administration imposed the first sanctions against Russia for election meddling and cyber attacks, though it held off on punishing business magnates close to Putin.</p> <p>U.S. officials and experts widely expect ties to further deteriorate, at least in the near term, and caution that Russia&#8217;s next steps could extend far beyond retaliation against American diplomats.</p> <p>&#8220;The risk of escalation doesn&#8217;t just come from tit-for-tat punishments,&#8221; said Matthew Rojansky, a Russia expert at the Wilson Center think tank in Washington, citing the potential for more aggressive moves from the Middle East to the cyber realm.</p> <p>U.S. officials have said the Trump administration still seeks to avoid a complete rupture in bilateral relations. One official said Russian cooperation was still sought to address thorny diplomatic issues like North Korea and Iran.</p> <p>Additional reporting by John Walcott; editing by Mary Milliken and G Crosse</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Turkey detains 42 people over Syrian operation social media comments - agency U.S. seeks China trade moves on autos, financials, chips: source GM says South Korean unit will file for bankruptcy if no union concessions by April 20: union Porn star sues Trump's personal lawyer for defamation Before expulsions, a brick-by-brick hardening of U.S. stance toward Russia

https://reuters.com/article/mideast-crisis-syria-turkey-security/turkey-detains-42-people-over-syrian-operation-social-media-comments-agency-idUSL8N1PI1HW

2018-01-23

2least

ISTANBUL Jan 23 Reuters Turkish police arrested 42 people including a proKurdish politician overnight for 8220spreading terrorist propaganda8221 on social media about Turkey8217s military operation against a Kurdish militia in Syria state media reported on Tuesday The police raids which staterun Anadolu news agency said were focused on the Western province of Izmir brought the number of such detentions to around 70 since 8220Operation Olive Branch8221 was launched at the weekend The incursion into the Afrin region targets the USbacked Syrian Kurdish YPG viewed by Ankara as a terrorist group and an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party PKK which has fought an insurgency in Turkey8217s largely Kurdish southeast since 1984 Counterterrorism squads launched simultaneous raids in various parts of Izmir and the nearby provinces of Denizli and Manisa Anadolu said It said among those detained was the Izmir head of the proKurdish Peoples8217 Democratic Party HDP the second biggest opposition party in parliament and also accused by Ankara of being an extension of the PKK It denies the accusation Among those arrested were also six suspects accused of spreading propaganda on the streets which amounted to 8220harassing people8221 the agency said adding that they were planning to hold a protest in a park Police carried out similar arrests related to social media posts across the country detaining 14 suspects in the eastern provinces of Van Igdir and Mus and another five in the Mediterranean province of Mersin Ankara has enforced a crackdown since a failed coup in 2016 that critics say has unjustly targeted proKurdish politicians HDP lawmakers are in jail on terrorism charges which they deny More than 50000 people have been jailed and face trial since the attempted putsch and 150000 have been sacked or suspended from their jobs The government says the moves were necessary given the security threats Turkey faces On Monday authorities in Ankara banned all rallies protests meetings and concerts across the capital for as long as the Afrin operation continues Writing by Daren Butler editing by Ralph Boulton Editing by Dominic Evans and Ralph Boulton Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTONBEIJING Reuters Top Trump administration officials are asking China to cut tariffs on imported cars allow foreign majority ownership of financial services firms and buy more USmade semiconductors in negotiations to avoid plans to slap tariffs on a host of Chinese goods and a potential trade war FILE PHOTO US President Donald Trump and Chinas President Xi Jinping shake hands after making joint statements at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing China November 9 2017 REUTERSDamir SagoljFile Photo A person familiar with the discussions said these were among the asks from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer as they pursue talks with Beijing The Wall Street Journal first reported the demands from US officials saying they came in a letter sent to Beijing last week White House trade adviser Peter Navarro confirmed that President Donald Trump asked Mnuchin and Lighthizer to try to resolve trade differences with China 8220We8217re hopeful there that China will work with us to basically address some of these practices8221 Navarro told CNBC television US stocks surged on Monday on the news that the two sides were talking after a massive rout last week when Trump announced plans to impose tariffs on up to 60 billion of Chinese imports over alleged misappropriation of US intellectual property The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJI posted its third biggest point gain ever rising 6694 points or 28 percent to close at 242026 while the broader SampampP 500 SPX rose 27 percent after a nearly 6 percent drop last week Chinese Premier Li Keqiang earlier on Monday said that China and the United States should maintain negotiations and repeated pledges to ease access for American businesses to China8217s markets Li told a conference that included global chief executives that China would treat foreign and domestic firms equally would not force foreign firms to transfer technology and would strengthen intellectual property rights repeating promises that have failed to placate Washington Despite a steady stream of fierce rhetoric from Chinese state media lambasting the United States for being a 8220bully8221 and warning of retaliation Chinese and US officials are busy negotiating behind the scenes TARIFFS TO PROCEED WITHOUT AGREEMENT In an interview aired on Sunday Mnuchin told Fox News that he was pursuing an agreement with the Chinese 8220for them to open up their markets reduce their tariffs stop forced technology transfer These are all the things we want to do8221 8220We are proceeding with these tariffs we8217re not putting them on hold unless we have an acceptable agreement that the president signs off on8221 Mnuchin added Slideshow 2 Images China has offered to buy more US semiconductors by diverting some purchases from South Korea and Taiwan the Financial Times reported citing people briefed on the negotiations China imported 26 billion of semiconductors from the United States last year Chinese officials are also working to finalize rules by May instead of the end of June to allow foreign financial groups to take majority stakes in Chinese securities firms the Financial Times said 8220I anticipate that for political reasons it would be logical for China to respond because countries do8221 Blackstone Group BXN Chief Executive Stephen Schwarzman told Reuters on Monday on the sidelines of the Beijing conference where Li spoke 8220That8217s why I view this more as a skirmish and I think the interests of both countries are served by resolving some of these matters8221 China called on World Trade Organization members on Monday to unite to oppose Trump8217s proposed tariffs targeting alleged intellectual property theft saying they should 8220lock this beast back into the cage of WTO rules8221 Dow Jones ampamp Company Inc 242026 DJI Dow Jones Indexes 66940 284 DJI SPX BXN AAPLO MSFTO On Friday China responded to the US tariffs on steel and aluminum by declaring plans to levy additional duties on up to 3 billion of US imports including fruit nuts and wine China could also inflict pain on US multinationals that rely on China for a substantial and growing portion of their total revenues said Alex Wolf senior emerging markets economist at Aberdeen Standard Investments 8220This could put US companies such as Apple AAPLO Microsoft MSFTO Starbucks SBUXO GM GMN Nike NKEN etc in the firing line8221 Wolf said in a note China can increase the regulatory burden on US companies through new inspections and rules ban travel stop providing export licenses of key intermediate goods raise the tax burden on US multinationals in China or block US companies from the government procurement market he said CAR TARIFF DIFFERENTIAL The Trump administration has demanded that China immediately cut its 375 billion trade surplus with the United States by 100 billion China has a 25 percent tariff on US cars and has talked recently of lowering it while Trump has often complained that the US import tariff on passenger vehicles is only 25 percent China8217s imports of USbuilt motor vehicles totaled 106 billion in 2017 about 8 percent of the country8217s overall US imports by value according to US government data On the reported offer to increase US semiconductor imports it is unclear how US chips would replace South Korean and Taiwanese chips since there is minimal overlap between US chips and those of the two Asian producers China is heavily dependent on foreign semiconductors one of its biggest import categories by value That said the United States accounted for just 1 percent of China8217s total semiconductor imports last year by value according to Reuters calculations based on Chinese customs data Additional reporting by Matthew Miller Ben Blanchard Elias Glenn and Stella Qiu in Beijing and Eric Beech in Washington Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Leslie Adler Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles SEOUL Reuters General Motors said its lossmaking South Korean operations would file for bankruptcy if its union did not make concessions by April 20 the union said on Tuesday The logo of GM Korea is seen at its Bupyeong plant in Incheon South Korea March 12 2018 Picture taken March 12 2018 REUTERSKim HongJi The comments were made by Barry Engle President of GM International during a meeting with GM Korea8217s union leader on Monday the union said in a document reviewed by Reuters The US automaker announced in February it would shut down a factory in Gunsan southwest of Seoul and that it was mulling the fate of its three remaining plants in South Korea Engle said the South Korean government should also promise to provide support for GM Korea by April 20 GM Korea which needs 600 million in operational funds by the end of April may consider more voluntary redundancies for the remaining 680 workers at the Gunsan factory Engle said according to the union adding that layoffs were the last option A GM Korea spokesman was not immediately available for comment The union said earlier this month that it will not demand a pay rise and bonuses this year but instead wants the US automaker to provide a future production plan and job security GM Korea still wants the union to agree to cut benefits a union official said Earlier this month GM Korea8217s secondlargest shareholder statefunded South Korean Development Bank began a duediligence review of GM8217s South Korean unit as part of its decision whether to inject more capital into the moneylosing operation GM Korea which employs nearly 16000 people has previously said that without new funding from its major shareholders it would have a firstquarter 8220cash crisis8221 Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin Editing by Lincoln Feast Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters Stormy Daniels sued Donald Trump8217s lawyer Michael Cohen on Monday for defamation according to court documents escalating a legal battle between the American president and the porn star that the White House was struggling to contain Daniels whose real name is Stephanie Clifford made the claim a day after her widely watched TV interview on 822060 Minutes8221 on CBS Daniels said she was threatened with violence to keep quiet about her alleged 2006 tryst with Trump At the White House a spokesman in a briefing with reporters cast aspersions on her account The White House has denied allegations that Trump had a sexual relationship with Daniels CBS Corp said the show drew its biggest audience in more than eight years with 213 million Americans tuning in more than double the previous week8217s edition of 822060 Minutes8221 Presidential spokesman Raj Shah told the briefing 8220The president doesn8217t believe any of the claims Ms Daniels made in the interview last night were accurate8221 Asked if Trump believed Daniels was threatened Shah said 8220No he does not There8217s nothing to corroborate her claim8221 Daniels8217 822060 Minutes8221 appearance also drew a denial from the president8217s personal lawyer Michael Cohen that he was involved in the alleged threat of violence against her Daniels originally sued Trump on March 6 saying he never signed an agreement for her to stay silent about what she called their 8220intimate8221 relationship Monday8217s filing in US District Court in Los Angeles amended the original lawsuit to say Daniels was defamed Her attorney Michael Avenatti said Cohen 8220meant to convey that Ms Clifford is a liar someone who should not be trusted and that her claims about her relationship with Mr Trump8221 were not true Daniels8217 defamation allegation was based on a Feb 13 statement by Cohen that she said hurt her reputation Stormy Daniels is interviewed by Anderson Cooper CBSNews60 MINUTESvia REUTERS The latest filing also said 130000 Cohen paid Daniels in October 2016 just before the presidential election to secure her silence amounted to an illegal campaign contribution and that the agreement should be declared void Cohen has said he paid Daniels out of his own pocket but has not explained why or if Trump was aware of the payment In filings with the Justice Department and Federal Election Commission watchdog groups have said the 130000 may have exceeded campaign contribution limits violating US law Cohen has denied this California attorney Michael Overing who specializes in defamation law said it would be difficult for Daniels to prevail on her defamation claim because she is a public figure Slideshow 2 Images To prove libel she would have to show that a false statement was made with either reckless or purposeful disregard for the truth Overing said Trump attorney Cohen8217s denial of involvement in the alleged threat against Daniels came in a 8220ceaseanddesist8221 letter sent to Avenatti shortly after 822060 Minutes8221 aired that demanded a retraction and an apology A copy of the letter was seen by Reuters on Monday The letter said 8220Mr Cohen had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with any such person or incident and does not even believe that any such person exists or that such incident ever occurred8221 Related Coverage Stormy Daniels suing Trump lawyer Michael Cohen for defamation Daniels said the threat of harm was made by a stranger in a Las Vegas parking lot in 2011 Avenatti said on NBC on Monday that the man who threatened her while she was with her infant daughter was not Cohen but 8220had to be someone that is related to Mr Trump or Mr Cohen8221 Last week CNN interviewed former Playboy model Karen McDougal who described a 10month affair with Trump starting in 2006 Trump was married to his wife Melania during both alleged relationships In addition to denying Trump had sex with Daniels the White House has said he denies having an affair with McDougal Reporting by Lisa Lambert and Makini Brice Additional reporting by Jan Wolfe Editing by Jonathan Oatis Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters America8217s most sweeping expulsion of Russian diplomats since the Cold War may have seemed like a dramatic escalation in Washington8217s response to Moscow but the groundwork for a more confrontational US posture had been taking shape for months 8212 in plain sight US President Donald Trump and Russias President Vladimir Putin talk during the family photo session at the APEC Summit in Danang Vietnam November 11 2017 REUTERSJorge Silva While President Donald Trump8217s conciliatory rhetoric toward Moscow has dominated headlines officials at the US State Department Pentagon and White House made a series of lowerprofile decisions over the past year to counter Russia around the world from Afghanistan to North Korea to Syria The State Department earlier in March announced plans to provide antitank missiles to Ukraine to defend against Russiabacked separatists in eastern Ukraine Trump8217s predecessor as president Barack Obama had declined to do so over fears of provoking Moscow In Syria last month the US military killed or injured as many as 300 men working for a Kremlinlinked private military firm after they attacked US and USbacked forces The White House meanwhile firmly tied Russia to deadly strikes on civilians in Syria8217s eastern Ghouta region Both the White House and Pentagon8217s top policy documents unveiled in January portrayed Russia as an adversary that had returned to the center of US national security planning That was all before the United States said on Monday it would expel 60 Russian diplomats joining governments across Europe in punishing the Kremlin for a nerve agent attack on a former Russian spy in Britain that they have blamed on Moscow Russia has denied any involvement With Monday8217s announcement however it was unclear whether Trump is promoting or just acquiescing to the tougher US stance developed by his advisers and generals Trump8217s critics sought to portray him as a reluctant actor in any gettough approach to Russia even though one senior administration official described him as involved 8220from the beginning8221 in the expulsions of Russian diplomats 8220It is disturbing how grudgingly he came to this decision8221 said US Representative Adam Smith the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee Still the Trump administration8217s actions run counter to widespread perception fueled by the president8217s own statements that Trump has softened America8217s stance toward Russian President Vladimir Putin amid a US investigation into Moscow8217s meddling in the 2016 presidential election A sign is seen on the exterior of the ConsulateGeneral of the Russian Federation in Manhattan REUTERSMike Segar Regardless of the tough actions the inconsistent messaging may undermine Washington8217s strategy to deter Moscow8217s aggressive behavior experts warn 8220US signaling is all undercut by Trump8217s lack of seriousness about Russia8221 said Andrew Weiss a Russia expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Just last Tuesday Trump congratulated Putin on his reelection drawing sharp criticism from fellow Republicans But in another sign of mixed messaging Trump two days later named John Bolton a strident Russia hawk to become his national security adviser DOWNWARD SPIRAL Although the nerve agent attack was the official trigger for the US expulsions Trump administration officials warned that the attack should not be viewed in isolation citing a series of destabilizing and aggressive actions by Moscow In Afghanistan Trump8217s top commander on the ground accused Russia again last week of arming Taliban militants On North Korea Trump himself told Reuters in January that Russia was helping Pyongyang evade United Nations sanctions And less than two weeks ago the Trump administration imposed the first sanctions against Russia for election meddling and cyber attacks though it held off on punishing business magnates close to Putin US officials and experts widely expect ties to further deteriorate at least in the near term and caution that Russia8217s next steps could extend far beyond retaliation against American diplomats 8220The risk of escalation doesn8217t just come from titfortat punishments8221 said Matthew Rojansky a Russia expert at the Wilson Center think tank in Washington citing the potential for more aggressive moves from the Middle East to the cyber realm US officials have said the Trump administration still seeks to avoid a complete rupture in bilateral relations One official said Russian cooperation was still sought to address thorny diplomatic issues like North Korea and Iran Additional reporting by John Walcott editing by Mary Milliken and G Crosse Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>WASHINGTON, Jan 24 (Reuters) - The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is sending investigators to examine the crash of a Tesla Inc vehicle apparently traveling in semi-autonomous mode and a fire truck in California, a person briefed on the matter said on Wednesday.</p> <p>The move follows a separate announcement on Tuesday by the National Transportation Safety Board that it was sending two investigators to the scene to conduct a &#8220;field investigation&#8221; to examine both driver and vehicle factors in Monday&#8217;s accident in which the driver said the vehicle was operating in &#8220;Autopilot&#8221; mode.</p> <p>Tesla declined to comment on Wednesday on the new probe. (Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Richard Chang)</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>TEMPE, Ariz./SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - An Uber self-driving car hit and killed a woman crossing the street in Arizona, police said on Monday, marking the first fatality involving an autonomous vehicle and a potential blow to the technology expected to transform transportation.</p> <p>The ride services company said it was suspending North American tests of its self-driving vehicles, which are currently going on in Arizona, Pittsburgh and Toronto.</p> <p>So-called robot cars, when fully developed by companies including Uber, Alphabet Inc and General Motors Co, are expected to drastically cut down on motor vehicle fatalities and create billion-dollar businesses. But Monday&#8217;s accident underscored the possible challenges ahead for the promising technology as the cars confront real-world situations involving real people.</p> <p>U.S. lawmakers have been debating legislation that would speed introduction of self-driving cars.</p> <p>&#8220;This tragic accident underscores why we need to be exceptionally cautious when testing and deploying autonomous vehicle technologies on public roads,&#8221; said Democratic Senator Edward Markey, a member of the transportation committee, in a statement.</p> <p>Elaine Herzberg, 49, was walking her bicycle outside the crosswalk on a four-lane road in the Phoenix suburb of Tempe about 10 p.m. MST Sunday (0400 GMT Monday) when she was struck by the Uber vehicle traveling at about 40 miles per hour (65 km per hour), police said. The Volvo XC90 SUV was in autonomous mode with an operator behind the wheel.</p> <p>Herzberg later died from her injuries in a hospital, police said.</p> <p>&#8220;The pedestrian was outside of the crosswalk. As soon as she walked into the lane of traffic she was struck,&#8221; Tempe Police Sergeant Ronald Elcock told reporters at a news conference. He said he did not yet know how close Herzberg was to the vehicle when she stepped into the lane.</p> <p>Elcock said he believed Herzberg may have been homeless.</p> <p>The San Francisco Chronicle late Monday reported that Tempe Police Chief Sylvia Moir said that from viewing videos taken from the vehicle &#8220;it&#8217;s very clear it would have been difficult to avoid this collision in any kind of mode (autonomous or human-driven) based on how she came from the shadows right into the roadway." ( <a href="http://bit.ly/2IADRUF" type="external">bit.ly/2IADRUF</a>)</p> <p>Moir told the Chronicle, &#8220;I suspect preliminarily it appears that the Uber would likely not be at fault in this accident,&#8221; but she did not rule out that charges could be filed against the operator in the Uber vehicle, the paper reported.</p> <p>The &#8220;Tempe Police Department does not determine fault in vehicular collisions,&#8221; the department said in a statement late Monday, in reply to questions from Reuters about the chief&#8217;s comments. &#8220;Ultimately the investigation will be submitted to the Maricopa County Attorney&#8217;s Office for review and any potential charges.&#8221;</p> <p>Tempe authorities and federal officials are still investigating the incident. Canada&#8217;s transportation ministry in Ontario, where Uber conducts testing, also said it was reviewing the accident.</p> Burned out flares lie at the location where a woman pedestrian was struck and killed by an Uber self-driving sport utility vehicle in Tempe, Arizona, U.S., March 19, 2018. REUTERS/Rick Scuteri <p>Volvo, the Swedish car brand owned by China&#8217;s Geely, said the software controlling the car in the crash was not its own.</p> <p>Video footage will aid the ongoing investigation, and the case would be submitted to the district attorney, Elcock said.</p> <p>&#8220;Our investigators have that information, and they will be using that in their investigation as well as the Maricopa County Attorney&#8217;s Office as part of their investigation,&#8221; said Elcock. &#8220;They are going to attempt to try to find who was possibly at fault and how we can better be safe, whether it&#8217;s pedestrians or whether it&#8217;s the vehicle itself.&#8221;</p> WILD WEST <p>Uber and Waymo on Friday urged Congress to pass sweeping legislation to speed the introduction of self-driving cars into the United States. Some congressional Democrats have blocked the legislation over safety concerns, and Monday&#8217;s fatality could hamper passage of the bill, congressional aides said Monday.</p> Slideshow (6 Images) <p>Safety advocates called for a national moratorium on all robot car testing on public roads.</p> <p>&#8220;Arizona has been the wild west of robot car testing with virtually no regulations in place,&#8221; said Consumer Watchdog, a non-profit consumer advocacy group, in a statement. &#8220;That&#8217;s why Uber and Waymo test there. When there&#8217;s no sheriff in town, people get killed.&#8221;</p> <p>Arizona has opened its arms to companies testing self-driving vehicles as a means to economic growth and jobs. Republican Governor Doug Ducey reached out to Uber in 2016 after California regulators cracked down on the company over its failure to obtain testing permits.</p> <p>Self-driving cars being tested routinely get into fender-benders with other vehicles. Last week, a self-driving Uber crashed with another vehicle in Pittsburgh, local news reported. There were no injuries.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-autos-selfdriving-uber-regulation/self-driving-car-industry-faces-critical-test-after-first-death-idUSKBN1GV2X5" type="external">Self-driving car industry faces critical test after first death</a> <p>A year ago, Uber temporarily grounded its self-driving cars for a few days following a crash with another car in Tempe. The company has been the subject of a number of complaints about its autonomous vehicles, but the company has said the cars were being driven by a human driver at the time of the incidents.</p> ESSENTIAL TO UBER&#8217;S SUCCESS <p>Uber has said its ability to build autonomous cars is essential to its success in the rapidly changing transportation industry. The company envisions a network of autonomous cars that would be summoned through the Uber app that would supplement - and eventually replace - human-driven cars.</p> <p>Uber has logged 2 million self-driving miles (3.2 million km) through December. The company has more than 100 autonomous cars testing on the roads of the greater Phoenix area, the company&#8217;s prime testing ground due to the state&#8217;s loose regulations and hospitable weather. Rain, snow and ice are particularly challenging for autonomous cars. The company also tests in Pittsburgh and Toronto.</p> <p>Concerns over the safety of autonomous vehicles flared after a July 2016 fatality involving a Tesla Inc automobile with a partially autonomous system that required human supervision. Safety regulators later determined Tesla was not at fault.</p> <p>Reporting by Sydney Maki and Alexandria Sage; Additional reporting by Dave Shepardson in Washington, Tina Bellon in New York, Heather Somerville in San Francisco, David Schwartz and Andres Guerra Luz in Phoenix, and Allison Lampert in Montreal; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Lisa Shumaker</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - A former Playboy model who said she had an affair with President Donald Trump filed suit in California on Tuesday seeking release from a legal agreement requiring her to stay silent, becoming the second woman this month to contest arrangements not to disclose alleged extramarital relationships with Trump.</p> Playboy Playmate of the Year Karen McDougal poses at the Playboy Mansion in Beverly Hills in 1998. REUTERS/Files <p>Karen McDougal filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court against American Media Inc, publisher of the National Enquirer, which paid her $150,000 in 2016 to keep quiet.</p> <p>McDougal&#8217;s lawsuit came on the same day that a New York state judge ruled Trump must face a defamation suit by California restaurateur Summer Zervos, who accused him of sexually harassing her after she appeared on his former reality TV show &#8220;The Apprentice.&#8221;</p> <p>New Yorker magazine last month reported on McDougal&#8217;s alleged affair and a move by American Media to pay her for rights to her story, which it never published. American Media head David Pecker has described Trump as a &#8220;personal friend.&#8221;</p> <p>In the lawsuit, McDougal claimed she and Trump engaged in a 10-month extramarital &#8220;romantic relationship&#8221; in 2006 and 2007, a time period that overlaps with his alleged affair with adult film actress Stormy Daniels. Trump&#8217;s wife Melania Trump gave birth to the president&#8217;s youngest son Barron in 2006.</p> <p>McDougal said her lawyer at the time, Keith Davidson, secretly negotiated with Michael Cohen, Trump&#8217;s personal lawyer, on the AMI deal. Cohen has acknowledged arranging to pay Daniels for her silence during the 2016 presidential campaign.</p> FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks with the news media before boarding Marine One helicopter to depart for travel to California via Joint Base Andrews from the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, U.S., March 13, 2018. REUTERS/Leah Millis/File Photo <p>McDougal is asking the court to declare the agreement null and void, saying she was tricked into signing it, that it was intended to illegally influence the 2016 election and because it violates public policy against using threats of legal action to get someone to stay silent on issues of public concern.</p> <p>She also called the agreement an illegal corporate donation from AMI to the Trump campaign that violated federal election law.</p> <p>AMI said in a statement the company has a valid contract with McDougal and looks forward to reaching an amicable resolution with her. It said she has been free to respond to press inquiries about her relationship with Trump since 2016 and that the suggestion that AMI silenced her is without merit.</p> <p>&#8220;AMI lied to me, made empty promises, and repeatedly intimidated and manipulated me. I just want the opportunity to set the record straight and move on with my life, free from this company, its executives, and its lawyers,&#8221; McDougal, who was Playboy magazine&#8217;s 1998 Playmate of the Year, said in a statement.</p> <p>Davidson declined to comment, citing attorney-client privilege. Cohen did not immediately respond to a request for comment.</p> <p>Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, sued the president on March 6, stating Trump never signed an agreement for her to keep her quiet about an &#8220;intimate&#8221; relationship between them. Daniels received $130,000 under that agreement.</p> <p>Reporting by Nathan Layne and Karen Freifeld in New York; Editing by Will Dunham</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - In a boost to the Democratic Party&#8217;s chances of winning back the U.S. Congress this year, both the U.S. Supreme Court and a Pennsylvania panel of federal judges on Monday rejected Republicans&#8217; efforts to block the state&#8217;s new congressional district map from taking effect.</p> FILE PHOTO: A general view of the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, DC, U.S., November 15, 2016. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo <p>The twin rulings, which ensure November&#8217;s midterm elections in Pennsylvania will be contested using the new boundaries, were announced just 24 hours before candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives must file petitions to secure spots on ballots.</p> <p>In a 5-2 vote in January along party lines, the Democratic-majority state Supreme Court ruled the Republican-controlled legislature designed the old boundaries to hurt Democratic voters, violating their constitutional rights. After the legislature did not meet a court deadline to submit a new version, the court drew its own map.</p> <p>Independent political analysts have said the new map will boost Democratic chances in one-third of the state&#8217;s 18 seats, which Republicans have dominated since the old district lines took effect in 2011 despite Pennsylvania&#8217;s status as a closely divided electoral swing state.</p> <p>Republicans hold 12 seats after Democrat Conor Lamb&#8217;s surprise victory last week in a special election. All told, Democrats need to flip 23 seats nationwide to capture control of the House.</p> <p>The state&#8217;s Republican legislative leaders had asked the U.S. Supreme Court to block the map, while eight Republican Congress members and two Republican state lawmakers separately filed a federal lawsuit in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, seeking the same remedy.</p> <p>In both cases, Republicans argued only lawmakers have the power to draw voting districts. U.S. President Donald Trump, a Republican, had urged legislators to contest the map.</p> <p>The panel of three federal judges, all appointed by Republican presidents, dismissed the Harrisburg lawsuit on Monday, finding that individual lawmakers did not have standing to bring such a complaint on behalf of the entire legislature.</p> <p>The U.S. Supreme Court, meanwhile, rejected the Republicans&#8217; petition in a single-line order.</p> <p>In statements, Republican legislative leaders in Pennsylvania said they were disappointed by the rulings but reiterated their belief that the state Supreme Court had usurped the legislature&#8217;s role.</p> <p>The legal battle began last year with a lawsuit from the League of Women Voters, echoing critics who had held up Pennsylvania&#8217;s bizarrely shaped districts as a prime example of partisan gerrymandering, in which one party engineers lines to marginalize opposing voters.</p> <p>In a statement, the organization&#8217;s president, Susan Carty, said, &#8220;This victory is an important first step toward slaying the gerrymander.&#8221;</p> <p>The U.S. Supreme Court is weighing whether to set a legal standard for partisan gerrymandering in two cases out of Wisconsin and Maryland. A ruling is expected by June.</p> <p>Reporting by Joseph Ax; additional reporting by Andrew Chung; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Grant McCool</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>GREAT MILLS, Md. (Reuters) - A 17-year-old boy opened fire at a Maryland high school on Tuesday in an attack that left two fellow students wounded, then died after a gunfight with a police officer posted there, amid a renewed national debate over gun violence in schools.</p> <p>The shooting in St. Mary&#8217;s County, about 70 miles (113 km)south of Washington, came five weeks after a high school massacre in Florida and just days before a planned student-led march in the U.S. capital for tougher gun laws.</p> <p>The latest bloodshed erupted shortly before 8 a.m. at Great Mills High School and lasted less than a minute, county Sheriff Timothy Cameron said, but the precise sequence of events was still being sorted out hours later.</p> <p>A 16-year-old girl was in intensive care with life-threatening wounds, Cameron told a news conference. A 14-year-old boy also struck by gunfire was listed in good condition at a hospital.</p> <p>The gunman was identified as Austin Wyatt Rollins, and Cameron said there was &#8220;an indication&#8221; the teenager had a prior relationship with the female student, although that was still under investigation.</p> <p>The sheriff initially told reporters Rollins shot both victims with a handgun, but then said in response to questions that investigators were still uncertain who fired the shot that hit the 14-year-old.</p> <p>Cameron also said it was not clear whether Rollins died after being shot by sheriff&#8217;s Deputy 1st Class Blaine Gaskill, who was assigned as the Great Mills school resource officer, or from self-inflicted gunfire.</p> <p>The latest in a long string of deadly shootings at U.S. schools and colleges occurred little more than a month after 14 students and three faculty members were fatally shot on Feb. 14 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The accused gunman, a 19-year-old former student expelled from the school for disciplinary reasons last year, was arrested and charged with 17 counts of murder.</p> <p>That massacre sparked a student movement against gun violence, including a national school walkout last week that included some Great Mills students. A march in Washington by gun control activists is set for Saturday.</p> <p>&#8220;We recently had a protest about school violence last week, and now this has happened,&#8221; said Kameron Norwood, 16, as he and other students waited for relatives to pick them up from a nearby high school.</p> <p>Cameron said Rollins pulled out a Glock semiautomatic pistol in a hallway of the school and opened fire.</p> Frank Lanham (2nd R), a teacher at Great Mills High School leaves Leonardtown High School in Leonardtown, Maryland, U.S., March 20, 2018. Great Mills students and parents reunited at Lenoardtown after the shooting at their school. REUTERS/Sait Serkan Gurbuz <p>The attack ended after Gaskill ran inside and confronted Rollins, with each firing a single shot almost simultaneously.</p> <p>The officer was not harmed, Cameron said. Rollins was confirmed dead nearly three hours later at a hospital.</p> <p>Rollins&#8217; Facebook page showed he was a fan of the Dallas Cowboys football team and NASCAR auto racing, and he appeared several times on the school&#8217;s honor and merit rolls for good grades that were published in a local newspaper.</p> Slideshow (12 Images) &#8216;WE NEED MORE THAN PRAYERS&#8217; <p>If authorities confirm Gaskill fired the fatal shot, it may be the only known instance in which a school resource officer, or SRO, typically a law enforcement member assigned to a school, killed a student gunman during a shooting.</p> <p>In 2001, an officer shot and wounded an 18-year-old student who wounded two teachers and three other students with a shotgun at Granite Hills High School in El Cajon, California, according to the National Association of School Resource Officers.</p> <p>An armed school resource officer had been on the Stoneman Douglas campus, and was criticized for failing to stop that gunman, who had an AR-15 assault-style rifle. The officer, who later resigned, said he had not been sure whether the gunfire was coming from inside or outside the school.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-maryland-shooting-students/maryland-lockdown-pulls-florida-students-into-twitter-storm-be-strong-idUSKBN1GW2OY" type="external">Maryland lockdown pulls Florida students into Twitter storm: 'Be strong'</a> <p>President Donald Trump and the National Rifle Association have proposed arming some teachers, while gun safety advocates have demanded a ban on semiautomatic rifles, among other restrictions.</p> <p>Maryland&#8217;s two Democratic U.S. senators, Chris Van Hollen and Ben Cardin, called on Congress on Tuesday to pass gun safety legislation, where such measures have stalled for years.</p> <p>The state&#8217;s Republican governor, Larry Hogan, said his thoughts and prayers were with the victims, but added: &#8220;We need more than prayers.&#8221;</p> <p>After the Parkland shooting, Hogan proposed spending $125 million to enhance school security, including panic buttons and metal detectors, and vowed to provide an additional $50 million to hire school resource officers and counselors.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Jonathan Allen, Gina Cherelus, Elizabeth Dilts and Sheila Dang in New York; Writing by Joseph Ax; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Peter Cooney</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

U.S. auto regulator probes Tesla ‘Autopilot’ crash -source Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street Former Playboy model sues to break silence on alleged Trump affair Supreme Court upholds Pennsylvania election map in win for Democrats Two wounded in Maryland school shooting, student gunman dies

https://reuters.com/article/tesla-crash/us-auto-regulator-probes-tesla-autopilot-crash-source-idUSL2N1PJ1NB

2018-01-24

2least

WASHINGTON Jan 24 Reuters The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is sending investigators to examine the crash of a Tesla Inc vehicle apparently traveling in semiautonomous mode and a fire truck in California a person briefed on the matter said on Wednesday The move follows a separate announcement on Tuesday by the National Transportation Safety Board that it was sending two investigators to the scene to conduct a 8220field investigation8221 to examine both driver and vehicle factors in Monday8217s accident in which the driver said the vehicle was operating in 8220Autopilot8221 mode Tesla declined to comment on Wednesday on the new probe Reporting by David Shepardson Editing by Richard Chang Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles TEMPE ArizSAN FRANCISCO Reuters An Uber selfdriving car hit and killed a woman crossing the street in Arizona police said on Monday marking the first fatality involving an autonomous vehicle and a potential blow to the technology expected to transform transportation The ride services company said it was suspending North American tests of its selfdriving vehicles which are currently going on in Arizona Pittsburgh and Toronto Socalled robot cars when fully developed by companies including Uber Alphabet Inc and General Motors Co are expected to drastically cut down on motor vehicle fatalities and create billiondollar businesses But Monday8217s accident underscored the possible challenges ahead for the promising technology as the cars confront realworld situations involving real people US lawmakers have been debating legislation that would speed introduction of selfdriving cars 8220This tragic accident underscores why we need to be exceptionally cautious when testing and deploying autonomous vehicle technologies on public roads8221 said Democratic Senator Edward Markey a member of the transportation committee in a statement Elaine Herzberg 49 was walking her bicycle outside the crosswalk on a fourlane road in the Phoenix suburb of Tempe about 10 pm MST Sunday 0400 GMT Monday when she was struck by the Uber vehicle traveling at about 40 miles per hour 65 km per hour police said The Volvo XC90 SUV was in autonomous mode with an operator behind the wheel Herzberg later died from her injuries in a hospital police said 8220The pedestrian was outside of the crosswalk As soon as she walked into the lane of traffic she was struck8221 Tempe Police Sergeant Ronald Elcock told reporters at a news conference He said he did not yet know how close Herzberg was to the vehicle when she stepped into the lane Elcock said he believed Herzberg may have been homeless The San Francisco Chronicle late Monday reported that Tempe Police Chief Sylvia Moir said that from viewing videos taken from the vehicle 8220it8217s very clear it would have been difficult to avoid this collision in any kind of mode autonomous or humandriven based on how she came from the shadows right into the roadway bitly2IADRUF Moir told the Chronicle 8220I suspect preliminarily it appears that the Uber would likely not be at fault in this accident8221 but she did not rule out that charges could be filed against the operator in the Uber vehicle the paper reported The 8220Tempe Police Department does not determine fault in vehicular collisions8221 the department said in a statement late Monday in reply to questions from Reuters about the chief8217s comments 8220Ultimately the investigation will be submitted to the Maricopa County Attorney8217s Office for review and any potential charges8221 Tempe authorities and federal officials are still investigating the incident Canada8217s transportation ministry in Ontario where Uber conducts testing also said it was reviewing the accident Burned out flares lie at the location where a woman pedestrian was struck and killed by an Uber selfdriving sport utility vehicle in Tempe Arizona US March 19 2018 REUTERSRick Scuteri Volvo the Swedish car brand owned by China8217s Geely said the software controlling the car in the crash was not its own Video footage will aid the ongoing investigation and the case would be submitted to the district attorney Elcock said 8220Our investigators have that information and they will be using that in their investigation as well as the Maricopa County Attorney8217s Office as part of their investigation8221 said Elcock 8220They are going to attempt to try to find who was possibly at fault and how we can better be safe whether it8217s pedestrians or whether it8217s the vehicle itself8221 WILD WEST Uber and Waymo on Friday urged Congress to pass sweeping legislation to speed the introduction of selfdriving cars into the United States Some congressional Democrats have blocked the legislation over safety concerns and Monday8217s fatality could hamper passage of the bill congressional aides said Monday Slideshow 6 Images Safety advocates called for a national moratorium on all robot car testing on public roads 8220Arizona has been the wild west of robot car testing with virtually no regulations in place8221 said Consumer Watchdog a nonprofit consumer advocacy group in a statement 8220That8217s why Uber and Waymo test there When there8217s no sheriff in town people get killed8221 Arizona has opened its arms to companies testing selfdriving vehicles as a means to economic growth and jobs Republican Governor Doug Ducey reached out to Uber in 2016 after California regulators cracked down on the company over its failure to obtain testing permits Selfdriving cars being tested routinely get into fenderbenders with other vehicles Last week a selfdriving Uber crashed with another vehicle in Pittsburgh local news reported There were no injuries Related Coverage Selfdriving car industry faces critical test after first death A year ago Uber temporarily grounded its selfdriving cars for a few days following a crash with another car in Tempe The company has been the subject of a number of complaints about its autonomous vehicles but the company has said the cars were being driven by a human driver at the time of the incidents ESSENTIAL TO UBER8217S SUCCESS Uber has said its ability to build autonomous cars is essential to its success in the rapidly changing transportation industry The company envisions a network of autonomous cars that would be summoned through the Uber app that would supplement and eventually replace humandriven cars Uber has logged 2 million selfdriving miles 32 million km through December The company has more than 100 autonomous cars testing on the roads of the greater Phoenix area the company8217s prime testing ground due to the state8217s loose regulations and hospitable weather Rain snow and ice are particularly challenging for autonomous cars The company also tests in Pittsburgh and Toronto Concerns over the safety of autonomous vehicles flared after a July 2016 fatality involving a Tesla Inc automobile with a partially autonomous system that required human supervision Safety regulators later determined Tesla was not at fault Reporting by Sydney Maki and Alexandria Sage Additional reporting by Dave Shepardson in Washington Tina Bellon in New York Heather Somerville in San Francisco David Schwartz and Andres Guerra Luz in Phoenix and Allison Lampert in Montreal Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Lisa Shumaker Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORK Reuters A former Playboy model who said she had an affair with President Donald Trump filed suit in California on Tuesday seeking release from a legal agreement requiring her to stay silent becoming the second woman this month to contest arrangements not to disclose alleged extramarital relationships with Trump Playboy Playmate of the Year Karen McDougal poses at the Playboy Mansion in Beverly Hills in 1998 REUTERSFiles Karen McDougal filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court against American Media Inc publisher of the National Enquirer which paid her 150000 in 2016 to keep quiet McDougal8217s lawsuit came on the same day that a New York state judge ruled Trump must face a defamation suit by California restaurateur Summer Zervos who accused him of sexually harassing her after she appeared on his former reality TV show 8220The Apprentice8221 New Yorker magazine last month reported on McDougal8217s alleged affair and a move by American Media to pay her for rights to her story which it never published American Media head David Pecker has described Trump as a 8220personal friend8221 In the lawsuit McDougal claimed she and Trump engaged in a 10month extramarital 8220romantic relationship8221 in 2006 and 2007 a time period that overlaps with his alleged affair with adult film actress Stormy Daniels Trump8217s wife Melania Trump gave birth to the president8217s youngest son Barron in 2006 McDougal said her lawyer at the time Keith Davidson secretly negotiated with Michael Cohen Trump8217s personal lawyer on the AMI deal Cohen has acknowledged arranging to pay Daniels for her silence during the 2016 presidential campaign FILE PHOTO US President Donald Trump speaks with the news media before boarding Marine One helicopter to depart for travel to California via Joint Base Andrews from the South Lawn of the White House in Washington US March 13 2018 REUTERSLeah MillisFile Photo McDougal is asking the court to declare the agreement null and void saying she was tricked into signing it that it was intended to illegally influence the 2016 election and because it violates public policy against using threats of legal action to get someone to stay silent on issues of public concern She also called the agreement an illegal corporate donation from AMI to the Trump campaign that violated federal election law AMI said in a statement the company has a valid contract with McDougal and looks forward to reaching an amicable resolution with her It said she has been free to respond to press inquiries about her relationship with Trump since 2016 and that the suggestion that AMI silenced her is without merit 8220AMI lied to me made empty promises and repeatedly intimidated and manipulated me I just want the opportunity to set the record straight and move on with my life free from this company its executives and its lawyers8221 McDougal who was Playboy magazine8217s 1998 Playmate of the Year said in a statement Davidson declined to comment citing attorneyclient privilege Cohen did not immediately respond to a request for comment Daniels whose real name is Stephanie Clifford sued the president on March 6 stating Trump never signed an agreement for her to keep her quiet about an 8220intimate8221 relationship between them Daniels received 130000 under that agreement Reporting by Nathan Layne and Karen Freifeld in New York Editing by Will Dunham Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters In a boost to the Democratic Party8217s chances of winning back the US Congress this year both the US Supreme Court and a Pennsylvania panel of federal judges on Monday rejected Republicans8217 efforts to block the state8217s new congressional district map from taking effect FILE PHOTO A general view of the US Supreme Court building in Washington DC US November 15 2016 REUTERSCarlos BarriaFile Photo The twin rulings which ensure November8217s midterm elections in Pennsylvania will be contested using the new boundaries were announced just 24 hours before candidates for the US House of Representatives must file petitions to secure spots on ballots In a 52 vote in January along party lines the Democraticmajority state Supreme Court ruled the Republicancontrolled legislature designed the old boundaries to hurt Democratic voters violating their constitutional rights After the legislature did not meet a court deadline to submit a new version the court drew its own map Independent political analysts have said the new map will boost Democratic chances in onethird of the state8217s 18 seats which Republicans have dominated since the old district lines took effect in 2011 despite Pennsylvania8217s status as a closely divided electoral swing state Republicans hold 12 seats after Democrat Conor Lamb8217s surprise victory last week in a special election All told Democrats need to flip 23 seats nationwide to capture control of the House The state8217s Republican legislative leaders had asked the US Supreme Court to block the map while eight Republican Congress members and two Republican state lawmakers separately filed a federal lawsuit in Harrisburg Pennsylvania seeking the same remedy In both cases Republicans argued only lawmakers have the power to draw voting districts US President Donald Trump a Republican had urged legislators to contest the map The panel of three federal judges all appointed by Republican presidents dismissed the Harrisburg lawsuit on Monday finding that individual lawmakers did not have standing to bring such a complaint on behalf of the entire legislature The US Supreme Court meanwhile rejected the Republicans8217 petition in a singleline order In statements Republican legislative leaders in Pennsylvania said they were disappointed by the rulings but reiterated their belief that the state Supreme Court had usurped the legislature8217s role The legal battle began last year with a lawsuit from the League of Women Voters echoing critics who had held up Pennsylvania8217s bizarrely shaped districts as a prime example of partisan gerrymandering in which one party engineers lines to marginalize opposing voters In a statement the organization8217s president Susan Carty said 8220This victory is an important first step toward slaying the gerrymander8221 The US Supreme Court is weighing whether to set a legal standard for partisan gerrymandering in two cases out of Wisconsin and Maryland A ruling is expected by June Reporting by Joseph Ax additional reporting by Andrew Chung editing by Jonathan Oatis and Grant McCool Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles GREAT MILLS Md Reuters A 17yearold boy opened fire at a Maryland high school on Tuesday in an attack that left two fellow students wounded then died after a gunfight with a police officer posted there amid a renewed national debate over gun violence in schools The shooting in St Mary8217s County about 70 miles 113 kmsouth of Washington came five weeks after a high school massacre in Florida and just days before a planned studentled march in the US capital for tougher gun laws The latest bloodshed erupted shortly before 8 am at Great Mills High School and lasted less than a minute county Sheriff Timothy Cameron said but the precise sequence of events was still being sorted out hours later A 16yearold girl was in intensive care with lifethreatening wounds Cameron told a news conference A 14yearold boy also struck by gunfire was listed in good condition at a hospital The gunman was identified as Austin Wyatt Rollins and Cameron said there was 8220an indication8221 the teenager had a prior relationship with the female student although that was still under investigation The sheriff initially told reporters Rollins shot both victims with a handgun but then said in response to questions that investigators were still uncertain who fired the shot that hit the 14yearold Cameron also said it was not clear whether Rollins died after being shot by sheriff8217s Deputy 1st Class Blaine Gaskill who was assigned as the Great Mills school resource officer or from selfinflicted gunfire The latest in a long string of deadly shootings at US schools and colleges occurred little more than a month after 14 students and three faculty members were fatally shot on Feb 14 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida The accused gunman a 19yearold former student expelled from the school for disciplinary reasons last year was arrested and charged with 17 counts of murder That massacre sparked a student movement against gun violence including a national school walkout last week that included some Great Mills students A march in Washington by gun control activists is set for Saturday 8220We recently had a protest about school violence last week and now this has happened8221 said Kameron Norwood 16 as he and other students waited for relatives to pick them up from a nearby high school Cameron said Rollins pulled out a Glock semiautomatic pistol in a hallway of the school and opened fire Frank Lanham 2nd R a teacher at Great Mills High School leaves Leonardtown High School in Leonardtown Maryland US March 20 2018 Great Mills students and parents reunited at Lenoardtown after the shooting at their school REUTERSSait Serkan Gurbuz The attack ended after Gaskill ran inside and confronted Rollins with each firing a single shot almost simultaneously The officer was not harmed Cameron said Rollins was confirmed dead nearly three hours later at a hospital Rollins8217 Facebook page showed he was a fan of the Dallas Cowboys football team and NASCAR auto racing and he appeared several times on the school8217s honor and merit rolls for good grades that were published in a local newspaper Slideshow 12 Images 8216WE NEED MORE THAN PRAYERS8217 If authorities confirm Gaskill fired the fatal shot it may be the only known instance in which a school resource officer or SRO typically a law enforcement member assigned to a school killed a student gunman during a shooting In 2001 an officer shot and wounded an 18yearold student who wounded two teachers and three other students with a shotgun at Granite Hills High School in El Cajon California according to the National Association of School Resource Officers An armed school resource officer had been on the Stoneman Douglas campus and was criticized for failing to stop that gunman who had an AR15 assaultstyle rifle The officer who later resigned said he had not been sure whether the gunfire was coming from inside or outside the school Related Coverage Maryland lockdown pulls Florida students into Twitter storm Be strong President Donald Trump and the National Rifle Association have proposed arming some teachers while gun safety advocates have demanded a ban on semiautomatic rifles among other restrictions Maryland8217s two Democratic US senators Chris Van Hollen and Ben Cardin called on Congress on Tuesday to pass gun safety legislation where such measures have stalled for years The state8217s Republican governor Larry Hogan said his thoughts and prayers were with the victims but added 8220We need more than prayers8221 After the Parkland shooting Hogan proposed spending 125 million to enhance school security including panic buttons and metal detectors and vowed to provide an additional 50 million to hire school resource officers and counselors Additional reporting by Jonathan Allen Gina Cherelus Elizabeth Dilts and Sheila Dang in New York Writing by Joseph Ax Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Peter Cooney Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p /> <p>In the year 2000, the US Congress achieved a level of Do-Nothingness so noteworthy that we decided to take note &#8212; by instituting the Diddly Awards. In the Senate, Trent Lott occupied those days plotting tiny acts of revenge, while the House, under the Potemkin leadership of Dennis Hastert, produced not a single bill worth discussing. It was, after all, a Congress that mourned the death of Sonny Bono in 1998 as a blow to its intellectual gravitas.</p> <p>Today&#8217;s Congress is far more accomplished. The members passed an enormous tax cut in the teeth of a recession &#8212; taking us from surplus to deficit so quickly that not even the talk-radio gasbags could convincingly pin the blame on our all-weather scapegoat, Bill Clinton. Then, of course, Congress responded to September 11 with the swift passage of the Patriot Act &#8212; a retreat from the spirit of our Constitution so un-thought-out that it made Lincoln&#8217;s wartime suspension of habeas corpus look positively democratic. In these efforts, and much more, our Congress has signed off on massive, tectonic legislation without so much as a moment&#8217;s pause. One could easily argue that the return of the imperial presidency has less to do with Dick Cheney&#8217;s powers of persuasion than with the doormat disposition of this Congress.</p> <p>The Do-Nothing 106th Congress has passed its baton. All hail the Question-Nothing 107th Congress. Having abandoned its essential constitutional duty, this Congress has had lots of spare time to do, once again, diddly. The envelopes, please&#8230;</p> <p>The Celebrity Mongering Award</p> <p>Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-Calif.) summoned Elmo, the Sesame Street character made of red felt, to the Capitol to testify on the importance of music education. Said one political analyst who witnessed the event, &#8220;Elmo has higher poll ratings than most members of Congress. They like to be in his reflective glory.&#8221; At the end, the Muppet insisted, not altogether convincingly, &#8220;Elmo is not making a mockery of this place.&#8221;</p> <p>Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) complained to the media about having to talk to Chief Justice William Rehnquist at a White House dinner when Clint Eastwood was there. &#8220;I had my back to all the action,&#8221; he noted.</p> <p>Reps. George Gekas (R-Pa.) and Jim Greenwood (R-Pa.) conferred with 7-foot, 2-inch Philadelphia 76er Dikembe Mutombo to discuss health care. &#8220;We believe this is a gigantic first step,&#8221; Gekas said.</p> <p>Senator Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) was mugging with Bono long before Paul O&#8217;Neill ever heard of the guy. Helms went to a U2 concert, turned off his hearing aid, and later offered anthropological notes on this new teenage craze called rock &#8216;n&#8217; roll: &#8220;When Bono shook his hips, that crowd shook their hips&#8230;It was filled to the gills, and people were moving back and forth like corn in the breeze.&#8221;</p> <p /> <p /> <p>Trent Lott</p> <p>Donning a kilt, Lott also alerted the world to his Scottish heritage by inviting Sean Connery to join him in Scottish drag on the Capitol steps. Before the assembled throng, Lott cried out in his best Braveheart impression, &#8220;Freedom!&#8221;</p> <p>The Family Values Award</p> <p>Senator Jim Bunning (R-Ky.), who obviously had nothing to do with Bush&#8217;s nomination of his son, David Bunning, 35, to be a federal judge &#8212; even after the American Bar Association deemed the boy &#8220;not qualified.&#8221;</p> <p>Senator Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), who also had nothing to do with Bush&#8217;s nomination of his son, Strom Thurmond Jr., 28 years old and three years out of law school, to be U.S. attorney for South Carolina.</p> <p>Rep. Bud Shuster (R-Pa.), who supported his son Bill Shuster, a 41-year-old car dealer, to replace him in a special election in 2001.</p> <p /> <p>Bill Shuster</p> <p>He forced the Republican Party to bloat his son&#8217;s campaign chest to $1 million. That was three times the amount gathered by the other fellow, who had no Congressional relatives. &#8220;This is about Bill Shuster,&#8221; Bill Shuster insisted, &#8220;and Bill Shuster standing on his own two feet.&#8221; Shuster won the election and is heading to D.C., where he can discuss his rugged individualism with FCC chair Michael Powell, son of Colin; Solicitor of the Labor Department Eugene Scalia, son of Antonin; Health and Human Services Inspector General Janet Rehnquist, daughter of William; and, of course, President George W. Bush.</p> <p>The Common Touch Award</p> <p>Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.) screamed at three parking-lot security officers in Atlanta when his shuttle van was held up at the entrance. The most polite account alleges Barr yelled at one of the guards, &#8220;When are you going to open the gate, you stupid black idiot?&#8221; Another version says Barr called a guard a &#8220;nigger.&#8221;</p> <p>Rep. J.C. Watts (R-Okla.) left his car idling at an airport (post-9/11) and returned to find a cop, Sergeant Edward Stupka, writing a $15 ticket. Watts blew his lid, crammed the ticket behind Stupka&#8217;s badge, and told him to &#8220;take care of it.&#8221; &#8220;I could have been a terrorist carrying a bomb,&#8221; Watts screamed, &#8220;and you would never have seen it!&#8221; He drove off after Stupka threw the ticket into his car. When called on his arrogance, Watts refused to apologize. His wife paid the fine.</p> <p>Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.) drove over a 13-year-old boy&#8217;s foot just outside the Capitol in 2001 and then left the scene.</p> <p>Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), whose voice can be heard on millions of his Viper car alarms shouting, &#8220;Stand back!&#8221; was stopped by Border Patrol for &#8220;driving 90 mph through an Interstate 5 construction zone at San Clemente.&#8221; He insisted to the officer, &#8220;It&#8217;s not your job to stop me for speeding.&#8221;</p> <p /> <p /> <p>Bob Barr</p> <p>In the annals of congressional arrogance, Barr is a repeat offender. In 1998, The New York Times reported an incident in which Barr slapped a female security guard at the airport, after which his wife summarized her view of airport security: &#8220;They were all from other countries, and they were talking about me in their language&#8230;I thought, &#8216;Hey, this is my country.'&#8221;</p> <p>The Class Clown Award</p> <p>Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) publicly sang &#8212; picture it &#8212; &#8220;Who Let the Dogs Out?&#8221;</p> <p>In a fundraising mailer, Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-Ariz.) sent out &#8220;Jim Jeffords Barf Bags&#8221; to be used while contemplating the senator&#8217;s &#8220;sickening&#8230;disgusting&#8230;treachery.&#8221;</p> <p>Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.), accused of causing $28,000 of damage to a rented yacht on a Y2K booze cruise, later appeared at a political roast dressed in a sailor suit. Tough to the finish, the son of Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) capped off the evening by singing &#8220;Patrick the Sailor Man.&#8221;</p> <p>Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) brought up the rumor of Florida Governor Jeb Bush&#8217;s affair with Katherine Harris. &#8220;I believe him,&#8221; cracked Foley about Jeb&#8217;s denials. &#8220;I mean, good God &#8212; dating Katherine Harris? How would you get that makeup off your collar?&#8221;</p> <p /> <p /> <p>Patrick Kennedy</p> <p>At the same roast, the admitted former cokehead joked about Senator Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.), another admitted former cokehead: &#8220;Now when I hear someone talking about a Rhode Island politician whose father was a senator and who got to Washington on his family name, used cocaine, and wasn&#8217;t very smart, I know there is only a 50-50 chance it&#8217;s me.&#8221;</p> <p>The Sex in Congress Award</p> <p>At the height of the Gary Condit imbroglio, Rep. Scott McInnis (R-Colo.) proposed a change in the House ethics manual &#8212; forbidding all sex between Congresspersons and interns. &#8220;Right now you&#8217;re allowed to engage in it,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) was seen partying just days after 9/11 with Diana Davis, a 22-year-old House staffer. The 36-year-old bachelor came on to Davis saying he was an &#8220;auto parts salesman.&#8221; Later, realizing she&#8217;d been misled, Davis emailed Weiner: &#8220;I&#8217;m assuming that selling auto parts&#8230;is only a part-time gig. My apologies if I offended you.&#8221; Weiner quickly hit his reply button, writing, &#8220;Apologies like yours are best offered in person.&#8221;</p> <p>Rep. Bill Thomas (R-Calif.) was outed for having an affair with Deborah Steelman, a health care lobbyist who routinely had business with Thomas&#8217; health care committee and steered huge campaign gifts to Thomas&#8217; war chest. Steelman, now a vice president for Eli Lilly, did not deny the affair; rather, she was enraged that anyone would think having sex with Thomas gave her undue advantage: &#8220;To suggest I would stoop to an &#8216;inappropriate relationship&#8217; to achieve legislative results is repugnant and sexist.&#8221;</p> <p /> <p>Bill Thomas</p> <p>Thomas breathes new life into the phrase &#8220;in bed with industry.&#8221; Despite the controversy surrounding the affair, Thomas went on to author the term&#8217;s key Republican health care legislation.</p> <p>The Dan Quayle Award</p> <p>Rep. Mark Foley, the son of a public school teacher, wanted voters to know of his opposition to TPA, or Trade Promotion Authority. He released a statement denouncing the &#8220;PTA.&#8221;</p> <p>Senator John Breaux (D-La.) wrote a note during the stimulus package debate and pinned it to a Congressional elevator, reading &#8220;STIMULAS NEEDED!&#8221;</p> <p>Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) pontificated last December on the need for yet another C.R., or &#8220;continuing resolution,&#8221; whereby Congress avoids shutting down the government by borrowing a few hundred million more dollars. Despite gales of laughter from Congressfolk, he persisted in referring to the need for &#8220;CPR .&#8221;</p> <p>Senator Thomas Daschle (D-S.D.) denounced spending billions on Bush&#8217;s space-based missile-defense system, saying, &#8220;This isn&#8217;t rocket science here.&#8221;</p> <p /> <p /> <p>Dan Quayle</p> <p>Stepping in from outside the ring, the former Senator never fails to win his own award. During the increase of violence in Israel, Quayle struggled to maintain a balanced attitude toward the Palestinians, asking, &#8220;How many Palestinians were on those airplanes on September 9? None.&#8221;</p> <p>The September 11 Demagoguery Award</p> <p>Rep. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) suggested that a good strategy to combat terrorism would be to &#8220;arrest every Muslim that crosses the state line.&#8221;</p> <p>Senator Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) told NBC that Chelsea almost died in the World Trade Center collapse. Chelsea, meanwhile, was writing a piece explaining how she was in Manhattan but nowhere near the towers.</p> <p>Rep. John Cooksey (R-La.) told a radio audience, right after 9/11, &#8220;If I see someone come in that&#8217;s got a diaper on his head and a fan belt wrapped around the diaper on his head, that guy needs to be pulled over.&#8221;</p> <p>Freshman Rep. Brian Kerns (R-Ind.) told his hometown paper that he&#8217;d witnessed the disaster at the Pentagon: &#8220;I&#8217;m in shock. I thought it was strange that they were letting airplanes still fly after the World Trade Center. Then it was so low, and it just banked into the building. I still can&#8217;t believe it.&#8221;</p> <p /> <p /> <p>Brian Kerns</p> <p>An American Legion official recalled being in a meeting with Kerns during the attack. Confronted with his lie and asked to account where he really was during the attacks, Kerns ran away from the media, saying, &#8220;Who knows?&#8221;</p> <p /> <p>Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) wrote a tune called &#8220;America Rocks,&#8221; which formed part of the soundtrack to the movie Rat Race: &#8220;America rocks! America rocks! / From its busy, bustling cities, / To its quiet country walks, / It&#8217;s totally cool, it&#8217;s totally hot. / I mean, it&#8217;s like right there at the top.&#8221;</p> <p>Senator Zell Miller (D-Ga.), concerned that &#8220;the pickup owners of this nation might get screwed in all this gas-guzzler talk about SUVs and vans,&#8221; co-wrote, sang, and recorded &#8220;The Talking Pickup Truck Blues.&#8221; The song goes in part: &#8220;I hear some news from Washington / Of a crackpot scheme to raise some mon. / It&#8217;s an unkind way to raise a buck, / And it adds more cost to my pickup truck.&#8221;</p> <p>Rep. Joe Scarborough (R-Fla.) played guitar with his band Regular Joe and, prior to leaving office last September, was often heard singing the alt-rock tune &#8220;Teenage Dirtbag.&#8221; It goes in part: &#8220;Oh, how she rocks in Keds and tube socks, / But she doesn&#8217;t know who I am, / And she doesn&#8217;t give a damn about me, / &#8216;Cause I&#8217;m just a teenage dirtbag, baby.&#8221; &#8220;I think I should get points for not doing Perry Como songs,&#8221; said Scarborough.</p> <p>Rep. Dick Armey (R-Texas) released a CD entitled Dick Armey&#8217;s Favorite Hits. (No, seriously.) The album cover features the House majority leader atop a horse and includes such titles as &#8220;I&#8217;m Just an Old Chunk of Coal.&#8221;</p> <p /> <p>Zell Miller</p> <p>The second verse goes: &#8220;Sure, an SUV is classy travel, / But it ain&#8217;t much good for haulin&#8217; gravel, / Or hay or seed or bovine feces. / So please, don&#8217;t make my pickup truck an endangered species.&#8221;</p> <p>The Talk Dirty to Me Award</p> <p>Rep. Barbara Cubin (R-Wyo.) was talking policy with some donors when, in stunning non sequitur fashion, she announced, &#8220;I know what Victoria&#8217;s Secret is. She&#8217;s a slut.&#8221;</p> <p>John Breaux, having been named an honorary &#8220;coxswain&#8221; of the U.S. Coast Guard, was traveling with a New Republic reporter and couldn&#8217;t stop entertaining himself. &#8220;Hey! Look at this &#8212; I&#8217;m a cocks&#8217;n!&#8221; Breaux said. &#8220;Does my wife know?&#8221; Passing a Hooters restaurant, he said, &#8220;Hey! Maybe I should get a job there, since I&#8217;m a cocks&#8217;n!&#8221;</p> <p>Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) announced, after being told that time was short during a hearing with Secretary of State Colin Powell, &#8220;My press release will read, &#8216;Ros-Lehtinen does quickie with Secretary Powell&#8230;&#8217; I&#8217;m ready!&#8221;</p> <p /> <p /> <p>Barbara Cubin</p> <p>She arrived in Congress already famous in Wyoming for passing around penis-shaped cookies to her male colleagues in the state legislature, which she later explained by saying, &#8220;People sometimes do things that they wouldn&#8217;t do in front of their mother.&#8221; Then, during the Florida recount battle, she screamed in a meeting, &#8220;We are bending over and taking it from the Democrats!&#8221; When some of her colleagues were alarmed by the rather un-family-values-esque image, she snapped, &#8220;Quiet down or you&#8217;ll get a spanking.&#8221;</p> <p>The Man Behind The Curtain Award</p> <p>Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.) was summoned by Barbra Streisand to the coast to huddle with famous Hollywood political strategist Warren Beatty about the Democrats&#8217; postelection malaise. The House minority leader had to endure a &#8220;dramatic reading&#8221; of Babs&#8217; three-page memo, entitled &#8220;Nice Guys Finish Last,&#8221; which the media struggled valiantly to quote witheringly, except that it&#8217;s really, really boring.</p> <p>Senator Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) sent out a fundraiser letter allegedly written by Thomas Towles. Towles is Bunning&#8217;s 11-year-old grandson. &#8220;If you can, please include a special gift of $500, $250, $100, $50, or even $25, along with your signed card to help his campaign,&#8221; wrote the child. &#8220;I know it would mean a lot to Grandpa.&#8221;</p> <p>Dennis Hastert held a press conference in front of a throng of hard-hat-wearing &#8220;working Americans&#8221; &#8212; who were actually lobbyists in disguise.</p> <p /> <p /> <p>Dennis Hastert</p> <p>This bit of street theater was intended to promote the trillion-dollar Bush tax cut as a boon for the working class. A memo from the National Association of Manufacturers gave denizens of Gucci Gulch their lunch-pail instructions: &#8220;The theme involves working Americans. Visually, this will involve a sea of hard hats, which our construction and contractor and building groups are working very hard to provide.&#8221; In addition, &#8220;the Speaker&#8217;s office was very clear in saying that they do not need people in suits. If people want to participate &#8212; AND WE DO NEED BODIES &#8212; they must be DRESSED DOWN, appear to be REAL WORKER types, etc.&#8221; The Rank Hypocrisy Award</p> <p>Orrin Hatch complained that the Democrats had confirmed only 28 right-wing judges in the first half of 2002. &#8220;Contrary to the widely held belief, the Republicans did not play such games when Bill Clinton was president,&#8221; Hatch declared without being struck by lightning. When Hatch ran the Judiciary Committee in 1996, he confirmed 17 of Clinton&#8217;s moderate appointments the whole year.</p> <p>Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.) called himself the &#8220;New Jersey Wen Ho Lee&#8221; after federal prosecutors dropped charges accusing him of receiving illegal funds from political patron David Chang &#8212; who had reportedly given the Senator an $8,100 Rolex watch, 10 Italian suits, and a large-screen TV. Earlier, Torricelli had demagogued the Wen Ho Lee case, even causing Janet Reno to break down at one hearing when he demanded that Clinton fire her. Torricelli later insisted that he didn&#8217;t understand how Chang got into a meeting he was having with Korea&#8217;s finance minister. &#8220;I had no idea what this man was doing in the room,&#8221; Torricelli explained through his teeth. &#8220;He showed up.&#8221;</p> <p>Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-La.), who took money from Enron and then went on to denounce the company, complained when the cable news stations began flashing on-screen the amounts that politicians received from the bankrupt company. &#8220;People hate hypocrites,&#8221; Tauzin observed.</p> <p>Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) criticized Senator John Kerry for first serving (by all accounts heroically) in Vietnam before following his conscience to oppose the war. &#8220;If we had had the leadership of a George W. Bush back in the Vietnam War days,&#8221; DeLay said of the president, who avoided the draft, &#8220;we probably would not have lost that war.&#8221;</p> <p /> <p /> <p>Tom Delay</p> <p>At the 1988 Republican National Convention, he defended his own absence in Vietnam in a bizarre statement that implicated affirmative action. According to a Houston Press reporter&#8217;s summary, the argument went like this: &#8220;So many minority youths had volunteered for the well-paying military positions to escape poverty and the ghetto that there was literally no room for patriotic folks.&#8221;</p> <p /> <p>Jesse Helms retires this year among a bizarre bouquet of accolades. But, with his departure, it would be rude not to recall some of his pearls of wisdom, such as this gem from 1950: &#8220;White people, wake up before it is too late. Do you want Negroes working beside you, your wife, and your daughters, in your mills and factories?&#8221; In 1963 he said, &#8220;The Negro cannot count forever on the kind of restraint that&#8217;s thus far left him free to clog the streets, disrupt traffic, and interfere with other men&#8217;s rights.&#8221; He regularly called the University of North Carolina &#8220;the University of Negroes and Communists.&#8221; Spotting Senator Carol Moseley-Braun in the elevator in 1993, he bragged, &#8220;I&#8217;m going to make her cry. I&#8217;m going to sing &#8216;Dixie&#8217; until she cries.&#8221; But nothing quite matches a more recent appearance on CNN&#8217;s Larry King Live. When a caller gushed over Helms for &#8220;everything you&#8217;ve done to help keep down the niggers,&#8221; Helms, seized by a Dr. Strangelove moment, turned to the camera, saluted, and replied, &#8220;Well, thank you, I think.&#8221;</p> <p />

The Diddly Awards

https://motherjones.com/politics/2002/09/diddly-awards/

2018-09-01

4left

In the year 2000 the US Congress achieved a level of DoNothingness so noteworthy that we decided to take note 8212 by instituting the Diddly Awards In the Senate Trent Lott occupied those days plotting tiny acts of revenge while the House under the Potemkin leadership of Dennis Hastert produced not a single bill worth discussing It was after all a Congress that mourned the death of Sonny Bono in 1998 as a blow to its intellectual gravitas Today8217s Congress is far more accomplished The members passed an enormous tax cut in the teeth of a recession 8212 taking us from surplus to deficit so quickly that not even the talkradio gasbags could convincingly pin the blame on our allweather scapegoat Bill Clinton Then of course Congress responded to September 11 with the swift passage of the Patriot Act 8212 a retreat from the spirit of our Constitution so unthoughtout that it made Lincoln8217s wartime suspension of habeas corpus look positively democratic In these efforts and much more our Congress has signed off on massive tectonic legislation without so much as a moment8217s pause One could easily argue that the return of the imperial presidency has less to do with Dick Cheney8217s powers of persuasion than with the doormat disposition of this Congress The DoNothing 106th Congress has passed its baton All hail the QuestionNothing 107th Congress Having abandoned its essential constitutional duty this Congress has had lots of spare time to do once again diddly The envelopes please8230 The Celebrity Mongering Award Rep Duke Cunningham RCalif summoned Elmo the Sesame Street character made of red felt to the Capitol to testify on the importance of music education Said one political analyst who witnessed the event 8220Elmo has higher poll ratings than most members of Congress They like to be in his reflective glory8221 At the end the Muppet insisted not altogether convincingly 8220Elmo is not making a mockery of this place8221 Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott RMiss complained to the media about having to talk to Chief Justice William Rehnquist at a White House dinner when Clint Eastwood was there 8220I had my back to all the action8221 he noted Reps George Gekas RPa and Jim Greenwood RPa conferred with 7foot 2inch Philadelphia 76er Dikembe Mutombo to discuss health care 8220We believe this is a gigantic first step8221 Gekas said Senator Jesse Helms RNC was mugging with Bono long before Paul O8217Neill ever heard of the guy Helms went to a U2 concert turned off his hearing aid and later offered anthropological notes on this new teenage craze called rock 8216n8217 roll 8220When Bono shook his hips that crowd shook their hips8230It was filled to the gills and people were moving back and forth like corn in the breeze8221 Trent Lott Donning a kilt Lott also alerted the world to his Scottish heritage by inviting Sean Connery to join him in Scottish drag on the Capitol steps Before the assembled throng Lott cried out in his best Braveheart impression 8220Freedom8221 The Family Values Award Senator Jim Bunning RKy who obviously had nothing to do with Bush8217s nomination of his son David Bunning 35 to be a federal judge 8212 even after the American Bar Association deemed the boy 8220not qualified8221 Senator Strom Thurmond RSC who also had nothing to do with Bush8217s nomination of his son Strom Thurmond Jr 28 years old and three years out of law school to be US attorney for South Carolina Rep Bud Shuster RPa who supported his son Bill Shuster a 41yearold car dealer to replace him in a special election in 2001 Bill Shuster He forced the Republican Party to bloat his son8217s campaign chest to 1 million That was three times the amount gathered by the other fellow who had no Congressional relatives 8220This is about Bill Shuster8221 Bill Shuster insisted 8220and Bill Shuster standing on his own two feet8221 Shuster won the election and is heading to DC where he can discuss his rugged individualism with FCC chair Michael Powell son of Colin Solicitor of the Labor Department Eugene Scalia son of Antonin Health and Human Services Inspector General Janet Rehnquist daughter of William and of course President George W Bush The Common Touch Award Rep Bob Barr RGa screamed at three parkinglot security officers in Atlanta when his shuttle van was held up at the entrance The most polite account alleges Barr yelled at one of the guards 8220When are you going to open the gate you stupid black idiot8221 Another version says Barr called a guard a 8220nigger8221 Rep JC Watts ROkla left his car idling at an airport post911 and returned to find a cop Sergeant Edward Stupka writing a 15 ticket Watts blew his lid crammed the ticket behind Stupka8217s badge and told him to 8220take care of it8221 8220I could have been a terrorist carrying a bomb8221 Watts screamed 8220and you would never have seen it8221 He drove off after Stupka threw the ticket into his car When called on his arrogance Watts refused to apologize His wife paid the fine Rep Tom Lantos DCalif drove over a 13yearold boy8217s foot just outside the Capitol in 2001 and then left the scene Rep Darrell Issa RCalif whose voice can be heard on millions of his Viper car alarms shouting 8220Stand back8221 was stopped by Border Patrol for 8220driving 90 mph through an Interstate 5 construction zone at San Clemente8221 He insisted to the officer 8220It8217s not your job to stop me for speeding8221 Bob Barr In the annals of congressional arrogance Barr is a repeat offender In 1998 The New York Times reported an incident in which Barr slapped a female security guard at the airport after which his wife summarized her view of airport security 8220They were all from other countries and they were talking about me in their language8230I thought 8216Hey this is my country8221 The Class Clown Award Senator Barbara Mikulski DMd publicly sang 8212 picture it 8212 8220Who Let the Dogs Out8221 In a fundraising mailer Rep JD Hayworth RAriz sent out 8220Jim Jeffords Barf Bags8221 to be used while contemplating the senator8217s 8220sickening8230disgusting8230treachery8221 Rep Patrick Kennedy DRI accused of causing 28000 of damage to a rented yacht on a Y2K booze cruise later appeared at a political roast dressed in a sailor suit Tough to the finish the son of Senator Ted Kennedy DMass capped off the evening by singing 8220Patrick the Sailor Man8221 Rep Mark Foley RFla brought up the rumor of Florida Governor Jeb Bush8217s affair with Katherine Harris 8220I believe him8221 cracked Foley about Jeb8217s denials 8220I mean good God 8212 dating Katherine Harris How would you get that makeup off your collar8221 Patrick Kennedy At the same roast the admitted former cokehead joked about Senator Lincoln Chafee RRI another admitted former cokehead 8220Now when I hear someone talking about a Rhode Island politician whose father was a senator and who got to Washington on his family name used cocaine and wasn8217t very smart I know there is only a 5050 chance it8217s me8221 The Sex in Congress Award At the height of the Gary Condit imbroglio Rep Scott McInnis RColo proposed a change in the House ethics manual 8212 forbidding all sex between Congresspersons and interns 8220Right now you8217re allowed to engage in it8221 he said Rep Anthony Weiner DNY was seen partying just days after 911 with Diana Davis a 22yearold House staffer The 36yearold bachelor came on to Davis saying he was an 8220auto parts salesman8221 Later realizing she8217d been misled Davis emailed Weiner 8220I8217m assuming that selling auto parts8230is only a parttime gig My apologies if I offended you8221 Weiner quickly hit his reply button writing 8220Apologies like yours are best offered in person8221 Rep Bill Thomas RCalif was outed for having an affair with Deborah Steelman a health care lobbyist who routinely had business with Thomas8217 health care committee and steered huge campaign gifts to Thomas8217 war chest Steelman now a vice president for Eli Lilly did not deny the affair rather she was enraged that anyone would think having sex with Thomas gave her undue advantage 8220To suggest I would stoop to an 8216inappropriate relationship8217 to achieve legislative results is repugnant and sexist8221 Bill Thomas Thomas breathes new life into the phrase 8220in bed with industry8221 Despite the controversy surrounding the affair Thomas went on to author the term8217s key Republican health care legislation The Dan Quayle Award Rep Mark Foley the son of a public school teacher wanted voters to know of his opposition to TPA or Trade Promotion Authority He released a statement denouncing the 8220PTA8221 Senator John Breaux DLa wrote a note during the stimulus package debate and pinned it to a Congressional elevator reading 8220STIMULAS NEEDED8221 Speaker Dennis Hastert RIll pontificated last December on the need for yet another CR or 8220continuing resolution8221 whereby Congress avoids shutting down the government by borrowing a few hundred million more dollars Despite gales of laughter from Congressfolk he persisted in referring to the need for 8220CPR 8221 Senator Thomas Daschle DSD denounced spending billions on Bush8217s spacebased missiledefense system saying 8220This isn8217t rocket science here8221 Dan Quayle Stepping in from outside the ring the former Senator never fails to win his own award During the increase of violence in Israel Quayle struggled to maintain a balanced attitude toward the Palestinians asking 8220How many Palestinians were on those airplanes on September 9 None8221 The September 11 Demagoguery Award Rep Saxby Chambliss RGa suggested that a good strategy to combat terrorism would be to 8220arrest every Muslim that crosses the state line8221 Senator Hillary Clinton DNY told NBC that Chelsea almost died in the World Trade Center collapse Chelsea meanwhile was writing a piece explaining how she was in Manhattan but nowhere near the towers Rep John Cooksey RLa told a radio audience right after 911 8220If I see someone come in that8217s got a diaper on his head and a fan belt wrapped around the diaper on his head that guy needs to be pulled over8221 Freshman Rep Brian Kerns RInd told his hometown paper that he8217d witnessed the disaster at the Pentagon 8220I8217m in shock I thought it was strange that they were letting airplanes still fly after the World Trade Center Then it was so low and it just banked into the building I still can8217t believe it8221 Brian Kerns An American Legion official recalled being in a meeting with Kerns during the attack Confronted with his lie and asked to account where he really was during the attacks Kerns ran away from the media saying 8220Who knows8221 Senator Orrin Hatch RUtah wrote a tune called 8220America Rocks8221 which formed part of the soundtrack to the movie Rat Race 8220America rocks America rocks From its busy bustling cities To its quiet country walks It8217s totally cool it8217s totally hot I mean it8217s like right there at the top8221 Senator Zell Miller DGa concerned that 8220the pickup owners of this nation might get screwed in all this gasguzzler talk about SUVs and vans8221 cowrote sang and recorded 8220The Talking Pickup Truck Blues8221 The song goes in part 8220I hear some news from Washington Of a crackpot scheme to raise some mon It8217s an unkind way to raise a buck And it adds more cost to my pickup truck8221 Rep Joe Scarborough RFla played guitar with his band Regular Joe and prior to leaving office last September was often heard singing the altrock tune 8220Teenage Dirtbag8221 It goes in part 8220Oh how she rocks in Keds and tube socks But she doesn8217t know who I am And she doesn8217t give a damn about me 8216Cause I8217m just a teenage dirtbag baby8221 8220I think I should get points for not doing Perry Como songs8221 said Scarborough Rep Dick Armey RTexas released a CD entitled Dick Armey8217s Favorite Hits No seriously The album cover features the House majority leader atop a horse and includes such titles as 8220I8217m Just an Old Chunk of Coal8221 Zell Miller The second verse goes 8220Sure an SUV is classy travel But it ain8217t much good for haulin8217 gravel Or hay or seed or bovine feces So please don8217t make my pickup truck an endangered species8221 The Talk Dirty to Me Award Rep Barbara Cubin RWyo was talking policy with some donors when in stunning non sequitur fashion she announced 8220I know what Victoria8217s Secret is She8217s a slut8221 John Breaux having been named an honorary 8220coxswain8221 of the US Coast Guard was traveling with a New Republic reporter and couldn8217t stop entertaining himself 8220Hey Look at this 8212 I8217m a cocks8217n8221 Breaux said 8220Does my wife know8221 Passing a Hooters restaurant he said 8220Hey Maybe I should get a job there since I8217m a cocks8217n8221 Rep Ileana RosLehtinen RFla announced after being told that time was short during a hearing with Secretary of State Colin Powell 8220My press release will read 8216RosLehtinen does quickie with Secretary Powell82308217 I8217m ready8221 Barbara Cubin She arrived in Congress already famous in Wyoming for passing around penisshaped cookies to her male colleagues in the state legislature which she later explained by saying 8220People sometimes do things that they wouldn8217t do in front of their mother8221 Then during the Florida recount battle she screamed in a meeting 8220We are bending over and taking it from the Democrats8221 When some of her colleagues were alarmed by the rather unfamilyvaluesesque image she snapped 8220Quiet down or you8217ll get a spanking8221 The Man Behind The Curtain Award Dick Gephardt DMo was summoned by Barbra Streisand to the coast to huddle with famous Hollywood political strategist Warren Beatty about the Democrats8217 postelection malaise The House minority leader had to endure a 8220dramatic reading8221 of Babs8217 threepage memo entitled 8220Nice Guys Finish Last8221 which the media struggled valiantly to quote witheringly except that it8217s really really boring Senator Jim Bunning RKy sent out a fundraiser letter allegedly written by Thomas Towles Towles is Bunning8217s 11yearold grandson 8220If you can please include a special gift of 500 250 100 50 or even 25 along with your signed card to help his campaign8221 wrote the child 8220I know it would mean a lot to Grandpa8221 Dennis Hastert held a press conference in front of a throng of hardhatwearing 8220working Americans8221 8212 who were actually lobbyists in disguise Dennis Hastert This bit of street theater was intended to promote the trilliondollar Bush tax cut as a boon for the working class A memo from the National Association of Manufacturers gave denizens of Gucci Gulch their lunchpail instructions 8220The theme involves working Americans Visually this will involve a sea of hard hats which our construction and contractor and building groups are working very hard to provide8221 In addition 8220the Speaker8217s office was very clear in saying that they do not need people in suits If people want to participate 8212 AND WE DO NEED BODIES 8212 they must be DRESSED DOWN appear to be REAL WORKER types etc8221 The Rank Hypocrisy Award Orrin Hatch complained that the Democrats had confirmed only 28 rightwing judges in the first half of 2002 8220Contrary to the widely held belief the Republicans did not play such games when Bill Clinton was president8221 Hatch declared without being struck by lightning When Hatch ran the Judiciary Committee in 1996 he confirmed 17 of Clinton8217s moderate appointments the whole year Robert Torricelli DNJ called himself the 8220New Jersey Wen Ho Lee8221 after federal prosecutors dropped charges accusing him of receiving illegal funds from political patron David Chang 8212 who had reportedly given the Senator an 8100 Rolex watch 10 Italian suits and a largescreen TV Earlier Torricelli had demagogued the Wen Ho Lee case even causing Janet Reno to break down at one hearing when he demanded that Clinton fire her Torricelli later insisted that he didn8217t understand how Chang got into a meeting he was having with Korea8217s finance minister 8220I had no idea what this man was doing in the room8221 Torricelli explained through his teeth 8220He showed up8221 Rep Billy Tauzin RLa who took money from Enron and then went on to denounce the company complained when the cable news stations began flashing onscreen the amounts that politicians received from the bankrupt company 8220People hate hypocrites8221 Tauzin observed Rep Tom DeLay RTexas criticized Senator John Kerry for first serving by all accounts heroically in Vietnam before following his conscience to oppose the war 8220If we had had the leadership of a George W Bush back in the Vietnam War days8221 DeLay said of the president who avoided the draft 8220we probably would not have lost that war8221 Tom Delay At the 1988 Republican National Convention he defended his own absence in Vietnam in a bizarre statement that implicated affirmative action According to a Houston Press reporter8217s summary the argument went like this 8220So many minority youths had volunteered for the wellpaying military positions to escape poverty and the ghetto that there was literally no room for patriotic folks8221 Jesse Helms retires this year among a bizarre bouquet of accolades But with his departure it would be rude not to recall some of his pearls of wisdom such as this gem from 1950 8220White people wake up before it is too late Do you want Negroes working beside you your wife and your daughters in your mills and factories8221 In 1963 he said 8220The Negro cannot count forever on the kind of restraint that8217s thus far left him free to clog the streets disrupt traffic and interfere with other men8217s rights8221 He regularly called the University of North Carolina 8220the University of Negroes and Communists8221 Spotting Senator Carol MoseleyBraun in the elevator in 1993 he bragged 8220I8217m going to make her cry I8217m going to sing 8216Dixie8217 until she cries8221 But nothing quite matches a more recent appearance on CNN8217s Larry King Live When a caller gushed over Helms for 8220everything you8217ve done to help keep down the niggers8221 Helms seized by a Dr Strangelove moment turned to the camera saluted and replied 8220Well thank you I think8221

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<p>Though a manhunt always garners publicity, the media enthusiasm for the grisly murder of Emily Sander, aka &#8220;Zoey Zane&#8221;, the aspiring Internet porn star and college student, has dwindled significantly. Israel Mireles, the prime suspect whose blood-soaked hotel room bedding was found with Sander&#8217;s body near a highway outside of El Dorado, unknowingly bought himself a bit of time with this red herring, and frustrated police complain of a &#8220;crippled&#8221; investigation. Indeed, if Internet porn is rampant, so is the media fetish for online, underage sexual exploitation, probably because it indulges the fantasy that, prior to the 1990s, this kind of victimization was rare. While it&#8217;s undeniable that the Web has transformed pornography distribution and consumption patterns, indifference to Ms. Sander coincided with the revelation that she met a more prosaic demise than one capping off a night of lesbian fondling. Like most murder victims, Ms. Sander died after having a drink.</p> <p>In the early spring of 2006, I was finishing my Masters degree at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. I was pregnant, working fulltime, and struggling to complete my term papers before going into labor. When I thought nothing could snap me from my love affair with self-pity, something awful happened: one of my classmates, Imette St. Guillen, was raped and tortured to death. Face wrapped in duct tape, nude, her mutilated body was found near the Belt Parkway. Her alleged murderer was the bouncer at the bar where she had stopped to have a birthday drink.</p> <p>Despite the obvious dissimilarities between these women, reading about Sander, I thought of St. Guillen and of Natalie Holloway, the Alabama high school senior, whose disappearance hijacked the airwaves during the summer of 2005. She recently resurfaced in the news as her alleged killer faces another round of questioning in Aruba. Despite the prurient and sometimes absurd speculations about the case in the media, one thing is certain: Holloway, as well as many other young men and women on the school field trip, consumed copious amounts of alcohol during that fateful week in Aruba. An employee of the hotel where the teenagers lodged told Vanity Fair:</p> <p>This group of students was a very&#8212;I don&#8217;t want to demonize them&#8212;but the group really went far, very far, in terms of having a good time&#8230;.Wild partying, a lot of drinking, lots of room switching every night. We know the Holiday Inn told them they weren&#8217;t welcome next year. Natalee, we know, she drank all day every day. We have statements she started every morning with cocktails&#8212;so much drinking that Natalee didn&#8217;t show up for breakfast two mornings.</p> <p>It also seems apparent that Holloway was sexually assaulted &#8211; her alleged murderers admitted as much in a taped interview and to the police &#8211; while intoxicated. A few months later, a similarly sensational story of an affluent honeymooner meeting a dark end on a Royal Caribbean cruise captured public consciousness and dented cruise sales. A botched police investigation obfuscated many of the details of George Smith&#8217;s disappearance, but again one thing is clear: the night after Smith&#8217;s death, several of the young men who were partying with Smith immediately prior to his disappearance stood accused of sexually assaulting a drunk women, and, in the wake of the controversy surrounding this incident, were asked, with their families, to vacate the ship.</p> <p>Holloway&#8217;s disappearance &#8211; marked by the special convergence of her race, youth, virginity and the aggressive cooperation of her parents with the media &#8211; was afforded &#8220;story of the summer&#8221; status by several major cable news channels; by comparison, the Royal Caribbean cruise rape was treated like an afterthought to a more important crime, another embarrassing blight on the reputation of a travel and tourism company that failed to ensure the safety of even its wealthy, white, male patrons. Imette St. Guillen is remembered in New York as an angelic honor student savaged by a demonic killer. Emily Sander, meanwhile, was nearly a great poster girl for the &#8220;if you&#8217;re not a slut, you&#8217;re safe&#8221; campaign, whose propaganda can be observed in most rape laws prior to 1970 and nearly every Hollywood thriller.</p> <p>Celebration of sexualized violence aside, there exist non-negligible similarities between these cases, and many others: each incident involves a night of drinking leading to allegations of rape, and sometimes homicide. From a criminological perspective, murder is an easy crime to study &#8211; and studies of murder prove that victims and offenders are usually under the influence of some intoxicating substance at the time of the attack. Although I&#8217;ve often heard women, especially young women, say, &#8220;If someone is going to rape me, he might as well kill me,&#8221; raped women consistently report their intense commitment to surviving the attack, their desire to live. It is why women, oftentimes, don&#8217;t fight back. And, as rape affects far more women than homicide does, sexual exploitation is a relatively normal part of life for women in America.</p> <p>In response to early feminist inquiries and consciousness raising efforts, rape theorists have rightly avoided critical analysis of victim behavior that could be construed as the same kind of &#8220;victim-blaming&#8221;, which characterized the formal investigation and adjudication of rape cases prior to the late 1970&#8217;s. Indeed, data indicate that rape, like most violent crime, cuts across age, class, and race demographics, and that, contrary to formerly held, sexist notions, neither physical appearance, nor sartorial choices affect patterns of victimization. The deeper understanding of rape as a crime of violence, not passion, and as a systematic mechanism for subjugating women has led to the dismantling, in most states, of troubling corroboration standards and irrelevant investigations into victims&#8217; sexual practices. In most states today, rape laws are designed to protect a woman&#8217;s right to consent to sexual intercourse, and, in more progressive states, recognize both men&#8217;s and women&#8217;s right to consent to any form of sexual interaction. In spite of these improvements, rape, unlike homicide, remains a rampant, largely unreported crime. Apart from Sander, St. Guillen, and Holloway, I think about other women, women I&#8217;ve known, lucky ones whose intoxicated sexual exploitation episodes did not land them on the front pages of the New York Times or the New York Post or CNN, but who cautiously admitted being traumatized by a forced sexual encounter after a few too many drinks. Victimization studies confirm lackluster reporting of sexual violence: despite the broader definition of rape and attempts by rape crisis centers and police departments to increasingly ensure sensitivity to victims, major victimization surveys suggest that most sexual assaults go unreported, and that 14.8 per cent of women have been raped during her their lifetimes.</p> <p>Why is rape nearly epidemic in some communities? Why don&#8217;t many victims report this life-altering trauma? If every woman is a potential victim, what are the real risk factors? As much as the media hastens to portray each sensational case as a scintillating aberration, the alcohol variable figures more importantly than any other in answering these questions.</p> <p>Amid the moral panic caused by the &#8220;date rape drug&#8221;, Rohypnol, in the 1990s, researchers quietly began investigating the effects of another drug whose consumption rates among young people continue to grow unabated: alcohol. Ubiquitous and legal, alcohol had already been correlated with crime from murder and domestic violence to petty theft. Prior to the 90&#8217;s, most formal analysis of alcohol&#8217;s relationship to rape tended to focus on the offender, and incorporated the assumption that sexual assault trends vary widely depending on circumstantial context. Because research tends to be cumulative and complementary, inquiries into victim alcohol use fixate on the university milieu.</p> <p>Employing a variety of methodological tactics, including examination of National Crime Victimization Survey Data and information collected using self-report instruments on university campuses and in high schools, all studies of rape and alcohol note a high correlation between pre-assault victim alcohol use and sex abuse victimization patterns.</p> <p>Administering a self-report questionnaire to a random sample of national college students, Sarah Ullman and her research team explored the complex interaction between victims&#8217; general alcohol habits and the characteristics of assault. Half of the 3,187 women polled experienced some form of sexual victimization. Of those victims, 42 per cent were using alcohol prior to the assault. Connecting both victim and offender alcohol use to sex abuse patterns, Ullman made the surprising finding that &#8220;victim drinking was related to less offender aggression, possibly because force was not needed to complete rape of a victim.&#8221; So, it is practical for rapists to rape women under the influence because alcohol&#8217;s acceptable incapacitating effects are similar to those of far less ubiquitous rape drugs.</p> <p>While Ullman&#8217;s work is the most comprehensive in terms of variables tested and research methodology employed, rape researchers linked sexual victimization and alcohol on college campuses prior to her studies. Other researchers analyzed both victimized and non-victimized women in order to test their hypotheses about victims&#8217; attitudes toward sex, alcohol, and sexual experience. Using Koss&#8217; reliable Sexual Experience Survey, William Corbin confirmed &#8220;alcohol consumption [as] a general risk factor for sexual victimization&#8221; and similarly affirmed what psychologists have known for decades: in the wake of trauma, victims frequently rely on alcohol and other substances to numb intrusive trauma response phenomena. Corbin is joined in his findings by other researchers, like Bonnie Fisher, who identified victim pre-assault alcohol use as a defining contextual characteristic, both for rape and the failure by the victim to report it. If, indeed, women are more likely to be victimized when consuming alcohol and less likely to report these attacks, then there likely exists a large class of victims ignored by the criminal justice and our social safety net. And the mystery of spotty reporting patterns is more comprehensible.</p> <p>Concerned with the convergence of rape myths, fraternity membership, and alcohol use, Martin Schwartz tested claims of past studies indicating that &#8220;fraternity men are said to learn that forced sex with a drunken woman is not wrong,&#8221; despite its illegality in every state. From using alcohol to incapacitate and avoid forcible rape, to employing it as a &#8220;tool&#8230; to &#8216;work out a yes&#8217; of unwilling women,&#8221; attitudes and behaviors in the fraternity context seem to exemplify the dangerousness of victim pre-assault alcohol use.</p> <p>What if you&#8217;re not drinking at the frat house? Contrary to established research, Schwartz found that fraternity men do not subscribe disproportionately to rape myths and do not drink more frequently than other men in the university population. In this way, Schwartz&#8217;s findings substantiate alcohol use, and its interaction with &#8220;peer culture,&#8221; as instrumental in sexual assaults. But his key finding &#8220;that other groups on campus may be just as likely as fraternities to provide the extensive male peer support for the sexual objectification of women, and the access to alcohol, that encourages some men to engage in victimizing behaviors&#8221; won&#8217;t surprise many women. We experience firsthand the extent to which sexism and violence are not relegated to their bastions.</p> <p>What of the &#8220;binge drinking&#8221; trend? Testing their theory that &#8220;drinkers are more likely to be victimized because of their association with motivated offenders,&#8221; and that &#8220;their routine activities and differential associations put them at greater risk of victimization regardless of whether they are drinking,&#8221; Felson and Burchfield explored National Violence Against Women Survey data from 1995 and 1996. The researchers did not relegate their work to sexual victimization, instead broadly investigating victimization of both sexes and testing a number of variables and crimes.</p> <p>They concluded that &#8220;victims of sexual assaults are more likely to be drinking than victims of physical assault.&#8221; More generally, however, Felson and Burchfield disproved the &#8220;routine activities&#8221; hypothesis they put forth, showing that &#8220;frequent and heavy drinkers are at a much greater risk of assault when they are drinking, but that drinking is unrelated to the risk of victimization while sober.&#8221; Helping to contextualize situations rather than patterns, this powerful finding nullifies the impulse to blame women&#8217;s &#8220;lifestyles&#8221; when trying to understand risk factors for rape. Journalists offer anecdotal evidence to bolster the argument that pre-assault alcohol use by rape victims is as common as rape itself. Responding to concerns about the recent liberalization of pub hours two years ago, the British media focused heavily on the correlation between alcohol use and sexual victimization. Citing one study conducted by the Forensic Science Service in London of 1,014 alleged rape victims, where &#8220;significant levels of alcohol were found&#8221; in 46 per cent of all rape cases, journalists report concerns of judges who &#8220;[warn] that binge drinking will lead to more rapes&#8230;[because] pubs and bars [are allowed] to open round the clock.&#8221; Estimating that &#8220;47,000 rapes occur each year,&#8221; and citing a second study stating that neither Rohypnol nor GHB was ever detected in victims&#8217; systems but that &#8220;in 50 per cent of all reported rapes the victim was seriously drunk,&#8221; some journalists and criminologists are declaring a rape epidemic in the UK, calling &#8220;alcohol the most common factor in drug-assisted rape.&#8221; Similar figures were released by &#8220;the drink industry&#8217;s own watchdog, the Portman Group,&#8221; stating that &#8220;one in three drunken girls is the victim of a sex attack.&#8221; To illustrate the statistics, the Daily Mail published a victim&#8217;s account: &#8220;through a haze of alcohol, almost as if I was looking down at myself from a great distance, I realized I had been stripped of my clothes and two men were raping me as a third held my hands tightly above my head.&#8221; Both the studies, and anecdotal evidence from UK victims dramatize the statistics U.S. researchers are systematically uncovering on college campuses.</p> <p>In the U.S., the national media won&#8217;t make a peep, but local reporters detail how fears of drug-induced rape spawned the introduction of drug detection kits into university &#8220;welcome&#8221; bags. An opponent of this arguably cynical policy cited the predominance of pre-assault alcohol use at the University of Syracuse, where she was a rape counselor, stating, &#8220;Alcohol is the No. 1 date rape drug&#8230;And you know alcohol is in your drink.&#8221;</p> <p>Cases abound of authorities confounding date-rape drugs with drinking practices. For example, a 2005 fraternity rape drug incident at the University of Colorado resulted in tension between the university and the fraternity house when a lab inaccurately reported positive GHB findings in alleged victims&#8217; blood. In fact, &#8220;the woman had blood-alcohol levels ranging from .128 to .292&#8230;The legal limit to drive in Colorado is .08.&#8221;</p> <p>While the news reporting in the U.S. has not latched onto the relevance of pre-assault alcohol use as a defining theme of its most recent celebrated criminal justice cases, ample evidence provides a foundation for this argument. At the convergence of any set of variables, there is the potential for risk or control. Rather than identifying rape as a consequence of victim behavior, these statistically significant correlations of victimization with pre-incident alcohol use provide lifestyle information relevant to critically conceptualizing personal safety. Just as domestic violence research in the 1980&#8217;s helped to dispel the myth of &#8220;stranger-danger,&#8221; whose politics were seductive to a society invested in restricting women&#8217;s movements outside of the home, research about alcohol and rape can teach us, and our children, about how to behave based on the way things really are.</p> <p>Of course, the relationship between alcohol and rape is a bitter pill to swallow. On top of already shouldering all kinds of disproportionate social burdens, do women and girls have to revive the temperance movement in order to avoid sexual exploitation? The answer, according to the research, is: kind of. Instead of a movement aimed at cleaning up society imposed by condescending liberal elites, however, women&#8217;s decision to drink less would likely increase their safety far more than impractical prescriptions to restrict their movements or associations.</p> <p>The most complex, national studies of rape and alcohol associate drinking with one- to two-thirds of sexual assaults. Although no woman is responsible for being raped, no matter what the circumstances, the implications of ignoring victim behavior can be just as grave as victim-blaming. While limiting alcohol consumption is no solution to the principles of male domination and misogyny that underlie our society and give rise to the troubling ubiquity of sexual violence, it is as subversive weapon as any in the arsenal of young women who believe that this reality can change.</p> <p>R.F. Blader can be reached at <a href="mailto:rfblader@gmail.com" type="external">rfblader@gmail.com</a></p> <p>Sources:</p> <p>Ullman, Sarah E., George Karabatsos, Mary P. Koss, &#8220;Alcohol and Sexual Assault in a National Sample of College Women.&#8221; Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Vol. 14 No. 6, June 1999: 603-625 Corbin, William R., Jeffrey A. Bernat, Karen S. Calhoun, Lily D. McNair, Kari L. Seals, &#8220;The Role of Alcohol Expectancies and Alcohol Consumption Among Sexually Victimized and Nonvictimized College Women&#8221;, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Vol. 16 No. 4, April 2001: 297-311</p> <p>Fisher, Bonnie S., Leah E. Daigle, Francis T. Cullen, Michael G. Turner, &#8220;Reporting Sexual Victimization to the Police and Others: Results From a National-Level Study of College Women&#8221;, Criminal Justice and Behavior, Vol. 30 No. 1, February 2003: 6-38. Schwartz, Martin D., Carol Nogrady, &#8220;Fraternity Membership, Sexual Aggression and Rape Myths on a College Campus&#8221;, Violence Against Women, Vol. 2, No. 2, June 1996: 148 &#8211; 162. Felson, Richard B., Keri B. Burchfield, &#8220;Alcohol and the Risk of Physical and Sexual Assault Victimization&#8221;, Criminology.Vol. 42, Iss. 4, April 2001: p. 837</p> <p>Hickley, Matthew. &#8220;The Drunken Victims,&#8221;, Daily Mail, September 26, 2005: p. 9 ; Wheldon, Julie. &#8220;The Date-Rape Risk for Women Who Binge Drink&#8221;, Daily Mail, August 1, 2005: p. 4</p> <p>Cochrane, Kira. &#8220;Are all men rapists after all?: British rape figures, already shocking, peak in the heavy-drinking party season&#8221;, New Statesman, September 26, 2005.</p> <p>Nisbet, Jenny, &#8220;Too Drunk to Say No&#8221;, Daily Mail, October 1, 2005: Pg. 28-29</p> <p>Maddelena, Christine, &#8220;Syracuse officials say new date rape drug test not the answer&#8221;, University Newswire. September 23, 2005</p> <p>Trujillo, Melissa, &#8220;Police now say women did not have &#8216;date-rape&#8217; drug in system&#8221;, Associated Press. November 10, 2005</p> <p>Brecklin, Leanne R., Sarah E. Ullman, &#8220;The Role of Offender Alcohol Use in Rape Attacks: An Analysis of National Crime Victimization Survey Data&#8221;, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Vol. 16 No. 1, January 2001: 3-21</p> <p /> <p /> <p /> <p><a href="" type="internal" /></p> <p /> <p>&amp;#160;</p>

A Rape in Every Drink?

https://counterpunch.org/2007/12/08/a-rape-in-every-drink/

2007-12-08

4left

Though a manhunt always garners publicity the media enthusiasm for the grisly murder of Emily Sander aka 8220Zoey Zane8221 the aspiring Internet porn star and college student has dwindled significantly Israel Mireles the prime suspect whose bloodsoaked hotel room bedding was found with Sander8217s body near a highway outside of El Dorado unknowingly bought himself a bit of time with this red herring and frustrated police complain of a 8220crippled8221 investigation Indeed if Internet porn is rampant so is the media fetish for online underage sexual exploitation probably because it indulges the fantasy that prior to the 1990s this kind of victimization was rare While it8217s undeniable that the Web has transformed pornography distribution and consumption patterns indifference to Ms Sander coincided with the revelation that she met a more prosaic demise than one capping off a night of lesbian fondling Like most murder victims Ms Sander died after having a drink In the early spring of 2006 I was finishing my Masters degree at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York I was pregnant working fulltime and struggling to complete my term papers before going into labor When I thought nothing could snap me from my love affair with selfpity something awful happened one of my classmates Imette St Guillen was raped and tortured to death Face wrapped in duct tape nude her mutilated body was found near the Belt Parkway Her alleged murderer was the bouncer at the bar where she had stopped to have a birthday drink Despite the obvious dissimilarities between these women reading about Sander I thought of St Guillen and of Natalie Holloway the Alabama high school senior whose disappearance hijacked the airwaves during the summer of 2005 She recently resurfaced in the news as her alleged killer faces another round of questioning in Aruba Despite the prurient and sometimes absurd speculations about the case in the media one thing is certain Holloway as well as many other young men and women on the school field trip consumed copious amounts of alcohol during that fateful week in Aruba An employee of the hotel where the teenagers lodged told Vanity Fair This group of students was a very8212I don8217t want to demonize them8212but the group really went far very far in terms of having a good time8230Wild partying a lot of drinking lots of room switching every night We know the Holiday Inn told them they weren8217t welcome next year Natalee we know she drank all day every day We have statements she started every morning with cocktails8212so much drinking that Natalee didn8217t show up for breakfast two mornings It also seems apparent that Holloway was sexually assaulted 8211 her alleged murderers admitted as much in a taped interview and to the police 8211 while intoxicated A few months later a similarly sensational story of an affluent honeymooner meeting a dark end on a Royal Caribbean cruise captured public consciousness and dented cruise sales A botched police investigation obfuscated many of the details of George Smith8217s disappearance but again one thing is clear the night after Smith8217s death several of the young men who were partying with Smith immediately prior to his disappearance stood accused of sexually assaulting a drunk women and in the wake of the controversy surrounding this incident were asked with their families to vacate the ship Holloway8217s disappearance 8211 marked by the special convergence of her race youth virginity and the aggressive cooperation of her parents with the media 8211 was afforded 8220story of the summer8221 status by several major cable news channels by comparison the Royal Caribbean cruise rape was treated like an afterthought to a more important crime another embarrassing blight on the reputation of a travel and tourism company that failed to ensure the safety of even its wealthy white male patrons Imette St Guillen is remembered in New York as an angelic honor student savaged by a demonic killer Emily Sander meanwhile was nearly a great poster girl for the 8220if you8217re not a slut you8217re safe8221 campaign whose propaganda can be observed in most rape laws prior to 1970 and nearly every Hollywood thriller Celebration of sexualized violence aside there exist nonnegligible similarities between these cases and many others each incident involves a night of drinking leading to allegations of rape and sometimes homicide From a criminological perspective murder is an easy crime to study 8211 and studies of murder prove that victims and offenders are usually under the influence of some intoxicating substance at the time of the attack Although I8217ve often heard women especially young women say 8220If someone is going to rape me he might as well kill me8221 raped women consistently report their intense commitment to surviving the attack their desire to live It is why women oftentimes don8217t fight back And as rape affects far more women than homicide does sexual exploitation is a relatively normal part of life for women in America In response to early feminist inquiries and consciousness raising efforts rape theorists have rightly avoided critical analysis of victim behavior that could be construed as the same kind of 8220victimblaming8221 which characterized the formal investigation and adjudication of rape cases prior to the late 19708217s Indeed data indicate that rape like most violent crime cuts across age class and race demographics and that contrary to formerly held sexist notions neither physical appearance nor sartorial choices affect patterns of victimization The deeper understanding of rape as a crime of violence not passion and as a systematic mechanism for subjugating women has led to the dismantling in most states of troubling corroboration standards and irrelevant investigations into victims8217 sexual practices In most states today rape laws are designed to protect a woman8217s right to consent to sexual intercourse and in more progressive states recognize both men8217s and women8217s right to consent to any form of sexual interaction In spite of these improvements rape unlike homicide remains a rampant largely unreported crime Apart from Sander St Guillen and Holloway I think about other women women I8217ve known lucky ones whose intoxicated sexual exploitation episodes did not land them on the front pages of the New York Times or the New York Post or CNN but who cautiously admitted being traumatized by a forced sexual encounter after a few too many drinks Victimization studies confirm lackluster reporting of sexual violence despite the broader definition of rape and attempts by rape crisis centers and police departments to increasingly ensure sensitivity to victims major victimization surveys suggest that most sexual assaults go unreported and that 148 per cent of women have been raped during her their lifetimes Why is rape nearly epidemic in some communities Why don8217t many victims report this lifealtering trauma If every woman is a potential victim what are the real risk factors As much as the media hastens to portray each sensational case as a scintillating aberration the alcohol variable figures more importantly than any other in answering these questions Amid the moral panic caused by the 8220date rape drug8221 Rohypnol in the 1990s researchers quietly began investigating the effects of another drug whose consumption rates among young people continue to grow unabated alcohol Ubiquitous and legal alcohol had already been correlated with crime from murder and domestic violence to petty theft Prior to the 908217s most formal analysis of alcohol8217s relationship to rape tended to focus on the offender and incorporated the assumption that sexual assault trends vary widely depending on circumstantial context Because research tends to be cumulative and complementary inquiries into victim alcohol use fixate on the university milieu Employing a variety of methodological tactics including examination of National Crime Victimization Survey Data and information collected using selfreport instruments on university campuses and in high schools all studies of rape and alcohol note a high correlation between preassault victim alcohol use and sex abuse victimization patterns Administering a selfreport questionnaire to a random sample of national college students Sarah Ullman and her research team explored the complex interaction between victims8217 general alcohol habits and the characteristics of assault Half of the 3187 women polled experienced some form of sexual victimization Of those victims 42 per cent were using alcohol prior to the assault Connecting both victim and offender alcohol use to sex abuse patterns Ullman made the surprising finding that 8220victim drinking was related to less offender aggression possibly because force was not needed to complete rape of a victim8221 So it is practical for rapists to rape women under the influence because alcohol8217s acceptable incapacitating effects are similar to those of far less ubiquitous rape drugs While Ullman8217s work is the most comprehensive in terms of variables tested and research methodology employed rape researchers linked sexual victimization and alcohol on college campuses prior to her studies Other researchers analyzed both victimized and nonvictimized women in order to test their hypotheses about victims8217 attitudes toward sex alcohol and sexual experience Using Koss8217 reliable Sexual Experience Survey William Corbin confirmed 8220alcohol consumption as a general risk factor for sexual victimization8221 and similarly affirmed what psychologists have known for decades in the wake of trauma victims frequently rely on alcohol and other substances to numb intrusive trauma response phenomena Corbin is joined in his findings by other researchers like Bonnie Fisher who identified victim preassault alcohol use as a defining contextual characteristic both for rape and the failure by the victim to report it If indeed women are more likely to be victimized when consuming alcohol and less likely to report these attacks then there likely exists a large class of victims ignored by the criminal justice and our social safety net And the mystery of spotty reporting patterns is more comprehensible Concerned with the convergence of rape myths fraternity membership and alcohol use Martin Schwartz tested claims of past studies indicating that 8220fraternity men are said to learn that forced sex with a drunken woman is not wrong8221 despite its illegality in every state From using alcohol to incapacitate and avoid forcible rape to employing it as a 8220tool8230 to 8216work out a yes8217 of unwilling women8221 attitudes and behaviors in the fraternity context seem to exemplify the dangerousness of victim preassault alcohol use What if you8217re not drinking at the frat house Contrary to established research Schwartz found that fraternity men do not subscribe disproportionately to rape myths and do not drink more frequently than other men in the university population In this way Schwartz8217s findings substantiate alcohol use and its interaction with 8220peer culture8221 as instrumental in sexual assaults But his key finding 8220that other groups on campus may be just as likely as fraternities to provide the extensive male peer support for the sexual objectification of women and the access to alcohol that encourages some men to engage in victimizing behaviors8221 won8217t surprise many women We experience firsthand the extent to which sexism and violence are not relegated to their bastions What of the 8220binge drinking8221 trend Testing their theory that 8220drinkers are more likely to be victimized because of their association with motivated offenders8221 and that 8220their routine activities and differential associations put them at greater risk of victimization regardless of whether they are drinking8221 Felson and Burchfield explored National Violence Against Women Survey data from 1995 and 1996 The researchers did not relegate their work to sexual victimization instead broadly investigating victimization of both sexes and testing a number of variables and crimes They concluded that 8220victims of sexual assaults are more likely to be drinking than victims of physical assault8221 More generally however Felson and Burchfield disproved the 8220routine activities8221 hypothesis they put forth showing that 8220frequent and heavy drinkers are at a much greater risk of assault when they are drinking but that drinking is unrelated to the risk of victimization while sober8221 Helping to contextualize situations rather than patterns this powerful finding nullifies the impulse to blame women8217s 8220lifestyles8221 when trying to understand risk factors for rape Journalists offer anecdotal evidence to bolster the argument that preassault alcohol use by rape victims is as common as rape itself Responding to concerns about the recent liberalization of pub hours two years ago the British media focused heavily on the correlation between alcohol use and sexual victimization Citing one study conducted by the Forensic Science Service in London of 1014 alleged rape victims where 8220significant levels of alcohol were found8221 in 46 per cent of all rape cases journalists report concerns of judges who 8220warn that binge drinking will lead to more rapes8230because pubs and bars are allowed to open round the clock8221 Estimating that 822047000 rapes occur each year8221 and citing a second study stating that neither Rohypnol nor GHB was ever detected in victims8217 systems but that 8220in 50 per cent of all reported rapes the victim was seriously drunk8221 some journalists and criminologists are declaring a rape epidemic in the UK calling 8220alcohol the most common factor in drugassisted rape8221 Similar figures were released by 8220the drink industry8217s own watchdog the Portman Group8221 stating that 8220one in three drunken girls is the victim of a sex attack8221 To illustrate the statistics the Daily Mail published a victim8217s account 8220through a haze of alcohol almost as if I was looking down at myself from a great distance I realized I had been stripped of my clothes and two men were raping me as a third held my hands tightly above my head8221 Both the studies and anecdotal evidence from UK victims dramatize the statistics US researchers are systematically uncovering on college campuses In the US the national media won8217t make a peep but local reporters detail how fears of druginduced rape spawned the introduction of drug detection kits into university 8220welcome8221 bags An opponent of this arguably cynical policy cited the predominance of preassault alcohol use at the University of Syracuse where she was a rape counselor stating 8220Alcohol is the No 1 date rape drug8230And you know alcohol is in your drink8221 Cases abound of authorities confounding daterape drugs with drinking practices For example a 2005 fraternity rape drug incident at the University of Colorado resulted in tension between the university and the fraternity house when a lab inaccurately reported positive GHB findings in alleged victims8217 blood In fact 8220the woman had bloodalcohol levels ranging from 128 to 2928230The legal limit to drive in Colorado is 088221 While the news reporting in the US has not latched onto the relevance of preassault alcohol use as a defining theme of its most recent celebrated criminal justice cases ample evidence provides a foundation for this argument At the convergence of any set of variables there is the potential for risk or control Rather than identifying rape as a consequence of victim behavior these statistically significant correlations of victimization with preincident alcohol use provide lifestyle information relevant to critically conceptualizing personal safety Just as domestic violence research in the 19808217s helped to dispel the myth of 8220strangerdanger8221 whose politics were seductive to a society invested in restricting women8217s movements outside of the home research about alcohol and rape can teach us and our children about how to behave based on the way things really are Of course the relationship between alcohol and rape is a bitter pill to swallow On top of already shouldering all kinds of disproportionate social burdens do women and girls have to revive the temperance movement in order to avoid sexual exploitation The answer according to the research is kind of Instead of a movement aimed at cleaning up society imposed by condescending liberal elites however women8217s decision to drink less would likely increase their safety far more than impractical prescriptions to restrict their movements or associations The most complex national studies of rape and alcohol associate drinking with one to twothirds of sexual assaults Although no woman is responsible for being raped no matter what the circumstances the implications of ignoring victim behavior can be just as grave as victimblaming While limiting alcohol consumption is no solution to the principles of male domination and misogyny that underlie our society and give rise to the troubling ubiquity of sexual violence it is as subversive weapon as any in the arsenal of young women who believe that this reality can change RF Blader can be reached at rfbladergmailcom Sources Ullman Sarah E George Karabatsos Mary P Koss 8220Alcohol and Sexual Assault in a National Sample of College Women8221 Journal of Interpersonal Violence Vol 14 No 6 June 1999 603625 Corbin William R Jeffrey A Bernat Karen S Calhoun Lily D McNair Kari L Seals 8220The Role of Alcohol Expectancies and Alcohol Consumption Among Sexually Victimized and Nonvictimized College Women8221 Journal of Interpersonal Violence Vol 16 No 4 April 2001 297311 Fisher Bonnie S Leah E Daigle Francis T Cullen Michael G Turner 8220Reporting Sexual Victimization to the Police and Others Results From a NationalLevel Study of College Women8221 Criminal Justice and Behavior Vol 30 No 1 February 2003 638 Schwartz Martin D Carol Nogrady 8220Fraternity Membership Sexual Aggression and Rape Myths on a College Campus8221 Violence Against Women Vol 2 No 2 June 1996 148 8211 162 Felson Richard B Keri B Burchfield 8220Alcohol and the Risk of Physical and Sexual Assault Victimization8221 CriminologyVol 42 Iss 4 April 2001 p 837 Hickley Matthew 8220The Drunken Victims8221 Daily Mail September 26 2005 p 9 Wheldon Julie 8220The DateRape Risk for Women Who Binge Drink8221 Daily Mail August 1 2005 p 4 Cochrane Kira 8220Are all men rapists after all British rape figures already shocking peak in the heavydrinking party season8221 New Statesman September 26 2005 Nisbet Jenny 8220Too Drunk to Say No8221 Daily Mail October 1 2005 Pg 2829 Maddelena Christine 8220Syracuse officials say new date rape drug test not the answer8221 University Newswire September 23 2005 Trujillo Melissa 8220Police now say women did not have 8216daterape8217 drug in system8221 Associated Press November 10 2005 Brecklin Leanne R Sarah E Ullman 8220The Role of Offender Alcohol Use in Rape Attacks An Analysis of National Crime Victimization Survey Data8221 Journal of Interpersonal Violence Vol 16 No 1 January 2001 321 amp160

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<p>ROME (Reuters) - A center-right grouping involving former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is pledging to slash taxes and throw out a drastic pension reform in its bid to win over voters at a national election in just over six weeks&#8217; time.</p> FILE PHOTO: Forza Italia party leader Silvio Berlusconi waves during a rally for the regional elections in Palermo, Italy November 1, 2017. REUTERS/Guglielmo Mangiapane/File Photo/File Photo <p>Late on Thursday, Berlusconi met his allies, the anti-immigrant Northern League and nationalist Brothers of Italy, to sign a 10-point pact, which does not spell out where they would find the money for the measures.</p> <p>Parties across the spectrum are campaigning on promises to spend more and tax less, but Italy, weighed down by one of the world&#8217;s largest public debt pile and weak productivity, has little room for maneuver within European Union budget rules.</p> <p>(Graphic: Italy's debt - <a href="http://reut.rs/2DjRa8S" type="external">reut.rs/2DjRa8S</a>)</p> <a href="http://reut.rs/2DjRa8S" type="external" /> <p>One entire section of the manifesto is devoted to ensuring &#8220;Less restraint by Europe&#8221;, reflecting frequent complaints about Brussels from League leader Matteo Salvini and Brothers of Italy&#8217;s Giorgia Meloni.</p> <p>Polls show the group in the lead ahead of the March 4 vote, but failing to muster enough support to govern alone, meaning it may have to make overtures to rivals to form a majority.</p> <p>First on the list is a flat tax, replacing the current system whereby the top tax rate is 43 percent, but the document published on Friday does not say what the new toll would be.</p> <p>However, Berlusconi said on his Mediaset TV network on Friday: &#8220;We plan to start with the lowest current rate of 23 percent with the aim of slowly reducing it, if revenue rises.&#8221;</p> <p>The League, which polls around 13 percent versus roughly 16 percent for Berlusconi&#8217;s Forza Italia (Go Italy!), has called for the rate to be set at 15 percent.</p> <p>In line with the &#8220;Italians first&#8221; credo promoted by Salvini and Meloni, the manifesto gives the Italian constitution precedence over legislation approved by the European parliament.</p> <p>The allies promise to review EU treaties, reject austerity and pay less into the bloc&#8217;s budget, but there is no mention of any plan to exit the euro. Both the League and Brothers of Italy want an orderly break-up of the currency union.</p> <p>All outstanding litigation over tax matters would stop, and there would be an amnesty for &#8220;smaller payers who find themselves in economic difficulty&#8221;. The agency responsible for collecting overdue taxes, Equitalia, would be closed, leaving local authorities to do the job.</p> <p>Also in the firing line is a 2012 overhaul of the pension system, made at the height of Italy&#8217;s sovereign debt crisis, which linked retirement age to life expectancy.</p> <p>The parties promise a new welfare system, and to hike the lowest pensions. Small-denomination, interest-free bonds would be issued to firms and individuals owed money by the state.</p> <p>All illegal immigrants would be repatriated, boat migrants would be blocked from arriving and rules on asylum would change.</p> <p>Former prime minister Mario Monti has scolded politicians for making &#8220;irresponsible&#8221; promises in the campaign, but a survey published last week showed most Italians did not like or believe any of the pledges anyway.</p> <p>The parties have not united behind one prime ministerial candidate, deciding instead that whoever gets the most votes chooses the premier. Salvini is campaigning hard for the post, but Berlusconi said on Thursday he would be ready to lead again if a ban on his holding public office is overturned.</p> <p>Reporting by Isla Binnie and Gavin Jones Editing by Steve Scherer/Jeremy Gaunt</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysia&#8217;s Prime Minister Najib Razak announced the dissolution of parliament on Friday, paving the way for a general election showdown with his old mentor and the country&#8217;s most seasoned campaigner, Mahathir Mohamad.</p> A woman passes a live telecast of Malaysia's Prime Minister Najib Razak addressing the nation on the dissolution of Parliament at a electronics shop in Port Klang, Malaysia April 6, 2018. REUTERS/Lai Seng Sin <p>Najib is under pressure to deliver an emphatic win for the Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition, as he struggles to appease Malaysians unhappy with rising costs and a multi-billion dollar scandal at a state fund he founded.</p> <p>The 64-year-old leader is expected to retain power due to a rift in opposition ranks between Mahathir&#8217;s bloc and the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party.</p> <p>But analysts predict a tough fight from Mahathir, who transformed Malaysia into an industrial nation from a rural backwater during his iron-fisted 22-year rule until 2003.</p> <p>The opposition says the election will be unfair.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-malaysia-election-factbox/factbox-malaysias-najib-calls-for-polls-to-face-toughest-election-yet-idUSKCN1HD0OQ" type="external">Factbox: Malaysia's Najib calls for polls, to face toughest election yet</a> <p>In recent days, parliament approved plans to redraw electoral boundaries and passed a contentious anti-fake news bill, changes critics say will favour Najib.</p> <p>The government rejects the accusations.</p> <p>&#8220;If victory is given to BN, we promise to do our best, to carry out a bigger, more inclusive and more comprehensive transformation of the country,&#8221; Najib said in an announcement on state television, adding that the dissolution of parliament would be effective from Saturday.</p> <p>Polling must be held within 60 days of a dissolution. The Election Commission is expected to meet in days to announce a date for the approximately 14 million eligible voters to cast their ballots.</p> <p>High living costs and corruption are issues that have resonated with voters but overall, Najib&#8217;s standing is likely to be bolstered by a robust economy.</p> <p>&#8220;We don&#8217;t choose parties, we choose leaders,&#8221; said 27-year-old Amir Mukris Bakeri, a travel agent in Kuala Lumpur.</p> <p>&#8220;If the leader can provide for people&#8217;s welfare, that&#8217;s who we&#8217;d pick.&#8221;</p> <p>Growth has been buoyed by a recovery in global crude oil prices and increased trade and infrastructure investment from Malaysia&#8217;s largest trading partner, China.</p> Malaysia's former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad speaks during a Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia briefing in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in this still image taken from social media video, April 6, 2018. Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia /via REUTERS &#8216;TRICKS&#8217; <p>Political apathy, however, is pervasive among young Malaysians and urban voters, many of whom are reluctant to choose between Mahathir and Najib, who are seen as cut from the same cloth.</p> <p>Mahathir, 92, who was himself criticised for his authoritarian premiership, told a news conference Malaysia&#8217;s 14th general election would be &#8220;dirty&#8221;.</p> <p>&#8220;Should Najib win this election through his tricks and his cheating, then we can kiss goodbye to democracy in the 15th, 16th, 17th elections,&#8221; Mahathir said.</p> <p>If elected, Mahathir would become the world&#8217;s oldest prime minister.</p> <p>Najib resisted demands to step down in mid-2015 following reports of financial mismanagement at state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), including that $681 million was deposited into his personal bank account.</p> <p>Najib has denied any wrongdoing in connection with 1MDB, but the scandal created a rift between Najib and Mahathir, who has become the prime minister&#8217;s harshest critic.</p> <p>With the common goal of taking down Najib, Mahathir has joined hands with his former deputy and jailed opposition leader, Anwar Ibrahim, ending a feud that had shaped the country&#8217;s political narrative over two decades.</p> &#8216;UNPREDICTABLE&#8217; <p>Najib&#8217;s United Malay National Organisation (UMNO) party heads the ruling coalition that has held power since Malaysia&#8217;s independence in 1957.</p> Slideshow (2 Images) <p>The coalition lost the popular vote in the last election, in 2013, but Najib held on to power with a smaller majority in parliament.</p> <p>Malaysia has a first-past-the-post election system, which is based on the number of seats won, not the popular vote.</p> <p>Even if Najib&#8217;s coalition retains power, a weak victory could lead to an internal leadership challenge against him.</p> <p>His predecessor, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, had to step down after the coalition lost its two-thirds majority in the 222-seat parliament for the first time in 2008.</p> <p>&#8220;He wants not only to win, but to win big,&#8221; said Yang Razali Kassim, Senior Fellow at S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.</p> <p>The election could be a very close call, he said.</p> <p>&#8220;This will in fact be the most unpredictable general election in Malaysian politics,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>Additional reporting by A.Ananthalakshmi, Emily Chow, Liz Lee and Ebrahim Harris; Writing by Praveen Menon; Editing by Michael Perry, Robert Birsel</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>SEOUL (Reuters) - A South Korean court jailed former President Park Geun-hye for 24 years on Friday over a scandal that exposed webs of corruption between political leaders and the country&#8217;s conglomerates.</p> <p>Park became South Korea&#8217;s first democratically elected leader to be forced from office last year when the Constitutional Court ordered her out over a scandal that landed the heads of two conglomerates in jail.</p> <p>The court also fined Park, the daughter of a former military dictator, 18 billion won ($16.9 million) after finding her guilty of charges including bribery, abuse of power and coercion.</p> <p>&#8220;The defendant abused her presidential power entrusted by the people, and as a result, brought massive chaos to the order of state affairs and led to the impeachment of the president, which was unprecedented,&#8221; judge Kim Se-yoon said as he handed down the sentence.</p> <p>Up to 1,000 Park supporters gathered outside the court, holding national flags and signs calling for an end to &#8220;political revenge&#8221; against her.</p> <p>The court found Park guilty of colluding with her old friend, Choi Soon-sil, to receive about 7 billion won ($6.56 million) each from Lotte Group, a retail giant, and Samsung, the world&#8217;s biggest maker of smartphones and semiconductors, while demanding 8.9 billion won from SK, an energy conglomerate.</p> <p>Most of the money was intended to bankroll non-profit foundations run by Choi&#8217;s family and confidants, and to fund the education of Choi&#8217;s horse-riding daughter, the court said.</p> <p>Prosecutors sought a 30-year sentence and a 118.5 billion won ($112 million) fine for Park.</p> <p>Park, 66, who has been in jail since March 31 last year, has denied wrongdoing and was not present in court.</p> <p>The judge said Park had shown &#8220;no sign of repentance&#8221; but had instead tried to shift the blame to Choi and her secretaries.</p> <p>&#8220;We cannot help but sternly hold her accountable,&#8221; Kim said.</p> &#8216;HEARTBREAKING&#8217; <p>Park apologized while in office for seeking help from Choi, who had no policy or political experience, but that was as close as she came to admitting any guilt.</p> <p>Kang Chul-koo, one of Park&#8217;s state-appointed lawyers, said he would discuss with her the possibility of an appeal.</p> <p>&#8220;We tried our utmost but regret the result turned out very bad,&#8221; Kang told reporters at the court.</p> <p>&#8220;The truth will be revealed one day.&#8221;</p> <p>The sentence will be a bitter blow for Park, who returned to the presidential palace in 2012 as the country&#8217;s first woman leader, more than three decades after she left it following the assassination of her father.</p> <p>Her ouster from office last year led to a presidential election won by the liberal Moon Jae-in, whose conciliatory stand on North Korea has underpinned a significant warming of ties between the rival neighbors.</p> <p>Moon&#8217;s office said Park&#8217;s fate was &#8220;heartbreaking&#8221; not only for herself but for the country, and added that history that was not remembered would be repeated.</p> <p>&#8220;We will not forget today,&#8221; the office said.</p> <p>Park is the latest former leader of South Korea to run afoul of the law.</p> <p>Two predecessors, Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo, were convicted in 1996 of mutiny, treason and corruption and sentenced to long prison terms but both received presidential pardons and were freed after a couple of years.</p> FILE PHOTO: South Korean ousted leader Park Geun-hye arrives at a court in Seoul, South Korea, August 25, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji <p>But Moon took office pledging to end the practice of pardoning public and corporate officials convicted of corruption.</p> WATERSHED? <p>Park&#8217;s friend, Choi, was convicted and jailed for 20 years after a separate trial in February.</p> <p>The chairman of the Lotte Group, the country&#8217;s fifth-largest conglomerate, Shin Dong-bin, was jailed for two years and six months.</p> <p>Samsung Group heir Jay Y. Lee was jailed for a similar term on charges of bribery and embezzlement but in a surprise decision in February, an appeals court freed him after a year in detention.</p> <p>Park&#8217;s supporters and opponents reflect divisions in a society still haunted by Cold War antagonism.</p> <p>Most supporters are older conservatives who remember her father&#8217;s authoritarian 18-year rule, beginning in 1961, when their country began its remarkable surge toward becoming an economic power.</p> <p>Younger, liberal voters, who staged months of protests against Park before her ouster, will be hoping the verdict will be a watershed in efforts by the new government to end the self-serving collusion between political leaders and the powerful conglomerates known as chaebol.</p> Slideshow (4 Images) <p>&#8220;The ruling will be a lesson for many companies,&#8221; said Choi Woon-youl, a lawmaker of the ruling Democratic Party.</p> <p>&#8220;They have to boost transparency and sever the ties of collusion with government. If you have nothing to hide, whether about management or succession, you don&#8217;t have to be bullied by the government.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Hyonhee Shin and Heekyong Yang; Additional reporting by Soyoung Kim and Christine Kim; Editing by Robert Birsel</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>GAZA BORDER (Reuters) - Israeli troops shot dead seven Palestinian protesters and wounded at least 200 along the Israel-Gaza border on Friday, Gaza medical officials said, raising the death toll to 27 in the week-long disturbances.</p> <p>They said the demonstrators, including two teenage boys aged 16 and 17, were killed at protest sites along the frontier during a round of daily demonstrations that has been dubbed &#8220;The Great March of Return&#8221;.</p> <p>The day of violence, which saw bigger Palestinian crowds than in recent days but not as large as when the demonstration began last Friday, calmed down as night descended.</p> <p>Gazans, including Palestinian refugees and their descendants seeking to regain ancestral homes in what is now Israel, have set up tent encampments a few hundred meters (yards) inside the 65-km (40-mile) fence that separates Israel from the Gaza Strip.</p> <p>Large groups of youths have ventured much closer to the no-go zone along the barrier, risking live fire from Israeli troops to roll burning tires and throw stones.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-israel-palestinians-gaza-explainer/explainer-gazas-70-years-of-woe-idUSKCN1HD16O" type="external">Explainer: Gaza's 70 years of woe</a> <p>&#8220;Israel took everything from us, the homeland, freedom, our future,&#8221; said Samer, a 27-year-old protester who would not give his full name, fearing Israeli reprisals. &#8220;I have two kids, a boy and a girl, and if I die, God will take care of them.&#8221;</p> <p>The number of protesters on Friday was larger than in recent days, but lower than the outset of the disturbances on March 30, when 17 Palestinians were fatally shot by Israeli forces. The Israeli military estimated Friday&#8217;s turnout at around 20,000.</p> <p>Refugees comprise most of the 2 million population of Israeli-blockaded Gaza, an enclave ruled by the Islamist movement Hamas which calls for Israel&#8217;s destruction and is designated by Western states as a terrorist organization.</p> <p>Many of those killed were militants, said Israel, which stationed sharpshooters on the frontier to stop Palestinians attempting &#8220;any breach of the security infrastructure and fence, which protects Israeli civilians&#8221;.</p> WAR OF WORDS <p>David Keyes, an Israeli government spokesman, accused Hamas of having instigated violent protests along the border.</p> <p>&#8220;This is a travesty for the Palestinian people that the Hamas government is encouraging its people to attack Israel, it is encouraging its people to commit acts of violence,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>Hamas&#8217;s Gaza leader, Yehya Al-Sinwar, spoke at a protest encampment to praise those who turned out to confront the &#8220;enemy who besieges us&#8221;. He said the demonstrations would continue, telling the crowds: &#8220;We will uproot the borders, we will pluck out their hearts, and we will pray in Jerusalem.&#8221;</p> <p>Earlier, Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem urged protesters to keep the rallies peaceful. &#8220;Maintaining the peaceful nature of the protests will strike all fragile Zionist propaganda,&#8221; Qassem said in a statement.</p> <p>Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who holds little sway in Gaza, condemned what he described as Israel&#8217;s &#8220;acts of killing and oppression conducted...against the peaceful uprising.&#8221;</p> <p>Israel&#8217;s response to the protests has drawn international criticism, with human rights groups saying it involved live fire against demonstrators posing no immediate threat to life.</p> <p>The demonstrators have revived a longstanding demand for the right of return of Palestinian refugees to towns and villages which their families fled from, or were driven out of, when the state of Israel was created.</p> <p>The Israeli government has ruled out any right of return, fearing that the country would lose its Jewish majority.</p> A Palestinian protects himself from inhaling tear gas at the Israel-Gaza border during a protest demanding the right to return to their homeland, in the southern Gaza Strip April 6, 2018. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa <p>Palestinian youths burned Israeli flags and planted Palestinian banners on dirt mounds beside tented encampments as others arrived on large trucks carrying piles of more tires to burn. Others launched stones with slingshots.</p> <p>With Israeli tear gas rising into the air, Palestinian youths used T-shirts, cheap medical masks and perfume to try and protect themselves. Israel tried to douse the burning rubber with jets of water directed over defensive dirt mounds on its side of the border.</p> <p>A U.N. human rights spokeswoman urged Israel to exercise restraint against the Palestinian protesters. &#8220;We are saying that Israel has obligations to ensure that excessive force is not employed. And that if there is unjustified and unlawful recourse to firearms, resulting in death, that may amount to a wilful killing,&#8221; Elizabeth Throssell said in Geneva.</p> <p>Israel says it is doing what it must to defend its border and that its troops have been responding with riot dispersal means and fire &#8220;in accordance with the rules of engagement&#8221;.</p> <p>The Palestinian deaths have elicited scant concern in Israel, which has been the target of thousands of rocket strikes from Gaza over the past few years.</p> Slideshow (4 Images) <p>Palestinian militant groups have also dug tunnels under the border fence to smuggle weapons, and to launch attacks.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Eli Berlzon and Amir Cohen on the Gaza border, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; writing by Stephen Farrell and Ori Lewis; editing by Mark Heinrich</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Italy's center right vows deep tax cuts, funding unclear Malaysia's PM dissolves parliament paving way for toughest election yet South Korean court jails former president Park for 24 years Israeli troops kill seven Palestinians on day of heightened Gaza border protests: medics

https://reuters.com/article/us-italy-election-pledges-centreright/italys-center-right-vows-deep-tax-cuts-funding-unclear-idUSKBN1F81OE

2018-01-19

2least

ROME Reuters A centerright grouping involving former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is pledging to slash taxes and throw out a drastic pension reform in its bid to win over voters at a national election in just over six weeks8217 time FILE PHOTO Forza Italia party leader Silvio Berlusconi waves during a rally for the regional elections in Palermo Italy November 1 2017 REUTERSGuglielmo MangiapaneFile PhotoFile Photo Late on Thursday Berlusconi met his allies the antiimmigrant Northern League and nationalist Brothers of Italy to sign a 10point pact which does not spell out where they would find the money for the measures Parties across the spectrum are campaigning on promises to spend more and tax less but Italy weighed down by one of the world8217s largest public debt pile and weak productivity has little room for maneuver within European Union budget rules Graphic Italys debt reutrs2DjRa8S One entire section of the manifesto is devoted to ensuring 8220Less restraint by Europe8221 reflecting frequent complaints about Brussels from League leader Matteo Salvini and Brothers of Italy8217s Giorgia Meloni Polls show the group in the lead ahead of the March 4 vote but failing to muster enough support to govern alone meaning it may have to make overtures to rivals to form a majority First on the list is a flat tax replacing the current system whereby the top tax rate is 43 percent but the document published on Friday does not say what the new toll would be However Berlusconi said on his Mediaset TV network on Friday 8220We plan to start with the lowest current rate of 23 percent with the aim of slowly reducing it if revenue rises8221 The League which polls around 13 percent versus roughly 16 percent for Berlusconi8217s Forza Italia Go Italy has called for the rate to be set at 15 percent In line with the 8220Italians first8221 credo promoted by Salvini and Meloni the manifesto gives the Italian constitution precedence over legislation approved by the European parliament The allies promise to review EU treaties reject austerity and pay less into the bloc8217s budget but there is no mention of any plan to exit the euro Both the League and Brothers of Italy want an orderly breakup of the currency union All outstanding litigation over tax matters would stop and there would be an amnesty for 8220smaller payers who find themselves in economic difficulty8221 The agency responsible for collecting overdue taxes Equitalia would be closed leaving local authorities to do the job Also in the firing line is a 2012 overhaul of the pension system made at the height of Italy8217s sovereign debt crisis which linked retirement age to life expectancy The parties promise a new welfare system and to hike the lowest pensions Smalldenomination interestfree bonds would be issued to firms and individuals owed money by the state All illegal immigrants would be repatriated boat migrants would be blocked from arriving and rules on asylum would change Former prime minister Mario Monti has scolded politicians for making 8220irresponsible8221 promises in the campaign but a survey published last week showed most Italians did not like or believe any of the pledges anyway The parties have not united behind one prime ministerial candidate deciding instead that whoever gets the most votes chooses the premier Salvini is campaigning hard for the post but Berlusconi said on Thursday he would be ready to lead again if a ban on his holding public office is overturned Reporting by Isla Binnie and Gavin Jones Editing by Steve SchererJeremy Gaunt Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles KUALA LUMPUR Reuters Malaysia8217s Prime Minister Najib Razak announced the dissolution of parliament on Friday paving the way for a general election showdown with his old mentor and the country8217s most seasoned campaigner Mahathir Mohamad A woman passes a live telecast of Malaysias Prime Minister Najib Razak addressing the nation on the dissolution of Parliament at a electronics shop in Port Klang Malaysia April 6 2018 REUTERSLai Seng Sin Najib is under pressure to deliver an emphatic win for the Barisan Nasional BN coalition as he struggles to appease Malaysians unhappy with rising costs and a multibillion dollar scandal at a state fund he founded The 64yearold leader is expected to retain power due to a rift in opposition ranks between Mahathir8217s bloc and the PanMalaysian Islamic Party But analysts predict a tough fight from Mahathir who transformed Malaysia into an industrial nation from a rural backwater during his ironfisted 22year rule until 2003 The opposition says the election will be unfair Related Coverage Factbox Malaysias Najib calls for polls to face toughest election yet In recent days parliament approved plans to redraw electoral boundaries and passed a contentious antifake news bill changes critics say will favour Najib The government rejects the accusations 8220If victory is given to BN we promise to do our best to carry out a bigger more inclusive and more comprehensive transformation of the country8221 Najib said in an announcement on state television adding that the dissolution of parliament would be effective from Saturday Polling must be held within 60 days of a dissolution The Election Commission is expected to meet in days to announce a date for the approximately 14 million eligible voters to cast their ballots High living costs and corruption are issues that have resonated with voters but overall Najib8217s standing is likely to be bolstered by a robust economy 8220We don8217t choose parties we choose leaders8221 said 27yearold Amir Mukris Bakeri a travel agent in Kuala Lumpur 8220If the leader can provide for people8217s welfare that8217s who we8217d pick8221 Growth has been buoyed by a recovery in global crude oil prices and increased trade and infrastructure investment from Malaysia8217s largest trading partner China Malaysias former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad speaks during a Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia briefing in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia in this still image taken from social media video April 6 2018 Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia via REUTERS 8216TRICKS8217 Political apathy however is pervasive among young Malaysians and urban voters many of whom are reluctant to choose between Mahathir and Najib who are seen as cut from the same cloth Mahathir 92 who was himself criticised for his authoritarian premiership told a news conference Malaysia8217s 14th general election would be 8220dirty8221 8220Should Najib win this election through his tricks and his cheating then we can kiss goodbye to democracy in the 15th 16th 17th elections8221 Mahathir said If elected Mahathir would become the world8217s oldest prime minister Najib resisted demands to step down in mid2015 following reports of financial mismanagement at state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad 1MDB including that 681 million was deposited into his personal bank account Najib has denied any wrongdoing in connection with 1MDB but the scandal created a rift between Najib and Mahathir who has become the prime minister8217s harshest critic With the common goal of taking down Najib Mahathir has joined hands with his former deputy and jailed opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim ending a feud that had shaped the country8217s political narrative over two decades 8216UNPREDICTABLE8217 Najib8217s United Malay National Organisation UMNO party heads the ruling coalition that has held power since Malaysia8217s independence in 1957 Slideshow 2 Images The coalition lost the popular vote in the last election in 2013 but Najib held on to power with a smaller majority in parliament Malaysia has a firstpastthepost election system which is based on the number of seats won not the popular vote Even if Najib8217s coalition retains power a weak victory could lead to an internal leadership challenge against him His predecessor Abdullah Ahmad Badawi had to step down after the coalition lost its twothirds majority in the 222seat parliament for the first time in 2008 8220He wants not only to win but to win big8221 said Yang Razali Kassim Senior Fellow at S Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore The election could be a very close call he said 8220This will in fact be the most unpredictable general election in Malaysian politics8221 he said Additional reporting by AAnanthalakshmi Emily Chow Liz Lee and Ebrahim Harris Writing by Praveen Menon Editing by Michael Perry Robert Birsel Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles SEOUL Reuters A South Korean court jailed former President Park Geunhye for 24 years on Friday over a scandal that exposed webs of corruption between political leaders and the country8217s conglomerates Park became South Korea8217s first democratically elected leader to be forced from office last year when the Constitutional Court ordered her out over a scandal that landed the heads of two conglomerates in jail The court also fined Park the daughter of a former military dictator 18 billion won 169 million after finding her guilty of charges including bribery abuse of power and coercion 8220The defendant abused her presidential power entrusted by the people and as a result brought massive chaos to the order of state affairs and led to the impeachment of the president which was unprecedented8221 judge Kim Seyoon said as he handed down the sentence Up to 1000 Park supporters gathered outside the court holding national flags and signs calling for an end to 8220political revenge8221 against her The court found Park guilty of colluding with her old friend Choi Soonsil to receive about 7 billion won 656 million each from Lotte Group a retail giant and Samsung the world8217s biggest maker of smartphones and semiconductors while demanding 89 billion won from SK an energy conglomerate Most of the money was intended to bankroll nonprofit foundations run by Choi8217s family and confidants and to fund the education of Choi8217s horseriding daughter the court said Prosecutors sought a 30year sentence and a 1185 billion won 112 million fine for Park Park 66 who has been in jail since March 31 last year has denied wrongdoing and was not present in court The judge said Park had shown 8220no sign of repentance8221 but had instead tried to shift the blame to Choi and her secretaries 8220We cannot help but sternly hold her accountable8221 Kim said 8216HEARTBREAKING8217 Park apologized while in office for seeking help from Choi who had no policy or political experience but that was as close as she came to admitting any guilt Kang Chulkoo one of Park8217s stateappointed lawyers said he would discuss with her the possibility of an appeal 8220We tried our utmost but regret the result turned out very bad8221 Kang told reporters at the court 8220The truth will be revealed one day8221 The sentence will be a bitter blow for Park who returned to the presidential palace in 2012 as the country8217s first woman leader more than three decades after she left it following the assassination of her father Her ouster from office last year led to a presidential election won by the liberal Moon Jaein whose conciliatory stand on North Korea has underpinned a significant warming of ties between the rival neighbors Moon8217s office said Park8217s fate was 8220heartbreaking8221 not only for herself but for the country and added that history that was not remembered would be repeated 8220We will not forget today8221 the office said Park is the latest former leader of South Korea to run afoul of the law Two predecessors Chun Doohwan and Roh Taewoo were convicted in 1996 of mutiny treason and corruption and sentenced to long prison terms but both received presidential pardons and were freed after a couple of years FILE PHOTO South Korean ousted leader Park Geunhye arrives at a court in Seoul South Korea August 25 2017 REUTERSKim HongJi But Moon took office pledging to end the practice of pardoning public and corporate officials convicted of corruption WATERSHED Park8217s friend Choi was convicted and jailed for 20 years after a separate trial in February The chairman of the Lotte Group the country8217s fifthlargest conglomerate Shin Dongbin was jailed for two years and six months Samsung Group heir Jay Y Lee was jailed for a similar term on charges of bribery and embezzlement but in a surprise decision in February an appeals court freed him after a year in detention Park8217s supporters and opponents reflect divisions in a society still haunted by Cold War antagonism Most supporters are older conservatives who remember her father8217s authoritarian 18year rule beginning in 1961 when their country began its remarkable surge toward becoming an economic power Younger liberal voters who staged months of protests against Park before her ouster will be hoping the verdict will be a watershed in efforts by the new government to end the selfserving collusion between political leaders and the powerful conglomerates known as chaebol Slideshow 4 Images 8220The ruling will be a lesson for many companies8221 said Choi Woonyoul a lawmaker of the ruling Democratic Party 8220They have to boost transparency and sever the ties of collusion with government If you have nothing to hide whether about management or succession you don8217t have to be bullied by the government8221 Reporting by Hyonhee Shin and Heekyong Yang Additional reporting by Soyoung Kim and Christine Kim Editing by Robert Birsel Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles GAZA BORDER Reuters Israeli troops shot dead seven Palestinian protesters and wounded at least 200 along the IsraelGaza border on Friday Gaza medical officials said raising the death toll to 27 in the weeklong disturbances They said the demonstrators including two teenage boys aged 16 and 17 were killed at protest sites along the frontier during a round of daily demonstrations that has been dubbed 8220The Great March of Return8221 The day of violence which saw bigger Palestinian crowds than in recent days but not as large as when the demonstration began last Friday calmed down as night descended Gazans including Palestinian refugees and their descendants seeking to regain ancestral homes in what is now Israel have set up tent encampments a few hundred meters yards inside the 65km 40mile fence that separates Israel from the Gaza Strip Large groups of youths have ventured much closer to the nogo zone along the barrier risking live fire from Israeli troops to roll burning tires and throw stones Related Coverage Explainer Gazas 70 years of woe 8220Israel took everything from us the homeland freedom our future8221 said Samer a 27yearold protester who would not give his full name fearing Israeli reprisals 8220I have two kids a boy and a girl and if I die God will take care of them8221 The number of protesters on Friday was larger than in recent days but lower than the outset of the disturbances on March 30 when 17 Palestinians were fatally shot by Israeli forces The Israeli military estimated Friday8217s turnout at around 20000 Refugees comprise most of the 2 million population of Israeliblockaded Gaza an enclave ruled by the Islamist movement Hamas which calls for Israel8217s destruction and is designated by Western states as a terrorist organization Many of those killed were militants said Israel which stationed sharpshooters on the frontier to stop Palestinians attempting 8220any breach of the security infrastructure and fence which protects Israeli civilians8221 WAR OF WORDS David Keyes an Israeli government spokesman accused Hamas of having instigated violent protests along the border 8220This is a travesty for the Palestinian people that the Hamas government is encouraging its people to attack Israel it is encouraging its people to commit acts of violence8221 he said Hamas8217s Gaza leader Yehya AlSinwar spoke at a protest encampment to praise those who turned out to confront the 8220enemy who besieges us8221 He said the demonstrations would continue telling the crowds 8220We will uproot the borders we will pluck out their hearts and we will pray in Jerusalem8221 Earlier Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem urged protesters to keep the rallies peaceful 8220Maintaining the peaceful nature of the protests will strike all fragile Zionist propaganda8221 Qassem said in a statement Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas who holds little sway in Gaza condemned what he described as Israel8217s 8220acts of killing and oppression conductedagainst the peaceful uprising8221 Israel8217s response to the protests has drawn international criticism with human rights groups saying it involved live fire against demonstrators posing no immediate threat to life The demonstrators have revived a longstanding demand for the right of return of Palestinian refugees to towns and villages which their families fled from or were driven out of when the state of Israel was created The Israeli government has ruled out any right of return fearing that the country would lose its Jewish majority A Palestinian protects himself from inhaling tear gas at the IsraelGaza border during a protest demanding the right to return to their homeland in the southern Gaza Strip April 6 2018 REUTERSIbraheem Abu Mustafa Palestinian youths burned Israeli flags and planted Palestinian banners on dirt mounds beside tented encampments as others arrived on large trucks carrying piles of more tires to burn Others launched stones with slingshots With Israeli tear gas rising into the air Palestinian youths used Tshirts cheap medical masks and perfume to try and protect themselves Israel tried to douse the burning rubber with jets of water directed over defensive dirt mounds on its side of the border A UN human rights spokeswoman urged Israel to exercise restraint against the Palestinian protesters 8220We are saying that Israel has obligations to ensure that excessive force is not employed And that if there is unjustified and unlawful recourse to firearms resulting in death that may amount to a wilful killing8221 Elizabeth Throssell said in Geneva Israel says it is doing what it must to defend its border and that its troops have been responding with riot dispersal means and fire 8220in accordance with the rules of engagement8221 The Palestinian deaths have elicited scant concern in Israel which has been the target of thousands of rocket strikes from Gaza over the past few years Slideshow 4 Images Palestinian militant groups have also dug tunnels under the border fence to smuggle weapons and to launch attacks Additional reporting by Eli Berlzon and Amir Cohen on the Gaza border Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva writing by Stephen Farrell and Ori Lewis editing by Mark Heinrich Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>Jan 23 (Reuters) - CCOOP Group Co Ltd:</p> <p>* SAYS IT PLANS TO BUY WHOLESALE AND RETAIL RELATED ASSETS VIA SHARE ISSUE</p> <p>* SAYS CONTROLLING SHAREHOLDER HNA GROUP&#8217;S COMMERCIAL ARM IS ASSISTING COMPANY&#8217;S ASSET RESTRUCTURING</p> <p>* SAYS SHARE TRADE REMAINS SUSPENDED Source text in Chinese: <a href="http://bit.ly/2G7aAPY" type="external">bit.ly/2G7aAPY</a> Further company coverage: (Reporting by Hong Kong newsroom)</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>SAN FRANCISCO/LONDON (Reuters) - Opinion polls published on Sunday in the United States and Germany indicated that a majority of the public were losing trust in Facebook over privacy, as the firm ran advertisements in British and U.S. newspapers apologizing to users.</p> FILE PHOTO: Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks on stage during the annual Facebook F8 developers conference in San Jose, California, U.S., April 18, 2017. REUTERS/Stephen Lam <p>Fewer than half of Americans trust Facebook to obey U.S. privacy laws, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Sunday, while a survey published by Bild am Sonntag, Germany&#8217;s largest-selling Sunday paper, found 60 percent of Germans fear that Facebook and other social networks are having a negative impact on democracy.</p> <p>Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg apologized for &#8220;a breach of trust&#8221; in advertisements placed in papers including the Observer in Britain and the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal.</p> <p>&#8220;We have a responsibility to protect your information. If we can&#8217;t, we don&#8217;t deserve it,&#8221; said the advertisement, which appeared in plain text on a white background with a tiny Facebook logo.</p> <p>The world&#8217;s largest social media network is coming under growing government scrutiny in Europe and the United States, and is trying to repair its reputation among users, advertisers, lawmakers and investors.</p> <p>This follows allegations that the British consultancy Cambridge Analytica improperly gained access to users&#8217; information to build profiles of American voters that were later used to help elect U.S. President Donald Trump in 2016.</p> <p>U.S. Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in an interview on NBC&#8217;s Meet the Press&#8221; on Sunday that Facebook had not been &#8220;fully forthcoming&#8221; over how Cambridge Analytica had used Facebook data.</p> <p>Warner repeated calls for Zuckerberg to testify in person before U.S. lawmakers, saying Facebook and other internet companies had been reluctant to confront &#8220;the dark underbelly of social media&#8221; and how it can be manipulated.</p> &#8220;BREACH OF TRUST&#8221; <p>Zuckerberg acknowledged that an app built by a university researcher had &#8220;leaked Facebook data of millions of people in 2014&#8221;.</p> A figurine is seen in front of the Facebook logo in this illustration taken March 20, 2018. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic <p>&#8220;This was a breach of trust, and I&#8217;m sorry we didn&#8217;t do more at the time,&#8221; Zuckerberg said, reiterating an apology first made last week in U.S. television interviews.</p> <p>Facebook shares tumbled 14 percent last week, while the hashtag #DeleteFacebook gained traction online.</p> <p>The Reuters/Ipsos online poll found that 41 percent of Americans trust Facebook to obey laws that protect their personal information, compared with 66 percent who said they trust Amazon.com Inc, 62 percent who trust Alphabet Inc&#8217;s Google, 60 percent for Microsoft Corp.</p> <p>The poll was conducted from Wednesday through Friday and had 2,237 responses. ( <a href="https://reut.rs/2G9hvrv" type="external">reut.rs/2G9hvrv</a>)</p> <p>The German poll published by Bild was conducted by Kantar EMNID, a unit of global advertising holding company WPP, using representative polling methods, the firm said. Overall, only 33 percent found social media had a positive effect on democracy, against 60 percent who believed the opposite.</p> Related Video <p>It is too early to say if distrust will cause people to step back from Facebook, eMarketer analyst Debra Williamson said in an interview. Customers of banks or other industries do not necessarily quit after losing faith, she said.</p> <p>&#8220;It&#8217;s psychologically harder to let go of a platform like Facebook that&#8217;s become pretty well ingrained into people&#8217;s lives,&#8221; she said.</p> <p>Data supplied to Reuters by the Israeli firm SimilarWeb, which measures global online audiences, indicated that Facebook usage in major markets and worldwide remained steady over the past week.</p> <p>&#8220;Desktop, mobile and app usage has remained steady and well within the expected range,&#8221; said Gitit Greenberg, SimilarWeb&#8217;s director of market insights. &#8220;It is important to separate frustration from actual tangible impacts to Facebook usage.&#8221;</p> <p>Additional reporting by William James in London, Dustin Volz in Washington D.C. and Chris Kahn in New Editing by Kevin Liffey</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Chanting &#8220;never again,&#8221; hundreds of thousands of young Americans and their supporters answered a call to action from survivors of last month&#8217;s Florida high school massacre and rallied across the United States on Saturday to demand tighter gun laws.</p> <p>In some of the biggest U.S. youth demonstrations for decades, protesters called on lawmakers and President Donald Trump to confront the issue. Voter registration activists fanned out in the crowds, signing up thousands of the nation&#8217;s newest voters.</p> <p>At the largest March For Our Lives protest, demonstrators jammed Washington&#8217;s Pennsylvania Avenue where they listened to speeches from survivors of the Feb. 14 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.</p> <p>There were sobs as one teenage survivor, Emma Gonzalez, read the names of the 17 victims and then stood in silence. Tears ran down her cheeks as she stared out over the crowd for the rest of a speech that lasted six minutes and 20 seconds, the time it took for the gunman to slaughter them.</p> <p>The massive March For Our Lives rallies aimed to break legislative gridlock that has long stymied efforts to increase restrictions on firearms sales in a nation where mass shootings like the one in Parkland have become frighteningly common.</p> <p>&#8220;Politicians: either represent the people or get out. Stand with us or beware, the voters are coming,&#8221; Cameron Kasky, a 17-year-old junior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas, told the crowd.</p> <p>Another survivor, David Hogg, said it was a new day.</p> <p>&#8220;We&#8217;re going to make sure the best people get in our elections to run not as politicians, but as Americans. Because this - this - is not cutting it,&#8221; he said, pointing at the white-domed Capitol behind the stage.</p> <p>Youthful marchers filled streets in cities including Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, San Diego and St. Louis.</p> <p>More than 800 demonstrations were scheduled in the United States and overseas, according to coordinators, with events as far afield as London, Mauritius, Stockholm and Sydney.</p> &#8216;TAKE THEIR LIBERTY AWAY&#8217; <p>Underlining sharp differences among the American public over the issue, counter-demonstrators and supporters of gun rights were also in evidence in many U.S. cities.</p> <p>Organizers of the anti-gun rallies want Congress, many of whose members are up for re-election in November, to ban the sale of assault weapons like the one used in the Florida rampage and to tighten background checks for gun buyers.</p> <p>On the other side of the debate, gun rights advocates cite constitutional guarantees of the right to bear arms.</p> <p>&#8220;All they&#8217;re doing is asking the government to take their liberty away from them without due process,&#8221; Brandon Howard, a 42-year-old Trump supporter, said of the protesters in the capital. He had a sign saying: &#8220;Keep your hands off my guns.&#8221;</p> Daisy Hernandez, age 22, joins students and gun control advocates for the "March for Our Lives" event demanding gun control after recent school shootings at a rally in Washington, U.S., March 24, 2018. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst <p>Wearing a red &#8220;Make America Great Again&#8221; sweatshirt, 16-year-old Connor Humphrey of San Luis Obispo, California, said: &#8220;Guns don&#8217;t kill people. People kill people.&#8221;</p> <p>Humphrey, who was visiting Washington with his family for spring break, said he owns guns for target shooting and hunting and uses them responsibly. His school had a lockdown exercise last week.</p> <p>&#8220;I think teachers should have guns,&#8221; he said, echoing a proposal made by Trump after the Parkland killings.</p> <p>Still, rallies for tighter firearm restrictions also sprang up in rural, Republican-leaning communities ranging from Lewiston, Idaho to Logan, Utah where there is strong support for the Second Amendment constitutional right to own guns.</p> Slideshow (30 Images) CELEBRITIES BACK STUDENTS <p>Among those marching next to New York&#8217;s Central Park to call for tighter gun controls was pop star Paul McCartney, who said he had a personal stake in the debate.</p> <p>&#8220;One of my best friends was shot not far from here,&#8221; he told CNN, referring to Beatles bandmate John Lennon, who was gunned down near the park in 1980.</p> <p>Taking aim at the National Rifle Association gun lobby, teenagers chanted, &#8220;Hey, hey, NRA, how many kids have you killed today?&#8221;</p> <p>The young U.S. organizers have won kudos and cash from dozens of celebrities, with singers Demi Lovato and Ariana Grande, as well as &#8220;Hamilton&#8221; creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, among those performing in Washington. Actor George Clooney and his human rights attorney wife, Amal, donated $500,000 and said they would be at the Washington rally.</p> <p>The U.S. football team the New England Patriots loaned its plane to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students and their families to travel to Washington.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-usa-guns-voters/vote-them-out-thousands-register-to-vote-at-u-s-gun-control-marches-idUSKBN1H00RY" type="external">'Vote them out!': Thousands register to vote at U.S. gun-control marches</a> <p>At the march in Washington, an elementary school student from Virginia, Naomi Wadler, 11, captivated demonstrators when she spoke up for African American girls who were victims of gun violence but whose stories &#8220;don&#8217;t make the front page.&#8221;</p> <p>White House deputy press secretary Lindsay Walters said the administration applauded &#8220;the many courageous young Americans&#8221; who exercised their free-speech rights.</p> <p>&#8220;Keeping our children safe is a top priority of the president&#8217;s,&#8221; said Walters, noting that on Friday the Justice Department proposed rule changes that would effectively ban &#8220;bump stock&#8221; devices that let semi-automatic weapons fire like a machine gun.</p> <p>Also on Friday, Trump signed a $1.3-trillion spending bill including modest improvements to background checks for gun sales and grants to help schools prevent gun violence.</p> <p>Former President Barack Obama said on Twitter that he and his wife Michelle were inspired by all the young people who made the marches happen.</p> <p>&#8220;Keep at it. You&#8217;re leading us forward. Nothing can stand in the way of millions of voices calling for change,&#8221; Obama said.</p> <p>Reporting by Ian Simpson, Lacey Johnson, Katanga Johnson and Lauren Young in Washington, Alice Popovici in New York, Phoenix Tso in Los Angeles, Zachary Fagenson in Parkland, Robert Chiarito in Chicago, Jim Oliphant in West Palm Beach and Andrew Hay in Taos; Editing by Daniel Wallis, James Dalgleish and Nick Zieminski</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump will not hire two lawyers to his legal team handling the special counsel&#8217;s probe despite announcing their addition last week, Trump&#8217;s personal lawyer said on Sunday, adding to uncertainty about the president&#8217;s legal representation in the Russia investigation.</p> U.S. President Donald Trump waves to well wishers as he arrive in West Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., March 23, 2018. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts <p>&#8220;The president is disappointed that conflicts prevent Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing from joining the president&#8217;s special counsel legal team,&#8221; Jay Sekulow said in a statement. &#8220;However, those conflicts do not prevent them from assisting the president in other legal matters. The president looks forward to working with them.&#8217;</p> <p>The announcement came nearly a week after Sekulow said diGenova would join the legal team handling Special Counsel Robert Mueller&#8217;s investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 presidential election.</p> <p>The quick reversal is likely to add to the perception that Trump&#8217;s legal representation is in disarray as his lawyers have been negotiating the terms of a possible interview with the president.</p> <p>Trump&#8217;s lead lawyer in the special counsel investigation, John Dowd, resigned Thursday.</p> <p>&#8220;Many lawyers and top law firms want to represent me in the Russia case...don&#8217;t believe the Fake News narrative that it is hard to find a lawyer who wants to take this on,&#8221; Trump tweeted on Sunday.</p> <p>Trump has denounced the investigation as a &#8220;witch hunt.&#8221; Russia denies meddling in the election.</p> <p>&#8220;We thank the president for his confidence in us and we look forward to working with him,&#8221; on other matters, Toensing said in a statement on behalf of both her and diGenova. The married pair work together at their namesake law firm.</p> <p>Toensing declined to comment on what specific conflicts may have led to the work on the Russia legal team falling through.</p> <p>DiGenova &amp;amp; Toensing has represented Mark Corallo, a former spokesman for Trump&#8217;s legal team, and Sam Clovis, a former campaign aide.</p> <p>Corallo was the spokesman for Trump&#8217;s outside lawyers until last summer, when he resigned during another legal team shake-up.</p> <p>Since then, Corallo has spoken with Mueller about what he viewed as a false statement dictated by Trump from Air Force One about a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower in New York City that included several Russians, according to a person familiar with the matter. That meeting was attended by Trump&#8217;s son, Donald Jr.</p> <p>Clovis, a former Pentagon official, was a campaign supervisor who wrote &#8220;great work&#8221; in an email after Trump&#8217;s foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos discussed efforts to broker a meeting between the campaign and Russian leaders.</p> <p>Corallo told Reuters on Friday that he had signed a waiver of potential conflicts last week.</p> <p>Clovis could not be reached for comment, but a person familiar with the matter said appropriate waivers had been signed.</p> <p>DiGenova was at the White House on Thursday, according to a person familiar with the meeting.</p> <p>Trump has had trouble finding outside lawyers to assist him in the Russia probe.</p> <p>Major firms such as Williams &amp;amp; Connolly and Gibson, Dunn &amp;amp; Crutcher turned him down in the last year, citing conflicts, people familiar with the matter have told Reuters.</p> <p>Trump representatives have reached out to some of those firms again more recently, sources said.</p> <p>Reporting by Karen Freifeld in New York; Writing by Dustin Volz; Editing by Lisa Shumaker</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BARCELONA/BERLIN (Reuters) - Former Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont was detained in Germany on Sunday, five months after entering self-imposed exile from Spain, where he faces up to 25 years in prison for organizing an illegal secession referendum last year.</p> <p>Puigdemont had entered Germany from Denmark after leaving Finland on Friday when it appeared that police would arrest him there and begin an extradition process requested by Spain.</p> <p>The detention threatens to worsen the Catalan crisis that flared last year when the region made a symbolic declaration of independence, prompting Madrid to take direct rule.</p> <p>Spain&#8217;s Supreme Court ruled on Friday that 25 Catalan leaders would be tried for rebellion, embezzlement or disobeying the state and reactivated international arrest warrants for Puigdemont and four other politicians who went into self-imposed exile last year.</p> <p>Among those subject to the arrest order, Clara Ponsati, a former Catalan minister now living in Scotland, told authorities she would turn herself in, Scottish police said in a statement on Sunday afternoon.</p> <p>The other three Catalan leaders are in Belgium.</p> <p>Pro-independence groups called for protests on Sunday outside the offices of the delegation of the European Commission and the German consulate.</p> <p>German police arrested Puigdemont on Sunday in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein on a European arrest warrant issued by Spain. In a statement, police said Puigdemont was detained near a section of the A7 highway, which cuts through the state from the city of Flensburg near the Danish border.</p> <p>Puigdemont was later transferred to Neumuenster prison, German news agency DPA reported.</p> <p>German magazine Focus said that Spanish intelligence informed the BKA federal police that Puigdemont was on his way from Finland to Germany. It gave no source for its report.</p> <p>He had arrived in Finland on Thursday to meet lawmakers and attend a conference as part of a campaign to raise the profile of the Catalan independence movement in Europe.</p> People protest after former president Carles Puigdemont was detained in Germany, during a demonstration held by pro-independence associations in Barcelona, Spain March 25, 2018. REUTERS/Albert Gea EXTRADITION ISSUE <p>The Higher Regional Court in Schleswig-Holstein will be responsible for deciding whether to grant Spain&#8217;s extradition request.</p> <p>The European arrest warrant system in place since 2004 makes it easier for EU countries to demand extradition from other EU states, having removed political decision-making from the process. EU nations issue thousands of such warrants each year.</p> <p>Puigdemont will appear in court tomorrow to have his remand extended, German prosecutors said in a statement.</p> <p>Paul Bekaert, who represents Puigdemont in Belgium, where he had been subject to an arrest warrant in December, said his client rang him after being detained in Germany and had appeared calm during the conversation.</p> Slideshow (8 Images) <p>Bekaert told Reuters TV that his client would have to appear before a German judge within 48 hours to determine whether or not to keep him in custody. Puigdemont will take German legal representation, Bekaert said, with the whole legal process, including possible appeals, likely to take months.</p> <p>Puigdemont could take his case to Germany&#8217;s highest court, which in 2005 blocked the extradition to Spain on an EU arrest warrant of a German-Syrian al-Qaeda suspect.</p> <p>The case of Mamoun Darkazanli sparked a judicial row between the two countries after Germany&#8217;s Federal Constitutional court refused to turn over Darkazanli, saying that EU extradition laws designed to speed up the delivery of suspects between member states violated the rights of German citizens.</p> <p>Puigdemont has previously made clear his preference to fight the extradition process from Belgium, where the former Catalan leader was heading at the time of his detention, according to Puigdemont&#8217;s spokesman, Joan Maria Pique.</p> <p>&#8220;The president was going to Belgium to put himself, as always, at the disposal of Belgian justice,&#8221; Pique told Reuters.</p> <p>The Spanish Supreme Court had issued an international arrest warrant against Puigdemont last year but withdrew it in December to avoid the risk of Belgian authorities granting him asylum.</p> <p>Leaving Belgium had exposed him again to the risk of arrest.</p> <p>Supreme Court judge Pablo Llarena also sent five separatist leaders to pre-trial jail, sparking protests across Catalonia.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Andres Gonzalez in Madrid and Thorsten Severin in Berlin; Writing by Julien Toyer; Editing by Keith Weir and David Goodman</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

BRIEF-CCOOP Group To Buy Wholesale And Retail Related Assets, Share Trade Remains Suspended Polls show Facebook losing trust as firm uses ads to apologize 'No more' or we vote you out: students lead huge U.S. anti-gun rallies Trump not adding two lawyers to legal team, citing conflicts Former Catalan leader Puigdemont detained in Germany

https://reuters.com/article/brief-ccoop-group-to-buy-wholesale-and-r/brief-ccoop-group-to-buy-wholesale-and-retail-related-assets-share-trade-remains-suspended-idUSH9N1PH00D

2018-01-23

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Jan 23 Reuters CCOOP Group Co Ltd SAYS IT PLANS TO BUY WHOLESALE AND RETAIL RELATED ASSETS VIA SHARE ISSUE SAYS CONTROLLING SHAREHOLDER HNA GROUP8217S COMMERCIAL ARM IS ASSISTING COMPANY8217S ASSET RESTRUCTURING SAYS SHARE TRADE REMAINS SUSPENDED Source text in Chinese bitly2G7aAPY Further company coverage Reporting by Hong Kong newsroom Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles SAN FRANCISCOLONDON Reuters Opinion polls published on Sunday in the United States and Germany indicated that a majority of the public were losing trust in Facebook over privacy as the firm ran advertisements in British and US newspapers apologizing to users FILE PHOTO Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks on stage during the annual Facebook F8 developers conference in San Jose California US April 18 2017 REUTERSStephen Lam Fewer than half of Americans trust Facebook to obey US privacy laws according to a ReutersIpsos poll released on Sunday while a survey published by Bild am Sonntag Germany8217s largestselling Sunday paper found 60 percent of Germans fear that Facebook and other social networks are having a negative impact on democracy Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg apologized for 8220a breach of trust8221 in advertisements placed in papers including the Observer in Britain and the New York Times Washington Post and Wall Street Journal 8220We have a responsibility to protect your information If we can8217t we don8217t deserve it8221 said the advertisement which appeared in plain text on a white background with a tiny Facebook logo The world8217s largest social media network is coming under growing government scrutiny in Europe and the United States and is trying to repair its reputation among users advertisers lawmakers and investors This follows allegations that the British consultancy Cambridge Analytica improperly gained access to users8217 information to build profiles of American voters that were later used to help elect US President Donald Trump in 2016 US Senator Mark Warner the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee said in an interview on NBC8217s Meet the Press8221 on Sunday that Facebook had not been 8220fully forthcoming8221 over how Cambridge Analytica had used Facebook data Warner repeated calls for Zuckerberg to testify in person before US lawmakers saying Facebook and other internet companies had been reluctant to confront 8220the dark underbelly of social media8221 and how it can be manipulated 8220BREACH OF TRUST8221 Zuckerberg acknowledged that an app built by a university researcher had 8220leaked Facebook data of millions of people in 20148221 A figurine is seen in front of the Facebook logo in this illustration taken March 20 2018 REUTERSDado Ruvic 8220This was a breach of trust and I8217m sorry we didn8217t do more at the time8221 Zuckerberg said reiterating an apology first made last week in US television interviews Facebook shares tumbled 14 percent last week while the hashtag DeleteFacebook gained traction online The ReutersIpsos online poll found that 41 percent of Americans trust Facebook to obey laws that protect their personal information compared with 66 percent who said they trust Amazoncom Inc 62 percent who trust Alphabet Inc8217s Google 60 percent for Microsoft Corp The poll was conducted from Wednesday through Friday and had 2237 responses reutrs2G9hvrv The German poll published by Bild was conducted by Kantar EMNID a unit of global advertising holding company WPP using representative polling methods the firm said Overall only 33 percent found social media had a positive effect on democracy against 60 percent who believed the opposite Related Video It is too early to say if distrust will cause people to step back from Facebook eMarketer analyst Debra Williamson said in an interview Customers of banks or other industries do not necessarily quit after losing faith she said 8220It8217s psychologically harder to let go of a platform like Facebook that8217s become pretty well ingrained into people8217s lives8221 she said Data supplied to Reuters by the Israeli firm SimilarWeb which measures global online audiences indicated that Facebook usage in major markets and worldwide remained steady over the past week 8220Desktop mobile and app usage has remained steady and well within the expected range8221 said Gitit Greenberg SimilarWeb8217s director of market insights 8220It is important to separate frustration from actual tangible impacts to Facebook usage8221 Additional reporting by William James in London Dustin Volz in Washington DC and Chris Kahn in New Editing by Kevin Liffey Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters Chanting 8220never again8221 hundreds of thousands of young Americans and their supporters answered a call to action from survivors of last month8217s Florida high school massacre and rallied across the United States on Saturday to demand tighter gun laws In some of the biggest US youth demonstrations for decades protesters called on lawmakers and President Donald Trump to confront the issue Voter registration activists fanned out in the crowds signing up thousands of the nation8217s newest voters At the largest March For Our Lives protest demonstrators jammed Washington8217s Pennsylvania Avenue where they listened to speeches from survivors of the Feb 14 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida There were sobs as one teenage survivor Emma Gonzalez read the names of the 17 victims and then stood in silence Tears ran down her cheeks as she stared out over the crowd for the rest of a speech that lasted six minutes and 20 seconds the time it took for the gunman to slaughter them The massive March For Our Lives rallies aimed to break legislative gridlock that has long stymied efforts to increase restrictions on firearms sales in a nation where mass shootings like the one in Parkland have become frighteningly common 8220Politicians either represent the people or get out Stand with us or beware the voters are coming8221 Cameron Kasky a 17yearold junior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas told the crowd Another survivor David Hogg said it was a new day 8220We8217re going to make sure the best people get in our elections to run not as politicians but as Americans Because this this is not cutting it8221 he said pointing at the whitedomed Capitol behind the stage Youthful marchers filled streets in cities including Atlanta Baltimore Boston Chicago Los Angeles Miami Minneapolis New York San Diego and St Louis More than 800 demonstrations were scheduled in the United States and overseas according to coordinators with events as far afield as London Mauritius Stockholm and Sydney 8216TAKE THEIR LIBERTY AWAY8217 Underlining sharp differences among the American public over the issue counterdemonstrators and supporters of gun rights were also in evidence in many US cities Organizers of the antigun rallies want Congress many of whose members are up for reelection in November to ban the sale of assault weapons like the one used in the Florida rampage and to tighten background checks for gun buyers On the other side of the debate gun rights advocates cite constitutional guarantees of the right to bear arms 8220All they8217re doing is asking the government to take their liberty away from them without due process8221 Brandon Howard a 42yearold Trump supporter said of the protesters in the capital He had a sign saying 8220Keep your hands off my guns8221 Daisy Hernandez age 22 joins students and gun control advocates for the March for Our Lives event demanding gun control after recent school shootings at a rally in Washington US March 24 2018 REUTERSJonathan Ernst Wearing a red 8220Make America Great Again8221 sweatshirt 16yearold Connor Humphrey of San Luis Obispo California said 8220Guns don8217t kill people People kill people8221 Humphrey who was visiting Washington with his family for spring break said he owns guns for target shooting and hunting and uses them responsibly His school had a lockdown exercise last week 8220I think teachers should have guns8221 he said echoing a proposal made by Trump after the Parkland killings Still rallies for tighter firearm restrictions also sprang up in rural Republicanleaning communities ranging from Lewiston Idaho to Logan Utah where there is strong support for the Second Amendment constitutional right to own guns Slideshow 30 Images CELEBRITIES BACK STUDENTS Among those marching next to New York8217s Central Park to call for tighter gun controls was pop star Paul McCartney who said he had a personal stake in the debate 8220One of my best friends was shot not far from here8221 he told CNN referring to Beatles bandmate John Lennon who was gunned down near the park in 1980 Taking aim at the National Rifle Association gun lobby teenagers chanted 8220Hey hey NRA how many kids have you killed today8221 The young US organizers have won kudos and cash from dozens of celebrities with singers Demi Lovato and Ariana Grande as well as 8220Hamilton8221 creator LinManuel Miranda among those performing in Washington Actor George Clooney and his human rights attorney wife Amal donated 500000 and said they would be at the Washington rally The US football team the New England Patriots loaned its plane to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students and their families to travel to Washington Related Coverage Vote them out Thousands register to vote at US guncontrol marches At the march in Washington an elementary school student from Virginia Naomi Wadler 11 captivated demonstrators when she spoke up for African American girls who were victims of gun violence but whose stories 8220don8217t make the front page8221 White House deputy press secretary Lindsay Walters said the administration applauded 8220the many courageous young Americans8221 who exercised their freespeech rights 8220Keeping our children safe is a top priority of the president8217s8221 said Walters noting that on Friday the Justice Department proposed rule changes that would effectively ban 8220bump stock8221 devices that let semiautomatic weapons fire like a machine gun Also on Friday Trump signed a 13trillion spending bill including modest improvements to background checks for gun sales and grants to help schools prevent gun violence Former President Barack Obama said on Twitter that he and his wife Michelle were inspired by all the young people who made the marches happen 8220Keep at it You8217re leading us forward Nothing can stand in the way of millions of voices calling for change8221 Obama said Reporting by Ian Simpson Lacey Johnson Katanga Johnson and Lauren Young in Washington Alice Popovici in New York Phoenix Tso in Los Angeles Zachary Fagenson in Parkland Robert Chiarito in Chicago Jim Oliphant in West Palm Beach and Andrew Hay in Taos Editing by Daniel Wallis James Dalgleish and Nick Zieminski Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters US President Donald Trump will not hire two lawyers to his legal team handling the special counsel8217s probe despite announcing their addition last week Trump8217s personal lawyer said on Sunday adding to uncertainty about the president8217s legal representation in the Russia investigation US President Donald Trump waves to well wishers as he arrive in West Palm Beach Florida US March 23 2018 REUTERSJoshua Roberts 8220The president is disappointed that conflicts prevent Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing from joining the president8217s special counsel legal team8221 Jay Sekulow said in a statement 8220However those conflicts do not prevent them from assisting the president in other legal matters The president looks forward to working with them8217 The announcement came nearly a week after Sekulow said diGenova would join the legal team handling Special Counsel Robert Mueller8217s investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 presidential election The quick reversal is likely to add to the perception that Trump8217s legal representation is in disarray as his lawyers have been negotiating the terms of a possible interview with the president Trump8217s lead lawyer in the special counsel investigation John Dowd resigned Thursday 8220Many lawyers and top law firms want to represent me in the Russia casedon8217t believe the Fake News narrative that it is hard to find a lawyer who wants to take this on8221 Trump tweeted on Sunday Trump has denounced the investigation as a 8220witch hunt8221 Russia denies meddling in the election 8220We thank the president for his confidence in us and we look forward to working with him8221 on other matters Toensing said in a statement on behalf of both her and diGenova The married pair work together at their namesake law firm Toensing declined to comment on what specific conflicts may have led to the work on the Russia legal team falling through DiGenova ampamp Toensing has represented Mark Corallo a former spokesman for Trump8217s legal team and Sam Clovis a former campaign aide Corallo was the spokesman for Trump8217s outside lawyers until last summer when he resigned during another legal team shakeup Since then Corallo has spoken with Mueller about what he viewed as a false statement dictated by Trump from Air Force One about a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower in New York City that included several Russians according to a person familiar with the matter That meeting was attended by Trump8217s son Donald Jr Clovis a former Pentagon official was a campaign supervisor who wrote 8220great work8221 in an email after Trump8217s foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos discussed efforts to broker a meeting between the campaign and Russian leaders Corallo told Reuters on Friday that he had signed a waiver of potential conflicts last week Clovis could not be reached for comment but a person familiar with the matter said appropriate waivers had been signed DiGenova was at the White House on Thursday according to a person familiar with the meeting Trump has had trouble finding outside lawyers to assist him in the Russia probe Major firms such as Williams ampamp Connolly and Gibson Dunn ampamp Crutcher turned him down in the last year citing conflicts people familiar with the matter have told Reuters Trump representatives have reached out to some of those firms again more recently sources said Reporting by Karen Freifeld in New York Writing by Dustin Volz Editing by Lisa Shumaker Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BARCELONABERLIN Reuters Former Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont was detained in Germany on Sunday five months after entering selfimposed exile from Spain where he faces up to 25 years in prison for organizing an illegal secession referendum last year Puigdemont had entered Germany from Denmark after leaving Finland on Friday when it appeared that police would arrest him there and begin an extradition process requested by Spain The detention threatens to worsen the Catalan crisis that flared last year when the region made a symbolic declaration of independence prompting Madrid to take direct rule Spain8217s Supreme Court ruled on Friday that 25 Catalan leaders would be tried for rebellion embezzlement or disobeying the state and reactivated international arrest warrants for Puigdemont and four other politicians who went into selfimposed exile last year Among those subject to the arrest order Clara Ponsati a former Catalan minister now living in Scotland told authorities she would turn herself in Scottish police said in a statement on Sunday afternoon The other three Catalan leaders are in Belgium Proindependence groups called for protests on Sunday outside the offices of the delegation of the European Commission and the German consulate German police arrested Puigdemont on Sunday in the northern state of SchleswigHolstein on a European arrest warrant issued by Spain In a statement police said Puigdemont was detained near a section of the A7 highway which cuts through the state from the city of Flensburg near the Danish border Puigdemont was later transferred to Neumuenster prison German news agency DPA reported German magazine Focus said that Spanish intelligence informed the BKA federal police that Puigdemont was on his way from Finland to Germany It gave no source for its report He had arrived in Finland on Thursday to meet lawmakers and attend a conference as part of a campaign to raise the profile of the Catalan independence movement in Europe People protest after former president Carles Puigdemont was detained in Germany during a demonstration held by proindependence associations in Barcelona Spain March 25 2018 REUTERSAlbert Gea EXTRADITION ISSUE The Higher Regional Court in SchleswigHolstein will be responsible for deciding whether to grant Spain8217s extradition request The European arrest warrant system in place since 2004 makes it easier for EU countries to demand extradition from other EU states having removed political decisionmaking from the process EU nations issue thousands of such warrants each year Puigdemont will appear in court tomorrow to have his remand extended German prosecutors said in a statement Paul Bekaert who represents Puigdemont in Belgium where he had been subject to an arrest warrant in December said his client rang him after being detained in Germany and had appeared calm during the conversation Slideshow 8 Images Bekaert told Reuters TV that his client would have to appear before a German judge within 48 hours to determine whether or not to keep him in custody Puigdemont will take German legal representation Bekaert said with the whole legal process including possible appeals likely to take months Puigdemont could take his case to Germany8217s highest court which in 2005 blocked the extradition to Spain on an EU arrest warrant of a GermanSyrian alQaeda suspect The case of Mamoun Darkazanli sparked a judicial row between the two countries after Germany8217s Federal Constitutional court refused to turn over Darkazanli saying that EU extradition laws designed to speed up the delivery of suspects between member states violated the rights of German citizens Puigdemont has previously made clear his preference to fight the extradition process from Belgium where the former Catalan leader was heading at the time of his detention according to Puigdemont8217s spokesman Joan Maria Pique 8220The president was going to Belgium to put himself as always at the disposal of Belgian justice8221 Pique told Reuters The Spanish Supreme Court had issued an international arrest warrant against Puigdemont last year but withdrew it in December to avoid the risk of Belgian authorities granting him asylum Leaving Belgium had exposed him again to the risk of arrest Supreme Court judge Pablo Llarena also sent five separatist leaders to pretrial jail sparking protests across Catalonia Additional reporting by Andres Gonzalez in Madrid and Thorsten Severin in Berlin Writing by Julien Toyer Editing by Keith Weir and David Goodman Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>SOFIA (Reuters) - The Bulgarian Orthodox Church on Monday urged lawmakers not to ratify a treaty designed to combat violence against women and domestic violence, saying it was opening the door to &#8220;moral decay&#8221;.</p> <p>It said some of the treaty&#8217;s clauses raised concern about the future of European Christian civilization, importing alien values from a godless society.</p> <p>Earlier this month the center-right government led by Prime Minister Boyko Borissov submitted the Council of Europe convention for ratification in the parliament in a move that divided opinions in the European Union&#8217;s poorest country, which now holds the EU&#8217;s rotating presidency for the first time since it joined the bloc in 2007.</p> <p>The 81-article document, also known as the Istanbul Convention, is intended to reinforce measures to protect women from violence. Some 28 countries ratified the treaty, which has been signed by 45 countries, including Bulgaria.</p> <p>The Bulgarian Church, however, has joined the chorus against ratification, saying it is opening the door to moral decay. It said the document opposes the basic beliefs of the Bulgarian people about faith, nationality, morality, honor, dignity, education and family.</p> <p>&#8220;It is a tool that instills a value system that is unfamiliar to us in order to allow society to be governed by a new model in the interests of a small part of it,&#8221; the Church&#8217;s Holy Synod, its top executive body, said in a statement.</p> <p>Junior coalition partner United Patriots, an alliance of three nationalist parties, and the Socialist Party - the largest opposition party in the Balkan country, have joined forces to oppose the cabinet&#8217;s decision while populist Will said some texts should be removed.</p> <p>But Tsvetan Tsvetanov, the head of the ruling GERB party&#8217;s parliamentary group, it was an EU commitment and would not bring the coalition down.</p> <p>The Church said the treaty opens the door to spiritual death and is totally opposed to Christianity.</p> <p>&#8220;It raises concerns about the future of the European Christian civilization because it contains a new understanding of man - man as an absolute master, the man without God who follows his desires and passions to such an extent that he can even determine his gender,&#8221; the Holy Synod said.</p> <p>&#8220;The consequences of denying biblical truths are tragic and we are witnessing them in many societies where &#8220;gender&#8221; ideology has long been a state policy,&#8221; the church said.</p> <p>Around 80 percent of Bulgarians identify themselves as Orthodox Christians - the mainstream religion also in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Greece, Romania and Serbia. But only a few see church-going as important to their lives.</p> <p>Trust in the Orthodox Church was shaken after a history commission showed a few years ago that many bishops collaborated with the former communist era secret police.</p> <p>Reporting by Angel Krasimirov Editing by Jeremy Gaunt.</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>HANOI/HONG KONG (Reuters) - Dozens of Chinese naval vessels are exercising this week with an aircraft carrier in a large show of force off Hainan island in the South China Sea, satellite images obtained by Reuters show.</p> <p>The images, provided by Planet Labs Inc, confirm a Chinese carrier group has entered the vital trade waterway as part of what the Chinese navy earlier described as combat drills that were part of routine annual exercises.</p> <p>The Liaoning carrier group last week traversed the Taiwan Strait, according to the Taiwanese defense ministry.</p> <p>The photos, taken on Monday, show what appear to be at least 40 ships and submarines flanking the carrier Liaoning in what some analysts described as an unusually large display of the Chinese military&#8217;s growing naval might.</p> <p>Sailing in a line formation more suited to visual propaganda than hard military maneuvers, the flotilla was headed by what appeared to be submarines, with aircraft above.</p> <p>Jeffrey Lewis, a security expert at the California-based based Middlebury Institute of Strategic Studies, said the images showed the first confirmation that the carrier was joining the drills.</p> <p>&#8220;It&#8217;s an incredible picture,&#8221; he said. &#8220;That&#8217;s the big news to me. Confirmation that, yes, the carrier participated in the exercise.&#8221;</p> <p>While the Liaoning has previously entered the South China Sea as part of drills in uncontested training grounds south of Hainan, its annual exercises are closely watched by regional and international powers eyeing Beijing&#8217;s growing military might.</p> <p>It is unclear where the flotilla was headed, or how long operations will last. China&#8217;s defense ministry did not immediately respond to a faxed request for comment.</p> <p>Collin Koh, a security expert at Singapore&#8217;s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, described the deployment as unusual for its size and scope.</p> Satellite photo dated March 26, 2018 shows Chinese ships south of Hainan, China. Planet Labs/Handout via REUTERS <p>&#8220;Judging by the images, it does seem they are keen to show that elements of the South Sea Fleet are able to routinely join up with the carrier strike group from Dalian in the north,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>&#8220;It does seem they want to show inter-fleet interoperability - something the (Chinese) navy has been quietly working on for some time.&#8221;</p> <p>Chinese naval and coast guard forces have expanded rapidly in recent years and now patrol the vast swathes of the South China Sea, but little is known about their combat readiness and co-ordination.</p> <p>Koh said as well as the destroyers, frigates and submarines that would ordinarily support a carrier, the flotilla appeared to include a large oiler for re-supply as well as smaller corvettes and possibly fast attack catamarans.</p> Satellite photo dated March 26, 2018 shows Chinese ships south of Hainan, China. Planet Labs/Handout via REUTERS <p>&#8220;While it highlights an extensive ability to deploy, we are still left to guess at the PLAN&#8217;s combat readiness,&#8221; Koh said.</p> <p>As well as Vietnam, China&#8217;s claims in the South China Sea are disputed by the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei while Taiwan also has claims.</p> <p>The exercises come amid fresh signs of tension in the resource-rich waterway, with Vietnam recently halting oil exploration off its coast by Spanish firm Repsol under pressure from Beijing.</p> <p>Beijing also objected to a so-called freedom of navigation patrol by a U.S. warship last week close to one of its artificial islands in the Spratlys archipelago further south.</p> <p>Reporting By Greg Torode and James Pearson, additional reporting by Ben Blanchard. Editing by Lincoln Feast.</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BEIJING/SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea&#8217;s leader Kim Jong Un pledged his commitment to denuclearization and to meet U.S. officials, China said on Wednesday after his meeting with President Xi Jinping, who promised China would uphold friendship with its isolated neighbour.</p> <p>After two days of speculation, China and North Korea both confirmed that Kim had travelled to Beijing and met Xi during what China called an unofficial visit from Sunday to Wednesday.</p> <p>The visit was Kim&#8217;s first known trip outside North Korea since he assumed power in 2011 and is believed by analysts to serve as preparation for upcoming summits with South Korea and the United States.</p> <p>U.S. President Donald Trump wrote on Twitter he had received a message from Xi on Tuesday night that his meeting with Kim &#8220;went very well&#8221; and that Kim looked forward to meeting the U.S. president.</p> <p>&#8220;Look forward to our meeting!&#8221; Trump wrote, while adding: &#8220;In the meantime, and unfortunately, maximum sanctions and pressure must be maintained at all cost!&#8221;</p> <p>White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said the China-North Korea talks and Kim&#8217;s decision to travel outside his country were a &#8220;positive sign&#8221; the U.S.-led pressure campaign to force North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons has been working. &#8220;We&#8217;re going to be cautiously optimistic,&#8221; she told reporters.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-northkorea-missiles-china-whitehouse/white-house-north-korea-situation-moving-in-right-direction-idUSKBN1H42YX" type="external">White House: North Korea situation moving in right direction</a> <a href="/article/us-northkorea-missiles-denuclearisation/differing-views-of-denuclearization-complicate-north-korea-talks-idUSKBN1H40YI" type="external">Differing views of 'denuclearization' complicate North Korea talks</a> <a href="/article/us-northkorea-missiles-russia/russia-sees-xi-kim-meeting-as-important-step-to-resolve-korean-crisis-idUSKBN1H413R" type="external">Russia sees Xi-Kim meeting as important step to resolve Korean crisis</a> <p>&#8220;For years and through many administrations, everyone said that peace and the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula was not even a small possibility,&#8221; Trump tweeted on Wednesday. &#8220;Now there is a good chance that Kim Jong Un will do what is right for his people and for humanity.&#8221;</p> <p>Earlier this month, Trump, who has exchanged bellicose threats with Kim in the past year, surprised the world by agreeing to meet the North Korean leader to discuss the crisis over Pyongyang&#8217;s development of nuclear weapons capable of hitting the United States.</p> <p>North Korea&#8217;s official media has made no mention of Kim&#8217;s pledge to denuclearize or the anticipated meeting with Trump, which is planned for some time in May.</p> <p>China has traditionally been secretive North Korea&#8217;s closest ally but ties have been frayed by Kim&#8217;s nuclear weapons programme and Beijing&#8217;s backing of tough U.N. sanctions in response.</p> <p>China&#8217;s Foreign Ministry cited Kim in a lengthy statement as telling Xi the situation on the Korean peninsula was starting to improve because North Korea had taken the initiative to ease tensions and put forward proposals for talks.</p> <p>&#8220;It is our consistent stand to be committed to denuclearization on the peninsula, in accordance with the will of late President Kim Il Sung and late General Secretary Kim Jong Il,&#8221; Kim Jong Un said, according to the ministry.</p> <p>North Korea was willing to talk with the United States and hold a summit between the countries, it quoted him as saying.</p> <p>&#8220;The issue of denuclearization of the Korean peninsula can be resolved, if South Korea and the United States respond to our efforts with goodwill, create an atmosphere of peace and stability while taking progressive and synchronous measures for the realisation of peace,&#8221; Kim said.</p> &#8216;NUCLEAR UMBRELLA&#8217; <p>Kim Jong Un&#8217;s predecessors, grandfather Kim Il Sung and father Kim Jong Il, both promised not to pursue nuclear weapons but secretly maintained programmes to develop them, culminating in the North&#8217;s first nuclear test in 2006 under Kim Jong Il.</p> <p>North Korea has said in previous, failed talks aimed at dismantling its nuclear programme it could consider giving up its arsenal if the United States removed its troops from South Korea and withdrew its so-called nuclear umbrella of deterrence from South Korea and Japan.</p> <p>Many analysts and former negotiators believe this still constitutes North Korea&#8217;s stance and remain deeply sceptical Kim is willing to give up the weapons his family has been developing for decades.</p> <p>&#8220;Kim Jong Un has finally echoed the unconvincing line of his father that denuclearization is the &#8216;will&#8217; of Kim Il Sung,&#8221; said Daniel Russel, who served as the top U.S. diplomat for Asia until last April.</p> <p>&#8220;While that&#8217;s better than his outright rejection of denuclearization to date, it&#8217;s not very persuasive in light of his actions and his caveats about the need for the U.S. to first create the right &#8216;atmosphere&#8217;,&#8221; Russel said in an email.</p> <p>Widely read Chinese state-run newspaper the Global Times said the Kim-Xi meeting proved naysayers wrong about Beijing-Pyongyang relations.</p> <p>&#8220;China and North Korea maintaining their friendly relations provides a positive force for the whole region and promotes strategic stability in northeast Asia,&#8221; it said in an editorial.</p> North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Chinese President Xi Jinping shake hands at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, in this picture released to Reuters on March 28, 2018. Ju Peng/Xinhua via REUTERS <p>Kim&#8217;s appearance in Beijing involved almost all the trappings of a state visit, complete with an honour guard and banquet at Beijing&#8217;s Great Hall of the People.</p> <p>Kim and Xi also met at the Diaoyutai State Guest House, where Kim Il Sung planted a tree in 1959 that still stands.</p> <p>State television showed pictures of the two men chatting and Kim&#8217;s wife, Ri Sol Ju, getting a warm welcome from Xi&#8217;s wife, Peng Liyuan.</p> <p>Analysts said the meeting strengthened North Korea&#8217;s position ahead of any meeting with Trump by aligning Beijing and Pyongyang while reassuring China it was not being sidelined in any negotiations.</p> <p>A top Chinese diplomat, Politburo member Yang Jiechi, will brief South Korean President Moon Jae-in about the Beijing talks in Seoul on Thursday, the South Korean presidency said.</p> <p>North Korea&#8217;s official news agency said Kim told a banquet hosted by Xi that his visit was intended to &#8220;maintain our great friendship and continue and develop our bilateral ties at a time of rapid developments on the Korean peninsula&#8221;.</p> Slideshow (18 Images) <p>It said Xi had accepted an invitation &#8220;with pleasure&#8221; to visit North Korea.</p> <p>China had largely sat on the sidelines as North Korea improved relations with South Korea recently, raising worries in Beijing that it was no longer a central player in the North Korean issue, reinforced by Trump&#8217;s announcement of his proposed meeting with Kim.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Christine Kim and Soyoung Kim in SEOUL, David Stanway and John Ruwitch in SHANGHAI and Ayesha Rascoe, Lisa Lambert and David Brunnstrom in WASHINGTON; Writing by Lincoln Feast; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and James Dalgleish</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>SEOUL (Reuters) - North and South Korea will hold their first summit in more than a decade on April 27, South Korean officials said on Thursday, after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un pledged his commitment to denuclearization as tensions ease between the old foes.</p> <p>South Korean officials, who announced the date after high-level talks with North Korean counterparts, said the agenda would largely be denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and improving inter-Korean relations.</p> <p>The two Koreas had agreed to hold the summit at the border truce village of Panmunjom when South Korean President Moon Jae-in sent a delegation to Pyongyang this month to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.</p> <p>Thursday&#8217;s meeting was the first high-level dialogue between the two Koreas since the delegation returned from the North.</p> <p>The two sides said in a joint statement they would hold a working-level meeting on April 4 to discuss details of the summit, such as staffing support, security and news releases.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-northkorea-missiles-china-southkorea/beijing-envoy-says-kim-jong-uns-china-visit-will-help-toward-denuclearization-idUSKBN1H50YM" type="external">Beijing envoy says Kim Jong Un's China visit will help toward denuclearization</a> <a href="/article/us-northkorea-missiles-ioc/ioc-chief-bach-arrives-to-north-korea-to-stay-until-saturday-idUSKBN1H50VC" type="external">IOC chief Bach arrives to North Korea, to stay until Saturday</a> <a href="/article/us-northkorea-missiles-russia-meeting/russia-foreign-ministry-working-on-north-korea-meetings-in-moscow-idUSKBN1H51T5" type="external">Russia foreign ministry working on North Korea meetings in Moscow</a> <p>&#8220;We still have a fair number of issues to resolve on a working level for preparations over the next month,&#8221; said Ri Son Gwon, the chairman of North Korea&#8217;s committee for the peaceful reunification of the country in closing remarks to the South Korean delegation.</p> <p>&#8220;But if the two sides deeply understand the historic significance and meaning of this summit and give their all, we will be able to solve all problems swiftly and amicably,&#8221; Ri added.</p> <p>Tension over North Korea&#8217;s tests of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile surged last year and raised fears of U.S. military action in response to North Korea&#8217;s threat to develop a nuclear weapon capable of hitting the United States.</p> <p>But tension has eased significantly since North Korea decided to send athletes to the Winter Olympics in South Korea in February. The neighbours are technically still at war after the 1950-53 conflict ended with a ceasefire, not a truce.</p> <p>China commended both sides for their efforts to improve ties.</p> <p>&#8220;We hope the momentum of dialogue can continue and that the peaceful situation also can last,&#8221; Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang told a briefing.</p> <p>United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was encouraged by the recent developments with North Korea.</p> <p>&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&#8220;I believe that in this world where unfortunately so many problems seem not to have a solution, I think there is here an opportunity for a peaceful solution to something that a few months ago was haunting us as the biggest danger we were facing,&#8221; Guterres told reporters on Thursday.</p> &#8216;RESOLVE PROBLEMS&#8217; <p>Kim is scheduled to meet U.S. President Donald Trump in May to discuss denuclearization, although a time and place have not been set.</p> <p>Kim met Chinese President Xi Jinping in a surprise visit to Beijing this week, his first trip outside the isolated North since he came to power in 2011.</p> <p>Even more surprising was Kim&#8217;s pledge to denuclearize the Korean peninsula. That commitment was reported by Chinese state media, although North Korea&#8217;s official media made no mention of it, or Kim&#8217;s anticipated meeting with Trump.</p> <p>A senior Chinese official visiting Seoul on Thursday to brief South Korea on Kim&#8217;s visit to Beijing said it should help ease tension and lead to the denuclearization of the peninsula.</p> South Korean delegation led by Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon cross the concrete border as they leave after their meeting at the truce village of Panmunjom, North Korea March 29, 2018. Korea Pool/Yonhap via REUTERS <p>&#8220;We believe his visit will help the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, ensure peace and security of the Korean peninsula and resolve problems regarding the peninsula through political negotiations and discussions,&#8221; Yang Jiechi said in opening remarks during a meeting with South Korea&#8217;s National Security Office head, Chung Eui-yong.</p> <p>Yang, a top Chinese diplomat, is scheduled to meet South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Friday.</p> <p>South Korean Unification Minister Cho Myong-gyon told reporters Kim&#8217;s visit to China was not discussed with North Korean officials in their Thursday talks.</p> <p>Trump and Kim had exchanged insults and veiled threats of war in recent months but the U.S. leader made the surprising announcement this month that he was prepared to meet Kim to discuss the crisis over the North&#8217;s development of weapons.</p> <p>The North Korean leader&#8217;s engagement with the international community has sparked speculation that he may try to meet other leaders. Japan&#8217;s Asahi newspaper said Japan had sounded out the North Korean government about a summit.</p> Slideshow (4 Images) <p>Japan&#8217;s Foreign Minister Taro Kono left open the possibility that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe might meet Kim at some point. Kono said in an interview with Reuters on Tuesday that Japan was closely watching preparations for the North-South Korean summit and the Trump-Kim meeting.</p> <p>Xi promised that Beijing would uphold its friendship with North Korea after his meeting with Kim.</p> <p>Trump wrote on Twitter he had received a message from Xi late on Tuesday that his meeting with Kim &#8220;went very well&#8221; and that Kim looked forward to meeting the U.S. president.</p> <p>Reporting by Christine Kim; Additional reporting by Michael Martina in BEIJING and Michelle Nichols at the UNITED NATIONS; Editing by Robert Birsel and James Dalgleish</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Treaty opposing violence against women will lead to 'moral decay', Bulgarian church says Exclusive: Satellite images reveal show of force by Chinese navy in South China Sea China says North Korea's Kim pledged commitment to denuclearization North, South Korea fix April date for first summit in years

https://reuters.com/article/us-bulgaria-church-treaty/treaty-opposing-violence-against-women-will-lead-to-moral-decay-bulgarian-church-says-idUSKBN1FB2LS

2018-01-22

2least

SOFIA Reuters The Bulgarian Orthodox Church on Monday urged lawmakers not to ratify a treaty designed to combat violence against women and domestic violence saying it was opening the door to 8220moral decay8221 It said some of the treaty8217s clauses raised concern about the future of European Christian civilization importing alien values from a godless society Earlier this month the centerright government led by Prime Minister Boyko Borissov submitted the Council of Europe convention for ratification in the parliament in a move that divided opinions in the European Union8217s poorest country which now holds the EU8217s rotating presidency for the first time since it joined the bloc in 2007 The 81article document also known as the Istanbul Convention is intended to reinforce measures to protect women from violence Some 28 countries ratified the treaty which has been signed by 45 countries including Bulgaria The Bulgarian Church however has joined the chorus against ratification saying it is opening the door to moral decay It said the document opposes the basic beliefs of the Bulgarian people about faith nationality morality honor dignity education and family 8220It is a tool that instills a value system that is unfamiliar to us in order to allow society to be governed by a new model in the interests of a small part of it8221 the Church8217s Holy Synod its top executive body said in a statement Junior coalition partner United Patriots an alliance of three nationalist parties and the Socialist Party the largest opposition party in the Balkan country have joined forces to oppose the cabinet8217s decision while populist Will said some texts should be removed But Tsvetan Tsvetanov the head of the ruling GERB party8217s parliamentary group it was an EU commitment and would not bring the coalition down The Church said the treaty opens the door to spiritual death and is totally opposed to Christianity 8220It raises concerns about the future of the European Christian civilization because it contains a new understanding of man man as an absolute master the man without God who follows his desires and passions to such an extent that he can even determine his gender8221 the Holy Synod said 8220The consequences of denying biblical truths are tragic and we are witnessing them in many societies where 8220gender8221 ideology has long been a state policy8221 the church said Around 80 percent of Bulgarians identify themselves as Orthodox Christians the mainstream religion also in Russia Ukraine Belarus Greece Romania and Serbia But only a few see churchgoing as important to their lives Trust in the Orthodox Church was shaken after a history commission showed a few years ago that many bishops collaborated with the former communist era secret police Reporting by Angel Krasimirov Editing by Jeremy Gaunt Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles HANOIHONG KONG Reuters Dozens of Chinese naval vessels are exercising this week with an aircraft carrier in a large show of force off Hainan island in the South China Sea satellite images obtained by Reuters show The images provided by Planet Labs Inc confirm a Chinese carrier group has entered the vital trade waterway as part of what the Chinese navy earlier described as combat drills that were part of routine annual exercises The Liaoning carrier group last week traversed the Taiwan Strait according to the Taiwanese defense ministry The photos taken on Monday show what appear to be at least 40 ships and submarines flanking the carrier Liaoning in what some analysts described as an unusually large display of the Chinese military8217s growing naval might Sailing in a line formation more suited to visual propaganda than hard military maneuvers the flotilla was headed by what appeared to be submarines with aircraft above Jeffrey Lewis a security expert at the Californiabased based Middlebury Institute of Strategic Studies said the images showed the first confirmation that the carrier was joining the drills 8220It8217s an incredible picture8221 he said 8220That8217s the big news to me Confirmation that yes the carrier participated in the exercise8221 While the Liaoning has previously entered the South China Sea as part of drills in uncontested training grounds south of Hainan its annual exercises are closely watched by regional and international powers eyeing Beijing8217s growing military might It is unclear where the flotilla was headed or how long operations will last China8217s defense ministry did not immediately respond to a faxed request for comment Collin Koh a security expert at Singapore8217s S Rajaratnam School of International Studies described the deployment as unusual for its size and scope Satellite photo dated March 26 2018 shows Chinese ships south of Hainan China Planet LabsHandout via REUTERS 8220Judging by the images it does seem they are keen to show that elements of the South Sea Fleet are able to routinely join up with the carrier strike group from Dalian in the north8221 he said 8220It does seem they want to show interfleet interoperability something the Chinese navy has been quietly working on for some time8221 Chinese naval and coast guard forces have expanded rapidly in recent years and now patrol the vast swathes of the South China Sea but little is known about their combat readiness and coordination Koh said as well as the destroyers frigates and submarines that would ordinarily support a carrier the flotilla appeared to include a large oiler for resupply as well as smaller corvettes and possibly fast attack catamarans Satellite photo dated March 26 2018 shows Chinese ships south of Hainan China Planet LabsHandout via REUTERS 8220While it highlights an extensive ability to deploy we are still left to guess at the PLAN8217s combat readiness8221 Koh said As well as Vietnam China8217s claims in the South China Sea are disputed by the Philippines Malaysia and Brunei while Taiwan also has claims The exercises come amid fresh signs of tension in the resourcerich waterway with Vietnam recently halting oil exploration off its coast by Spanish firm Repsol under pressure from Beijing Beijing also objected to a socalled freedom of navigation patrol by a US warship last week close to one of its artificial islands in the Spratlys archipelago further south Reporting By Greg Torode and James Pearson additional reporting by Ben Blanchard Editing by Lincoln Feast Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BEIJINGSEOUL Reuters North Korea8217s leader Kim Jong Un pledged his commitment to denuclearization and to meet US officials China said on Wednesday after his meeting with President Xi Jinping who promised China would uphold friendship with its isolated neighbour After two days of speculation China and North Korea both confirmed that Kim had travelled to Beijing and met Xi during what China called an unofficial visit from Sunday to Wednesday The visit was Kim8217s first known trip outside North Korea since he assumed power in 2011 and is believed by analysts to serve as preparation for upcoming summits with South Korea and the United States US President Donald Trump wrote on Twitter he had received a message from Xi on Tuesday night that his meeting with Kim 8220went very well8221 and that Kim looked forward to meeting the US president 8220Look forward to our meeting8221 Trump wrote while adding 8220In the meantime and unfortunately maximum sanctions and pressure must be maintained at all cost8221 White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said the ChinaNorth Korea talks and Kim8217s decision to travel outside his country were a 8220positive sign8221 the USled pressure campaign to force North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons has been working 8220We8217re going to be cautiously optimistic8221 she told reporters Related Coverage White House North Korea situation moving in right direction Differing views of denuclearization complicate North Korea talks Russia sees XiKim meeting as important step to resolve Korean crisis 8220For years and through many administrations everyone said that peace and the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula was not even a small possibility8221 Trump tweeted on Wednesday 8220Now there is a good chance that Kim Jong Un will do what is right for his people and for humanity8221 Earlier this month Trump who has exchanged bellicose threats with Kim in the past year surprised the world by agreeing to meet the North Korean leader to discuss the crisis over Pyongyang8217s development of nuclear weapons capable of hitting the United States North Korea8217s official media has made no mention of Kim8217s pledge to denuclearize or the anticipated meeting with Trump which is planned for some time in May China has traditionally been secretive North Korea8217s closest ally but ties have been frayed by Kim8217s nuclear weapons programme and Beijing8217s backing of tough UN sanctions in response China8217s Foreign Ministry cited Kim in a lengthy statement as telling Xi the situation on the Korean peninsula was starting to improve because North Korea had taken the initiative to ease tensions and put forward proposals for talks 8220It is our consistent stand to be committed to denuclearization on the peninsula in accordance with the will of late President Kim Il Sung and late General Secretary Kim Jong Il8221 Kim Jong Un said according to the ministry North Korea was willing to talk with the United States and hold a summit between the countries it quoted him as saying 8220The issue of denuclearization of the Korean peninsula can be resolved if South Korea and the United States respond to our efforts with goodwill create an atmosphere of peace and stability while taking progressive and synchronous measures for the realisation of peace8221 Kim said 8216NUCLEAR UMBRELLA8217 Kim Jong Un8217s predecessors grandfather Kim Il Sung and father Kim Jong Il both promised not to pursue nuclear weapons but secretly maintained programmes to develop them culminating in the North8217s first nuclear test in 2006 under Kim Jong Il North Korea has said in previous failed talks aimed at dismantling its nuclear programme it could consider giving up its arsenal if the United States removed its troops from South Korea and withdrew its socalled nuclear umbrella of deterrence from South Korea and Japan Many analysts and former negotiators believe this still constitutes North Korea8217s stance and remain deeply sceptical Kim is willing to give up the weapons his family has been developing for decades 8220Kim Jong Un has finally echoed the unconvincing line of his father that denuclearization is the 8216will8217 of Kim Il Sung8221 said Daniel Russel who served as the top US diplomat for Asia until last April 8220While that8217s better than his outright rejection of denuclearization to date it8217s not very persuasive in light of his actions and his caveats about the need for the US to first create the right 8216atmosphere82178221 Russel said in an email Widely read Chinese staterun newspaper the Global Times said the KimXi meeting proved naysayers wrong about BeijingPyongyang relations 8220China and North Korea maintaining their friendly relations provides a positive force for the whole region and promotes strategic stability in northeast Asia8221 it said in an editorial North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Chinese President Xi Jinping shake hands at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing China in this picture released to Reuters on March 28 2018 Ju PengXinhua via REUTERS Kim8217s appearance in Beijing involved almost all the trappings of a state visit complete with an honour guard and banquet at Beijing8217s Great Hall of the People Kim and Xi also met at the Diaoyutai State Guest House where Kim Il Sung planted a tree in 1959 that still stands State television showed pictures of the two men chatting and Kim8217s wife Ri Sol Ju getting a warm welcome from Xi8217s wife Peng Liyuan Analysts said the meeting strengthened North Korea8217s position ahead of any meeting with Trump by aligning Beijing and Pyongyang while reassuring China it was not being sidelined in any negotiations A top Chinese diplomat Politburo member Yang Jiechi will brief South Korean President Moon Jaein about the Beijing talks in Seoul on Thursday the South Korean presidency said North Korea8217s official news agency said Kim told a banquet hosted by Xi that his visit was intended to 8220maintain our great friendship and continue and develop our bilateral ties at a time of rapid developments on the Korean peninsula8221 Slideshow 18 Images It said Xi had accepted an invitation 8220with pleasure8221 to visit North Korea China had largely sat on the sidelines as North Korea improved relations with South Korea recently raising worries in Beijing that it was no longer a central player in the North Korean issue reinforced by Trump8217s announcement of his proposed meeting with Kim Additional reporting by Christine Kim and Soyoung Kim in SEOUL David Stanway and John Ruwitch in SHANGHAI and Ayesha Rascoe Lisa Lambert and David Brunnstrom in WASHINGTON Writing by Lincoln Feast Editing by Jonathan Oatis and James Dalgleish Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles SEOUL Reuters North and South Korea will hold their first summit in more than a decade on April 27 South Korean officials said on Thursday after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un pledged his commitment to denuclearization as tensions ease between the old foes South Korean officials who announced the date after highlevel talks with North Korean counterparts said the agenda would largely be denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and improving interKorean relations The two Koreas had agreed to hold the summit at the border truce village of Panmunjom when South Korean President Moon Jaein sent a delegation to Pyongyang this month to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un Thursday8217s meeting was the first highlevel dialogue between the two Koreas since the delegation returned from the North The two sides said in a joint statement they would hold a workinglevel meeting on April 4 to discuss details of the summit such as staffing support security and news releases Related Coverage Beijing envoy says Kim Jong Uns China visit will help toward denuclearization IOC chief Bach arrives to North Korea to stay until Saturday Russia foreign ministry working on North Korea meetings in Moscow 8220We still have a fair number of issues to resolve on a working level for preparations over the next month8221 said Ri Son Gwon the chairman of North Korea8217s committee for the peaceful reunification of the country in closing remarks to the South Korean delegation 8220But if the two sides deeply understand the historic significance and meaning of this summit and give their all we will be able to solve all problems swiftly and amicably8221 Ri added Tension over North Korea8217s tests of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile surged last year and raised fears of US military action in response to North Korea8217s threat to develop a nuclear weapon capable of hitting the United States But tension has eased significantly since North Korea decided to send athletes to the Winter Olympics in South Korea in February The neighbours are technically still at war after the 195053 conflict ended with a ceasefire not a truce China commended both sides for their efforts to improve ties 8220We hope the momentum of dialogue can continue and that the peaceful situation also can last8221 Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang told a briefing United Nations SecretaryGeneral Antonio Guterres said he was encouraged by the recent developments with North Korea amp160amp160amp160amp1608220I believe that in this world where unfortunately so many problems seem not to have a solution I think there is here an opportunity for a peaceful solution to something that a few months ago was haunting us as the biggest danger we were facing8221 Guterres told reporters on Thursday 8216RESOLVE PROBLEMS8217 Kim is scheduled to meet US President Donald Trump in May to discuss denuclearization although a time and place have not been set Kim met Chinese President Xi Jinping in a surprise visit to Beijing this week his first trip outside the isolated North since he came to power in 2011 Even more surprising was Kim8217s pledge to denuclearize the Korean peninsula That commitment was reported by Chinese state media although North Korea8217s official media made no mention of it or Kim8217s anticipated meeting with Trump A senior Chinese official visiting Seoul on Thursday to brief South Korea on Kim8217s visit to Beijing said it should help ease tension and lead to the denuclearization of the peninsula South Korean delegation led by Unification Minister Cho Myounggyon cross the concrete border as they leave after their meeting at the truce village of Panmunjom North Korea March 29 2018 Korea PoolYonhap via REUTERS 8220We believe his visit will help the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula ensure peace and security of the Korean peninsula and resolve problems regarding the peninsula through political negotiations and discussions8221 Yang Jiechi said in opening remarks during a meeting with South Korea8217s National Security Office head Chung Euiyong Yang a top Chinese diplomat is scheduled to meet South Korean President Moon Jaein on Friday South Korean Unification Minister Cho Myonggyon told reporters Kim8217s visit to China was not discussed with North Korean officials in their Thursday talks Trump and Kim had exchanged insults and veiled threats of war in recent months but the US leader made the surprising announcement this month that he was prepared to meet Kim to discuss the crisis over the North8217s development of weapons The North Korean leader8217s engagement with the international community has sparked speculation that he may try to meet other leaders Japan8217s Asahi newspaper said Japan had sounded out the North Korean government about a summit Slideshow 4 Images Japan8217s Foreign Minister Taro Kono left open the possibility that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe might meet Kim at some point Kono said in an interview with Reuters on Tuesday that Japan was closely watching preparations for the NorthSouth Korean summit and the TrumpKim meeting Xi promised that Beijing would uphold its friendship with North Korea after his meeting with Kim Trump wrote on Twitter he had received a message from Xi late on Tuesday that his meeting with Kim 8220went very well8221 and that Kim looked forward to meeting the US president Reporting by Christine Kim Additional reporting by Michael Martina in BEIJING and Michelle Nichols at the UNITED NATIONS Editing by Robert Birsel and James Dalgleish Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>Editor&#8217;s note: The following is an edited conversation between Truthdig managing editor Blair Golson and Lawrence Bender, the producer of the Al Gore global warming documentary &#8220;An Inconvenient Truth,&#8221; which opens in Los Angeles and New York on Wednesday, May 24.</p> <p>SEVERAL years ago, the idea of making a wide-release movie out of Al Gore delivering an hour-and-a-half lecture might have struck some people as slightly batty. After all, the nickname he earned during the 2000 presidential campaign was &#8220;The Robot&#8221; &#8212; hardly a selling point for a guy whose rhetoric would have to carry an entire movie.</p> <p>Nonetheless, there he was this past weekend at the Cannes Film Festival, posing for pictures on the red carpet in support of &#8220;An Inconvenient Truth&#8221; &#8212; a film cut almost entirely from the footage of Gore&#8217;s lecture on the dangers of global warming.</p> <p /> <p>The presentation is one that the former vice president has given around 1,000 times since the late 1980s, but it wasn&#8217;t until early 2005 that it caught the attention of a Hollywood producer who glimpsed the cinematic potential of Gore&#8217;s traveling show.</p> <p>That producer, Lawrence Bender, had exploded onto the Hollywood scene in 1992 as the producer of Quentin Tarantino&#8217;s first film, &#8220;Reservoir Dogs,&#8221; and produced every Tarantino film since &#8212; including &#8220;Pulp Fiction&#8221; and the two &#8220;Kill Bill&#8221; movies. And although gory violence is indeed one of his hallmarks, he has also made a career of tackling projects with more social conscience: &#8220;Good Will Hunting,&#8221; &#8220;White Man&#8217;s Burden&#8221; and &#8220;Voces Innocentes&#8221; (&#8220;Innocent Voices&#8221;).</p> <p>More recently, he was one of the driving forces behind &#8220;The Detroit Project&#8221; TV ads, which drew attention to the foreign policy ramifications of driving gas-guzzling SUVs.</p> <p>With &#8220;An Inconvenient Truth,&#8221; Bender tackles an issue of, well, earth-shattering importance: global warming. And whereas the makers of &#8220;The Day After Tomorrow&#8221; pumped a reported $175 million into that depiction of catastrophic climate change, Bender&#8217;s version is somewhat more stripped down. The majority of the movie exhibits Gore delivering his lecture to an audience at a relatively small theater in Los Angeles. But the message is no less startling than that of the fictional movie &#8212; it&#8217;s more, because it derives from essentially uncontested scientific fact. With the aid of a 70-foot digital screen that Bender commissioned specifically for the movie, Gore displays a dizzying array of graphs, facts, figures and slideshows that leave little doubt of the calamity facing our planet due to the stratospheric levels of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in our atmosphere.</p> <p>But lest Bender allow the entire film to rest upon Gore&#8217;s delivery, the producer also sprinkles the film with narrative dramas from the former presidential candidate&#8217;s life &#8212; such as the death of his sister Nancy to lung cancer, which Gore ties into the film&#8217;s message by highlighting the disingenuous marketing strategies of industries like tobacco and coal.</p> <p><a href="http://imdb.com/name/nm0004744/" type="external" /> <a href="http://imdb.com/name/nm0004744/" type="external">Lawrence Bender filmography at IMDb</a></p> <p /> <p>Bender and his production team have orchestrated a grass-roots marketing campaign that relies heavily on small informal screenings for influential groups and individuals. The movie&#8217;s almost uniformly positive buzz and advance press have stoked enormous amounts of &#8220;will he or won&#8217;t he&#8221; speculation about a possible 2008 White House run by Gore. But the man who says during the film that he &#8220;used to be the next president of the United States,&#8221; has repeatedly said he isn&#8217;t running.</p> <p>Truthdig managing editor Blair Golson spoke to Lawrence Bender in Los Angeles on the eve of his trip to Cannes. Bender discussed how he became convinced that Gore would make a compelling documentary subject; the reasons why Gore didn&#8217;t capitalize on this issue when he was in office; and the sad fact that despite all of Gore&#8217;s efforts, pollsters still finds that global warming barely registers on most voters&#8217; minds.</p> <p /> <p /> <p>Lawrence Bender: Basically what happened is that [environmental activist] Laurie David brought Gore here to do his presentation in L.A. I hadn&#8217;t seen it, and when you see him do it, it&#8217;s so definitive on global warming that it makes you want to take action. Everyone comes out saying, &#8220;What can I do?&#8221; I&#8217;m a filmmaker, obviously, and I immediately felt that this presentation could be made into a movie. And I think a light bulb went off in my head. I thought it could be made much more visual &#8212; instead of thousands of people seeing this, millions of people could see this; and we could create a tipping point if we created a movie out of this.</p> <p>To be fair, Gore isn&#8217;t exactly known for having the most captivating rhetorical skills. What made you think that his delivering a lecture on-screen for an hour and a half would make for a good movie?</p> <p>When I saw him actually give the presentation, I felt he was funny, he was passionate, grounded, emotional and that from a purely cinematic point of view he had all the things that would make a character in a movie interesting to watch.</p> <p>Even as a lecture? Because I can&#8217;t think of many movies that stick so closely to the lecture format.</p> <p>When I saw him do the presentation, I felt that between the slideshow, his personality, and who he has become as a human being, he would really come through on screen.</p> <p>But didn&#8217;t his personality come through on screen during the 2000 presidential debates? In a sense America has had a long time to get to know him on screen. But you thought this would be different because&#8230;?</p> <p>I just know that the Al Gore that we saw during those debates &#8212; I didn&#8217;t know him personally then, so all I knew was what I was seeing [during the lecture]. And watching him, I thought, &#8220;This guy is a transformed being, and I want to capture this on film.&#8221;</p> <p>I know that Gore says he isn&#8217;t running in 2008, but Steve Forbes started a national debate on the flat tax with his candidacy. By any measure, Gore is a tremendously more plausible candidate than Forbes was. Don&#8217;t you think his running can be a way to bring the debate to the fore?</p> <p>It could certainly. All I can tell you is that he&#8217;s been very clear with us that he&#8217;s not running. Certainly that&#8217;s not the reason why we approached him to make this movie, nor is it the reason why &#8212; well, he didn&#8217;t come to us to make the movie. Do I think he&#8217;d be a great candidate? Of course. Would I like to see him president? Of course. But right now this is what he&#8217;s doing. It seems like, for him, he&#8217;s creating a lot of traction on an issue that he&#8217;s very passionate about, and making a real difference.</p> <p>Why do you think Gore wasn&#8217;t able to get more traction on this issue when he was in office, and held the reins of power for eight years?</p> <p>I think it had a lot to do with the Republican Congress. They kept pushing back. The good news is that there were a lot of environmentally unfriendly bills that the Republican Congress was trying to pass that [the Democrats] were able to stop. But the bad news is that the Democrats couldn&#8217;t do what should have been done on global warming. And now, this administration is really horrific on this issue.</p> <p>You&#8217;ve racked up a lot of awards for your more commercial films. Have you been recognized for advocacy projects before this one?</p> <p>Last year I got a Torch of Liberty award from the ACLU for different movies I made on issues that are timely and relevant today.</p> <p>Can you name a few?</p> <p>I did one called &#8220;Chumscrubber&#8221; that dealt with the proliferation of prescription drugs; &#8220;Innocent Voices,&#8221; about a 12-year-old boy in the civil war of El Salvador; even with &#8220;Good Will Hunting&#8221; I had different therapists tell me that it was an important movie for people who deal with teens. I did a movie called &#8220;White Man&#8217;s Burden&#8221; with John Travolta and Harry Belafonte; it wasn&#8217;t the greatest movie, but essentially it was about what America would be like if Africans had settled here and we were an Afrocentric country as opposed to a Eurocentric one.</p> <p>Who approached Gore, and how did that happen?</p> <p>We put a team together. We had: me, the, kind of, big Hollywood producer; Laurie David, the activist; Scott Burns, who directed the &#8220;Got Milk?&#8221; commercials and the Detroit Project commercials; Leslie Chilcott, who was going to handle all the heavy lifting; and Davis Guggenheim, the director who was going to visually put this together.</p> <p>We all went up to San Francisco last May to pitch Gore, and when we met him we were pretty much in a different city every day doing his presentation. And we said to him: &#8220;Look, you&#8217;re crisscrossing the country doing this. What if we made a movie and got millions of people to see it?&#8221; He got it immediately.</p> <p>What was your first impression of Gore?</p> <p>We were immediately taken by how personal and emotional he was in person. So if we didn&#8217;t feel it before, we certainly got it then in the room. And the other thing we felt was that there was an urgency, that this had to be done quickly, because it&#8217;s an urgent issue, and we wanted to get this thing out within a year. So we literally dove right in. We brought it to Jeff Skoll, who ended up putting up the money. They seemed like the obvious choice because of the movies they make. Skoll&#8217;s company, Participant, financed &#8220;Good Night, and Good Luck,&#8221; and &#8220;Syrianna.&#8221; They got 11 Academy Award nominations last year; but their mission statement is to make movies with social relevance.</p> <p>So they&#8217;re the main financial backers?</p> <p>They&#8217;re the financial backers.</p> <p>Oh, OK.</p> <p>So we got into Sundance, standing ovations there, and Paramount Classics bought the movie out of Sundance. That&#8217;s the whole background on it.</p> <p>What kind of marketing and what kind of rollout is the movie getting?</p> <p>The movie opens May 24th in L.A. and New York, and it goes wide through June. It&#8217;s a very big grass-roots marketing campaign, involving all different kinds of social organizations, environmental organizations, religious organizations, many different bloggers, Internet portals, be it MySpace, Yahoo, Google, Netflix &#8212; all these different groups are helping to get the word out on the movie. Al is doing the nighttime and morning shows. He&#8217;s tireless. He&#8217;s going around the country, city by city.</p> <p>Where are the profits going? I mean, are you guys all going to get a fleet of Hummers instead of points on the back end?</p> <p>Exactly [laughs]. Most of the profits are going to go to a fund to make people aware of the planet crisis.</p> <p>What&#8217;s been the most challenging thing about making this whole thing happen?</p> <p>The most challenging thing is &#8212; I mean it&#8217;s kind of one of those miracle movies that was made on a very, very small budget.</p> <p>How much was the budget?</p> <p>Ya know, I don&#8217;t like to talk about the budget.</p> <p>OK, no problem.</p> <p>It&#8217;s a documentary, so believe me, it&#8217;s a small budget. The most challenging thing is that we needed to do this now. We wanted to go into production early [in the] summer because we wanted the movie to come out early [the] next year. So we met with Al Gore in May [of 2005], and we&#8217;re screening it seven months later at Sundance. It was a pretty intense schedule.</p> <p>What was your thinking on including in the film narrative snippets of tragedies in Gore&#8217;s life?</p> <p>When I saw the presentation, I said to myself: &#8216;OK, this is a movie. I know it can be made more visual, but we need to find a personal way in. And that meant hours and hours and hours of interviews. At one point Gore said it felt like we were making &#8220;Kill Al Vol. 3.&#8221; It was grueling, and we did it in a very short period of time. We followed him to China, we shot in Nashville, Stanford &#8212; we went all over the country. It was a lot of travel in a very short period of time. And they had to get this thing edited and cut starting in January, and ready to screen in May. That&#8217;s like a seriously tight schedule. So the logistics of pulling it off with a low budget were really difficult, and if there&#8217;s one person who gets credit, it&#8217;s Leslie Chilcott, because she really pulled it together.</p> <p>By movie&#8217;s end, the problems facing our environment seem so severe that it almost seems silly to think that improving gas mileage from 25 to 35 miles per gallon would have much of an impact. You get the feeling that the entire industrial world would have to stop being industrial before we could start to arrest, if not reverse, the damage being done to the planet. How much truth is there to that?</p> <p>There&#8217;s a lot that has to be done. And it&#8217;s not just one thing. I mean, yes, the fuel efficiency of cars has to dramatically change. We need to go from gas to biofuel, ethanol. We need solar, wind, other renewable-energy technologies. We need to carbon capture and sequester the carbon dioxide coming out of the smokestacks. There&#8217;s not one solution. The thing that&#8217;s challenging about this is that we need solutions at every level, every area. One of the things I believe could happen on a grass-roots level is for people to learn what it means to have a carbon footprint. Your carbon footprint is the car you drive, the house you live in, the way you travel. You can calculate how much carbon dioxide you put out by living. If you go to our website, climatecrisis.net, you can calculate it yourself and see how you can reduce your carbon output. And then for a very small amount of money you can buy a carbon offset &#8212; and make yourself carbon neutral. And if you get your friends to become carbon neutral, and your family, your community &#8212; all of a sudden, you could create a whole grass-roots thing around being carbon neutral. Our movie was carbon neutral. We bought carbon offsets. Our premiere was carbon neutral. You can do things to become carbon neutral.</p> <p>What&#8217;s the scale of reforms that America and the world would need to enact to halt this problem, if not reverse it?</p> <p>It&#8217;s one step at a time. We just need to start. When we did get the world to address the ozone problem, we started off with one treaty, which, in and of itself, was not enough to reduce the CFCs that we were emitting. But they kept cutting again and again until we got to a place where those chemicals in the atmosphere are way, way down. The ozone issue is being addressed on a worldwide basis. Right now the United States and Australia are the only countries that haven&#8217;t signed the Kyoto Protocol. You can argue that it&#8217;s not good enough, but it&#8217;s a start; and once you have a start, you can continue to address the problem.</p> <p>Have you screened the movie for any people like industrial barons or car company owners that you&#8217;d assume might be hostile to the film&#8217;s message?</p> <p>We haven&#8217;t screened it for any car companies, but we are screening it for all different groups of people. We&#8217;ve screened it for evangelical leaders, and there&#8217;s a whole bunch of evangelical leaders who now are supporting this issue. So we are trying to go across the board. This should be a nonpartisan issue, obviously.</p> <p>But no screenings for people who you know would be natively unreceptive to the message?</p> <p>[Chuckles.] Honestly, right now, it&#8217;s like one step at a time. Right now the idea is to get the word out on the movie. So as a company, we&#8217;re trying to market the movie. And as we progress, we&#8217;ll be screening the movie. We want to screen it for as many different types of people as possible &#8212; different areas, the head of General Electric [Jeffrey Immelt]. Last year he came out publicly and said that this is an issue that needs to be addressed. So there are big industry leaders that are addressing this. And I think this year will be a perfect storm, with this movie being part of it, between Katrina and the gas prices and the war on Iraq and the storms. I think this movie is going to be part of a whole perfect storm battle to create a tipping point on this issue.</p> <p>Really? Because you anticipated my next question. Global warming and the environment hardly register at all in some polls about voters&#8217; concerns going into the 2006 midterm and 2008 elections. Why do you think that is?</p> <p>I think it&#8217;s because of that frog in our movie: You put a frog in cold water and slowly heat it, he doesn&#8217;t know that things are heating up around him and jump out. As opposed to throwing a frog in a pot of boiling water, and he&#8217;ll jump right out. That&#8217;s a visual look at what&#8217;s around us: Global warming does not affect you in everyday life. The problem is that if you wait until it affects your everyday life, it&#8217;s too late. Because once that carbon dioxide is up in the atmosphere, it stays up there for like 100 years. And once it&#8217;s too late, it&#8217;s really too late. It&#8217;s going to take real leadership on all levels to make people aware that this issue is potentially the greatest threat we&#8217;re facing this century.</p> <p>Of course terrorism, jobs, healthcare &#8212; these are things that you deal with on a daily basis, so they&#8217;re going to be high on your priority list. And what&#8217;s exciting about this: The solutions to global warming help create jobs, help the economy, are good for national security, are good for your healthcare system&#8230;. That&#8217;s why I&#8217;m so taken by this issue. The solutions offer so many different ways to help.</p> <p />

Lawrence Bender: The Truthdig Interview

https://truthdig.com/articles/lawrence-bender-the-truthdig-interview-2/

2006-05-24

4left

Editor8217s note The following is an edited conversation between Truthdig managing editor Blair Golson and Lawrence Bender the producer of the Al Gore global warming documentary 8220An Inconvenient Truth8221 which opens in Los Angeles and New York on Wednesday May 24 SEVERAL years ago the idea of making a widerelease movie out of Al Gore delivering an hourandahalf lecture might have struck some people as slightly batty After all the nickname he earned during the 2000 presidential campaign was 8220The Robot8221 8212 hardly a selling point for a guy whose rhetoric would have to carry an entire movie Nonetheless there he was this past weekend at the Cannes Film Festival posing for pictures on the red carpet in support of 8220An Inconvenient Truth8221 8212 a film cut almost entirely from the footage of Gore8217s lecture on the dangers of global warming The presentation is one that the former vice president has given around 1000 times since the late 1980s but it wasn8217t until early 2005 that it caught the attention of a Hollywood producer who glimpsed the cinematic potential of Gore8217s traveling show That producer Lawrence Bender had exploded onto the Hollywood scene in 1992 as the producer of Quentin Tarantino8217s first film 8220Reservoir Dogs8221 and produced every Tarantino film since 8212 including 8220Pulp Fiction8221 and the two 8220Kill Bill8221 movies And although gory violence is indeed one of his hallmarks he has also made a career of tackling projects with more social conscience 8220Good Will Hunting8221 8220White Man8217s Burden8221 and 8220Voces Innocentes8221 8220Innocent Voices8221 More recently he was one of the driving forces behind 8220The Detroit Project8221 TV ads which drew attention to the foreign policy ramifications of driving gasguzzling SUVs With 8220An Inconvenient Truth8221 Bender tackles an issue of well earthshattering importance global warming And whereas the makers of 8220The Day After Tomorrow8221 pumped a reported 175 million into that depiction of catastrophic climate change Bender8217s version is somewhat more stripped down The majority of the movie exhibits Gore delivering his lecture to an audience at a relatively small theater in Los Angeles But the message is no less startling than that of the fictional movie 8212 it8217s more because it derives from essentially uncontested scientific fact With the aid of a 70foot digital screen that Bender commissioned specifically for the movie Gore displays a dizzying array of graphs facts figures and slideshows that leave little doubt of the calamity facing our planet due to the stratospheric levels of heattrapping carbon dioxide in our atmosphere But lest Bender allow the entire film to rest upon Gore8217s delivery the producer also sprinkles the film with narrative dramas from the former presidential candidate8217s life 8212 such as the death of his sister Nancy to lung cancer which Gore ties into the film8217s message by highlighting the disingenuous marketing strategies of industries like tobacco and coal Lawrence Bender filmography at IMDb Bender and his production team have orchestrated a grassroots marketing campaign that relies heavily on small informal screenings for influential groups and individuals The movie8217s almost uniformly positive buzz and advance press have stoked enormous amounts of 8220will he or won8217t he8221 speculation about a possible 2008 White House run by Gore But the man who says during the film that he 8220used to be the next president of the United States8221 has repeatedly said he isn8217t running Truthdig managing editor Blair Golson spoke to Lawrence Bender in Los Angeles on the eve of his trip to Cannes Bender discussed how he became convinced that Gore would make a compelling documentary subject the reasons why Gore didn8217t capitalize on this issue when he was in office and the sad fact that despite all of Gore8217s efforts pollsters still finds that global warming barely registers on most voters8217 minds Lawrence Bender Basically what happened is that environmental activist Laurie David brought Gore here to do his presentation in LA I hadn8217t seen it and when you see him do it it8217s so definitive on global warming that it makes you want to take action Everyone comes out saying 8220What can I do8221 I8217m a filmmaker obviously and I immediately felt that this presentation could be made into a movie And I think a light bulb went off in my head I thought it could be made much more visual 8212 instead of thousands of people seeing this millions of people could see this and we could create a tipping point if we created a movie out of this To be fair Gore isn8217t exactly known for having the most captivating rhetorical skills What made you think that his delivering a lecture onscreen for an hour and a half would make for a good movie When I saw him actually give the presentation I felt he was funny he was passionate grounded emotional and that from a purely cinematic point of view he had all the things that would make a character in a movie interesting to watch Even as a lecture Because I can8217t think of many movies that stick so closely to the lecture format When I saw him do the presentation I felt that between the slideshow his personality and who he has become as a human being he would really come through on screen But didn8217t his personality come through on screen during the 2000 presidential debates In a sense America has had a long time to get to know him on screen But you thought this would be different because8230 I just know that the Al Gore that we saw during those debates 8212 I didn8217t know him personally then so all I knew was what I was seeing during the lecture And watching him I thought 8220This guy is a transformed being and I want to capture this on film8221 I know that Gore says he isn8217t running in 2008 but Steve Forbes started a national debate on the flat tax with his candidacy By any measure Gore is a tremendously more plausible candidate than Forbes was Don8217t you think his running can be a way to bring the debate to the fore It could certainly All I can tell you is that he8217s been very clear with us that he8217s not running Certainly that8217s not the reason why we approached him to make this movie nor is it the reason why 8212 well he didn8217t come to us to make the movie Do I think he8217d be a great candidate Of course Would I like to see him president Of course But right now this is what he8217s doing It seems like for him he8217s creating a lot of traction on an issue that he8217s very passionate about and making a real difference Why do you think Gore wasn8217t able to get more traction on this issue when he was in office and held the reins of power for eight years I think it had a lot to do with the Republican Congress They kept pushing back The good news is that there were a lot of environmentally unfriendly bills that the Republican Congress was trying to pass that the Democrats were able to stop But the bad news is that the Democrats couldn8217t do what should have been done on global warming And now this administration is really horrific on this issue You8217ve racked up a lot of awards for your more commercial films Have you been recognized for advocacy projects before this one Last year I got a Torch of Liberty award from the ACLU for different movies I made on issues that are timely and relevant today Can you name a few I did one called 8220Chumscrubber8221 that dealt with the proliferation of prescription drugs 8220Innocent Voices8221 about a 12yearold boy in the civil war of El Salvador even with 8220Good Will Hunting8221 I had different therapists tell me that it was an important movie for people who deal with teens I did a movie called 8220White Man8217s Burden8221 with John Travolta and Harry Belafonte it wasn8217t the greatest movie but essentially it was about what America would be like if Africans had settled here and we were an Afrocentric country as opposed to a Eurocentric one Who approached Gore and how did that happen We put a team together We had me the kind of big Hollywood producer Laurie David the activist Scott Burns who directed the 8220Got Milk8221 commercials and the Detroit Project commercials Leslie Chilcott who was going to handle all the heavy lifting and Davis Guggenheim the director who was going to visually put this together We all went up to San Francisco last May to pitch Gore and when we met him we were pretty much in a different city every day doing his presentation And we said to him 8220Look you8217re crisscrossing the country doing this What if we made a movie and got millions of people to see it8221 He got it immediately What was your first impression of Gore We were immediately taken by how personal and emotional he was in person So if we didn8217t feel it before we certainly got it then in the room And the other thing we felt was that there was an urgency that this had to be done quickly because it8217s an urgent issue and we wanted to get this thing out within a year So we literally dove right in We brought it to Jeff Skoll who ended up putting up the money They seemed like the obvious choice because of the movies they make Skoll8217s company Participant financed 8220Good Night and Good Luck8221 and 8220Syrianna8221 They got 11 Academy Award nominations last year but their mission statement is to make movies with social relevance So they8217re the main financial backers They8217re the financial backers Oh OK So we got into Sundance standing ovations there and Paramount Classics bought the movie out of Sundance That8217s the whole background on it What kind of marketing and what kind of rollout is the movie getting The movie opens May 24th in LA and New York and it goes wide through June It8217s a very big grassroots marketing campaign involving all different kinds of social organizations environmental organizations religious organizations many different bloggers Internet portals be it MySpace Yahoo Google Netflix 8212 all these different groups are helping to get the word out on the movie Al is doing the nighttime and morning shows He8217s tireless He8217s going around the country city by city Where are the profits going I mean are you guys all going to get a fleet of Hummers instead of points on the back end Exactly laughs Most of the profits are going to go to a fund to make people aware of the planet crisis What8217s been the most challenging thing about making this whole thing happen The most challenging thing is 8212 I mean it8217s kind of one of those miracle movies that was made on a very very small budget How much was the budget Ya know I don8217t like to talk about the budget OK no problem It8217s a documentary so believe me it8217s a small budget The most challenging thing is that we needed to do this now We wanted to go into production early in the summer because we wanted the movie to come out early the next year So we met with Al Gore in May of 2005 and we8217re screening it seven months later at Sundance It was a pretty intense schedule What was your thinking on including in the film narrative snippets of tragedies in Gore8217s life When I saw the presentation I said to myself 8216OK this is a movie I know it can be made more visual but we need to find a personal way in And that meant hours and hours and hours of interviews At one point Gore said it felt like we were making 8220Kill Al Vol 38221 It was grueling and we did it in a very short period of time We followed him to China we shot in Nashville Stanford 8212 we went all over the country It was a lot of travel in a very short period of time And they had to get this thing edited and cut starting in January and ready to screen in May That8217s like a seriously tight schedule So the logistics of pulling it off with a low budget were really difficult and if there8217s one person who gets credit it8217s Leslie Chilcott because she really pulled it together By movie8217s end the problems facing our environment seem so severe that it almost seems silly to think that improving gas mileage from 25 to 35 miles per gallon would have much of an impact You get the feeling that the entire industrial world would have to stop being industrial before we could start to arrest if not reverse the damage being done to the planet How much truth is there to that There8217s a lot that has to be done And it8217s not just one thing I mean yes the fuel efficiency of cars has to dramatically change We need to go from gas to biofuel ethanol We need solar wind other renewableenergy technologies We need to carbon capture and sequester the carbon dioxide coming out of the smokestacks There8217s not one solution The thing that8217s challenging about this is that we need solutions at every level every area One of the things I believe could happen on a grassroots level is for people to learn what it means to have a carbon footprint Your carbon footprint is the car you drive the house you live in the way you travel You can calculate how much carbon dioxide you put out by living If you go to our website climatecrisisnet you can calculate it yourself and see how you can reduce your carbon output And then for a very small amount of money you can buy a carbon offset 8212 and make yourself carbon neutral And if you get your friends to become carbon neutral and your family your community 8212 all of a sudden you could create a whole grassroots thing around being carbon neutral Our movie was carbon neutral We bought carbon offsets Our premiere was carbon neutral You can do things to become carbon neutral What8217s the scale of reforms that America and the world would need to enact to halt this problem if not reverse it It8217s one step at a time We just need to start When we did get the world to address the ozone problem we started off with one treaty which in and of itself was not enough to reduce the CFCs that we were emitting But they kept cutting again and again until we got to a place where those chemicals in the atmosphere are way way down The ozone issue is being addressed on a worldwide basis Right now the United States and Australia are the only countries that haven8217t signed the Kyoto Protocol You can argue that it8217s not good enough but it8217s a start and once you have a start you can continue to address the problem Have you screened the movie for any people like industrial barons or car company owners that you8217d assume might be hostile to the film8217s message We haven8217t screened it for any car companies but we are screening it for all different groups of people We8217ve screened it for evangelical leaders and there8217s a whole bunch of evangelical leaders who now are supporting this issue So we are trying to go across the board This should be a nonpartisan issue obviously But no screenings for people who you know would be natively unreceptive to the message Chuckles Honestly right now it8217s like one step at a time Right now the idea is to get the word out on the movie So as a company we8217re trying to market the movie And as we progress we8217ll be screening the movie We want to screen it for as many different types of people as possible 8212 different areas the head of General Electric Jeffrey Immelt Last year he came out publicly and said that this is an issue that needs to be addressed So there are big industry leaders that are addressing this And I think this year will be a perfect storm with this movie being part of it between Katrina and the gas prices and the war on Iraq and the storms I think this movie is going to be part of a whole perfect storm battle to create a tipping point on this issue Really Because you anticipated my next question Global warming and the environment hardly register at all in some polls about voters8217 concerns going into the 2006 midterm and 2008 elections Why do you think that is I think it8217s because of that frog in our movie You put a frog in cold water and slowly heat it he doesn8217t know that things are heating up around him and jump out As opposed to throwing a frog in a pot of boiling water and he8217ll jump right out That8217s a visual look at what8217s around us Global warming does not affect you in everyday life The problem is that if you wait until it affects your everyday life it8217s too late Because once that carbon dioxide is up in the atmosphere it stays up there for like 100 years And once it8217s too late it8217s really too late It8217s going to take real leadership on all levels to make people aware that this issue is potentially the greatest threat we8217re facing this century Of course terrorism jobs healthcare 8212 these are things that you deal with on a daily basis so they8217re going to be high on your priority list And what8217s exciting about this The solutions to global warming help create jobs help the economy are good for national security are good for your healthcare system8230 That8217s why I8217m so taken by this issue The solutions offer so many different ways to help

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<p>STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - The rivalry between Sweden and Finland in men&#8217;s ice hockey burns with an incredible intensity, and the Nordic neighbors are set to ignite their feud once again in the group stage at the Pyeongchang Olympics.</p> FILE PHOTO: Nicklas Lidstrom (5) of Sweden falls on top of Jere Lehtinen of Finland during their men's hockey game at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics February 21, 2010. REUTERS/Todd Korol/File Photo <p>The Swedes have twice won the Olympic gold medal, first in 1994 and famously beating their bitter rivals 3-2 in the 2006 final in Turin.</p> <p>No Finnish hockey fan needs reminding that their team has never won the Olympic tournament.</p> <p>&#8220;For us Swedes, we just cannot lose to Finland - that would never work,&#8221; Sweden&#8217;s two-time Olympic champion Peter Forsberg told Reuters.</p> <p>&#8220;It&#8217;s powerful,&#8221; explains Hakan Loob, who was a team mate of Forsberg&#8217;s when Sweden won gold at Lillehammer in 1994, and the two are set to pair up again as experts for Eurosport&#8217;s hockey broadcasts in Sweden during the Games.</p> <p>&#8220;A long time ago, the Finns saw us as the big brother and felt sorry for themselves, but recently they have become very good, so now it&#8217;s a more even rivalry,&#8221; Loob said.</p> <p>For the Finns, it is no different.</p> <p>&#8220;Of course you want to win all games, but there&#8217;s a special atmosphere every time you play Sweden,&#8221; current Finland general manager and former player Jere Lehtinen said.</p> <p>&#8220;When I played those games it was always a little more physical on the ice, to show you wanted to win. Those were special games.&#8221;</p> <p>SEMI-FINAL DEFEAT</p> <p>The two sides meet in the final qualifying game in group C on February 18, with the Finns determined to avenge their semi-final defeat in Sochi four years ago when they ended up with the bronze medal and the Swedes went one better by winning silver.</p> <p>The historical roots of the Swedish-Finnish rivalry are long and deep, with Finland part of Sweden for almost 700 years until it became an autonomous part of Russia for more than a century, eventually declaring independence in 1917.</p> <p>The two countries share a border and Swedish is still one of Finland&#8217;s official languages, but the relationship is not without its problems, and never is this more apparent than when the two sides clash on the ice.</p> <p>The players Reuters spoke to all recall the rivalry beginning for them while they were still in the junior ranks, continuing through their international careers and even onto the rinks of North America, where most of them plied their trade.</p> <p>&#8220;There were good rivalries in the NHL against players like Forsberg and (Nicklas) Lidstrom - good, honest battles,&#8221; remembers Lehtinen, who spent 14 seasons with the Dallas Stars.</p> <p>&#8220;Forsberg was tough and he came hard at you, but in the same way he was honest, and you could go hard at him too. It was a tough rivalry.&#8221;</p> <p>The creative force at the heart of the Swedish team, Forsberg was often given a hard time by the Finns, not least when the two countries clashed.</p> <p>&#8220;I always had to play against Saku Koivu, Teemu Selanne, Jere Lehtinen and a few other big players. Every single tournament you knew you&#8217;d have to play against them, and you knew it was going to be tough,&#8221; Forsberg said.</p> <p>&#8220;But there was something, we just had to win.&#8221;</p> SHOCK VICTORY <p>With Forsberg in the team the Swedes secured their fair share of victories but as time went on Finland improved, even pulling off a shock victory against the then-Olympic champions in the World Championship final in Stockholm in 1995.</p> <p>For Lehtinen, who played in that winning side, the victory was a watershed in the rivalry.</p> <p>&#8220;It changed things, because Sweden had been beating us most of the time, so that was a big moment for us. There was a lot of Finnish fans there too, so it was very loud when we took the lead,&#8221; the 44-year-old said.</p> <p>The scenes of joy were not limited to Finnish players and fans in Stockholm&#8217;s Globen arena.</p> <p>&#8220;I was a young boy back then, and it was a huge thing at that time, it was an unbelievable victory for the whole nation,&#8221; defenseman Sami Lepisto, who will be a key part of Finland&#8217;s team in Pyeongchang, told Reuters.</p> <p>Lepisto went on to be in the Finnish squad that hammered the Swedes 6-1 in the 2011 World Championship final, and he now hopes they can improve their Olympic record against the Swedes and finally make it to the top step of the podium.</p> <p>&#8220;Of course, we have those two World Championship finals that we won, but at the Olympics it&#8217;s been mainly Sweden that has been winning those battles,&#8221; he said, adding that he will be keeping an eye on the Swedes when the knockout stages begin.</p> <p>&#8220;We feel like we have a good team and a good chance to win, and I think we have a strong chance - just like Sweden.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Philip O'Connor, editing by Ed Osmond</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>MANAMA (Reuters) - Formula One&#8217;s commercial rights holders have laid out plans for an overhaul of the sport from 2021 with cheaper and simpler power units, the implementation of a cost cap and a more balanced distribution of revenues.</p> Formula One F1 - Australian Grand Prix - Melbourne Grand Prix Circuit, Melbourne, Australia - March 25, 2018 The start of the race REUTERS/Brandon Malone/File Photo <p>Liberty Media, who took over in January last year, met team bosses and the governing FIA at the Sakhir circuit ahead of Friday&#8217;s opening practice for the Bahrain Grand Prix.</p> <p>There was no immediate response from reigning champions Mercedes and Ferrari, the biggest and wealthiest teams who have expressed concern in recent months about where the sport is heading.</p> <p>Ferrari, who enjoy special financial privileges and a veto on rules, have warned repeatedly that they could walk away if they did not like what was on offer.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-motor-f1-bahrain-future-astonmartin/aston-martin-boss-welcomes-f1-future-proposals-idUSKCN1HD2F0" type="external">Aston Martin boss welcomes F1 future proposals</a> <p>&#8220;The teams have to digest the proposals that we&#8217;ve made,&#8221; Formula One&#8217;s managing director of motorsport Ross Brawn, a former Ferrari technical director and ex-Mercedes team principal, told Reuters.</p> <p>&#8220;I think they were all accepted in good spirit,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>&#8220;There&#8217;s no doubt there will be different opinions. I think everyone, all the teams, is pleased to see the landscape laid out completely on some key elements.&#8221;</p> <p>Formula One said future engines needed to be &#8220;cheaper, simpler, louder, have more power and reduce the necessity of grid penalties.&#8221;</p> <p>They must also remain road relevant for manufacturers, and hybrid, with the rules making it attractive for any new entrants.</p> <p>On the thorny subject of costs, Formula One said that &#8220;how you spend the money must be more decisive and important than how much money you spend.&#8221;</p> <p>It gave no details about any cap, however, with media reports talking of a $150 million annual figure which would be above what many teams spend but well below that of the biggest manufacturer budgets.</p> <p>Formula One said future revenue distribution must be &#8220;more balanced, based on meritocracy of the current performance and reward success for the teams and the commercial rights holder.&#8221;</p> <p>Force India&#8217;s chief operating officer Otmar Szafnauer said his team were pleased with Liberty&#8217;s proposals.</p> <p>&#8220;It was a presentation and we all listened and there wasn&#8217;t much interaction,&#8221; he said. &#8220;My opinion is it&#8217;s going in the right direction.&#8221;</p> <p>The five-point plan, published as broad outlines, said there needed to be more overtaking and driver skill should be the &#8220;predominant factor&#8221; in the car&#8217;s performance.</p> <p>While cars must remain different from each other, areas not relevant to fans needed to be standardized. Governance of the sport also needed to be simple and streamlined.</p> <p>&#8220;We are driven by one desire: to create the world&#8217;s leading sporting brand,&#8221; said Formula One chairman Chase Carey.</p> <p>&#8220;Fan-centered, commercially successful, profitable for our teams, and with technological innovation at its heart.&#8221;</p> <p>Editing by Alan Baldwin and Christian Radnedge</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - Cross-country skier Marit Bjoergen, the most successful winter Olympian of all time with 15 medals, has told Norwegian state broadcaster NRK that she is bringing her glittering career to a close.</p> FILE PHOTO: Cross-Country Skiing - Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympics - Women's 30km Mass Start Classic - Alpensia Cross-Country Skiing Centre - Pyeongchang, South Korea - February 25, 2018 - Gold medallist Marit Bjoergen of Norway celebrates victory with her national flag. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo <p>The 38-year-old, who won five medals at the Winter Games in Pyeongchang in February and recorded 114 individual wins in her 303 World Cup races, said that the time was right to call it a day.</p> <p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t feel I have the motivation that is needed to give 100 percent for another season, that&#8217;s why I&#8217;m choosing to retire,&#8221; she told NRK.</p> <p>She finished her career with a total of eight Olympic golds, five in individual races and three in team events, and rounded off the Pyeongchang Games with a dominant victory in the 30km classic race.</p> <p>Editing by Toby Davis</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>AUGUSTA, Ga. (Reuters) - A red-hot Patrick Reed stormed into a two-shot lead after the second round of the U.S. Masters on Friday, while a struggling Tiger Woods barely kept alive his hopes of a fairytale comeback from injury.</p> Patrick Reed of the U.S. hits on the 14th fairway during second round play of the 2018 Masters golf tournament at the Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia, U.S., April 6, 2018. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson <p>Former world number one Woods was considered one of the favourites in his bid to collect a fifth Green Jacket after showing impressive form in his return to competition this year, but was unable to make any noise for a second consecutive day.</p> <p>The 14-times major champion struggled in the tough scoring conditions at a windy Augusta National, mixing three bogeys with a double-bogey and two birdies for a three-over-par 75 that put him on four-over par for the week.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-golf-masters-woods/woods-happy-with-progress-despite-falling-off-the-pace-idUSKCN1HE022" type="external">Woods happy with progress despite falling off the pace</a> <a href="/article/us-golf-masters-leishman/happy-hooker-leishman-conjures-up-masterpiece-to-stay-in-hunt-idUSKCN1HE03I" type="external">Happy hooker Leishman conjures up masterpiece to stay in hunt</a> <a href="/article/us-golf-masters-reed/ryder-cup-warrior-reed-ready-to-fly-solo-for-augusta-glory-idUSKCN1HE039" type="external">Ryder Cup warrior Reed ready to fly solo for Augusta glory</a> <p>&#8220;I felt like I hit it off well off the tee. I hit my irons awful today. I didn&#8217;t control my distance, my shape, spins. I left myself in bad spots,&#8221; Woods told reporters. &#8220;That kind of summed up the whole day.&#8221;</p> <p>The poor round left Woods, competing in his first major since 2015, just one shot above the cut-line but a distant 13 shots back of world number 24 Reed, who is hoping to pen a comeback of his own after missing the cut last year.</p> <p>Following a bogey at the first, Woods added a double-bogey at the par-four fifth, where he took a penalty drop from an unplayable lie after sending his second shot into the bushes to the left of the green.</p> <p>He bogeyed the par-three 12th after sending his tee shot into Rae&#8217;s Creek and while he did well to card a pair of birdies over the next three holes, he dropped another shot at the par-three 16th.</p> Patrick Reed of the U.S. finishes the day on the 18th green during second round play of the 2018 Masters golf tournament at the Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia, U.S., April 6, 2018. REUTERS/Mike Segar <p>Reed, a five-times winner on the PGA Tour still seeking his breakthrough in a major, fired the day&#8217;s lowest round, a six-under 66 that included nine birdies, to reach nine under on the week, two clear of Australian Marc Leishman (67).</p> <p>&#8220;I feel like I know where I need to leave the golf ball, and most of the pins out here, and it&#8217;s now just going out here and executing the game plan and staying disciplined,&#8221; said Reed, who went to college at nearby Augusta State.</p> <p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve been doing that the first two days, and it&#8217;s allowing me to kind of attack this golf course and not make a lot of mistakes.&#8221;</p> &#8216;WORTH THE RISK&#8217; <p>Leishman delivered the shot of the day when his approach at the par-five 15th stopped six feet from the hole, setting up an easy eagle.</p> <p>The Australian, who made a double-bogey on the same hole in the first round, weighed other options before finally opting for the risky play of hooking it around a tree and over the water.</p> Slideshow (12 Images) <p>&#8220;To win this tournament, you&#8217;re going to have to take a chance at some point, and I felt like that was one where the reward was worth the risk,&#8221; Leishman said.</p> <p>Swede Henrik Stenson (70) sits alone in third place at five under, while Northern Irishman Rory McIlroy (71) and former champion Jordan Spieth (74) are a further shot adrift.</p> <p>McIlroy, who with a victory this week would become only the sixth player to win each of golf&#8217;s four majors, credited his new-found ability to remain patient for his recent form.</p> <p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t have to go out there and make a birdie on every hole, especially not on this golf course, and in these conditions, pars are okay,&#8221; McIlroy said.</p> <p>&#8220;Sometimes pars might be a little bit boring and you might feel as if you want to get a little bit more out of your round, but as you look up the leaderboard and you&#8217;re still there around the lead, that&#8217;s taken awhile for me to adjust to.&#8221;</p> <p>Sergio Garcia, whose 81 on Thursday was the worst opening-round score by a defending champion, followed that up with a six-over-par 78 to become the 10th reigning Green Jacket owner to miss the cut.</p> <p>Reporting by Frank Pingue; Editing by John O'Brien</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - After a series of plot twists befitting a Broadway production, the UFC had hoped to bring clarity to its disorderly lightweight division with Saturday&#8217;s UFC 223 fight card in Brooklyn, but it will be overshadowed by one man not on it &#8212; Conor McGregor.</p> Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fighter Conor McGregor exits after appearing in a Brooklyn court on charges of assault stemming from a melee, in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, U.S., April 6, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid <p>The Irish fighter gate-crashed a media day on Thursday and caused chaos with his entourage when he attacked a bus ferrying fighters in the venue&#8217;s loading bay, an assault that led to injuries to some of those aboard the vehicle.</p> <p>McGregor appeared in court in New York on Friday charged with assault and criminal mischief.</p> <p>Fighters Michael Chiesa and Ray Borg were pulled from the card by the New York State Athletic Commission (NYSAC) after sustaining injuries, and McGregor&#8217;s stable mate Artem Lobov was kicked off the bill for his part in the chaos.</p> <p>In another twist, lightweight challenger Max Holloway was declared &#8220;medically unfit&#8221; to fight Khabib Nurmagomedov by NYSAC as he struggled to shed weight and make the 155-pound limit. He has been replaced by American Al Iaquinta in the title match.</p> <p>Ever since the 29-year-old McGregor became the first UFC fighter to hold two belts simultaneously, the promotion has struggled to ensure its hugely popular &#8216;bad boy&#8217; followed by the rules.</p> <p>By the time Russia&#8217;s Nurmagomedov and Iaquinta face off across the Octagon in Brooklyn, 511 days will have passed since McGregor won the title from Eddie Alvarez at the Madison Square Garden in Manhattan in November 2016.</p> <p>However, the Irishman was first stripped of the featherweight title he claimed in 2015 and he has never managed to defended either crown after winning them.</p> <p>Instead, he took up boxing and enticed retired great Floyd Mayweather back into the ring for a huge payday, in a bout he lost, with American Tony Ferguson stepping in and winning the interim UFC lightweight belt by overcoming Kevin Lee.</p> <p>Asked at a news conference on Friday whether he could foresee McGregor ever fighting in the UFC again, the organization&#8217;s president Dana White said he was not sure.</p> <p>&#8220;This thing is so crazy. He is being arraigned right now and dealing with what he has to deal with. We&#8217;re dealing with this fight,&#8221; White said.</p> <p>&#8220;Next week I&#8217;m going to go home and figure out how this whole thing plays out,&#8221; he added.</p> <p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a very unique situation that we&#8217;re in. It&#8217;s never happened in nearly 20 years of doing this so we&#8217;ll see.&#8221;</p> FILE PHOTO: Dec 9, 2016; Toronto, ON, Canada; Max Holloway during weigh ins for UFC 206 at Air Canada Centre. Mandatory Credit: Tom Szczerbowski-USA TODAY Sports <p>FIGHTER MERRY-GO-ROUND</p> <p>Ferguson was originally scheduled to face Nurmagomedov in a highly anticipated showdown but the contest had to be canceled for a fourth time when the American suffered a freak knee injury last week.</p> <p>Holloway stepped up at very short notice but could not shed the weight, opening the door for the 30-year-old Iaquinta to save the main event.</p> <p>With his ability to smother opponents using his powerful wrestling skills, the undefeated Nurmagomedov is the promotion&#8217;s rising star but Iaquinta is an excellent grappler and will provide a tough test.</p> <p>As Iaquinta came in slightly over the weight, only Nurmagomedov can win the belt.</p> <p>The other highlight on Saturday&#8217;s card is a women&#8217;s straw-weight title rematch between champion Rose Namajunas and Poland&#8217;s Joanna Jedrzejczyk, whom the American knocked out in stunning fashion in the first round to win the belt in November.</p> <p>However, anyone expecting to grab any of the limelight from McGregor is mistaken.</p> <p>Emboldened by his money from the Mayweather fight, he has become a law unto himself, but his latest misstep has seriously tested the patience of White, who has excused plenty of bad behavior in the past.</p> <p>However, with the promotion quickly tiring of his antics, the Irishman may find that while he might well be able to win back a belt in the future, winning back fans may prove a lot more difficult.</p> <p>Reporting by Philip O'Connor; Additional reporting by Rory Carroll; Editing by John O'Brien</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Sweden, Finland to renew fierce ice hockey rivalry Liberty unveils its post-2020 vision for F1 Cross-country skiing: Bjoergen brings curtain down on golden career Reed storms into Masters lead, Tiger just makes cut Chaotic McGregor casts shadow over UFC 223

https://reuters.com/article/us-olympics-2018-iceh-swedenfinland/sweden-finland-to-renew-fierce-ice-hockey-rivalry-idUSKBN1F81J0

2018-01-19

2least

STOCKHOLM Reuters The rivalry between Sweden and Finland in men8217s ice hockey burns with an incredible intensity and the Nordic neighbors are set to ignite their feud once again in the group stage at the Pyeongchang Olympics FILE PHOTO Nicklas Lidstrom 5 of Sweden falls on top of Jere Lehtinen of Finland during their mens hockey game at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics February 21 2010 REUTERSTodd KorolFile Photo The Swedes have twice won the Olympic gold medal first in 1994 and famously beating their bitter rivals 32 in the 2006 final in Turin No Finnish hockey fan needs reminding that their team has never won the Olympic tournament 8220For us Swedes we just cannot lose to Finland that would never work8221 Sweden8217s twotime Olympic champion Peter Forsberg told Reuters 8220It8217s powerful8221 explains Hakan Loob who was a team mate of Forsberg8217s when Sweden won gold at Lillehammer in 1994 and the two are set to pair up again as experts for Eurosport8217s hockey broadcasts in Sweden during the Games 8220A long time ago the Finns saw us as the big brother and felt sorry for themselves but recently they have become very good so now it8217s a more even rivalry8221 Loob said For the Finns it is no different 8220Of course you want to win all games but there8217s a special atmosphere every time you play Sweden8221 current Finland general manager and former player Jere Lehtinen said 8220When I played those games it was always a little more physical on the ice to show you wanted to win Those were special games8221 SEMIFINAL DEFEAT The two sides meet in the final qualifying game in group C on February 18 with the Finns determined to avenge their semifinal defeat in Sochi four years ago when they ended up with the bronze medal and the Swedes went one better by winning silver The historical roots of the SwedishFinnish rivalry are long and deep with Finland part of Sweden for almost 700 years until it became an autonomous part of Russia for more than a century eventually declaring independence in 1917 The two countries share a border and Swedish is still one of Finland8217s official languages but the relationship is not without its problems and never is this more apparent than when the two sides clash on the ice The players Reuters spoke to all recall the rivalry beginning for them while they were still in the junior ranks continuing through their international careers and even onto the rinks of North America where most of them plied their trade 8220There were good rivalries in the NHL against players like Forsberg and Nicklas Lidstrom good honest battles8221 remembers Lehtinen who spent 14 seasons with the Dallas Stars 8220Forsberg was tough and he came hard at you but in the same way he was honest and you could go hard at him too It was a tough rivalry8221 The creative force at the heart of the Swedish team Forsberg was often given a hard time by the Finns not least when the two countries clashed 8220I always had to play against Saku Koivu Teemu Selanne Jere Lehtinen and a few other big players Every single tournament you knew you8217d have to play against them and you knew it was going to be tough8221 Forsberg said 8220But there was something we just had to win8221 SHOCK VICTORY With Forsberg in the team the Swedes secured their fair share of victories but as time went on Finland improved even pulling off a shock victory against the thenOlympic champions in the World Championship final in Stockholm in 1995 For Lehtinen who played in that winning side the victory was a watershed in the rivalry 8220It changed things because Sweden had been beating us most of the time so that was a big moment for us There was a lot of Finnish fans there too so it was very loud when we took the lead8221 the 44yearold said The scenes of joy were not limited to Finnish players and fans in Stockholm8217s Globen arena 8220I was a young boy back then and it was a huge thing at that time it was an unbelievable victory for the whole nation8221 defenseman Sami Lepisto who will be a key part of Finland8217s team in Pyeongchang told Reuters Lepisto went on to be in the Finnish squad that hammered the Swedes 61 in the 2011 World Championship final and he now hopes they can improve their Olympic record against the Swedes and finally make it to the top step of the podium 8220Of course we have those two World Championship finals that we won but at the Olympics it8217s been mainly Sweden that has been winning those battles8221 he said adding that he will be keeping an eye on the Swedes when the knockout stages begin 8220We feel like we have a good team and a good chance to win and I think we have a strong chance just like Sweden8221 Reporting by Philip OConnor editing by Ed Osmond Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles MANAMA Reuters Formula One8217s commercial rights holders have laid out plans for an overhaul of the sport from 2021 with cheaper and simpler power units the implementation of a cost cap and a more balanced distribution of revenues Formula One F1 Australian Grand Prix Melbourne Grand Prix Circuit Melbourne Australia March 25 2018 The start of the race REUTERSBrandon MaloneFile Photo Liberty Media who took over in January last year met team bosses and the governing FIA at the Sakhir circuit ahead of Friday8217s opening practice for the Bahrain Grand Prix There was no immediate response from reigning champions Mercedes and Ferrari the biggest and wealthiest teams who have expressed concern in recent months about where the sport is heading Ferrari who enjoy special financial privileges and a veto on rules have warned repeatedly that they could walk away if they did not like what was on offer Related Coverage Aston Martin boss welcomes F1 future proposals 8220The teams have to digest the proposals that we8217ve made8221 Formula One8217s managing director of motorsport Ross Brawn a former Ferrari technical director and exMercedes team principal told Reuters 8220I think they were all accepted in good spirit8221 he said 8220There8217s no doubt there will be different opinions I think everyone all the teams is pleased to see the landscape laid out completely on some key elements8221 Formula One said future engines needed to be 8220cheaper simpler louder have more power and reduce the necessity of grid penalties8221 They must also remain road relevant for manufacturers and hybrid with the rules making it attractive for any new entrants On the thorny subject of costs Formula One said that 8220how you spend the money must be more decisive and important than how much money you spend8221 It gave no details about any cap however with media reports talking of a 150 million annual figure which would be above what many teams spend but well below that of the biggest manufacturer budgets Formula One said future revenue distribution must be 8220more balanced based on meritocracy of the current performance and reward success for the teams and the commercial rights holder8221 Force India8217s chief operating officer Otmar Szafnauer said his team were pleased with Liberty8217s proposals 8220It was a presentation and we all listened and there wasn8217t much interaction8221 he said 8220My opinion is it8217s going in the right direction8221 The fivepoint plan published as broad outlines said there needed to be more overtaking and driver skill should be the 8220predominant factor8221 in the car8217s performance While cars must remain different from each other areas not relevant to fans needed to be standardized Governance of the sport also needed to be simple and streamlined 8220We are driven by one desire to create the world8217s leading sporting brand8221 said Formula One chairman Chase Carey 8220Fancentered commercially successful profitable for our teams and with technological innovation at its heart8221 Editing by Alan Baldwin and Christian Radnedge Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters Crosscountry skier Marit Bjoergen the most successful winter Olympian of all time with 15 medals has told Norwegian state broadcaster NRK that she is bringing her glittering career to a close FILE PHOTO CrossCountry Skiing Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympics Womens 30km Mass Start Classic Alpensia CrossCountry Skiing Centre Pyeongchang South Korea February 25 2018 Gold medallist Marit Bjoergen of Norway celebrates victory with her national flag REUTERSCarlos BarriaFile Photo The 38yearold who won five medals at the Winter Games in Pyeongchang in February and recorded 114 individual wins in her 303 World Cup races said that the time was right to call it a day 8220I don8217t feel I have the motivation that is needed to give 100 percent for another season that8217s why I8217m choosing to retire8221 she told NRK She finished her career with a total of eight Olympic golds five in individual races and three in team events and rounded off the Pyeongchang Games with a dominant victory in the 30km classic race Editing by Toby Davis Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles AUGUSTA Ga Reuters A redhot Patrick Reed stormed into a twoshot lead after the second round of the US Masters on Friday while a struggling Tiger Woods barely kept alive his hopes of a fairytale comeback from injury Patrick Reed of the US hits on the 14th fairway during second round play of the 2018 Masters golf tournament at the Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta Georgia US April 6 2018 REUTERSLucy Nicholson Former world number one Woods was considered one of the favourites in his bid to collect a fifth Green Jacket after showing impressive form in his return to competition this year but was unable to make any noise for a second consecutive day The 14times major champion struggled in the tough scoring conditions at a windy Augusta National mixing three bogeys with a doublebogey and two birdies for a threeoverpar 75 that put him on fourover par for the week Related Coverage Woods happy with progress despite falling off the pace Happy hooker Leishman conjures up masterpiece to stay in hunt Ryder Cup warrior Reed ready to fly solo for Augusta glory 8220I felt like I hit it off well off the tee I hit my irons awful today I didn8217t control my distance my shape spins I left myself in bad spots8221 Woods told reporters 8220That kind of summed up the whole day8221 The poor round left Woods competing in his first major since 2015 just one shot above the cutline but a distant 13 shots back of world number 24 Reed who is hoping to pen a comeback of his own after missing the cut last year Following a bogey at the first Woods added a doublebogey at the parfour fifth where he took a penalty drop from an unplayable lie after sending his second shot into the bushes to the left of the green He bogeyed the parthree 12th after sending his tee shot into Rae8217s Creek and while he did well to card a pair of birdies over the next three holes he dropped another shot at the parthree 16th Patrick Reed of the US finishes the day on the 18th green during second round play of the 2018 Masters golf tournament at the Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta Georgia US April 6 2018 REUTERSMike Segar Reed a fivetimes winner on the PGA Tour still seeking his breakthrough in a major fired the day8217s lowest round a sixunder 66 that included nine birdies to reach nine under on the week two clear of Australian Marc Leishman 67 8220I feel like I know where I need to leave the golf ball and most of the pins out here and it8217s now just going out here and executing the game plan and staying disciplined8221 said Reed who went to college at nearby Augusta State 8220I8217ve been doing that the first two days and it8217s allowing me to kind of attack this golf course and not make a lot of mistakes8221 8216WORTH THE RISK8217 Leishman delivered the shot of the day when his approach at the parfive 15th stopped six feet from the hole setting up an easy eagle The Australian who made a doublebogey on the same hole in the first round weighed other options before finally opting for the risky play of hooking it around a tree and over the water Slideshow 12 Images 8220To win this tournament you8217re going to have to take a chance at some point and I felt like that was one where the reward was worth the risk8221 Leishman said Swede Henrik Stenson 70 sits alone in third place at five under while Northern Irishman Rory McIlroy 71 and former champion Jordan Spieth 74 are a further shot adrift McIlroy who with a victory this week would become only the sixth player to win each of golf8217s four majors credited his newfound ability to remain patient for his recent form 8220I don8217t have to go out there and make a birdie on every hole especially not on this golf course and in these conditions pars are okay8221 McIlroy said 8220Sometimes pars might be a little bit boring and you might feel as if you want to get a little bit more out of your round but as you look up the leaderboard and you8217re still there around the lead that8217s taken awhile for me to adjust to8221 Sergio Garcia whose 81 on Thursday was the worst openinground score by a defending champion followed that up with a sixoverpar 78 to become the 10th reigning Green Jacket owner to miss the cut Reporting by Frank Pingue Editing by John OBrien Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters After a series of plot twists befitting a Broadway production the UFC had hoped to bring clarity to its disorderly lightweight division with Saturday8217s UFC 223 fight card in Brooklyn but it will be overshadowed by one man not on it 8212 Conor McGregor Mixed Martial Arts MMA fighter Conor McGregor exits after appearing in a Brooklyn court on charges of assault stemming from a melee in the Brooklyn borough of New York City US April 6 2018 REUTERSBrendan McDermid The Irish fighter gatecrashed a media day on Thursday and caused chaos with his entourage when he attacked a bus ferrying fighters in the venue8217s loading bay an assault that led to injuries to some of those aboard the vehicle McGregor appeared in court in New York on Friday charged with assault and criminal mischief Fighters Michael Chiesa and Ray Borg were pulled from the card by the New York State Athletic Commission NYSAC after sustaining injuries and McGregor8217s stable mate Artem Lobov was kicked off the bill for his part in the chaos In another twist lightweight challenger Max Holloway was declared 8220medically unfit8221 to fight Khabib Nurmagomedov by NYSAC as he struggled to shed weight and make the 155pound limit He has been replaced by American Al Iaquinta in the title match Ever since the 29yearold McGregor became the first UFC fighter to hold two belts simultaneously the promotion has struggled to ensure its hugely popular 8216bad boy8217 followed by the rules By the time Russia8217s Nurmagomedov and Iaquinta face off across the Octagon in Brooklyn 511 days will have passed since McGregor won the title from Eddie Alvarez at the Madison Square Garden in Manhattan in November 2016 However the Irishman was first stripped of the featherweight title he claimed in 2015 and he has never managed to defended either crown after winning them Instead he took up boxing and enticed retired great Floyd Mayweather back into the ring for a huge payday in a bout he lost with American Tony Ferguson stepping in and winning the interim UFC lightweight belt by overcoming Kevin Lee Asked at a news conference on Friday whether he could foresee McGregor ever fighting in the UFC again the organization8217s president Dana White said he was not sure 8220This thing is so crazy He is being arraigned right now and dealing with what he has to deal with We8217re dealing with this fight8221 White said 8220Next week I8217m going to go home and figure out how this whole thing plays out8221 he added 8220It8217s a very unique situation that we8217re in It8217s never happened in nearly 20 years of doing this so we8217ll see8221 FILE PHOTO Dec 9 2016 Toronto ON Canada Max Holloway during weigh ins for UFC 206 at Air Canada Centre Mandatory Credit Tom SzczerbowskiUSA TODAY Sports FIGHTER MERRYGOROUND Ferguson was originally scheduled to face Nurmagomedov in a highly anticipated showdown but the contest had to be canceled for a fourth time when the American suffered a freak knee injury last week Holloway stepped up at very short notice but could not shed the weight opening the door for the 30yearold Iaquinta to save the main event With his ability to smother opponents using his powerful wrestling skills the undefeated Nurmagomedov is the promotion8217s rising star but Iaquinta is an excellent grappler and will provide a tough test As Iaquinta came in slightly over the weight only Nurmagomedov can win the belt The other highlight on Saturday8217s card is a women8217s strawweight title rematch between champion Rose Namajunas and Poland8217s Joanna Jedrzejczyk whom the American knocked out in stunning fashion in the first round to win the belt in November However anyone expecting to grab any of the limelight from McGregor is mistaken Emboldened by his money from the Mayweather fight he has become a law unto himself but his latest misstep has seriously tested the patience of White who has excused plenty of bad behavior in the past However with the promotion quickly tiring of his antics the Irishman may find that while he might well be able to win back a belt in the future winning back fans may prove a lot more difficult Reporting by Philip OConnor Additional reporting by Rory Carroll Editing by John OBrien Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p /> <p>On a breezy, unusually warm morning in late October, about 60 cops, mental health counselors, pastors, and business leaders are gathered inside a community center in Newton, Kansas for an intensive training. They sit mostly stone-faced around folding tables with coffee and pastries as Dr. Russell Palarea launches into a close analysis of the 1999 cult comedy Office Space. He explains why the behavior of Milton Waddams&#8212;a memorably pathetic cubicle dweller who suffers multiple indignities at the hands of his coworkers&#8212;holds the key to preventing a mass shooting.&amp;#160; &amp;#160;</p> <p>Palarea cues a series of clips that show Milton muttering under his breath about a prized <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1025580993822908760" type="external">red</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqxjRzzGn8k" type="external">Swingline stapler</a> taken from him by his bullying boss. As the film progresses, Milton&#8217;s socially awkward affect begins to turn more hostile. Eventually, he slinks into the boss&#8217;s office to repossess the stapler. Palarea pauses the video to underscore the telling escalation: &#8220;He&#8217;s taken matters into his own hands. He&#8217;s moved from idea to action.&#8221; By the final clip, Milton has burned down the office building and decamped to a beach resort in Mexico, where he mumbles about slipping strychnine into the guacamole. The dark comedy cracks a couple of smiles, serving both as an icebreaker and an initial lesson on the behavioral warning signs of an attack&#8212;an obsessive grievance, oblique threats about killing.</p> <p>Palarea, a forensic psychologist based in Washington, D.C., is a leading practitioner of <a href="" type="internal">threat assessment</a>, an emerging field in which mental health and law enforcement experts work together to identify and deter individuals who may be poised to commit violent attacks. At his invitation, I&#8217;d come to this rural, heavily Mennonite region about 30 miles north of Wichita to observe him train an unprecedented group: Virtually every person in the room was connected to the events of February 25, 2016, when a disturbed employee at the lawnmower plant in nearby Hesston went on a rampage, killing three people and wounding 14 others.</p> <p /> <p /> <p>In today&#8217;s era of <a href="" type="internal">active-shooter drills</a>, leaders here in Harvey County didn&#8217;t want to focus just on how to respond in the event of another attack; they wanted to understand what led to the rampage and do what they could to ensure that another one, however unlikely, wouldn&#8217;t occur. They had learned about Palarea&#8217;s work after reading a 2015 <a href="" type="internal">story</a> I wrote about an innovative strategy to prevent mass shootings and flew him in to teach them the fundamentals of threat assessment. Palarea has been in the threat assessment field for more than two decades, consulting with teams for the military, federal agencies, colleges, and corporations. When working in these various settings, he told me, he&#8217;s always emphasized the same theme: &#8220;You need to worry about this happening here.&#8221; But the theme in Harvey County was new: &#8220;Let&#8217;s heal from this and make sure it doesn&#8217;t happen again.&#8221;</p> <p /> <p>I&#8217;d also come to Kansas to gain a deeper sense of the impact from the mass shooting, long after the news cameras were gone and the rest of America had moved on. Though the experience was still raw for many at the training, participants also expressed a sense of empowerment, in part because threat assessment defies the conventional wisdom that <a href="http://www.theonion.com/article/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-nation-where-this-36131" type="external">nothing</a> can really be done to prevent mass shootings. &#8220;As a clinician, when you are confronted with the fact that there might be harm or danger, it&#8217;s isolating,&#8221; Karla Roth, a mental health counselor, told me. &#8220;To know that you can work together and not be alone in it&#8212;that&#8217;s hopeful.&#8221;&amp;#160; &amp;#160;</p> <p>Roth was among a small team from Prairie View Hospital in Newton that had rushed to Hesston to help in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. Initially, she didn&#8217;t know the status of her husband and son-in-law, who both worked inside the Excel facility. &#8220;It was horror. Then when I found out that they were OK, I just had to help,&#8221; she said. &#8220;This is a peaceful, quiet, want-to-live-in place. To have it happen here is something no one would have ever thought.&#8221; &amp;#160;</p> <p>As the sun began to sink across the hayfields, Harvey County Sheriff Townsend &#8220;T.&#8221; Walton took me for a ride in his cruiser. He retraced a chaotic path that started around 5 p.m. that day. A burst of calls had come over the radio in the span of just a few minutes&#8212;one, two, and then three shootings. Gun violence had been relatively rare in Walton&#8217;s three decades of law enforcement in the region&#8212;and never anything like what he was hearing now. &#8220;In my head I&#8217;m going, &#8216;Is this terrorism?'&#8221; he recalled. It was just two months after the massacre in San Bernardino, California. &#8220;I&#8217;m not thinking, &#8216;This is a guy who just got served a protection-from-abuse letter and he&#8217;s flipped out.'&#8221;&amp;#160;</p> <p /> <p>Thirty-eight-year-old <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/26/us/cedric-ford-kansas-shooting/" type="external">Cedric Ford</a> was a recent transplant to Newton who worked the paint line at Excel. He had a criminal record in Florida and had come to the attention of local authorities for beating up his girlfriend. About three hours before the attack, &#8220;everything was totally normal&#8221; and Ford seemed &#8220;happy as all could be,&#8221; remarked a coworker who&#8217;d chatted with him in the Excel parking lot. Soon afterwards, sheriff&#8217;s deputies showed up at Excel to serve Ford with a protection order obtained by his girlfriend, apparently triggering his plan to go on a killing spree. Ford drove home, <a href="http://www.kansas.com/news/local/crime/article82564917.html" type="external">binged</a> on meth and booze, and got back into his car with an AK-47 assault rifle and Glock handgun.</p> <p>Walton slowed down just past the intersection of 12th Street and Meridian, where he&#8217;d reached Ford&#8217;s first victims. Paramedics were rushing a middle-aged man with a blood-soaked shoulder out of a pickup truck strafed with bullet holes. The man&#8217;s two grandchildren cowering in the rear of the cab were, amazingly, unharmed. Just up the road, Ford had slammed his car to a halt in the road in front of his next victim, a 74-year-old woman who refused his demand to relinquish her vehicle. Miraculously, she also survived unscathed, ducking into the passenger seat as Ford fired through the driver&#8217;s side window. Ford succeeded in taking a truck from his third victim; the young man he shot in the leg along Old Highway 81 likely would have died if a sheriff&#8217;s deputy hadn&#8217;t arrived moments later with a tourniquet. (It is unclear why Ford went on the carjacking spree. His mental state was impaired and volatile, but he also may have been having trouble with his car.)</p> <p /> <p>Walton was handling triage near 12th and Meridian when the radio erupted again: There was an active shooter inside Excel. Emergency dispatchers were quickly overwhelmed with nearly 50 calls from the plant. Walton immediately contacted his chief deputy: &#8220;Get ahold of everybody we have and send them to Hesston.&#8221; &amp;#160;</p> <p>As police vehicles and ambulances screamed toward the town, Hesston <a href="http://www.kansas.com/news/local/crime/article108566537.html" type="external">police chief Doug Schroeder</a> had already reached Excel and found pandemonium. The large glass doors at the front of the plant had been shot out. Scores of employees were fleeing across the parking lots, some helping wounded coworkers. Schroeder didn&#8217;t know who was shooting inside the mammoth facility, or where. But like most law enforcement leaders trained in the post-Columbine era, he knew he could not hesitate: An active shooter fires an average of every four seconds. And hundreds of people were still inside the building.</p> <p>Schroeder entered through a side door, his Colt AR-15 rifle in hand. He saw blood trails on the floor both to the left and the right. It was quiet. He went right, toward the main entrance, and began to hear gunfire. He moved through several more hallways to an office area, where he encountered a frightened employee. As they began to speak, the glass window in the door next to them shattered. Ford was just on the other side. &#8220;I&#8217;m going to get you,&#8221; Schroeder recalled him saying.</p> <p>The terrified employee bolted as the barrel of Ford&#8217;s rifle poked through the doorway. Ford came through the door and chased after the employee, unaware that Schroeder was just behind him. Schroeder took aim with his rifle and fired four shots. As Ford spun and went down, he raised his pistol and fired at Schroeder. He missed. &#8220;I saw the shell casings being ejected from the handgun, but I didn&#8217;t hear the shots,&#8221; Schroeder recalled.&amp;#160;</p> <p>Many employees were hiding in nearby offices and Ford was carrying plenty more ammo when he was killed. There is no way to know how many lives were saved by the 41-year-old police chief, who waved off <a href="http://www.kansas.com/news/local/crime/article62793242.html" type="external">a flurry of praise</a> and said he didn&#8217;t want his service to be defined by this one tragic event.</p> <p>&#8220;He&#8217;s a humble man,&#8221; Walton remarked as we pulled out of the Excel parking lot. &#8220;But he was a hero to me, and without a doubt to the hundreds that got to go home that night.&#8221; &amp;#160;</p> <p>Excel employs about a thousand people, and many in this sparsely populated region are connected to someone who works at the plant. I visited Subrina Luke, a big-hearted woman with a wide smile, at her small apartment near the Wichita airport. She recalled how she was feeling grumpy when her fianc&#233;e Josh Higbee dropped her off at her job that morning: She was short on sleep and had forgotten her usual morning beverage, and she&#8217;d closed the car door without even saying goodbye. She was surprised when Higbee walked into the LensCrafters where she worked about 15 minutes later.&amp;#160; &amp;#160;</p> <p>&#8220;What are you doing here?&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;Just bringing you a drink.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;You didn&#8217;t have to do that,&#8221; she said, cracking a grin.</p> <p>&#8220;Yes I did, woman. You would have been calling me for one.&#8221;</p> <p /> <p>He kissed her goodbye. They&#8217;d been together for almost two years, sharing an apartment and raising Higbee&#8217;s spry four-year-old son from a prior relationship, who called Luke his mommy. A few hours later, the 31-year-old Higbee headed up the road to Excel. He mostly disliked his job as a welder on the second shift but was glad to be pulling in $23-plus an hour for his family.</p> <p>The first call came from their four-year-old&#8217;s babysitter, whose boyfriend also worked at Excel. &#8220;There was a shooting at the job,&#8221; she said. Luke&#8217;s heart dropped, but the babysitter knew no details and Luke wouldn&#8217;t be able to reach Higbee during his shift. She tried to focus on helping her customers. Her phone kept buzzing. During a break, she answered a call from one of Higbee&#8217;s coworkers. &#8220;I&#8217;m sorry,&#8221; the woman told her, &#8220;but Josh is gone.&#8221;</p> <p /> <p>&#8220;I think I screamed so loud everyone in the mall heard me,&#8221; Luke recalled, fighting through tears as we sat in her living room, sunlight jagging through the window blinds. Higbee&#8217;s son, now five, was playing in the bedroom with a pastor who&#8217;d been helping Luke and the boy through the recovery process. The youngster seemed to be doing remarkably well, bounding over to me to show off a favorite toy and hugging Luke affectionately before going off to play while we talked.</p> <p>Luke reflected on being robbed of her partner, and the boy of his father. &#8220;He&#8217;s not going to get to see him graduate high school, he&#8217;s not going to even get to see him on his first day of school,&#8221; she said. &#8220;That&#8217;s what hurts the most, is what his dad is going to miss and what he&#8217;s going to miss.&#8221; She recalled when the boy grasped that Higbee wasn&#8217;t coming home again. &#8220;When you have a five-year-old break down and cry that he misses his dad, that is the most heartbreaking thing you can ever experience,&#8221; she said. &#8220;I picked him up and I said, &#8216;I miss him too, and I&#8217;m here for you when you need me.'&#8221;</p> <p>Luke struggled to recount her experience but said she was compelled to share it. People needed to know about who gets left behind and what they face, she said.</p> <p>&#8220;They should have psychological evaluations on everyone that owns a gun,&#8221; she continued. &#8220;I know that sounds crazy, but they have a way of telling people who are sane and not sane by things that they say. Not everyone should have a gun.&#8221; &amp;#160;</p> <p>Why did the shooter do it? And could he have been stopped?</p> <p>Those twin questions haunt the survivors of every mass shooting, and they are always difficult to answer. Several hours into the threat assessment training, Palarea asked the community leaders whether they were comfortable discussing their own recent case. He&#8217;d confided to me over dinner the night before that he wasn&#8217;t sure he should even go there, given how fresh the attack still was. And there likely wouldn&#8217;t be any satisfying answers to those core questions. Nonetheless, the group agreed to proceed. The discussion was brief and somewhat circumspect (and not for public disclosure), but it underscored behaviors and circumstances to watch out for&#8212;domestic violence, drug abuse, menacing comments&#8212;and how to communicate more effectively among local agencies and institutions about individuals of concern.</p> <p>With the encouragement of event organizers, Palarea also decided that he would not leave out his most graphic training material. Ford&#8217;s attack was the latest in a long history of similar workplace violence. Palarea gave an in-depth analysis of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Farley" type="external">a 1988 case</a> in Sunnyvale, California, where Richard Farley went on a rampage at the technology company ESL Incorporated, killing seven coworkers and wounding four others. One of the survivors, Laura Black, had rejected Farley&#8217;s romantic advances; after he continued harassing her and turned abusive, ESL fired him. This was another case where a restraining order appeared to have triggered the plan for an attack: The day before the order obtained by Black was to go into effect, Farley struck.&amp;#160;</p> <p>Palarea highlighted how ESL&#8217;s termination of Farley had obviously turned out to be an inadequate solution to the threat&#8212;and may have worsened it. He showed a clip of an interview conducted with Farley after he was taken into custody. Once ESL had fired him, Farley stated coldly to investigators, &#8220;They lost control of me.&#8221; Punitive measures may well be necessary in response to aberrant behavior, Palarea explained, but understanding and dealing with the root grievance remains crucial.</p> <p /> <p>A few months before the rampage at Excel, Ford had <a href="http://heavy.com/news/2016/02/cedric-ford-hesston-kansas-shooting-shooter-facebook-video-firing-rifle-gun-field-ak47-ak-47-long-gun-photos-watch-youtube/" type="external">posted a video</a> on Facebook: The footage showed him standing at the side of a road, firing dozens of rounds from an AK-47 into an empty field. Was it just a guy harmlessly blowing off some steam, or something more ominous?</p> <p>Perhaps a threat assessment team could have gained insight into Ford&#8217;s mental state and motivations. &#8220;It&#8217;s a matter of the community keeping eyes and ears open for concerns,&#8221; Palarea explains, &#8220;and reporting those concerns to authorities, whether school administrators, workplace threat assessment teams, or the police.&#8221; Once a tip comes in, a local threat assessment team scrutinizes the subject&#8217;s behavior and circumstances for signs that person could be contemplating an attack. Indicators can include the acquisition of weapons, surveillance of a target, or communicating threats about intended victims, whether directly or indirectly (as is more commonly the case). &#8220;Once we get a heads up, we can intervene,&#8221; says Palarea. &#8220;We can get the person mental health treatment if it&#8217;s appropriate. We can help the person resolve conflict in a positive way instead of using violence as a solution to the problem. We can get the people the help they need, to prevent these things from happening.&#8221;&amp;#160;</p> <p /> <p>Misty Elder-Serene, a director at Prairie View Hospital who arranged the training, told me that the community&#8217;s interest in threat assessment stemmed in part from its social ethics: Though rural Kansas is gun country, the heavily Mennonite region is also marked by a culture of pacifism and commitment to social justice, she said. Those crosscurrents prompted some interesting conversations after the mass shooting&#8212;not so much a debate about gun violence as a discussion about &#8220;how can we heal, and how can we be safe.&#8221; The concept of threat assessment resonated with its imperative to better understand and manage people who could turn dangerous.</p> <p>&#8220;It&#8217;s easy to just divide it into, &#8216;Oh well, it&#8217;s a gun problem&#8217; or &#8216;It&#8217;s a mental health problem,'&#8221; remarked Dr. Mary Carman, a VP of psychological services at Prairie View. &#8220;It&#8217;s not. It is 12 problems, at least, that have to be addressed.&#8221;&amp;#160;</p> <p>Some in the community expressed a striking degree of compassion for the killer. At a church in Hesston on the Sunday evening after the attack, the service included four candles: three for those murdered, and a fourth for Ford. One person who was wounded, speaking to a reporter from his hospital bed, talked about seeing the look in Ford&#8217;s eyes and understanding how much pain he was in.</p> <p>Several leaders at the training expressed the hope that their response to the tragedy might serve as a model for other communities upended by mass shootings. Carman, who has worked in mental health for more than three decades, noted that Prairie View Hospital was founded by World War II-era conscientious objectors who&#8217;d served in so-called insane asylums, where people with mental health issues were often treated brutally. The hospital&#8217;s founders felt there had to be a more humane and effective way to deal with disruptive, troubled people.</p> <p>&#8220;I think that passion still permeates the [local] culture,&#8221; Carman told me. Ford&#8217;s attack was shocking, &#8220;but we can do something. We can learn more about it. We can help teach others. Some of this can be prevented. Let&#8217;s not just sit here and do nothing.&#8221;</p> <p /> <p>Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and the wealthy wouldn&#8217;t fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.</p> <p>Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation so we can keep on doing the type of journalism that 2018 demands.</p> <p>Mark Follman is the national affairs editor at Mother Jones. Contact him with tips or feedback at mfollman@motherjones.com.</p> <p><a href="" type="internal">Mark Follman</a></p>

One Small Town’s Plan to Prevent Another Mass Shooting

https://motherjones.com/politics/2017/03/mass-shooting-hesston-kansas-threat-assessment/

2017-03-07

4left

On a breezy unusually warm morning in late October about 60 cops mental health counselors pastors and business leaders are gathered inside a community center in Newton Kansas for an intensive training They sit mostly stonefaced around folding tables with coffee and pastries as Dr Russell Palarea launches into a close analysis of the 1999 cult comedy Office Space He explains why the behavior of Milton Waddams8212a memorably pathetic cubicle dweller who suffers multiple indignities at the hands of his coworkers8212holds the key to preventing a mass shootingamp160 amp160 Palarea cues a series of clips that show Milton muttering under his breath about a prized red Swingline stapler taken from him by his bullying boss As the film progresses Milton8217s socially awkward affect begins to turn more hostile Eventually he slinks into the boss8217s office to repossess the stapler Palarea pauses the video to underscore the telling escalation 8220He8217s taken matters into his own hands He8217s moved from idea to action8221 By the final clip Milton has burned down the office building and decamped to a beach resort in Mexico where he mumbles about slipping strychnine into the guacamole The dark comedy cracks a couple of smiles serving both as an icebreaker and an initial lesson on the behavioral warning signs of an attack8212an obsessive grievance oblique threats about killing Palarea a forensic psychologist based in Washington DC is a leading practitioner of threat assessment an emerging field in which mental health and law enforcement experts work together to identify and deter individuals who may be poised to commit violent attacks At his invitation I8217d come to this rural heavily Mennonite region about 30 miles north of Wichita to observe him train an unprecedented group Virtually every person in the room was connected to the events of February 25 2016 when a disturbed employee at the lawnmower plant in nearby Hesston went on a rampage killing three people and wounding 14 others In today8217s era of activeshooter drills leaders here in Harvey County didn8217t want to focus just on how to respond in the event of another attack they wanted to understand what led to the rampage and do what they could to ensure that another one however unlikely wouldn8217t occur They had learned about Palarea8217s work after reading a 2015 story I wrote about an innovative strategy to prevent mass shootings and flew him in to teach them the fundamentals of threat assessment Palarea has been in the threat assessment field for more than two decades consulting with teams for the military federal agencies colleges and corporations When working in these various settings he told me he8217s always emphasized the same theme 8220You need to worry about this happening here8221 But the theme in Harvey County was new 8220Let8217s heal from this and make sure it doesn8217t happen again8221 I8217d also come to Kansas to gain a deeper sense of the impact from the mass shooting long after the news cameras were gone and the rest of America had moved on Though the experience was still raw for many at the training participants also expressed a sense of empowerment in part because threat assessment defies the conventional wisdom that nothing can really be done to prevent mass shootings 8220As a clinician when you are confronted with the fact that there might be harm or danger it8217s isolating8221 Karla Roth a mental health counselor told me 8220To know that you can work together and not be alone in it8212that8217s hopeful8221amp160 amp160 Roth was among a small team from Prairie View Hospital in Newton that had rushed to Hesston to help in the immediate aftermath of the shooting Initially she didn8217t know the status of her husband and soninlaw who both worked inside the Excel facility 8220It was horror Then when I found out that they were OK I just had to help8221 she said 8220This is a peaceful quiet wanttolivein place To have it happen here is something no one would have ever thought8221 amp160 As the sun began to sink across the hayfields Harvey County Sheriff Townsend 8220T8221 Walton took me for a ride in his cruiser He retraced a chaotic path that started around 5 pm that day A burst of calls had come over the radio in the span of just a few minutes8212one two and then three shootings Gun violence had been relatively rare in Walton8217s three decades of law enforcement in the region8212and never anything like what he was hearing now 8220In my head I8217m going 8216Is this terrorism8221 he recalled It was just two months after the massacre in San Bernardino California 8220I8217m not thinking 8216This is a guy who just got served a protectionfromabuse letter and he8217s flipped out8221amp160 Thirtyeightyearold Cedric Ford was a recent transplant to Newton who worked the paint line at Excel He had a criminal record in Florida and had come to the attention of local authorities for beating up his girlfriend About three hours before the attack 8220everything was totally normal8221 and Ford seemed 8220happy as all could be8221 remarked a coworker who8217d chatted with him in the Excel parking lot Soon afterwards sheriff8217s deputies showed up at Excel to serve Ford with a protection order obtained by his girlfriend apparently triggering his plan to go on a killing spree Ford drove home binged on meth and booze and got back into his car with an AK47 assault rifle and Glock handgun Walton slowed down just past the intersection of 12th Street and Meridian where he8217d reached Ford8217s first victims Paramedics were rushing a middleaged man with a bloodsoaked shoulder out of a pickup truck strafed with bullet holes The man8217s two grandchildren cowering in the rear of the cab were amazingly unharmed Just up the road Ford had slammed his car to a halt in the road in front of his next victim a 74yearold woman who refused his demand to relinquish her vehicle Miraculously she also survived unscathed ducking into the passenger seat as Ford fired through the driver8217s side window Ford succeeded in taking a truck from his third victim the young man he shot in the leg along Old Highway 81 likely would have died if a sheriff8217s deputy hadn8217t arrived moments later with a tourniquet It is unclear why Ford went on the carjacking spree His mental state was impaired and volatile but he also may have been having trouble with his car Walton was handling triage near 12th and Meridian when the radio erupted again There was an active shooter inside Excel Emergency dispatchers were quickly overwhelmed with nearly 50 calls from the plant Walton immediately contacted his chief deputy 8220Get ahold of everybody we have and send them to Hesston8221 amp160 As police vehicles and ambulances screamed toward the town Hesston police chief Doug Schroeder had already reached Excel and found pandemonium The large glass doors at the front of the plant had been shot out Scores of employees were fleeing across the parking lots some helping wounded coworkers Schroeder didn8217t know who was shooting inside the mammoth facility or where But like most law enforcement leaders trained in the postColumbine era he knew he could not hesitate An active shooter fires an average of every four seconds And hundreds of people were still inside the building Schroeder entered through a side door his Colt AR15 rifle in hand He saw blood trails on the floor both to the left and the right It was quiet He went right toward the main entrance and began to hear gunfire He moved through several more hallways to an office area where he encountered a frightened employee As they began to speak the glass window in the door next to them shattered Ford was just on the other side 8220I8217m going to get you8221 Schroeder recalled him saying The terrified employee bolted as the barrel of Ford8217s rifle poked through the doorway Ford came through the door and chased after the employee unaware that Schroeder was just behind him Schroeder took aim with his rifle and fired four shots As Ford spun and went down he raised his pistol and fired at Schroeder He missed 8220I saw the shell casings being ejected from the handgun but I didn8217t hear the shots8221 Schroeder recalledamp160 Many employees were hiding in nearby offices and Ford was carrying plenty more ammo when he was killed There is no way to know how many lives were saved by the 41yearold police chief who waved off a flurry of praise and said he didn8217t want his service to be defined by this one tragic event 8220He8217s a humble man8221 Walton remarked as we pulled out of the Excel parking lot 8220But he was a hero to me and without a doubt to the hundreds that got to go home that night8221 amp160 Excel employs about a thousand people and many in this sparsely populated region are connected to someone who works at the plant I visited Subrina Luke a bighearted woman with a wide smile at her small apartment near the Wichita airport She recalled how she was feeling grumpy when her fianc233e Josh Higbee dropped her off at her job that morning She was short on sleep and had forgotten her usual morning beverage and she8217d closed the car door without even saying goodbye She was surprised when Higbee walked into the LensCrafters where she worked about 15 minutes lateramp160 amp160 8220What are you doing here8221 8220Just bringing you a drink8221 8220You didn8217t have to do that8221 she said cracking a grin 8220Yes I did woman You would have been calling me for one8221 He kissed her goodbye They8217d been together for almost two years sharing an apartment and raising Higbee8217s spry fouryearold son from a prior relationship who called Luke his mommy A few hours later the 31yearold Higbee headed up the road to Excel He mostly disliked his job as a welder on the second shift but was glad to be pulling in 23plus an hour for his family The first call came from their fouryearold8217s babysitter whose boyfriend also worked at Excel 8220There was a shooting at the job8221 she said Luke8217s heart dropped but the babysitter knew no details and Luke wouldn8217t be able to reach Higbee during his shift She tried to focus on helping her customers Her phone kept buzzing During a break she answered a call from one of Higbee8217s coworkers 8220I8217m sorry8221 the woman told her 8220but Josh is gone8221 8220I think I screamed so loud everyone in the mall heard me8221 Luke recalled fighting through tears as we sat in her living room sunlight jagging through the window blinds Higbee8217s son now five was playing in the bedroom with a pastor who8217d been helping Luke and the boy through the recovery process The youngster seemed to be doing remarkably well bounding over to me to show off a favorite toy and hugging Luke affectionately before going off to play while we talked Luke reflected on being robbed of her partner and the boy of his father 8220He8217s not going to get to see him graduate high school he8217s not going to even get to see him on his first day of school8221 she said 8220That8217s what hurts the most is what his dad is going to miss and what he8217s going to miss8221 She recalled when the boy grasped that Higbee wasn8217t coming home again 8220When you have a fiveyearold break down and cry that he misses his dad that is the most heartbreaking thing you can ever experience8221 she said 8220I picked him up and I said 8216I miss him too and I8217m here for you when you need me8221 Luke struggled to recount her experience but said she was compelled to share it People needed to know about who gets left behind and what they face she said 8220They should have psychological evaluations on everyone that owns a gun8221 she continued 8220I know that sounds crazy but they have a way of telling people who are sane and not sane by things that they say Not everyone should have a gun8221 amp160 Why did the shooter do it And could he have been stopped Those twin questions haunt the survivors of every mass shooting and they are always difficult to answer Several hours into the threat assessment training Palarea asked the community leaders whether they were comfortable discussing their own recent case He8217d confided to me over dinner the night before that he wasn8217t sure he should even go there given how fresh the attack still was And there likely wouldn8217t be any satisfying answers to those core questions Nonetheless the group agreed to proceed The discussion was brief and somewhat circumspect and not for public disclosure but it underscored behaviors and circumstances to watch out for8212domestic violence drug abuse menacing comments8212and how to communicate more effectively among local agencies and institutions about individuals of concern With the encouragement of event organizers Palarea also decided that he would not leave out his most graphic training material Ford8217s attack was the latest in a long history of similar workplace violence Palarea gave an indepth analysis of a 1988 case in Sunnyvale California where Richard Farley went on a rampage at the technology company ESL Incorporated killing seven coworkers and wounding four others One of the survivors Laura Black had rejected Farley8217s romantic advances after he continued harassing her and turned abusive ESL fired him This was another case where a restraining order appeared to have triggered the plan for an attack The day before the order obtained by Black was to go into effect Farley struckamp160 Palarea highlighted how ESL8217s termination of Farley had obviously turned out to be an inadequate solution to the threat8212and may have worsened it He showed a clip of an interview conducted with Farley after he was taken into custody Once ESL had fired him Farley stated coldly to investigators 8220They lost control of me8221 Punitive measures may well be necessary in response to aberrant behavior Palarea explained but understanding and dealing with the root grievance remains crucial A few months before the rampage at Excel Ford had posted a video on Facebook The footage showed him standing at the side of a road firing dozens of rounds from an AK47 into an empty field Was it just a guy harmlessly blowing off some steam or something more ominous Perhaps a threat assessment team could have gained insight into Ford8217s mental state and motivations 8220It8217s a matter of the community keeping eyes and ears open for concerns8221 Palarea explains 8220and reporting those concerns to authorities whether school administrators workplace threat assessment teams or the police8221 Once a tip comes in a local threat assessment team scrutinizes the subject8217s behavior and circumstances for signs that person could be contemplating an attack Indicators can include the acquisition of weapons surveillance of a target or communicating threats about intended victims whether directly or indirectly as is more commonly the case 8220Once we get a heads up we can intervene8221 says Palarea 8220We can get the person mental health treatment if it8217s appropriate We can help the person resolve conflict in a positive way instead of using violence as a solution to the problem We can get the people the help they need to prevent these things from happening8221amp160 Misty ElderSerene a director at Prairie View Hospital who arranged the training told me that the community8217s interest in threat assessment stemmed in part from its social ethics Though rural Kansas is gun country the heavily Mennonite region is also marked by a culture of pacifism and commitment to social justice she said Those crosscurrents prompted some interesting conversations after the mass shooting8212not so much a debate about gun violence as a discussion about 8220how can we heal and how can we be safe8221 The concept of threat assessment resonated with its imperative to better understand and manage people who could turn dangerous 8220It8217s easy to just divide it into 8216Oh well it8217s a gun problem8217 or 8216It8217s a mental health problem8221 remarked Dr Mary Carman a VP of psychological services at Prairie View 8220It8217s not It is 12 problems at least that have to be addressed8221amp160 Some in the community expressed a striking degree of compassion for the killer At a church in Hesston on the Sunday evening after the attack the service included four candles three for those murdered and a fourth for Ford One person who was wounded speaking to a reporter from his hospital bed talked about seeing the look in Ford8217s eyes and understanding how much pain he was in Several leaders at the training expressed the hope that their response to the tragedy might serve as a model for other communities upended by mass shootings Carman who has worked in mental health for more than three decades noted that Prairie View Hospital was founded by World War IIera conscientious objectors who8217d served in socalled insane asylums where people with mental health issues were often treated brutally The hospital8217s founders felt there had to be a more humane and effective way to deal with disruptive troubled people 8220I think that passion still permeates the local culture8221 Carman told me Ford8217s attack was shocking 8220but we can do something We can learn more about it We can help teach others Some of this can be prevented Let8217s not just sit here and do nothing8221 Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and the wealthy wouldn8217t fund the type of hardhitting journalism we set out to do Today reader support makes up about twothirds of our budget allows us to dig deep on stories that matter and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone If you value what you get from Mother Jones please join us with a taxdeductible donation so we can keep on doing the type of journalism that 2018 demands Mark Follman is the national affairs editor at Mother Jones Contact him with tips or feedback at mfollmanmotherjonescom Mark Follman

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<p>What the emphasis on racism blinds us to is that the justice system is corrupt because justice does not play a role in it.</p> <p>Your purchases at <a href="https://www.amazon.com/?_encoding=UTF8&amp;amp;camp=1789&amp;amp;creative=9325&amp;amp;linkCode=ur2&amp;amp;tag=forepolijour-20&amp;amp;linkId=QBLURRIJM7RG4UUE" type="external">Amazon.com</a> via affiliate links below will help support FPJ at no extra cost to you.</p> <p>On January 23, 2017, I asked, &#8220;Are Americans Racists?&#8221; I pointed out examples where racist explanations prevail over empirical fact. I did not write that there is no racism in America. I said that racism is not the be-all and end-all explanation of American history and institutions. The point I made is that racist explanations are often inadequate and both work against racial harmony and blind us to more general and more serious problems.</p> <p>Perhaps the worst of America&#8217;s failed institutions is the criminal justice system. The US has the largest prison population in the world, not only as a percentage of the population but also in absolute numbers. &#8220;Freedom and democracy&#8221; America has an absolute larger number of incarcerated citizens than &#8220;authoritarian&#8221; China, a country with four times the US population.</p> <p><a href="https://amzn.to/2jW7yCO" type="external">&amp;lt;img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-19426" src="https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/tyranny-good-intentions-paul-craig-roberts-194x300.jpg" alt="The Tyranny of Good Intentions by Paul Craig Roberts" width="194" height="300" srcset="https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/tyranny-good-intentions-paul-craig-roberts-194x300.jpg 194w, https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/tyranny-good-intentions-paul-craig-roberts-259x400.jpg 259w, https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/tyranny-good-intentions-paul-craig-roberts-142x220.jpg 142w, https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/tyranny-good-intentions-paul-craig-roberts-118x182.jpg 118w, https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/tyranny-good-intentions-paul-craig-roberts.jpg 324w" sizes="(max-width: 194px) 100vw, 194px" /&amp;gt;</a>Many factors contribute to this result. One is the privatization of prisons, which has turned them into profit-making enterprises ever needful of more labor to exploit, which adds to the pressure for convictions. Another factor is the disregard of the protective features of law in order to more easily pursue demonized offender groups, such as the Mafia, child abusers, drug dealers and users, and &#8220;terrorists.&#8221; Lawrence M. Stratton and I describe the transformation of law from a shield of the people into a weapon in the hands of the state in our book, <a href="https://amzn.to/2ksVqwd" type="external">The Tyranny of Good Intentions</a>.</p> <p>This transformation did not occur because of racism. It occurred because chasing after devils and convicting them became more important than justice. Today the criminal justice system is largely indifferent to a defendant&#8217;s guilt or innocence. This is a far worst problem than racism. It is&amp;#160;the main reason that there are so many false convictions in the US and so many wrongfully convicted Americans in prison. Indeed, even the guilty are&amp;#160;wrongfully convicted as it is easier to frame them than to convict them on the evidence.</p> <p>To be clear: The primary reason for wrongful conviction is that the success indicator for police, prosecutor, and judge is conviction, not justice. Crimes are solved by wrongful convictions. High conviction rates boost the careers of prosecutors, and high profile convictions boost their political careers. The key to rapid and numerous convictions is the plea bargain. And plea bargains suit judges as they keep the court docket clear. Today 97% of felony cases are settled with a plea bargain. This means police evidence and a prosecutor&#8217;s case are tested only three times out of 100. When the evidence and case are tested in court, the test confronts a vast array of prosecutorial misconduct, such as suborned perjury and the withholding of exculpatory evidence. In America, everything is loaded against Justice.</p> <p>In a plea bargain police do not have to present evidence, prosecutors do not have to bring a case, and judges do not have to pay attention to the case and be troubled by a growing backlog as trials consume days and weeks.</p> <p>In a plea bargain the defendant, innocent or guilty, is told that he can plead to this or that offence, which carries a lighter sentence than the crime that allegedly has actually occurred and on which the defendant is arrested, or the defendant can go to trial where he will face more serious charges that carry much harsher penalties. As it has become routine for police to falsify evidence, for prosecutors to suborn perjury and withhold exculpatory evidence, for jurors naively to trust police and prosecutors, and for judges to look the other way, attorneys advise defendants to accept a plea deal. In other words, no one expects a fair trial or for real evidence to play a role in the outcome.</p> <p>The short of it is that the pursuit of justice is not a feature of the American criminal justice system. Justice does not matter to the police, to the prosecutor, to the jury, to the judge, and often not to the hardened defense attorney who has witnessed so much injustice that he believes justice is a fairy tale.</p> <p>The only exception to this is the justice introduced from outside the justice system by innocence projects and pro bono attorneys, such as Bryan Stevenson, director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama.</p> <p><a href="https://amzn.to/2jWcqYq" type="external">&amp;lt;img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-36936" src="https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/just-mercy-195x300.jpg" alt="Just Mercy" width="195" height="300" srcset="https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/just-mercy-195x300.jpg 195w, https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/just-mercy-97x150.jpg 97w, https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/just-mercy.jpg 324w" sizes="(max-width: 195px) 100vw, 195px" /&amp;gt;</a>In 2014 Stevenson published <a href="https://amzn.to/2ksU2K4" type="external">Just Mercy</a>, a fascinating collection of case histories of wrongful convictions that he and his colleagues managed to have overturned. A book such as this benefits from a main case, and the one that Stevenson delivers is that of Walter McMillian. It required six years for Stevenson to overturn what must be the most obvious, blatant frameup of a completely innocent man in US history. There were a large number of witnesses who testified that they were with McMillian at a fish fry&amp;#160;during the time that a murder for which McMillian was indicted and convicted took place. The only &#8220;evidence&#8221; against McMillian was the suborned perjury of a man who retracted his coerced testimony three times, once in the courtroom of Alabama Judge Thomas B. Norton, who simply ignored it.</p> <p>McMillian is black, and the sheriff, prosecutor, judge, and jury that framed him are white. This fact, together with the fact that the ignored witnesses&amp;#160;whose testimony cleared McMillian were black and McMillian&#8217;s sexual affair with a white woman in a small Alabama town, seem to convince Stevenson that McMillian was convicted because of racism.</p> <p /> <p /> <p>McMillian was falsely convicted, (1) because sheriff John Tate was under community criticism for the failure to solve the murder case of a young woman and needed someone to arrest for the crime, (2) because Ralph Meyers gave false testimony against McMillian for confused reasons that did not work out for him, (3) because the local newspaper, as newspapers are wont to do, convicted McMillian in the press, which meant that the jury had to convict or be accused of letting off a murderer, and (4) because the judge, Robert E. Lee Key, not only is unworthy of his name but most certainly did not have the fortitude to run a fair trial when the only possible outcome for his career and reputation in the community was conviction. Neither did his successor, Thomas B. Norton, have fortitude for the same reasons.</p> <p>I am convinced that all of these representatives of the justice system are racists, but they would have convicted McMillian for the same reasons if he had been white. If the justice system was concerned with justice, he would not have been convicted irrespective or race or gender.</p> <p>What the emphasis on racism blinds us to is that the justice system is corrupt because justice does not play a role in it. Justice has to be brought into the system from outside by people such as Bryan Stevenson. And for people such as Stevenson to bring justice into the justice system, they must have a high tolerance for death threats and for witnessing justice fail again and again.</p> <p /> <p /> <p>Stevenson describes the convictions of white women by white women. In the aftermath of hurricanes and tornadoes that wrecked coastal Alabama, Marsha Colbey gave premature birth to a stillborn son. She came to the attention of police because her busybody neighbor Debbie Cook had noticed the pregnancy but saw no child.</p> <p>Colbey&#8217;s fate was sealed by the media craze set aflame by Andrea Yates and Susan Smith&#8217;s murders of their children. Media sensationalized the baseless suspicion surrounding Colbey and turned her into another &#8220;dangerous mother.&#8221; Forensic pathologist Kathleen Enstice testified without evidence that Colbey&#8217;s son had been born alive and had died by drowning. The state&#8217;s own expert witness, Dr. Dennis McNally, and the defense&#8217;s expert witness Dr. Werner Spitz testified that Colbey&#8217;s age alone placed her pregnancy at high risk for fetal death and that there was no scientific evidence that a crime had occurred.</p> <p>Irresponsible media had communities and juries on the lookout for &#8220;dangerous moms&#8221; who should be put in prison, and they found one (along with many others) in Colbey. The trial judge permitted Colbey&#8217;s fate to be decided by jurors who stated that they could not honor the presumption of innocence in Colbey&#8217;s case. Other jurors said that they always believe the police and prosecutor. This failure of justice enabled Stevenson after years of effort to secure Colbey&#8217;s release. Clearly, Colbey&#8217;s wrongful conviction had nothing to do with racism. Identity politics would want to say she was convicted by misogynists, but Colbey was the victim of other women.</p> <p>Justice is so absent in the criminal justice system that Victoria Banks in order to avoid capital punishment was coerced into a plea bargain carrying a 20-year sentence for murdering her child after her pregnancy despite the fact that there was no pregnancy and no child. Stevenson was able to win her release by establishing that she had had a tubal ligation five years prior to her alleged pregnancy, which made it biologically impossible for her to conceive and give birth to a child.</p> <p>A woman whose tubes were tied, for which conclusive medical evidence existed, five years before she was accused of having just had a child that she murdered is forced into a plea bargain carrying 20 years in order to avoid the electric chair. Perhaps only Alabama could produce something this absurd, but this is a faithful picture of American &#8220;justice.&#8221;</p> <p /> <p /> <p>This is a faithful picture of justice in America.</p> <p>The justice system needs victims, and is focused on ruining people&#8217;s lives whether they deserve it or not. The more American lives ruined, the greater the success of the justice system.</p> <p>There is a current case in Alabama of a US Marine honorably discharged who suffers from PTSD. To help out a family friend, who needed a car for work but could not obtain a loan, the Marine sold him a car of his own, which the family friend was to pay off monthly. When payments stopped, the former Marine inquired. Payments were promised, and the family friend offered his cell phone to be held until payments caught up, as an indication of his good faith to pay.</p> <p>It turned out to be the wrong cell phone, not the debtor&#8217;s personal phone but a company-issued one. The company regarded it as a theft by the Marine, and the family friend had to report it to the police. The fact that it was all a misunderstanding has not caused the justice system to drop the case. Instead the prosecutor is demanding a misdemeanor plea. In other words, another person with something on his record who can be a suspect for the next burglary. As everyone in the case is white, injustice is occurring despite the absence of racism.</p> <p>It is a paradox that child protection laws in the hands of police and prosecutors have become weapons with which to ruin children.</p> <p>A father whose son is being ruined for life over nothing sent me the story with his permission to publish it as a warning to others about the heartlessness with which the justice system irresponsibly ruins even the immature young. This story again demonstrates that the function of American justice is not justice, but to ruin as many people as possible and as early in life as possible. The gratuitously ruined lives that the justice system achieves is the monument to the success of justice.</p> <p>I decided not to publish it, not because I disbelieve it, but because the son has not been sentenced, and protestations of innocence in media, as Stevenson says, can prejudice authorities against the defendant, especially in Virginia where this miscarriage of justice took place. I do not want to expose the son to risk in the event that the father is wrong, as I suspect he is, in expecting publicity to elicit compassion and empathy that would moderate an unjust event.</p> <p /> <p /> <p>Let&#8217;s call the son Zach. Having just turned 18, he was visiting a young woman his age whose younger sister introduced him via social media to a 13 year old female who shared his interest in dragons and animation. The two never met. As their shared interest developed via the Internet, so did their friendship.</p> <p>As the natural process that turns a girl into a woman progressed, the cyber relationship developed a romantic aspect. The girl/woman sent Zach five photographs of herself in her underwear.</p> <p>Later the girl/woman developed emotional problems due to the impending divorce of her parents and was admitted to a mental health facility. At some point she confided her cyber relationship with Zach to a counselor. The &#8220;child protection&#8221; laws required the counselor to inform the police, who seized Zach&#8217;s computer and found chat logs and the five photos.</p> <p>The consequence was that Zach was charged with 20 felony indictments carrying 350 years in prison. As they always are, the charges were vastly overstated. For example, the five photos sent to Zach of a torso in underwear (apparently the girl&#8217;s face was not shown) got Zach charged with distribution of child pornography.</p> <p>No charges were filed by the parents of the girl. The charges were entirely the idea of the prosecutor&#8217;s office, and the 350 years produced a plea bargain to lesser offences. American criminal justice had secured another victim.</p> <p>In the absurdity that is American law you can be guilty of &#8220;indecent liberties with a minor&#8221; without ever having seen the girl in person or ever having been close enough to touch. The advent of virtual reality and video screens means that crimes can have happened in virtual reality that did not happen in real reality.</p> <p>In my days it was almost impossible to be guilty of indecent liberties with a minor, because the age of female sexual consent was 14. But as females sexually matured earlier, the age of sexual consent was irrationally pushed higher. Today the legal age that a male may have sex with a female is 18. In other words, the absurd American legal system pretends that women do not have sex until after they graduate from high school. Who can imagine college dorms full of virginal women?</p> <p>When America had a livable legal system, law was based on the common ordinary behavior of people. This is known as the Common Law, the foundation of law in England and the United States.</p> <p>Today the law is so uncommon as to be absurd. Yet absurdity is enforced with vengeance.</p> <p>The video age means that crimes can be committed by looking at a video screen, and that is what happened to Zach. Neither his attorney nor the judge told Zach and his parents that his coerced plea meant that there was no appeal and that he was registered for life as a sex offender. Zach had committed a &#8220;violent sex offense&#8221; online! It was the girl who sent the photos, but the offense was Zach&#8217;s for having them on his computer.</p> <p /> <p /> <p>This is America, a country totally devoid of justice, a hapless country forced to suffer injustice except for those few cases that heroes such as Bryan Stevenson are able to overturn.</p> <p>If only Americans in their so-called democracy had the power to make Bryan Stevenson Attorney General for life and give him the power to write and enforce the laws would justice return to America.</p> <p>God help a country as totally devoid of justice as the United States of America.</p> <p /> <p /> <p>Police, prosecutorial and judicial misconduct seldom bear any cost. Just so you understand how &#8220;law&#8217;&#8221; completely protects the police, prosecutors and judges who routinely violate it, as Stevenson reports, &#8220;state and federal courts have persistently insulated prosecutors from accountability for egregious misconduct that results in innocent people being sent to death row.&#8221; In 2011 a Republican Supreme Court ruled that a prosecutor cannot be held liable for misconduct in a criminal case, even if he intentionally and illegally withheld evidence of innocence.</p> <p>In plain words, criminal actions against the innocent are now the legalized policy of the American criminal justice system.</p> <p>Are the American people moved by these extraordinary injustices and their legalization by the Supreme Court of the United States? Are the Alabamans in the same county who egged on the frame-up of Walter McMillian ashamed of their willing complicity in a gratuitous act of injustice? Absolutely not. They reelected sheriff Tate, and he remains in office today.</p> <p /> <p /> <p>This is the face of justice in America, a hapless country totally devoid of justice where law exists solely for the economic benefit of those whose careers rise with conviction rates, whether of the innocent or the guilty.</p> <p>Law professors, such as Harvard&#8217;s Charles Fried, have shown their indifference to wrongful conviction. Fried came up with the argument that &#8220;finality&#8221; was more important than justice. Fried was annoyed by appeals. He argued that ending a case had its own importance and that at some point appeals based on fresh evidence had to be cut off even if it meant an innocent person was executed or spent life in prison.</p> <p>Conservative legislators showed their indifference to wrongful conviction in 1994 when they took over Congress and promptly eliminated federal aid for legal representation of the wrongly convicted on death row. The conservatives were more comfortable with the deaths of innocents than with admitting the willful mistakes made by &#8220;law and order.&#8221;</p> <p>The indifference of Americans to injustice has spread outside US borders. The Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama regimes are responsible for millions of dead and displaced persons in 10 countries&#8212;Serbia, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, Syria, Ukraine, and Palestine. None of those responsible have expressed any remorse and neither have the American people.</p>

The Justice System Is Criminal

http://foreignpolicyjournal.com/2017/02/01/the-justice-system-is-criminal/

2017-02-01

1right-center

What the emphasis on racism blinds us to is that the justice system is corrupt because justice does not play a role in it Your purchases at Amazoncom via affiliate links below will help support FPJ at no extra cost to you On January 23 2017 I asked 8220Are Americans Racists8221 I pointed out examples where racist explanations prevail over empirical fact I did not write that there is no racism in America I said that racism is not the beall and endall explanation of American history and institutions The point I made is that racist explanations are often inadequate and both work against racial harmony and blind us to more general and more serious problems Perhaps the worst of America8217s failed institutions is the criminal justice system The US has the largest prison population in the world not only as a percentage of the population but also in absolute numbers 8220Freedom and democracy8221 America has an absolute larger number of incarcerated citizens than 8220authoritarian8221 China a country with four times the US population ampltimg classalignleft sizemedium wpimage19426 srchttpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201402tyrannygoodintentionspaulcraigroberts194x300jpg altThe Tyranny of Good Intentions by Paul Craig Roberts width194 height300 srcsethttpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201402tyrannygoodintentionspaulcraigroberts194x300jpg 194w httpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201402tyrannygoodintentionspaulcraigroberts259x400jpg 259w httpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201402tyrannygoodintentionspaulcraigroberts142x220jpg 142w httpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201402tyrannygoodintentionspaulcraigroberts118x182jpg 118w httpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201402tyrannygoodintentionspaulcraigrobertsjpg 324w sizesmaxwidth 194px 100vw 194px ampgtMany factors contribute to this result One is the privatization of prisons which has turned them into profitmaking enterprises ever needful of more labor to exploit which adds to the pressure for convictions Another factor is the disregard of the protective features of law in order to more easily pursue demonized offender groups such as the Mafia child abusers drug dealers and users and 8220terrorists8221 Lawrence M Stratton and I describe the transformation of law from a shield of the people into a weapon in the hands of the state in our book The Tyranny of Good Intentions This transformation did not occur because of racism It occurred because chasing after devils and convicting them became more important than justice Today the criminal justice system is largely indifferent to a defendant8217s guilt or innocence This is a far worst problem than racism It isamp160the main reason that there are so many false convictions in the US and so many wrongfully convicted Americans in prison Indeed even the guilty areamp160wrongfully convicted as it is easier to frame them than to convict them on the evidence To be clear The primary reason for wrongful conviction is that the success indicator for police prosecutor and judge is conviction not justice Crimes are solved by wrongful convictions High conviction rates boost the careers of prosecutors and high profile convictions boost their political careers The key to rapid and numerous convictions is the plea bargain And plea bargains suit judges as they keep the court docket clear Today 97 of felony cases are settled with a plea bargain This means police evidence and a prosecutor8217s case are tested only three times out of 100 When the evidence and case are tested in court the test confronts a vast array of prosecutorial misconduct such as suborned perjury and the withholding of exculpatory evidence In America everything is loaded against Justice In a plea bargain police do not have to present evidence prosecutors do not have to bring a case and judges do not have to pay attention to the case and be troubled by a growing backlog as trials consume days and weeks In a plea bargain the defendant innocent or guilty is told that he can plead to this or that offence which carries a lighter sentence than the crime that allegedly has actually occurred and on which the defendant is arrested or the defendant can go to trial where he will face more serious charges that carry much harsher penalties As it has become routine for police to falsify evidence for prosecutors to suborn perjury and withhold exculpatory evidence for jurors naively to trust police and prosecutors and for judges to look the other way attorneys advise defendants to accept a plea deal In other words no one expects a fair trial or for real evidence to play a role in the outcome The short of it is that the pursuit of justice is not a feature of the American criminal justice system Justice does not matter to the police to the prosecutor to the jury to the judge and often not to the hardened defense attorney who has witnessed so much injustice that he believes justice is a fairy tale The only exception to this is the justice introduced from outside the justice system by innocence projects and pro bono attorneys such as Bryan Stevenson director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery Alabama ampltimg classalignleft sizemedium wpimage36936 srchttpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201702justmercy195x300jpg altJust Mercy width195 height300 srcsethttpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201702justmercy195x300jpg 195w httpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201702justmercy97x150jpg 97w httpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201702justmercyjpg 324w sizesmaxwidth 195px 100vw 195px ampgtIn 2014 Stevenson published Just Mercy a fascinating collection of case histories of wrongful convictions that he and his colleagues managed to have overturned A book such as this benefits from a main case and the one that Stevenson delivers is that of Walter McMillian It required six years for Stevenson to overturn what must be the most obvious blatant frameup of a completely innocent man in US history There were a large number of witnesses who testified that they were with McMillian at a fish fryamp160during the time that a murder for which McMillian was indicted and convicted took place The only 8220evidence8221 against McMillian was the suborned perjury of a man who retracted his coerced testimony three times once in the courtroom of Alabama Judge Thomas B Norton who simply ignored it McMillian is black and the sheriff prosecutor judge and jury that framed him are white This fact together with the fact that the ignored witnessesamp160whose testimony cleared McMillian were black and McMillian8217s sexual affair with a white woman in a small Alabama town seem to convince Stevenson that McMillian was convicted because of racism McMillian was falsely convicted 1 because sheriff John Tate was under community criticism for the failure to solve the murder case of a young woman and needed someone to arrest for the crime 2 because Ralph Meyers gave false testimony against McMillian for confused reasons that did not work out for him 3 because the local newspaper as newspapers are wont to do convicted McMillian in the press which meant that the jury had to convict or be accused of letting off a murderer and 4 because the judge Robert E Lee Key not only is unworthy of his name but most certainly did not have the fortitude to run a fair trial when the only possible outcome for his career and reputation in the community was conviction Neither did his successor Thomas B Norton have fortitude for the same reasons I am convinced that all of these representatives of the justice system are racists but they would have convicted McMillian for the same reasons if he had been white If the justice system was concerned with justice he would not have been convicted irrespective or race or gender What the emphasis on racism blinds us to is that the justice system is corrupt because justice does not play a role in it Justice has to be brought into the system from outside by people such as Bryan Stevenson And for people such as Stevenson to bring justice into the justice system they must have a high tolerance for death threats and for witnessing justice fail again and again Stevenson describes the convictions of white women by white women In the aftermath of hurricanes and tornadoes that wrecked coastal Alabama Marsha Colbey gave premature birth to a stillborn son She came to the attention of police because her busybody neighbor Debbie Cook had noticed the pregnancy but saw no child Colbey8217s fate was sealed by the media craze set aflame by Andrea Yates and Susan Smith8217s murders of their children Media sensationalized the baseless suspicion surrounding Colbey and turned her into another 8220dangerous mother8221 Forensic pathologist Kathleen Enstice testified without evidence that Colbey8217s son had been born alive and had died by drowning The state8217s own expert witness Dr Dennis McNally and the defense8217s expert witness Dr Werner Spitz testified that Colbey8217s age alone placed her pregnancy at high risk for fetal death and that there was no scientific evidence that a crime had occurred Irresponsible media had communities and juries on the lookout for 8220dangerous moms8221 who should be put in prison and they found one along with many others in Colbey The trial judge permitted Colbey8217s fate to be decided by jurors who stated that they could not honor the presumption of innocence in Colbey8217s case Other jurors said that they always believe the police and prosecutor This failure of justice enabled Stevenson after years of effort to secure Colbey8217s release Clearly Colbey8217s wrongful conviction had nothing to do with racism Identity politics would want to say she was convicted by misogynists but Colbey was the victim of other women Justice is so absent in the criminal justice system that Victoria Banks in order to avoid capital punishment was coerced into a plea bargain carrying a 20year sentence for murdering her child after her pregnancy despite the fact that there was no pregnancy and no child Stevenson was able to win her release by establishing that she had had a tubal ligation five years prior to her alleged pregnancy which made it biologically impossible for her to conceive and give birth to a child A woman whose tubes were tied for which conclusive medical evidence existed five years before she was accused of having just had a child that she murdered is forced into a plea bargain carrying 20 years in order to avoid the electric chair Perhaps only Alabama could produce something this absurd but this is a faithful picture of American 8220justice8221 This is a faithful picture of justice in America The justice system needs victims and is focused on ruining people8217s lives whether they deserve it or not The more American lives ruined the greater the success of the justice system There is a current case in Alabama of a US Marine honorably discharged who suffers from PTSD To help out a family friend who needed a car for work but could not obtain a loan the Marine sold him a car of his own which the family friend was to pay off monthly When payments stopped the former Marine inquired Payments were promised and the family friend offered his cell phone to be held until payments caught up as an indication of his good faith to pay It turned out to be the wrong cell phone not the debtor8217s personal phone but a companyissued one The company regarded it as a theft by the Marine and the family friend had to report it to the police The fact that it was all a misunderstanding has not caused the justice system to drop the case Instead the prosecutor is demanding a misdemeanor plea In other words another person with something on his record who can be a suspect for the next burglary As everyone in the case is white injustice is occurring despite the absence of racism It is a paradox that child protection laws in the hands of police and prosecutors have become weapons with which to ruin children A father whose son is being ruined for life over nothing sent me the story with his permission to publish it as a warning to others about the heartlessness with which the justice system irresponsibly ruins even the immature young This story again demonstrates that the function of American justice is not justice but to ruin as many people as possible and as early in life as possible The gratuitously ruined lives that the justice system achieves is the monument to the success of justice I decided not to publish it not because I disbelieve it but because the son has not been sentenced and protestations of innocence in media as Stevenson says can prejudice authorities against the defendant especially in Virginia where this miscarriage of justice took place I do not want to expose the son to risk in the event that the father is wrong as I suspect he is in expecting publicity to elicit compassion and empathy that would moderate an unjust event Let8217s call the son Zach Having just turned 18 he was visiting a young woman his age whose younger sister introduced him via social media to a 13 year old female who shared his interest in dragons and animation The two never met As their shared interest developed via the Internet so did their friendship As the natural process that turns a girl into a woman progressed the cyber relationship developed a romantic aspect The girlwoman sent Zach five photographs of herself in her underwear Later the girlwoman developed emotional problems due to the impending divorce of her parents and was admitted to a mental health facility At some point she confided her cyber relationship with Zach to a counselor The 8220child protection8221 laws required the counselor to inform the police who seized Zach8217s computer and found chat logs and the five photos The consequence was that Zach was charged with 20 felony indictments carrying 350 years in prison As they always are the charges were vastly overstated For example the five photos sent to Zach of a torso in underwear apparently the girl8217s face was not shown got Zach charged with distribution of child pornography No charges were filed by the parents of the girl The charges were entirely the idea of the prosecutor8217s office and the 350 years produced a plea bargain to lesser offences American criminal justice had secured another victim In the absurdity that is American law you can be guilty of 8220indecent liberties with a minor8221 without ever having seen the girl in person or ever having been close enough to touch The advent of virtual reality and video screens means that crimes can have happened in virtual reality that did not happen in real reality In my days it was almost impossible to be guilty of indecent liberties with a minor because the age of female sexual consent was 14 But as females sexually matured earlier the age of sexual consent was irrationally pushed higher Today the legal age that a male may have sex with a female is 18 In other words the absurd American legal system pretends that women do not have sex until after they graduate from high school Who can imagine college dorms full of virginal women When America had a livable legal system law was based on the common ordinary behavior of people This is known as the Common Law the foundation of law in England and the United States Today the law is so uncommon as to be absurd Yet absurdity is enforced with vengeance The video age means that crimes can be committed by looking at a video screen and that is what happened to Zach Neither his attorney nor the judge told Zach and his parents that his coerced plea meant that there was no appeal and that he was registered for life as a sex offender Zach had committed a 8220violent sex offense8221 online It was the girl who sent the photos but the offense was Zach8217s for having them on his computer This is America a country totally devoid of justice a hapless country forced to suffer injustice except for those few cases that heroes such as Bryan Stevenson are able to overturn If only Americans in their socalled democracy had the power to make Bryan Stevenson Attorney General for life and give him the power to write and enforce the laws would justice return to America God help a country as totally devoid of justice as the United States of America Police prosecutorial and judicial misconduct seldom bear any cost Just so you understand how 8220law82178221 completely protects the police prosecutors and judges who routinely violate it as Stevenson reports 8220state and federal courts have persistently insulated prosecutors from accountability for egregious misconduct that results in innocent people being sent to death row8221 In 2011 a Republican Supreme Court ruled that a prosecutor cannot be held liable for misconduct in a criminal case even if he intentionally and illegally withheld evidence of innocence In plain words criminal actions against the innocent are now the legalized policy of the American criminal justice system Are the American people moved by these extraordinary injustices and their legalization by the Supreme Court of the United States Are the Alabamans in the same county who egged on the frameup of Walter McMillian ashamed of their willing complicity in a gratuitous act of injustice Absolutely not They reelected sheriff Tate and he remains in office today This is the face of justice in America a hapless country totally devoid of justice where law exists solely for the economic benefit of those whose careers rise with conviction rates whether of the innocent or the guilty Law professors such as Harvard8217s Charles Fried have shown their indifference to wrongful conviction Fried came up with the argument that 8220finality8221 was more important than justice Fried was annoyed by appeals He argued that ending a case had its own importance and that at some point appeals based on fresh evidence had to be cut off even if it meant an innocent person was executed or spent life in prison Conservative legislators showed their indifference to wrongful conviction in 1994 when they took over Congress and promptly eliminated federal aid for legal representation of the wrongly convicted on death row The conservatives were more comfortable with the deaths of innocents than with admitting the willful mistakes made by 8220law and order8221 The indifference of Americans to injustice has spread outside US borders The Clinton George W Bush and Obama regimes are responsible for millions of dead and displaced persons in 10 countries8212Serbia Somalia Afghanistan Iraq Libya Yemen Pakistan Syria Ukraine and Palestine None of those responsible have expressed any remorse and neither have the American people

What/PRON the/DET emphasis/NOUN on/ADP racism/NOUN blinds/VERB us/PRON to/PART is/AUX that/SCONJ the/DET justice/NOUN system/NOUN is/AUX corrupt/ADJ because/SCONJ justice/NOUN does/AUX not/PART play/VERB a/DET role/NOUN in/ADP it/PRON Your/PRON purchases/NOUN at/ADP Amazoncom/PROPN via/ADP affiliate/NOUN links/NOUN below/ADV will/AUX help/VERB support/VERB FPJ/PROPN at/ADP no/DET extra/ADJ cost/NOUN to/ADP you/PRON On/ADP January/PROPN 23/NUM 2017/NUM I/PRON asked/VERB 8220Are/DET Americans/PROPN Racists8221/PROPN I/PRON pointed/VERB out/ADP examples/NOUN where/SCONJ racist/ADJ explanations/NOUN prevail/VERB over/ADP empirical/ADJ fact/NOUN I/PRON did/AUX not/PART write/VERB that/SCONJ there/PRON is/VERB no/DET racism/NOUN in/ADP America/PROPN I/PRON said/VERB that/SCONJ racism/NOUN is/AUX not/PART the/DET beall/NOUN and/CCONJ endall/NOUN explanation/NOUN of/ADP American/ADJ history/NOUN and/CCONJ institutions/NOUN The/DET point/NOUN I/PRON made/VERB is/AUX that/SCONJ racist/ADJ 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<p>What the emphasis on racism blinds us to is that the justice system is corrupt because justice does not play a role in it.</p> <p>Your purchases at <a href="https://www.amazon.com/?_encoding=UTF8&amp;amp;camp=1789&amp;amp;creative=9325&amp;amp;linkCode=ur2&amp;amp;tag=forepolijour-20&amp;amp;linkId=QBLURRIJM7RG4UUE" type="external">Amazon.com</a> via affiliate links below will help support FPJ at no extra cost to you.</p> <p>On January 23, 2017, I asked, &#8220;Are Americans Racists?&#8221; I pointed out examples where racist explanations prevail over empirical fact. I did not write that there is no racism in America. I said that racism is not the be-all and end-all explanation of American history and institutions. The point I made is that racist explanations are often inadequate and both work against racial harmony and blind us to more general and more serious problems.</p> <p>Perhaps the worst of America&#8217;s failed institutions is the criminal justice system. The US has the largest prison population in the world, not only as a percentage of the population but also in absolute numbers. &#8220;Freedom and democracy&#8221; America has an absolute larger number of incarcerated citizens than &#8220;authoritarian&#8221; China, a country with four times the US population.</p> <p><a href="https://amzn.to/2jW7yCO" type="external">&amp;lt;img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-19426" src="https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/tyranny-good-intentions-paul-craig-roberts-194x300.jpg" alt="The Tyranny of Good Intentions by Paul Craig Roberts" width="194" height="300" srcset="https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/tyranny-good-intentions-paul-craig-roberts-194x300.jpg 194w, https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/tyranny-good-intentions-paul-craig-roberts-259x400.jpg 259w, https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/tyranny-good-intentions-paul-craig-roberts-142x220.jpg 142w, https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/tyranny-good-intentions-paul-craig-roberts-118x182.jpg 118w, https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/tyranny-good-intentions-paul-craig-roberts.jpg 324w" sizes="(max-width: 194px) 100vw, 194px" /&amp;gt;</a>Many factors contribute to this result. One is the privatization of prisons, which has turned them into profit-making enterprises ever needful of more labor to exploit, which adds to the pressure for convictions. Another factor is the disregard of the protective features of law in order to more easily pursue demonized offender groups, such as the Mafia, child abusers, drug dealers and users, and &#8220;terrorists.&#8221; Lawrence M. Stratton and I describe the transformation of law from a shield of the people into a weapon in the hands of the state in our book, <a href="https://amzn.to/2ksVqwd" type="external">The Tyranny of Good Intentions</a>.</p> <p>This transformation did not occur because of racism. It occurred because chasing after devils and convicting them became more important than justice. Today the criminal justice system is largely indifferent to a defendant&#8217;s guilt or innocence. This is a far worst problem than racism. It is&amp;#160;the main reason that there are so many false convictions in the US and so many wrongfully convicted Americans in prison. Indeed, even the guilty are&amp;#160;wrongfully convicted as it is easier to frame them than to convict them on the evidence.</p> <p>To be clear: The primary reason for wrongful conviction is that the success indicator for police, prosecutor, and judge is conviction, not justice. Crimes are solved by wrongful convictions. High conviction rates boost the careers of prosecutors, and high profile convictions boost their political careers. The key to rapid and numerous convictions is the plea bargain. And plea bargains suit judges as they keep the court docket clear. Today 97% of felony cases are settled with a plea bargain. This means police evidence and a prosecutor&#8217;s case are tested only three times out of 100. When the evidence and case are tested in court, the test confronts a vast array of prosecutorial misconduct, such as suborned perjury and the withholding of exculpatory evidence. In America, everything is loaded against Justice.</p> <p>In a plea bargain police do not have to present evidence, prosecutors do not have to bring a case, and judges do not have to pay attention to the case and be troubled by a growing backlog as trials consume days and weeks.</p> <p>In a plea bargain the defendant, innocent or guilty, is told that he can plead to this or that offence, which carries a lighter sentence than the crime that allegedly has actually occurred and on which the defendant is arrested, or the defendant can go to trial where he will face more serious charges that carry much harsher penalties. As it has become routine for police to falsify evidence, for prosecutors to suborn perjury and withhold exculpatory evidence, for jurors naively to trust police and prosecutors, and for judges to look the other way, attorneys advise defendants to accept a plea deal. In other words, no one expects a fair trial or for real evidence to play a role in the outcome.</p> <p>The short of it is that the pursuit of justice is not a feature of the American criminal justice system. Justice does not matter to the police, to the prosecutor, to the jury, to the judge, and often not to the hardened defense attorney who has witnessed so much injustice that he believes justice is a fairy tale.</p> <p>The only exception to this is the justice introduced from outside the justice system by innocence projects and pro bono attorneys, such as Bryan Stevenson, director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama.</p> <p><a href="https://amzn.to/2jWcqYq" type="external">&amp;lt;img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-36936" src="https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/just-mercy-195x300.jpg" alt="Just Mercy" width="195" height="300" srcset="https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/just-mercy-195x300.jpg 195w, https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/just-mercy-97x150.jpg 97w, https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/just-mercy.jpg 324w" sizes="(max-width: 195px) 100vw, 195px" /&amp;gt;</a>In 2014 Stevenson published <a href="https://amzn.to/2ksU2K4" type="external">Just Mercy</a>, a fascinating collection of case histories of wrongful convictions that he and his colleagues managed to have overturned. A book such as this benefits from a main case, and the one that Stevenson delivers is that of Walter McMillian. It required six years for Stevenson to overturn what must be the most obvious, blatant frameup of a completely innocent man in US history. There were a large number of witnesses who testified that they were with McMillian at a fish fry&amp;#160;during the time that a murder for which McMillian was indicted and convicted took place. The only &#8220;evidence&#8221; against McMillian was the suborned perjury of a man who retracted his coerced testimony three times, once in the courtroom of Alabama Judge Thomas B. Norton, who simply ignored it.</p> <p>McMillian is black, and the sheriff, prosecutor, judge, and jury that framed him are white. This fact, together with the fact that the ignored witnesses&amp;#160;whose testimony cleared McMillian were black and McMillian&#8217;s sexual affair with a white woman in a small Alabama town, seem to convince Stevenson that McMillian was convicted because of racism.</p> <p /> <p /> <p>McMillian was falsely convicted, (1) because sheriff John Tate was under community criticism for the failure to solve the murder case of a young woman and needed someone to arrest for the crime, (2) because Ralph Meyers gave false testimony against McMillian for confused reasons that did not work out for him, (3) because the local newspaper, as newspapers are wont to do, convicted McMillian in the press, which meant that the jury had to convict or be accused of letting off a murderer, and (4) because the judge, Robert E. Lee Key, not only is unworthy of his name but most certainly did not have the fortitude to run a fair trial when the only possible outcome for his career and reputation in the community was conviction. Neither did his successor, Thomas B. Norton, have fortitude for the same reasons.</p> <p>I am convinced that all of these representatives of the justice system are racists, but they would have convicted McMillian for the same reasons if he had been white. If the justice system was concerned with justice, he would not have been convicted irrespective or race or gender.</p> <p>What the emphasis on racism blinds us to is that the justice system is corrupt because justice does not play a role in it. Justice has to be brought into the system from outside by people such as Bryan Stevenson. And for people such as Stevenson to bring justice into the justice system, they must have a high tolerance for death threats and for witnessing justice fail again and again.</p> <p /> <p /> <p>Stevenson describes the convictions of white women by white women. In the aftermath of hurricanes and tornadoes that wrecked coastal Alabama, Marsha Colbey gave premature birth to a stillborn son. She came to the attention of police because her busybody neighbor Debbie Cook had noticed the pregnancy but saw no child.</p> <p>Colbey&#8217;s fate was sealed by the media craze set aflame by Andrea Yates and Susan Smith&#8217;s murders of their children. Media sensationalized the baseless suspicion surrounding Colbey and turned her into another &#8220;dangerous mother.&#8221; Forensic pathologist Kathleen Enstice testified without evidence that Colbey&#8217;s son had been born alive and had died by drowning. The state&#8217;s own expert witness, Dr. Dennis McNally, and the defense&#8217;s expert witness Dr. Werner Spitz testified that Colbey&#8217;s age alone placed her pregnancy at high risk for fetal death and that there was no scientific evidence that a crime had occurred.</p> <p>Irresponsible media had communities and juries on the lookout for &#8220;dangerous moms&#8221; who should be put in prison, and they found one (along with many others) in Colbey. The trial judge permitted Colbey&#8217;s fate to be decided by jurors who stated that they could not honor the presumption of innocence in Colbey&#8217;s case. Other jurors said that they always believe the police and prosecutor. This failure of justice enabled Stevenson after years of effort to secure Colbey&#8217;s release. Clearly, Colbey&#8217;s wrongful conviction had nothing to do with racism. Identity politics would want to say she was convicted by misogynists, but Colbey was the victim of other women.</p> <p>Justice is so absent in the criminal justice system that Victoria Banks in order to avoid capital punishment was coerced into a plea bargain carrying a 20-year sentence for murdering her child after her pregnancy despite the fact that there was no pregnancy and no child. Stevenson was able to win her release by establishing that she had had a tubal ligation five years prior to her alleged pregnancy, which made it biologically impossible for her to conceive and give birth to a child.</p> <p>A woman whose tubes were tied, for which conclusive medical evidence existed, five years before she was accused of having just had a child that she murdered is forced into a plea bargain carrying 20 years in order to avoid the electric chair. Perhaps only Alabama could produce something this absurd, but this is a faithful picture of American &#8220;justice.&#8221;</p> <p /> <p /> <p>This is a faithful picture of justice in America.</p> <p>The justice system needs victims, and is focused on ruining people&#8217;s lives whether they deserve it or not. The more American lives ruined, the greater the success of the justice system.</p> <p>There is a current case in Alabama of a US Marine honorably discharged who suffers from PTSD. To help out a family friend, who needed a car for work but could not obtain a loan, the Marine sold him a car of his own, which the family friend was to pay off monthly. When payments stopped, the former Marine inquired. Payments were promised, and the family friend offered his cell phone to be held until payments caught up, as an indication of his good faith to pay.</p> <p>It turned out to be the wrong cell phone, not the debtor&#8217;s personal phone but a company-issued one. The company regarded it as a theft by the Marine, and the family friend had to report it to the police. The fact that it was all a misunderstanding has not caused the justice system to drop the case. Instead the prosecutor is demanding a misdemeanor plea. In other words, another person with something on his record who can be a suspect for the next burglary. As everyone in the case is white, injustice is occurring despite the absence of racism.</p> <p>It is a paradox that child protection laws in the hands of police and prosecutors have become weapons with which to ruin children.</p> <p>A father whose son is being ruined for life over nothing sent me the story with his permission to publish it as a warning to others about the heartlessness with which the justice system irresponsibly ruins even the immature young. This story again demonstrates that the function of American justice is not justice, but to ruin as many people as possible and as early in life as possible. The gratuitously ruined lives that the justice system achieves is the monument to the success of justice.</p> <p>I decided not to publish it, not because I disbelieve it, but because the son has not been sentenced, and protestations of innocence in media, as Stevenson says, can prejudice authorities against the defendant, especially in Virginia where this miscarriage of justice took place. I do not want to expose the son to risk in the event that the father is wrong, as I suspect he is, in expecting publicity to elicit compassion and empathy that would moderate an unjust event.</p> <p /> <p /> <p>Let&#8217;s call the son Zach. Having just turned 18, he was visiting a young woman his age whose younger sister introduced him via social media to a 13 year old female who shared his interest in dragons and animation. The two never met. As their shared interest developed via the Internet, so did their friendship.</p> <p>As the natural process that turns a girl into a woman progressed, the cyber relationship developed a romantic aspect. The girl/woman sent Zach five photographs of herself in her underwear.</p> <p>Later the girl/woman developed emotional problems due to the impending divorce of her parents and was admitted to a mental health facility. At some point she confided her cyber relationship with Zach to a counselor. The &#8220;child protection&#8221; laws required the counselor to inform the police, who seized Zach&#8217;s computer and found chat logs and the five photos.</p> <p>The consequence was that Zach was charged with 20 felony indictments carrying 350 years in prison. As they always are, the charges were vastly overstated. For example, the five photos sent to Zach of a torso in underwear (apparently the girl&#8217;s face was not shown) got Zach charged with distribution of child pornography.</p> <p>No charges were filed by the parents of the girl. The charges were entirely the idea of the prosecutor&#8217;s office, and the 350 years produced a plea bargain to lesser offences. American criminal justice had secured another victim.</p> <p>In the absurdity that is American law you can be guilty of &#8220;indecent liberties with a minor&#8221; without ever having seen the girl in person or ever having been close enough to touch. The advent of virtual reality and video screens means that crimes can have happened in virtual reality that did not happen in real reality.</p> <p>In my days it was almost impossible to be guilty of indecent liberties with a minor, because the age of female sexual consent was 14. But as females sexually matured earlier, the age of sexual consent was irrationally pushed higher. Today the legal age that a male may have sex with a female is 18. In other words, the absurd American legal system pretends that women do not have sex until after they graduate from high school. Who can imagine college dorms full of virginal women?</p> <p>When America had a livable legal system, law was based on the common ordinary behavior of people. This is known as the Common Law, the foundation of law in England and the United States.</p> <p>Today the law is so uncommon as to be absurd. Yet absurdity is enforced with vengeance.</p> <p>The video age means that crimes can be committed by looking at a video screen, and that is what happened to Zach. Neither his attorney nor the judge told Zach and his parents that his coerced plea meant that there was no appeal and that he was registered for life as a sex offender. Zach had committed a &#8220;violent sex offense&#8221; online! It was the girl who sent the photos, but the offense was Zach&#8217;s for having them on his computer.</p> <p /> <p /> <p>This is America, a country totally devoid of justice, a hapless country forced to suffer injustice except for those few cases that heroes such as Bryan Stevenson are able to overturn.</p> <p>If only Americans in their so-called democracy had the power to make Bryan Stevenson Attorney General for life and give him the power to write and enforce the laws would justice return to America.</p> <p>God help a country as totally devoid of justice as the United States of America.</p> <p /> <p /> <p>Police, prosecutorial and judicial misconduct seldom bear any cost. Just so you understand how &#8220;law&#8217;&#8221; completely protects the police, prosecutors and judges who routinely violate it, as Stevenson reports, &#8220;state and federal courts have persistently insulated prosecutors from accountability for egregious misconduct that results in innocent people being sent to death row.&#8221; In 2011 a Republican Supreme Court ruled that a prosecutor cannot be held liable for misconduct in a criminal case, even if he intentionally and illegally withheld evidence of innocence.</p> <p>In plain words, criminal actions against the innocent are now the legalized policy of the American criminal justice system.</p> <p>Are the American people moved by these extraordinary injustices and their legalization by the Supreme Court of the United States? Are the Alabamans in the same county who egged on the frame-up of Walter McMillian ashamed of their willing complicity in a gratuitous act of injustice? Absolutely not. They reelected sheriff Tate, and he remains in office today.</p> <p /> <p /> <p>This is the face of justice in America, a hapless country totally devoid of justice where law exists solely for the economic benefit of those whose careers rise with conviction rates, whether of the innocent or the guilty.</p> <p>Law professors, such as Harvard&#8217;s Charles Fried, have shown their indifference to wrongful conviction. Fried came up with the argument that &#8220;finality&#8221; was more important than justice. Fried was annoyed by appeals. He argued that ending a case had its own importance and that at some point appeals based on fresh evidence had to be cut off even if it meant an innocent person was executed or spent life in prison.</p> <p>Conservative legislators showed their indifference to wrongful conviction in 1994 when they took over Congress and promptly eliminated federal aid for legal representation of the wrongly convicted on death row. The conservatives were more comfortable with the deaths of innocents than with admitting the willful mistakes made by &#8220;law and order.&#8221;</p> <p>The indifference of Americans to injustice has spread outside US borders. The Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama regimes are responsible for millions of dead and displaced persons in 10 countries&#8212;Serbia, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, Syria, Ukraine, and Palestine. None of those responsible have expressed any remorse and neither have the American people.</p>

The Justice System Is Criminal

http://foreignpolicyjournal.com/2017/02/01/the-justice-system-is-criminal/

2017-02-01

1right-center

What the emphasis on racism blinds us to is that the justice system is corrupt because justice does not play a role in it Your purchases at Amazoncom via affiliate links below will help support FPJ at no extra cost to you On January 23 2017 I asked 8220Are Americans Racists8221 I pointed out examples where racist explanations prevail over empirical fact I did not write that there is no racism in America I said that racism is not the beall and endall explanation of American history and institutions The point I made is that racist explanations are often inadequate and both work against racial harmony and blind us to more general and more serious problems Perhaps the worst of America8217s failed institutions is the criminal justice system The US has the largest prison population in the world not only as a percentage of the population but also in absolute numbers 8220Freedom and democracy8221 America has an absolute larger number of incarcerated citizens than 8220authoritarian8221 China a country with four times the US population ampltimg classalignleft sizemedium wpimage19426 srchttpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201402tyrannygoodintentionspaulcraigroberts194x300jpg altThe Tyranny of Good Intentions by Paul Craig Roberts width194 height300 srcsethttpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201402tyrannygoodintentionspaulcraigroberts194x300jpg 194w httpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201402tyrannygoodintentionspaulcraigroberts259x400jpg 259w httpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201402tyrannygoodintentionspaulcraigroberts142x220jpg 142w httpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201402tyrannygoodintentionspaulcraigroberts118x182jpg 118w httpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201402tyrannygoodintentionspaulcraigrobertsjpg 324w sizesmaxwidth 194px 100vw 194px ampgtMany factors contribute to this result One is the privatization of prisons which has turned them into profitmaking enterprises ever needful of more labor to exploit which adds to the pressure for convictions Another factor is the disregard of the protective features of law in order to more easily pursue demonized offender groups such as the Mafia child abusers drug dealers and users and 8220terrorists8221 Lawrence M Stratton and I describe the transformation of law from a shield of the people into a weapon in the hands of the state in our book The Tyranny of Good Intentions This transformation did not occur because of racism It occurred because chasing after devils and convicting them became more important than justice Today the criminal justice system is largely indifferent to a defendant8217s guilt or innocence This is a far worst problem than racism It isamp160the main reason that there are so many false convictions in the US and so many wrongfully convicted Americans in prison Indeed even the guilty areamp160wrongfully convicted as it is easier to frame them than to convict them on the evidence To be clear The primary reason for wrongful conviction is that the success indicator for police prosecutor and judge is conviction not justice Crimes are solved by wrongful convictions High conviction rates boost the careers of prosecutors and high profile convictions boost their political careers The key to rapid and numerous convictions is the plea bargain And plea bargains suit judges as they keep the court docket clear Today 97 of felony cases are settled with a plea bargain This means police evidence and a prosecutor8217s case are tested only three times out of 100 When the evidence and case are tested in court the test confronts a vast array of prosecutorial misconduct such as suborned perjury and the withholding of exculpatory evidence In America everything is loaded against Justice In a plea bargain police do not have to present evidence prosecutors do not have to bring a case and judges do not have to pay attention to the case and be troubled by a growing backlog as trials consume days and weeks In a plea bargain the defendant innocent or guilty is told that he can plead to this or that offence which carries a lighter sentence than the crime that allegedly has actually occurred and on which the defendant is arrested or the defendant can go to trial where he will face more serious charges that carry much harsher penalties As it has become routine for police to falsify evidence for prosecutors to suborn perjury and withhold exculpatory evidence for jurors naively to trust police and prosecutors and for judges to look the other way attorneys advise defendants to accept a plea deal In other words no one expects a fair trial or for real evidence to play a role in the outcome The short of it is that the pursuit of justice is not a feature of the American criminal justice system Justice does not matter to the police to the prosecutor to the jury to the judge and often not to the hardened defense attorney who has witnessed so much injustice that he believes justice is a fairy tale The only exception to this is the justice introduced from outside the justice system by innocence projects and pro bono attorneys such as Bryan Stevenson director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery Alabama ampltimg classalignleft sizemedium wpimage36936 srchttpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201702justmercy195x300jpg altJust Mercy width195 height300 srcsethttpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201702justmercy195x300jpg 195w httpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201702justmercy97x150jpg 97w httpswwwforeignpolicyjournalcomwpcontentuploads201702justmercyjpg 324w sizesmaxwidth 195px 100vw 195px ampgtIn 2014 Stevenson published Just Mercy a fascinating collection of case histories of wrongful convictions that he and his colleagues managed to have overturned A book such as this benefits from a main case and the one that Stevenson delivers is that of Walter McMillian It required six years for Stevenson to overturn what must be the most obvious blatant frameup of a completely innocent man in US history There were a large number of witnesses who testified that they were with McMillian at a fish fryamp160during the time that a murder for which McMillian was indicted and convicted took place The only 8220evidence8221 against McMillian was the suborned perjury of a man who retracted his coerced testimony three times once in the courtroom of Alabama Judge Thomas B Norton who simply ignored it McMillian is black and the sheriff prosecutor judge and jury that framed him are white This fact together with the fact that the ignored witnessesamp160whose testimony cleared McMillian were black and McMillian8217s sexual affair with a white woman in a small Alabama town seem to convince Stevenson that McMillian was convicted because of racism McMillian was falsely convicted 1 because sheriff John Tate was under community criticism for the failure to solve the murder case of a young woman and needed someone to arrest for the crime 2 because Ralph Meyers gave false testimony against McMillian for confused reasons that did not work out for him 3 because the local newspaper as newspapers are wont to do convicted McMillian in the press which meant that the jury had to convict or be accused of letting off a murderer and 4 because the judge Robert E Lee Key not only is unworthy of his name but most certainly did not have the fortitude to run a fair trial when the only possible outcome for his career and reputation in the community was conviction Neither did his successor Thomas B Norton have fortitude for the same reasons I am convinced that all of these representatives of the justice system are racists but they would have convicted McMillian for the same reasons if he had been white If the justice system was concerned with justice he would not have been convicted irrespective or race or gender What the emphasis on racism blinds us to is that the justice system is corrupt because justice does not play a role in it Justice has to be brought into the system from outside by people such as Bryan Stevenson And for people such as Stevenson to bring justice into the justice system they must have a high tolerance for death threats and for witnessing justice fail again and again Stevenson describes the convictions of white women by white women In the aftermath of hurricanes and tornadoes that wrecked coastal Alabama Marsha Colbey gave premature birth to a stillborn son She came to the attention of police because her busybody neighbor Debbie Cook had noticed the pregnancy but saw no child Colbey8217s fate was sealed by the media craze set aflame by Andrea Yates and Susan Smith8217s murders of their children Media sensationalized the baseless suspicion surrounding Colbey and turned her into another 8220dangerous mother8221 Forensic pathologist Kathleen Enstice testified without evidence that Colbey8217s son had been born alive and had died by drowning The state8217s own expert witness Dr Dennis McNally and the defense8217s expert witness Dr Werner Spitz testified that Colbey8217s age alone placed her pregnancy at high risk for fetal death and that there was no scientific evidence that a crime had occurred Irresponsible media had communities and juries on the lookout for 8220dangerous moms8221 who should be put in prison and they found one along with many others in Colbey The trial judge permitted Colbey8217s fate to be decided by jurors who stated that they could not honor the presumption of innocence in Colbey8217s case Other jurors said that they always believe the police and prosecutor This failure of justice enabled Stevenson after years of effort to secure Colbey8217s release Clearly Colbey8217s wrongful conviction had nothing to do with racism Identity politics would want to say she was convicted by misogynists but Colbey was the victim of other women Justice is so absent in the criminal justice system that Victoria Banks in order to avoid capital punishment was coerced into a plea bargain carrying a 20year sentence for murdering her child after her pregnancy despite the fact that there was no pregnancy and no child Stevenson was able to win her release by establishing that she had had a tubal ligation five years prior to her alleged pregnancy which made it biologically impossible for her to conceive and give birth to a child A woman whose tubes were tied for which conclusive medical evidence existed five years before she was accused of having just had a child that she murdered is forced into a plea bargain carrying 20 years in order to avoid the electric chair Perhaps only Alabama could produce something this absurd but this is a faithful picture of American 8220justice8221 This is a faithful picture of justice in America The justice system needs victims and is focused on ruining people8217s lives whether they deserve it or not The more American lives ruined the greater the success of the justice system There is a current case in Alabama of a US Marine honorably discharged who suffers from PTSD To help out a family friend who needed a car for work but could not obtain a loan the Marine sold him a car of his own which the family friend was to pay off monthly When payments stopped the former Marine inquired Payments were promised and the family friend offered his cell phone to be held until payments caught up as an indication of his good faith to pay It turned out to be the wrong cell phone not the debtor8217s personal phone but a companyissued one The company regarded it as a theft by the Marine and the family friend had to report it to the police The fact that it was all a misunderstanding has not caused the justice system to drop the case Instead the prosecutor is demanding a misdemeanor plea In other words another person with something on his record who can be a suspect for the next burglary As everyone in the case is white injustice is occurring despite the absence of racism It is a paradox that child protection laws in the hands of police and prosecutors have become weapons with which to ruin children A father whose son is being ruined for life over nothing sent me the story with his permission to publish it as a warning to others about the heartlessness with which the justice system irresponsibly ruins even the immature young This story again demonstrates that the function of American justice is not justice but to ruin as many people as possible and as early in life as possible The gratuitously ruined lives that the justice system achieves is the monument to the success of justice I decided not to publish it not because I disbelieve it but because the son has not been sentenced and protestations of innocence in media as Stevenson says can prejudice authorities against the defendant especially in Virginia where this miscarriage of justice took place I do not want to expose the son to risk in the event that the father is wrong as I suspect he is in expecting publicity to elicit compassion and empathy that would moderate an unjust event Let8217s call the son Zach Having just turned 18 he was visiting a young woman his age whose younger sister introduced him via social media to a 13 year old female who shared his interest in dragons and animation The two never met As their shared interest developed via the Internet so did their friendship As the natural process that turns a girl into a woman progressed the cyber relationship developed a romantic aspect The girlwoman sent Zach five photographs of herself in her underwear Later the girlwoman developed emotional problems due to the impending divorce of her parents and was admitted to a mental health facility At some point she confided her cyber relationship with Zach to a counselor The 8220child protection8221 laws required the counselor to inform the police who seized Zach8217s computer and found chat logs and the five photos The consequence was that Zach was charged with 20 felony indictments carrying 350 years in prison As they always are the charges were vastly overstated For example the five photos sent to Zach of a torso in underwear apparently the girl8217s face was not shown got Zach charged with distribution of child pornography No charges were filed by the parents of the girl The charges were entirely the idea of the prosecutor8217s office and the 350 years produced a plea bargain to lesser offences American criminal justice had secured another victim In the absurdity that is American law you can be guilty of 8220indecent liberties with a minor8221 without ever having seen the girl in person or ever having been close enough to touch The advent of virtual reality and video screens means that crimes can have happened in virtual reality that did not happen in real reality In my days it was almost impossible to be guilty of indecent liberties with a minor because the age of female sexual consent was 14 But as females sexually matured earlier the age of sexual consent was irrationally pushed higher Today the legal age that a male may have sex with a female is 18 In other words the absurd American legal system pretends that women do not have sex until after they graduate from high school Who can imagine college dorms full of virginal women When America had a livable legal system law was based on the common ordinary behavior of people This is known as the Common Law the foundation of law in England and the United States Today the law is so uncommon as to be absurd Yet absurdity is enforced with vengeance The video age means that crimes can be committed by looking at a video screen and that is what happened to Zach Neither his attorney nor the judge told Zach and his parents that his coerced plea meant that there was no appeal and that he was registered for life as a sex offender Zach had committed a 8220violent sex offense8221 online It was the girl who sent the photos but the offense was Zach8217s for having them on his computer This is America a country totally devoid of justice a hapless country forced to suffer injustice except for those few cases that heroes such as Bryan Stevenson are able to overturn If only Americans in their socalled democracy had the power to make Bryan Stevenson Attorney General for life and give him the power to write and enforce the laws would justice return to America God help a country as totally devoid of justice as the United States of America Police prosecutorial and judicial misconduct seldom bear any cost Just so you understand how 8220law82178221 completely protects the police prosecutors and judges who routinely violate it as Stevenson reports 8220state and federal courts have persistently insulated prosecutors from accountability for egregious misconduct that results in innocent people being sent to death row8221 In 2011 a Republican Supreme Court ruled that a prosecutor cannot be held liable for misconduct in a criminal case even if he intentionally and illegally withheld evidence of innocence In plain words criminal actions against the innocent are now the legalized policy of the American criminal justice system Are the American people moved by these extraordinary injustices and their legalization by the Supreme Court of the United States Are the Alabamans in the same county who egged on the frameup of Walter McMillian ashamed of their willing complicity in a gratuitous act of injustice Absolutely not They reelected sheriff Tate and he remains in office today This is the face of justice in America a hapless country totally devoid of justice where law exists solely for the economic benefit of those whose careers rise with conviction rates whether of the innocent or the guilty Law professors such as Harvard8217s Charles Fried have shown their indifference to wrongful conviction Fried came up with the argument that 8220finality8221 was more important than justice Fried was annoyed by appeals He argued that ending a case had its own importance and that at some point appeals based on fresh evidence had to be cut off even if it meant an innocent person was executed or spent life in prison Conservative legislators showed their indifference to wrongful conviction in 1994 when they took over Congress and promptly eliminated federal aid for legal representation of the wrongly convicted on death row The conservatives were more comfortable with the deaths of innocents than with admitting the willful mistakes made by 8220law and order8221 The indifference of Americans to injustice has spread outside US borders The Clinton George W Bush and Obama regimes are responsible for millions of dead and displaced persons in 10 countries8212Serbia Somalia Afghanistan Iraq Libya Yemen Pakistan Syria Ukraine and Palestine None of those responsible have expressed any remorse and neither have the American people

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<p>(Reuters) - Spark Therapeutics Inc, whose breakthrough gene therapy to treat a rare form of blindness was approved by U.S. regulators in December, said on Wednesday that it had licensed rights to the drug outside the United States to Switzerland-based Novartis AG.</p> <p>Philadelphia-based Spark said it will keep U.S. rights to Luxturna, or voretigene neparvovec, which is the first approved gene therapy for an inherited disease. It plans to launch the one-time treatment in March, charging an unprecedented $850,000.</p> <p>Spark will receive $105 million from Novartis and up to another $65 million in milestone payments based on near-term European regulatory approval and initial sales in certain markets. Spark is also entitled to future royalties on net sales outside the United States.</p> <p>In a statement, Spark said the deal leverages Novartis&#8217; &#8220;large, existing commercial and medical infrastructure in ophthalmology, as well as its commitment to commercializing genetic-based medicines.&#8221;</p> <p>Novartis, which sells opthalmology drugs including macular degeneration treatment Lucentis, last year won U.S. approval for Kymriah, the first of a new type of potent gene-modifying immunotherapy for leukemia.</p> <p>&#8220;We think this deal is a positive for Spark, as the company will be able to focus on the U.S. launch of Luxturna, leaving the ex-U.S. launch and commercialization to Novartis, a leader in the ophthalmology space,&#8221; Jefferies analyst Michael Yee said in a note to investors.</p> <p>Luxturna treats inherited retinal disease caused by defects in a gene known as RPE65, which affects between 1,000 and 2,000 people in the United States. It works by delivering by an eye injection viral vector particles containing a correct copy of the gene to retinal cells, restoring their ability to make a needed enzyme.</p> <p>Shares of Spark, which fell 2 percent to close at $55.36 in regular trading on Wednesday, were up 3 percent at $57 after hours. The shares have lost nearly 25 percent of their value since mid-December when investors were disappointed by trial data for Spark&#8217;s experimental gene therapy for hemophilia A.</p> <p>Reporting y Deena Beasley; Editing by Susan Thomas and Tom Brown</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean officials began preparations on Friday for a summit next month with North Korea aimed at reducing tensions on the peninsula, as a report showed the North had probably begun testing a nuclear reactor as recently as late February.</p> South Korean President Moon Jae-in delivers a speech during a ceremony celebrating the 99th anniversary of the March First Independence Movement against Japanese colonial rule, at Seodaemun Prison History Hall in Seoul, South Korea, March 1, 2018. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji <p>The report by intelligence analysts at Jane&#8217;s by IHS Markit said satellite imagery from Feb. 25 showed emissions of non-condensable gases from a stack at the North&#8217;s experimental light water reactor (ELWR) at the Yongbyon Atomic Energy Research Center, suggesting preliminary testing had likely begun.</p> <p>The reactor could be used to produce weapons-grade plutonium, but North Korea is believed to already have enough fissile material for multiple nuclear bombs, according to Joshua Pollack, a senior research associate at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.</p> <p>Meantime, South Korean officials were set to convene their first meeting at the presidential Blue House to prepare for a summit between President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un late next month.</p> <p>Headed by Moon&#8217;s chief of staff Im Jong-seok, former prominent democracy activist, the team will hammer out plans for the summit, including when to contact the North and what will be discussed between Kim and Moon.</p> <p>U.S. President Donald Trump also accepted a summit invitation from Kim Jong Un, after a South Korean envoy told him earlier this month that the North&#8217;s leader was prepared to discuss denuclearization. Trump and Kim are expected to meet sometime in May although a location has not been set yet.</p> <p>Although North Korea&#8217;s state media has yet to comment on the pending summits with Moon and Trump, its foreign minister Ri Yong Ho is visiting Sweden for talks with his Swedish counterpart Margot Wallstrom. Ri&#8217;s trip prompted speculation it could lay the groundwork for the summit in Sweden between Trump and Kim Jong Un.</p> North Korean leader Kim Jong Un waves to people attending a military parade marking the 105th birth anniversary of country's founding father, Kim Il Sung in Pyongyang, April 15, 2017. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj <p>The push for these summits came after the North Korean leader said in a New Year&#8217;s address that he wanted to improve relations with the South following a year of heightened tensions brought on by the North&#8217;s nuclear and missile tests.</p> &#8220;WORK GOES ON&#8221; <p>North Korea completed construction of the Yongbyon ELWR in 2013. It was optimized for civilian electricity production, and although it is not yet operational, it could start running with &#8220;little warning&#8221; later in 2018 or 2019, the Jane&#8217;s report said.</p> <p>The experimental reactor is likely too small to provide much in the way of electricity, but is part of a &#8220;long-running effort&#8221; to develop a light-water reactor after a deal by an international consortium, including the United States, to provide two such nuclear power reactors in the 1990s fell apart, Pollack said.</p> <p>&#8220;It&#8217;s their way of saying, &#8216;see, since you won&#8217;t give us what you promised, we&#8217;ll do it ourselves&#8217;,&#8221; Pollack said. &#8220;They haven&#8217;t made any agreements lately with the U.S., so the work goes on.&#8221;</p> <p>An official at the South&#8217;s defense ministry said authorities were aware of the Jane&#8217;s report, which follows a similar one released on the 38 North website earlier this month that said a nearby reactor had also continued to show signs of operation.</p> <p>The isolated state has maintained it will continue developing its nuclear program but later added it was open to abandoning the program if the security of its regime was guaranteed, according to South Korea.</p> <p>Reporting by Christine Kim; Additional reporting by Josh Smith; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The head of the most influential U.S. business lobbying group warned the Trump administration that unilateral tariffs on Chinese goods could lead to a destructive trade war that will hurt American consumers and U.S. economic growth.</p> U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Thomas Donohue attends an event with the Mexican Chamber of Commerce in Mexico City, Mexico October 10, 2017. REUTERS/Ginnette Riquelme <p>U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue said in a statement on Thursday that such tariffs, associated with a probe of China&#8217;s intellectual property practices, would be &#8220;damaging taxes on American consumers.&#8221;</p> <p>His comments came after White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said that Trump would in coming weeks get options to address China&#8217;s &#8220;theft and forced transfer&#8221; of American intellectual property as part of the investigation under Section 301 of the U.S. Trade Act of 1974.</p> <p>Reuters reported on Tuesday that Trump was considering tariffs on up to $60 billion worth of Chinese information technology, telecommunications and consumer products, along with U.S. investment restrictions for Chinese companies.</p> <p>Donohue said the Trump administration was right to focus on the negative economic impact of China&#8217;s industrial policies and unfair trade practices, but said tariffs were the wrong approach to dealing with these.</p> <p>&#8220;Tariffs of $30 billion a year would wipe out over a third of the savings American families received from the doubling of the standard deduction in tax reform,&#8221; Donohue said. &#8220;If the tariffs reach $60 billion, which has been rumored, the impact would be even more devastating.&#8221;</p> <p>He urged the administration not to proceed with such a plan.</p> U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during his meeting with Ireland's Prime Minister, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, U.S., March 15, 2018. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque <p>&#8220;Tariffs could lead to a destructive trade war with serious consequences for U.S. economic growth and job creation,&#8221; hurting consumers, businesses, farmers and ranchers.</p> <p>Navarro, speaking on CNBC television, said the remedies in the &#8220;Section 301&#8221; probe were among &#8220;many steps that the president is courageously going to take in order to address unfair trade practices.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t think there&#8217;s a single person... on Wall Street that will oppose cracking down on China&#8217;s theft of our intellectual property or their forced transfer,&#8221; Navarro added.</p> <p>But Navarro, a key architect of steel and aluminum tariffs announced last week by Trump, said that tariffs will not necessarily provoke a trade war.</p> <p>&#8220;We can obviously do it in a way that can be good for the American people and good for the global trading system,&#8221; he said. &#8220;We can do this in a way that is peaceful and will improve and strengthen the trading system... Everybody on Wall Street needs to understand: Just relax.&#8221;</p> <p>China has repeatedly said that there would be no winners in a trade war, but that it would protect its interests in the face of U.S. trade action.</p> <p>China wouldn&#8217;t allow itself to become &#8220;the target for the arrows of adversity&#8221;, the official China Daily newspaper warned in an editorial late on Thursday.</p> <p>&#8220;It should be borne in mind that even the most playful cat will scratch if you provoke it beyond a certain point,&#8221; the newspaper said.</p> <p>Reporting by David Lawder and Lisa Lambert; Additional reporting by Michael Martina in BEIJING; Editing by James Dalgleish and Richard Borsuk</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>TOKYO (Reuters) - Asian stocks slid on Friday as reports of more chaos in the Trump administration tested investors&#8217; nerves, already frayed by fears that U.S. tariffs could hurt the global economy and trigger a trade war.</p> FILE PHOTO - A man walks past an electronic stock quotation board outside a brokerage in Tokyo, Japan, February 9, 2018. REUTERS/Toru Hanai <p>MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS slipped 0.2 percent in early trade. Japan's Nikkei <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.N225" type="external">.N225</a> was down 0.3 percent.</p> <p>On Wall Street, the S&amp;amp;P 500 <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.SPX" type="external">.SPX</a> edged 0.08 percent lower on Thursday, marking its first four-day losing streak of 2018.</p> <p>It hit a session low soon after the New York Times reported that U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller had issued a subpoena for documents related to U.S. President Donald Trump&#8217;s businesses.</p> <p>The Washington Post, meanwhile, reported that President Donald Trump has decided to remove H.R. McMaster as his national security advisor.</p> <p>The news came just days after following the recent departure of two key officials, former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and top economic advisor Gary Cohn, from the Trump administration.</p> <p>Together with the report earlier this week that Trump is seeking to impose tariffs on up to $60 billion of Chinese imports, they cemented investor concerns that the administration is increasingly leaning toward protectionism.</p> <p>&#8220;Trade frictions look set to grow. The next week could see more details of Trump&#8217;s tariff plans on China, and there will likely be sectors that fall to victim,&#8221; said Norihiro Fujito, senior investment strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley.</p> <p>Already shares of steelmakers have been battered since Trump announced tariffs on steel and aluminum exports.</p> <p>Fears that the tariffs could disrupt synchronized global growth dwarfed recent strong economic data, including a fall in U.S. jobless claims.</p> <p>&#8220;It seems as if for Trump, only &#8216;America First&#8217; policies are left to boost his popularity and to get re-elected,&#8221; said Hiroko Iwaki, senior strategist at Mizuho Securities.</p> <p>&#8220;It is hard to expect political uncertainties to disappear soon. That will underpin bonds,&#8221; she added.</p> <p>U.S. Treasuries yield stood little changed at 2.822 percent US10YT=RR in Asia after having hit a near two-week low of 2.797 percent on Thursday.</p> <p>In contrast, short-term bond yields rose as investors braced for a widely expected rate hike by the Federal Reserve next week, with the two-year yield hitting a 9 1/2-year high of 2.295 percent US2YT=RR.</p> <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.N225" type="external">Nikkei Inc</a> 21669.8 .N225 Nikkei Index -134.15 (-0.62%) .N225 .SPX <p>In Europe, the German Bund yield DE10YT=TWEB hit a six-week low of 0.566 percent.</p> <p>Political uncertainties are mounting in Japan, where Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is under pressure for suspicions of a cover-up in a controversial land sale.</p> <p>In the currency market, rising risk aversion pushed the dollar lower against the safe haven yen to 105.94 yen <a href="/finance/currencies/quote?srcCurr=JPY&amp;amp;destCurr=USD" type="external">JPY=</a> down 0.4 percent.</p> <p>The euro was little changed at $1.2303 <a href="/finance/currencies/quote?srcCurr=EUR&amp;amp;destCurr=USD" type="external">EUR=</a>, having slipped 0.5 percent the previous day.</p> <p>Subdued risk sentiment kept the dollar supported against riskier currencies, such as commodity-linked currencies and emerging market currencies.</p> <p>The Canadian dollar <a href="/finance/currencies/quote?srcCurr=CAD&amp;amp;destCurr=USD" type="external">CAD=D4</a>, which has been hit also by worries Trump may pull out from NAFTA, hit a nine-month low of C$1.3072 to the dollar.</p> <p>Oil prices were little changed after ending choppy Thursday trade higher as the International Energy Agency said global oil demand is expected to pick up this year, but warned supply is growing at a faster pace.</p> <p>Brent futures LCOc1 stood flat at $65.11 per barrel.</p> <p>Editing by Sam Holmes and KIm Coghill</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - By imposing new sanctions on Russia and condemning a suspected Russian chemical attack in Britain, Washington has hinted at a tougher stance toward Moscow despite President Donald Trump&#8217;s stated desire for better ties.</p> National flags of Russia and the U.S. fly at Vnukovo International Airport in Moscow, Russia April 11, 2017. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov <p>The U.S. Treasury slapped sanctions on 19 Russian citizens and five entities for election meddling and cyber attacks in the most significant steps the United States has taken against Russia since Trump took office amid U.S. intelligence agency allegations that Moscow tried to help him win the 2016 election.</p> <p>While the Treasury put off targeting oligarchs and officials close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, it said further sanctions were coming and for the first time blamed Moscow for cyber attacks stretching back at least two years that targeted the U.S. power grid, including nuclear facilities.</p> <p>After initially equivocating about a chemical attack on a former Russian double agent in Salisbury, England, the White House joined a statement by the leaders of Britain, France and Germany in which they said they &#8220;abhor the attack&#8221; and blamed it on Moscow.</p> <p>Moscow has denied any involvement in the poisoning.</p> <p>Thursday&#8217;s actions have caused some Russia analysts to ask whether the administration is taking a more confrontational stance despite Trump&#8217;s repeated statements in the election campaign that he wanted a better relationship with Moscow, his praise for Putin and apparent reluctance to criticize the Russian leader.</p> <p>&#8220;I think we have hit an inflection point in the current administration&#8217;s approach towards Russia,&#8221; said a diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity. &#8220;There has been a shift in balance.&#8221;</p> <p>The diplomat attributed the evolution partly to a clash between U.S.-backed and Russian-backed forces in the Syrian city of Deir al-Zor in February; Russia pounding Syria&#8217;s eastern Ghouta enclave of anti-government rebels with air strikes during the past month; and Putin showing a video on March 1 of a weapon appearing to hover over what looked like a map of Florida, home to Trump&#8217;s Mar-a-Lago resort.</p> <p>&#8220;Those three things, taken together, have caused a shift in analysis in parts ... of the administration,&#8221; said the diplomat.</p> TRUMP EXASPERATED <p>While there was a sense at the White House that there has been a hardening of Trump&#8217;s view toward Russia, at least for now, it was unclear whether this represented a long-term shift.</p> <p>A senior administration official said there was some feeling that the goodwill that Trump extended toward Russia when he took over has not been reciprocated and that the Russians do not want to have good relations with the United States.</p> <p>This has exasperated Trump, who instructed his team to make sure the United States appeared to be in solidarity with Britain over the nerve agent attack.</p> <p>Eugene Rumer, a former U.S. national intelligence officer for Russia, suggested Trump&#8217;s approach may ultimately be guided by Special Counsel Robert Mueller&#8217;s investigation into whether Russia meddled in the election campaign.</p> <p>The Kremlin denies interfering. Mueller is also investigating any potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow officials, something Trump denies.</p> <p>&#8220;My hypothesis is ... the White House stance on Russia is going to be determined to a large extent by how much they think the investigation threatens their political position,&#8221; Rumer said.</p> <p>Officials from multiple U.S. agencies discussed next steps at a meeting on Thursday, with one aim being to avoid personally attacking Putin and taking in-your-face steps that could prompt retaliation.</p> <p>In announcing Thursday&#8217;s sanctions, U.S. officials made clear more would follow.</p> <p>&#8220;This is just one of a series of ongoing actions that we&#8217;re taking to counter Russian aggression,&#8221; one U.S. official told reporters.&amp;#160;&#8220;There will be more to come, and we&#8217;re going to continue to employ our resources to combat malicious Russian activity and respond to nefarious attacks.&#8221;</p> <p>Sergei Skripal, 66, and his daughter Yulia, 33, were found unconscious on a bench outside a shopping center on March 4 after being exposed to what the British authorities have identified as a military-grade, Soviet-era Novichok nerve agent.</p> <p>Another U.S. official attributed the sharper edge to U.S. policy to increasingly brazen behavior by Russia in cyberspace and on the ground, culminating in the Salisbury attack.</p> <p>This U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, also pointed to Russia&#8217;s refusal to restrain Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the role of Russian &#8220;mercenaries&#8221; in Syria, now entering its eighth year of civil war.</p> <p>The official said it was unclear if Trump himself saw Russia as an adversary but suggested Putin may have &#8220;overplayed his hand&#8221; by leaving Russian fingerprints on the hacking, the chemical attack, the deployment of ground-launched cruise missiles which the U.S. says violate an arms control treaty, and a March 1 speech on &#8220;invincible&#8221; Russian weaponry.</p> <p>&#8220;If the president felt like Putin was one-upping him, not to mention stealing the limelight, then it wouldn&#8217;t be surprising that he would react,&#8221; the official said.</p> <p>While more sanctions are expected, it was not clear if the Trump policy toward Russia was changing, especially given Trump&#8217;s unpredictability, said a third official, who is involved in talks on next steps.</p> <p>&#8220;Tomorrow is another day,&#8221; the official said.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Steve Holland and Warren Strobel; Writing by Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Grant McCool and Paul Tait</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Spark licenses blindness gene therapy rights outside U.S. to Novartis South Korea gears up for summit, report shows North Korea testing reactor Chamber of Commerce warns Trump against China tariffs Asian shares slip as new U.S. political worries sour mood U.S. hints at shift on Russia with sanctions and condemnation

https://reuters.com/article/us-spark-luxturna-novartis/spark-licenses-blindness-gene-therapy-rights-outside-us-to-novartis-idUSKBN1FD35R

2018-01-24

2least

Reuters Spark Therapeutics Inc whose breakthrough gene therapy to treat a rare form of blindness was approved by US regulators in December said on Wednesday that it had licensed rights to the drug outside the United States to Switzerlandbased Novartis AG Philadelphiabased Spark said it will keep US rights to Luxturna or voretigene neparvovec which is the first approved gene therapy for an inherited disease It plans to launch the onetime treatment in March charging an unprecedented 850000 Spark will receive 105 million from Novartis and up to another 65 million in milestone payments based on nearterm European regulatory approval and initial sales in certain markets Spark is also entitled to future royalties on net sales outside the United States In a statement Spark said the deal leverages Novartis8217 8220large existing commercial and medical infrastructure in ophthalmology as well as its commitment to commercializing geneticbased medicines8221 Novartis which sells opthalmology drugs including macular degeneration treatment Lucentis last year won US approval for Kymriah the first of a new type of potent genemodifying immunotherapy for leukemia 8220We think this deal is a positive for Spark as the company will be able to focus on the US launch of Luxturna leaving the exUS launch and commercialization to Novartis a leader in the ophthalmology space8221 Jefferies analyst Michael Yee said in a note to investors Luxturna treats inherited retinal disease caused by defects in a gene known as RPE65 which affects between 1000 and 2000 people in the United States It works by delivering by an eye injection viral vector particles containing a correct copy of the gene to retinal cells restoring their ability to make a needed enzyme Shares of Spark which fell 2 percent to close at 5536 in regular trading on Wednesday were up 3 percent at 57 after hours The shares have lost nearly 25 percent of their value since midDecember when investors were disappointed by trial data for Spark8217s experimental gene therapy for hemophilia A Reporting y Deena Beasley Editing by Susan Thomas and Tom Brown Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles SEOUL Reuters South Korean officials began preparations on Friday for a summit next month with North Korea aimed at reducing tensions on the peninsula as a report showed the North had probably begun testing a nuclear reactor as recently as late February South Korean President Moon Jaein delivers a speech during a ceremony celebrating the 99th anniversary of the March First Independence Movement against Japanese colonial rule at Seodaemun Prison History Hall in Seoul South Korea March 1 2018 REUTERSKim HongJi The report by intelligence analysts at Jane8217s by IHS Markit said satellite imagery from Feb 25 showed emissions of noncondensable gases from a stack at the North8217s experimental light water reactor ELWR at the Yongbyon Atomic Energy Research Center suggesting preliminary testing had likely begun The reactor could be used to produce weaponsgrade plutonium but North Korea is believed to already have enough fissile material for multiple nuclear bombs according to Joshua Pollack a senior research associate at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey Meantime South Korean officials were set to convene their first meeting at the presidential Blue House to prepare for a summit between President Moon Jaein and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un late next month Headed by Moon8217s chief of staff Im Jongseok former prominent democracy activist the team will hammer out plans for the summit including when to contact the North and what will be discussed between Kim and Moon US President Donald Trump also accepted a summit invitation from Kim Jong Un after a South Korean envoy told him earlier this month that the North8217s leader was prepared to discuss denuclearization Trump and Kim are expected to meet sometime in May although a location has not been set yet Although North Korea8217s state media has yet to comment on the pending summits with Moon and Trump its foreign minister Ri Yong Ho is visiting Sweden for talks with his Swedish counterpart Margot Wallstrom Ri8217s trip prompted speculation it could lay the groundwork for the summit in Sweden between Trump and Kim Jong Un North Korean leader Kim Jong Un waves to people attending a military parade marking the 105th birth anniversary of countrys founding father Kim Il Sung in Pyongyang April 15 2017 REUTERSDamir Sagolj The push for these summits came after the North Korean leader said in a New Year8217s address that he wanted to improve relations with the South following a year of heightened tensions brought on by the North8217s nuclear and missile tests 8220WORK GOES ON8221 North Korea completed construction of the Yongbyon ELWR in 2013 It was optimized for civilian electricity production and although it is not yet operational it could start running with 8220little warning8221 later in 2018 or 2019 the Jane8217s report said The experimental reactor is likely too small to provide much in the way of electricity but is part of a 8220longrunning effort8221 to develop a lightwater reactor after a deal by an international consortium including the United States to provide two such nuclear power reactors in the 1990s fell apart Pollack said 8220It8217s their way of saying 8216see since you won8217t give us what you promised we8217ll do it ourselves82178221 Pollack said 8220They haven8217t made any agreements lately with the US so the work goes on8221 An official at the South8217s defense ministry said authorities were aware of the Jane8217s report which follows a similar one released on the 38 North website earlier this month that said a nearby reactor had also continued to show signs of operation The isolated state has maintained it will continue developing its nuclear program but later added it was open to abandoning the program if the security of its regime was guaranteed according to South Korea Reporting by Christine Kim Additional reporting by Josh Smith Editing by Simon CameronMoore Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters The head of the most influential US business lobbying group warned the Trump administration that unilateral tariffs on Chinese goods could lead to a destructive trade war that will hurt American consumers and US economic growth US Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Thomas Donohue attends an event with the Mexican Chamber of Commerce in Mexico City Mexico October 10 2017 REUTERSGinnette Riquelme US Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue said in a statement on Thursday that such tariffs associated with a probe of China8217s intellectual property practices would be 8220damaging taxes on American consumers8221 His comments came after White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said that Trump would in coming weeks get options to address China8217s 8220theft and forced transfer8221 of American intellectual property as part of the investigation under Section 301 of the US Trade Act of 1974 Reuters reported on Tuesday that Trump was considering tariffs on up to 60 billion worth of Chinese information technology telecommunications and consumer products along with US investment restrictions for Chinese companies Donohue said the Trump administration was right to focus on the negative economic impact of China8217s industrial policies and unfair trade practices but said tariffs were the wrong approach to dealing with these 8220Tariffs of 30 billion a year would wipe out over a third of the savings American families received from the doubling of the standard deduction in tax reform8221 Donohue said 8220If the tariffs reach 60 billion which has been rumored the impact would be even more devastating8221 He urged the administration not to proceed with such a plan US President Donald Trump speaks during his meeting with Irelands Prime Minister Taoiseach Leo Varadkar in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington US March 15 2018 REUTERSKevin Lamarque 8220Tariffs could lead to a destructive trade war with serious consequences for US economic growth and job creation8221 hurting consumers businesses farmers and ranchers Navarro speaking on CNBC television said the remedies in the 8220Section 3018221 probe were among 8220many steps that the president is courageously going to take in order to address unfair trade practices8221 8220I don8217t think there8217s a single person on Wall Street that will oppose cracking down on China8217s theft of our intellectual property or their forced transfer8221 Navarro added But Navarro a key architect of steel and aluminum tariffs announced last week by Trump said that tariffs will not necessarily provoke a trade war 8220We can obviously do it in a way that can be good for the American people and good for the global trading system8221 he said 8220We can do this in a way that is peaceful and will improve and strengthen the trading system Everybody on Wall Street needs to understand Just relax8221 China has repeatedly said that there would be no winners in a trade war but that it would protect its interests in the face of US trade action China wouldn8217t allow itself to become 8220the target for the arrows of adversity8221 the official China Daily newspaper warned in an editorial late on Thursday 8220It should be borne in mind that even the most playful cat will scratch if you provoke it beyond a certain point8221 the newspaper said Reporting by David Lawder and Lisa Lambert Additional reporting by Michael Martina in BEIJING Editing by James Dalgleish and Richard Borsuk Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles TOKYO Reuters Asian stocks slid on Friday as reports of more chaos in the Trump administration tested investors8217 nerves already frayed by fears that US tariffs could hurt the global economy and trigger a trade war FILE PHOTO A man walks past an electronic stock quotation board outside a brokerage in Tokyo Japan February 9 2018 REUTERSToru Hanai MSCIs broadest index of AsiaPacific shares outside Japan MIAPJ0000PUS slipped 02 percent in early trade Japans Nikkei N225 was down 03 percent On Wall Street the SampampP 500 SPX edged 008 percent lower on Thursday marking its first fourday losing streak of 2018 It hit a session low soon after the New York Times reported that US Special Counsel Robert Mueller had issued a subpoena for documents related to US President Donald Trump8217s businesses The Washington Post meanwhile reported that President Donald Trump has decided to remove HR McMaster as his national security advisor The news came just days after following the recent departure of two key officials former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and top economic advisor Gary Cohn from the Trump administration Together with the report earlier this week that Trump is seeking to impose tariffs on up to 60 billion of Chinese imports they cemented investor concerns that the administration is increasingly leaning toward protectionism 8220Trade frictions look set to grow The next week could see more details of Trump8217s tariff plans on China and there will likely be sectors that fall to victim8221 said Norihiro Fujito senior investment strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Already shares of steelmakers have been battered since Trump announced tariffs on steel and aluminum exports Fears that the tariffs could disrupt synchronized global growth dwarfed recent strong economic data including a fall in US jobless claims 8220It seems as if for Trump only 8216America First8217 policies are left to boost his popularity and to get reelected8221 said Hiroko Iwaki senior strategist at Mizuho Securities 8220It is hard to expect political uncertainties to disappear soon That will underpin bonds8221 she added US Treasuries yield stood little changed at 2822 percent US10YTRR in Asia after having hit a near twoweek low of 2797 percent on Thursday In contrast shortterm bond yields rose as investors braced for a widely expected rate hike by the Federal Reserve next week with the twoyear yield hitting a 9 12year high of 2295 percent US2YTRR Nikkei Inc 216698 N225 Nikkei Index 13415 062 N225 SPX In Europe the German Bund yield DE10YTTWEB hit a sixweek low of 0566 percent Political uncertainties are mounting in Japan where Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is under pressure for suspicions of a coverup in a controversial land sale In the currency market rising risk aversion pushed the dollar lower against the safe haven yen to 10594 yen JPY down 04 percent The euro was little changed at 12303 EUR having slipped 05 percent the previous day Subdued risk sentiment kept the dollar supported against riskier currencies such as commoditylinked currencies and emerging market currencies The Canadian dollar CADD4 which has been hit also by worries Trump may pull out from NAFTA hit a ninemonth low of C13072 to the dollar Oil prices were little changed after ending choppy Thursday trade higher as the International Energy Agency said global oil demand is expected to pick up this year but warned supply is growing at a faster pace Brent futures LCOc1 stood flat at 6511 per barrel Editing by Sam Holmes and KIm Coghill Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters By imposing new sanctions on Russia and condemning a suspected Russian chemical attack in Britain Washington has hinted at a tougher stance toward Moscow despite President Donald Trump8217s stated desire for better ties National flags of Russia and the US fly at Vnukovo International Airport in Moscow Russia April 11 2017 REUTERSMaxim Shemetov The US Treasury slapped sanctions on 19 Russian citizens and five entities for election meddling and cyber attacks in the most significant steps the United States has taken against Russia since Trump took office amid US intelligence agency allegations that Moscow tried to help him win the 2016 election While the Treasury put off targeting oligarchs and officials close to Russian President Vladimir Putin it said further sanctions were coming and for the first time blamed Moscow for cyber attacks stretching back at least two years that targeted the US power grid including nuclear facilities After initially equivocating about a chemical attack on a former Russian double agent in Salisbury England the White House joined a statement by the leaders of Britain France and Germany in which they said they 8220abhor the attack8221 and blamed it on Moscow Moscow has denied any involvement in the poisoning Thursday8217s actions have caused some Russia analysts to ask whether the administration is taking a more confrontational stance despite Trump8217s repeated statements in the election campaign that he wanted a better relationship with Moscow his praise for Putin and apparent reluctance to criticize the Russian leader 8220I think we have hit an inflection point in the current administration8217s approach towards Russia8221 said a diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity 8220There has been a shift in balance8221 The diplomat attributed the evolution partly to a clash between USbacked and Russianbacked forces in the Syrian city of Deir alZor in February Russia pounding Syria8217s eastern Ghouta enclave of antigovernment rebels with air strikes during the past month and Putin showing a video on March 1 of a weapon appearing to hover over what looked like a map of Florida home to Trump8217s MaraLago resort 8220Those three things taken together have caused a shift in analysis in parts of the administration8221 said the diplomat TRUMP EXASPERATED While there was a sense at the White House that there has been a hardening of Trump8217s view toward Russia at least for now it was unclear whether this represented a longterm shift A senior administration official said there was some feeling that the goodwill that Trump extended toward Russia when he took over has not been reciprocated and that the Russians do not want to have good relations with the United States This has exasperated Trump who instructed his team to make sure the United States appeared to be in solidarity with Britain over the nerve agent attack Eugene Rumer a former US national intelligence officer for Russia suggested Trump8217s approach may ultimately be guided by Special Counsel Robert Mueller8217s investigation into whether Russia meddled in the election campaign The Kremlin denies interfering Mueller is also investigating any potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow officials something Trump denies 8220My hypothesis is the White House stance on Russia is going to be determined to a large extent by how much they think the investigation threatens their political position8221 Rumer said Officials from multiple US agencies discussed next steps at a meeting on Thursday with one aim being to avoid personally attacking Putin and taking inyourface steps that could prompt retaliation In announcing Thursday8217s sanctions US officials made clear more would follow 8220This is just one of a series of ongoing actions that we8217re taking to counter Russian aggression8221 one US official told reportersamp1608220There will be more to come and we8217re going to continue to employ our resources to combat malicious Russian activity and respond to nefarious attacks8221 Sergei Skripal 66 and his daughter Yulia 33 were found unconscious on a bench outside a shopping center on March 4 after being exposed to what the British authorities have identified as a militarygrade Sovietera Novichok nerve agent Another US official attributed the sharper edge to US policy to increasingly brazen behavior by Russia in cyberspace and on the ground culminating in the Salisbury attack This US official who spoke on condition of anonymity also pointed to Russia8217s refusal to restrain Syrian President Bashar alAssad and the role of Russian 8220mercenaries8221 in Syria now entering its eighth year of civil war The official said it was unclear if Trump himself saw Russia as an adversary but suggested Putin may have 8220overplayed his hand8221 by leaving Russian fingerprints on the hacking the chemical attack the deployment of groundlaunched cruise missiles which the US says violate an arms control treaty and a March 1 speech on 8220invincible8221 Russian weaponry 8220If the president felt like Putin was oneupping him not to mention stealing the limelight then it wouldn8217t be surprising that he would react8221 the official said While more sanctions are expected it was not clear if the Trump policy toward Russia was changing especially given Trump8217s unpredictability said a third official who is involved in talks on next steps 8220Tomorrow is another day8221 the official said Additional reporting by Steve Holland and Warren Strobel Writing by Arshad Mohammed Editing by Grant McCool and Paul Tait Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>Jan 24 (Reuters) - Netia SA:</p> <p>* SAID ON TUESDAY THAT AT THIS STAGE IT ESTIMATES TO WRITE OFF 150.7 MILLION ZLOTYS DUE TO IMPAIRMENT OF NON-FINANCIAL ASSETS IN ITS NON-CONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL STATEMENT FOR 2017</p> <p>* SAYS WILL GIVE IS FINAL RESULTS OF ASSETS IMPAIRMENT TEST WITH ITS FINANCIAL RESULTS FOR 2017 ON FEB. 15</p> <p>* SAYS IT IS CONDUCTING ASSETS IMPAIRMENT TEST BY COMPARING THE BALANCE VALUE OF ASSETS WITH ITS RECOVERABLE VALUE</p> <p>* SAYS THE RECOVERABLE VALUE IS BASED ON THE FAIR VALUE CALCULATION</p> <p>* SAYS LAST YEAR THE CALCULATION OF FAIR VALUE WAS BASED ON ESTIMATED CASH FLOW AND ITS 10-YEAR BUSINESS PLAN</p> <p>* SAYS CYFROWY POLSAT ACQUIRED 33 PERCENT STAKE IN THE COMPANY AT THE BEGINNING OF DEC. AND ANNOUNCED A TENDER OFFER FOR THE REMAINING 66 PERCENT STAKE</p> <p>* SAYS THE SUCCESSFUL IMPLEMENTATION OF THE TENDER OFFER CAN HAVE AN IMPACT ON ITS STRATEGY AND OPERATING ACTIVITY</p> <p>* SAYS IT HAS DECIDED THEN TO APPLY MARKET SHARE PRICE AS THE MOST TRUSTWORTHY METHOD OF CALCULATION OF FAIR VALUE OF ITS ASSETS</p> <p>Source text for Eikon:</p> <p>Further company coverage: (Gdynia Newsroom)</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel is investigating Facebook Inc. ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FB.O" type="external">FB.O</a>) over possible infringement of its citizens&#8217; privacy following reports that British consultancy Cambridge Analytica improperly accessed users&#8217; information, the Justice Ministry said on Thursday.</p> A man poses with a magnifier in front of a Facebook logo on display in this illustration taken in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, December 16, 2015. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/File Photo <p>The probe will examine &#8220;whether personal data of Israeli citizens was illegally used in a way that infringes upon their right to privacy and the provisions of the Israeli Privacy Law,&#8221; the ministry said in a statement.</p> <p>According to the Israeli law, it said, personal data may only be used to the purpose for which it was given, with the consent of the individual.</p> <p>The world&#8217;s largest social-media network is facing growing government scrutiny in Europe and the United States.</p> <p>This follows allegations by a whistleblower that Cambridge Analytica improperly accessed users&#8217; information to build profiles on American voters that were later used to help elect U.S. President Donald Trump in 2016.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FB.O" type="external">Facebook Inc</a> 169.39 FB.O Nasdaq +1.24 (+0.74%) FB.O <p>Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has promised tougher steps to restrict developers&#8217; access to user information.</p> <p>Facebook and Cambridge Analytica have both blamed the academic who provided the data, Aleksandr Kogan, who gathered it by running a survey app on Facebook. Kogan has said he is being made a scapegoat.</p> <p>Reporting by Dan Williams and Ari Rabinovitch; Editing by Mark Potter</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FB.O" type="external">FB.O</a>) Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg apologized on Wednesday for mistakes his company made in how it handled data belonging to 50 million of its users, and promised tougher steps to restrict developers&#8217; access to such information.</p> <p>The world&#8217;s largest social media network is facing growing government scrutiny in Europe and the United States. This follows allegations by a whistleblower that British political consultancy Cambridge Analytica improperly accessed users&#8217; information to build profiles on American voters that were later used to help elect U.S. President Donald Trump in 2016.</p> <p>&#8220;This was a major breach of trust. I&#8217;m really sorry this happened. We have a basic responsibility to protect people&#8217;s data,&#8221; Zuckerberg told CNN, breaking a public silence since the scandal erupted at the weekend.</p> <p>Zuckerberg said in a post on Facebook the company "made mistakes, there's more to do, and we need to step up and do it." ( <a href="http://bit.ly/2DHAlUJ" type="external">bit.ly/2DHAlUJ</a>)</p> <p>He said the social network planned to conduct an investigation of thousands of apps that have used Facebook&#8217;s platform, restrict developer access to data, and give members a tool that lets them disable access to their Facebook data more easily.</p> <p>His plans did not represent a big reduction of advertisers&#8217; ability to use Facebook data, which is the company&#8217;s lifeblood.</p> <p>European governments expressed dissatisfaction with Facebook&#8217;s response and said the scandal showed the need for strong regulation.</p> <p>&#8220;It shouldn&#8217;t be for a company to decide what is the appropriate balance between privacy and innovation and use of data. Those rules should be set by society as a whole and so by parliament,&#8221; British minister for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, Matt Hancock, told BBC Radio. &#8220;The big tech companies need to abide by the law and we&#8217;re strengthening the law.&#8221;</p> <p>Germany&#8217;s justice minister Katarina Barley demanded that Facebook executives explain to her whether the site&#8217;s 30 million German users had been affected.</p> <p>Zuckerberg said he was open to additional government regulation and happy to testify before the U.S. Congress if he was the right person.</p> <p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not sure we shouldn&#8217;t be regulated,&#8221; he told CNN. &#8220;I actually think the question is more what is the right regulation rather than yes or no, should it be regulated? ... People should know who is buying the ads that they see on Facebook.&#8221;</p> <p>Zuckerberg said Facebook was committed to stopping interference in the U.S. midterm election in November and elections in India and Brazil.</p> Slideshow (5 Images) INVESTOR FEARS <p>Facebook shares fell 1.5 percent in premarket trading on Thursday as the apology failed to quell Wall Street nerves.</p> <p>The company has lost nearly $46 billion of its stock market value over the past three days on investors&#8217; fears that any failure by big tech firms to protect personal data could deter advertisers and users and invite tougher regulation.</p> <p>Zuckerberg told the New York Times in an interview published on Wednesday he had not seen a &#8220;meaningful number of people&#8221; deleting their accounts over the scandal.</p> <p>Facebook representatives met U.S. congressional staff on Wednesday and planned to continue meetings on Capitol Hill on Thursday. Facebook was unable to answer many questions, two aides who attended the briefing said.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FB.O" type="external">Facebook Inc</a> 169.39 FB.O Nasdaq +1.24 (+0.74%) FB.O <p>Zuckerberg told the website Recode that fixes to protect users' data would cost "many millions of dollars." ( <a href="http://bit.ly/2IJbYJS" type="external">bit.ly/2IJbYJS</a>)</p> <p>The whistleblower who launched the scandal, Christopher Wylie, formerly of Cambridge Analytica, said on Twitter he had accepted invitations to testify before U.S. and UK lawmakers.</p> &#8216;SCAPEGOAT&#8217; <p>On Tuesday, the board of Cambridge Analytica suspended its Chief Executive Alexander Nix, who was caught in a secret recording boasting that his company played a decisive role in Trump&#8217;s victory.</p> <p>Psychologist Aleksandr Kogan, who provided the data, dismissed on Wednesday Cambridge Analytica&#8217;s assertions that the information was &#8220;incredibly accurate&#8221;.</p> <p>Kogan, who gathered the data by running a survey app on Facebook, also said he was being made a scapegoat by the social media firm and Cambridge Analytica. Both companies have blamed Kogan for alleged data misuse.</p> <p>About 300,000 Facebook users responded to Kogan&#8217;s quiz, but that gave the researcher access to those people&#8217;s Facebook friends as well, who had not agreed to share information, producing details on 50 million users.</p> <p>Facebook has said it subsequently made changes that prevent people from sharing data about friends and maintains that no breach occurred because the original users gave permission. Critics say that it essentially was a breach because data of unsuspecting friends was taken.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-facebook-cambridgeanalytica-israel/israel-investigating-facebook-over-privacy-concerns-idUSKBN1GY1YE" type="external">Israel investigating Facebook over privacy concerns</a> <a href="/article/us-facebook-cambridge-analytica-russia/russian-uk-ambassador-says-we-had-no-links-to-cambridge-analytica-idUSKBN1GY1PY" type="external">Russian UK ambassador says: we had no links to Cambridge Analytica</a> <a href="/article/us-facebook-cambridge-analytica-warrants/cambridge-analytica-london-search-warrant-adjourned-until-friday-ico-idUSKBN1GY1DW" type="external">Cambridge Analytica London search warrant adjourned until Friday: ICO</a> <p>Analysts say the incident may reduce user engagement with Facebook, lessening its clout with advertisers. Three Wall Street brokerages cut their price targets.</p> <p>Reporting by David Ingram; Additional reporting by Dustin Volz and David Shepardson in Washington and Kate Holton in London; Writing by Susan Thomas; Editing by Bill Rigby, Lisa Shumaker, Paul Tait and David Stamp</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Congress was racing on Thursday to approve a massive spending bill and send it to President Donald Trump for enactment before a midnight Friday government shutdown deadline,</p> People build a snowman outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., March 21, 2018. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein <p>in a move that would significantly boost defense and non-military funding through Sept. 30.</p> <p>The House of Representatives planned to debate and vote on the measure on Thursday. If it clears the chamber, despite opposition from some conservatives protesting the measure&#8217;s crushing deficit spending, it is likely to have an easier time passing the Senate.</p> <p>When coupled with recently enacted tax cuts, the bill is projected to result in budget deficits hitting more than $800 billion for this year. That could create political difficulties for Republicans running for re-election in November if the conservative wing of the party lashes out at this legislation.</p> <p>Democrats complained that in the rush to pass the bill, few if any lawmakers had time to read through the 2,232-page tome to see what it actually contained.</p> <p>For Trump, there are potential difficulties as well beyond the deficit-spending.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-usa-fiscal-congress-freedomcaucus/house-freedom-caucus-rejects-1-3-trillion-u-s-spending-bill-idUSKBN1GY1K4" type="external">House Freedom Caucus rejects $1.3 trillion U.S. spending bill</a> <p>Trump, in a post on Twitter late on Wednesday, said the funding bill will allow him to start building a wall on the southwest U.S. border with Mexico. &#8220;Got $1.6 Billion to start Wall on Southern Border, rest will be forthcoming,&#8221; he wrote.</p> <p>But Democrats argued the added funds will help build or restore a range of other barriers, including existing fencing, and would not pay for a concrete edifice that Trump originally said would be financed by Mexico - a claim the Mexican government has denounced.</p> <p>Passage of the spending bill would end several months of intense bickering between Republicans and Democrats over spending priorities, which led to two short government shutdowns earlier this year.</p> <p>It also would deliver a further setback to Trump, whose proposals for severe cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency, State Department and other federal agencies would be scaled back.</p> <p>The bill, which also excludes some of Trump&#8217;s immigration-related funding requests, was unveiled late on Wednesday. Senate No. 2 Republican John Cornyn said his chamber could take it up on Thursday night if no senator acts to slow it.</p> <p>On Wednesday, the White House signaled that Trump would sign the legislation if Congress sends it to him.</p> CONSERVATIVE OPPOSITION <p>House Republicans&#8217; conservative Freedom Caucus on Thursday said its roughly three dozen members would not back the bill because it massively increases spending while not defunding Obamacare, Planned Parenthood and so-called sanctuary cities.</p> <p>&#8220;You&#8217;re going to see lots of conservatives vote against it,&#8221; U.S. Representative Jim Jordan, a caucus member, told Fox News in an interview.</p> <p>Trump at one point wanted $25 billion included in the bill to fully fund construction of his proposed U.S.-Mexico border wall, but negotiations with Democrats to make that happen fell apart early this week, according to congressional aides.</p> <p>Instead, Trump would get nearly $1.6 billion more for border security this year. More border patrol agents could be hired, but there would not be the significant increase in immigration agents working the interior of the country.</p> <p>The Department of Homeland Security had sought a big buildup in those officers to boost deportation of undocumented immigrants.</p> <p>Besides the $80 billion boost in military spending, the largest in 15 years, the measure includes new money for infrastructure improvements and combating Russian election hacking.</p> <p>In response to public anger and frustration over mass shootings, including a Feb. 14 massacre at a Florida high school, the bill contains modest improvements to background checks for gun sales and grants to help schools prevent gun violence.</p> <p>These provisions were far short of steps many Democrats and gun control groups say are needed to stop the shooting deaths of school children, concert-goers, church worshipers and others.</p> <p>A so-called &#8220;grain glitch&#8221; included in a tax law enacted at the end of last year would be repaired by the legislation.</p> <p>Big grain buyers, such as Anheuser Busch Inbev NV, Cargill Inc and the ethanol industry, have complained the glitch gives lucrative tax breaks to grain producers for selling to farming cooperatives, and a lesser break for selling to agriculture companies.</p> <p>The bill will provide a $307 million increase above the administration&#8217;s request for counter-intelligence efforts to fight Russian cyber attacks in 2018, when U.S. mid-term congressional elections will be held, and $380 million for grants to states to secure their election systems.</p> <p>Other components of the bill include $10 billion in infrastructure spending for highways, airports, railroads and broadband, and a $2.8 billion increase to fund treatment and prevention of opioid addiction and research into the subject.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Amanda Becker and Susan Heavey; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Bill Trott</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BEIRUT/DAMASCUS (Reuters) - The Syrian government moved closer to ending rebel resistance in eastern Ghouta as civilians streamed out of one of its besieged, bomb-battered towns on Thursday and insurgents prepared to surrender another.</p> A woman holds a child during evacuation from the besieged town of Douma, Eastern Ghouta, in Damascus, Syria March 22, 2018. REUTERS/Bassam Khabieh <p>The army assault on eastern Ghouta, an area of towns and farmland just outside Damascus, has been one of the most intense in Syria&#8217;s seven-year-old war, killing more than 1,500 people in a relentless bombardment with war planes, shells and rockets.</p> <p>A Reuters witness said buses had driven into the town of Harasta and a Syrian military source said 600 to 700 fighters were expected to be among about 2,000 people leaving in them in the coming hours for opposition areas in northwestern Syria.</p> <p>Hundreds of people including scores of fighters had already started boarding buses at an assembly point inside Harasta, the military source said. Between 18,000-20,000 people were expected to stay in Harasta under government rule, the source added.</p> <p>Meanwhile, state television reported that more than 6,000 people had fled the larger rebel-held town of Douma since Wednesday, crossing over into government-held territory.</p> <p>The Ahrar al-Sham group&#8217;s decision to surrender Harsata leaves only Douma and another rebel pocket in eastern Ghouta that includes the towns of Jobar, Ein Terma, Arbin and Zamalka.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-ghouta-evacuatio/more-than-5000-civilians-leave-syrias-ghouta-russian-military-says-idUSKBN1GY1KG" type="external">More than 5,000 civilians leave Syria's Ghouta, Russian military says</a> <p>They are all that remain of the main insurgent stronghold near the Syrian capital Damascus, the biggest prize for President Bashar al-Assad in his fight against the rebels since the recapture of Aleppo in late 2016.</p> <p>Rebels fired rockets from eastern Ghouta into Damascus on Thursday, killing two people, state media reported. Television showed burning projectile parts on streets and in parks.</p> <p>Government air strikes had pummeled parts of eastern Ghouta on Thursday morning, striking Arbin and Zamalka and killing 19 people, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitoring group.</p> <p>An army officer interviewed on state television urged rebels who had not yet negotiated a deal to quit. &#8220;Death is coming for you if you do not surrender,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>On Sunday, Assad drove himself to a newly captured battlefront in eastern Ghouta, a demonstration of his seemingly unassailable position in the war that has been going his way since Russia sent its air force to help him in 2015.</p> <p>The deal to surrender Harasta is the first by eastern Ghouta rebels and began on Thursday with a prisoner swap. In an interview with state television, a Syrian soldier freed by rebels wept and thanked God and the army for his release.</p> <p>The Reuters witness at the crossing with Harasta said the army had removed barriers from the old frontline lying across the road into the town to allow the buses to pass.</p> A girl holds her belongings during evacuation from the besieged town of Douma, Eastern Ghouta, in Damascus, Syria March 22, 2018. REUTERS/Bassam Khabieh <p>The Russian Defence Ministry website showed what it said was live footage from the al-Wafideen crossing point from Douma into government areas. Over a period of several minutes, it showed dozens of people in small groups coming around a corner and trekking along the dirt road past armed soldiers.</p> <p>Some bore bundles of their possessions, others carried small children or pushed prams. Behind were fields and trees. At one point in the road a man could be seen in a red shirt with the logo of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent.</p> <p>Douma is the most populous area in eastern Ghouta, and for more than a week it has been entirely surrounded by the government. The Jaish al-Islam rebel group that holds the town has said it is determined to fight on after a month-long government offensive that has taken 70 percent of the former opposition enclave in eastern Ghouta.</p> <p>However, the Observatory said people leaving the area were doing so under an agreement between the group and the government&#8217;s closest ally Russia.</p> Slideshow (8 Images) FEROCITY <p>The Syrian government and Russia have both accused rebels in eastern Ghouta of stopping civilians leaving the area. They say their assault, which the Observatory says has killed more than 1,500 people so far, is needed to end Islamist militant rule over the area&#8217;s people.</p> <p>They also say it is needed to end rebel shelling of Damascus and other nearby areas. On Tuesday, a rocket struck a marketplace in a government-held town, killing dozens.</p> <p>However, the ferocity of the Syrian army&#8217;s offensive in eastern Ghouta has prompted Western condemnation and urgent pleas from United Nations humanitarian agencies for a ceasefire.</p> <p>Over the past week, tens of thousands of people have fled across the frontlines into government territory.</p> <p>For the Harasta rebels, the journey to Idlib is one already well trodden by insurgents from other areas surrendered to Assad after prolonged sieges and intense bombardments of the kind used against eastern Ghouta over the past month.</p> <p>The northwestern province is the biggest remaining area under rebel control in Syria and its population has been doubled by refugees fleeing other areas including many opposition supporters.</p> <p>A military media unit run by Assad&#8217;s ally Hezbollah on Wednesday said some 1,500 fighters along with 6,000 family members would depart Harasta under the agreement with the government.</p> <p>On Thursday the same Hezbollah media unit said the army and Ahrar al-Sham had started to exchange prisoners as the Harasta deal got under way.</p> <p>Reporting by Firas Makdesi and Kinda Makieh in Damascus; Ellen Francis and Angus McDowall, editing by Angus MacSwan/Tom Perry</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

BRIEF-Netia May Write Off 150.7 Mln Zlotys For 2017 Israel investigating Facebook over privacy concerns Zuckerberg apologizes for Facebook mistakes with user data, vows curbs Congress scrambles to pass funding bill before Friday deadline Assad closer to Ghouta victory, as some rebels prepare to quit

https://reuters.com/article/idUSL8N1PJ0RD

2018-01-24

2least

Jan 24 Reuters Netia SA SAID ON TUESDAY THAT AT THIS STAGE IT ESTIMATES TO WRITE OFF 1507 MILLION ZLOTYS DUE TO IMPAIRMENT OF NONFINANCIAL ASSETS IN ITS NONCONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL STATEMENT FOR 2017 SAYS WILL GIVE IS FINAL RESULTS OF ASSETS IMPAIRMENT TEST WITH ITS FINANCIAL RESULTS FOR 2017 ON FEB 15 SAYS IT IS CONDUCTING ASSETS IMPAIRMENT TEST BY COMPARING THE BALANCE VALUE OF ASSETS WITH ITS RECOVERABLE VALUE SAYS THE RECOVERABLE VALUE IS BASED ON THE FAIR VALUE CALCULATION SAYS LAST YEAR THE CALCULATION OF FAIR VALUE WAS BASED ON ESTIMATED CASH FLOW AND ITS 10YEAR BUSINESS PLAN SAYS CYFROWY POLSAT ACQUIRED 33 PERCENT STAKE IN THE COMPANY AT THE BEGINNING OF DEC AND ANNOUNCED A TENDER OFFER FOR THE REMAINING 66 PERCENT STAKE SAYS THE SUCCESSFUL IMPLEMENTATION OF THE TENDER OFFER CAN HAVE AN IMPACT ON ITS STRATEGY AND OPERATING ACTIVITY SAYS IT HAS DECIDED THEN TO APPLY MARKET SHARE PRICE AS THE MOST TRUSTWORTHY METHOD OF CALCULATION OF FAIR VALUE OF ITS ASSETS Source text for Eikon Further company coverage Gdynia Newsroom Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles JERUSALEM Reuters Israel is investigating Facebook Inc FBO over possible infringement of its citizens8217 privacy following reports that British consultancy Cambridge Analytica improperly accessed users8217 information the Justice Ministry said on Thursday A man poses with a magnifier in front of a Facebook logo on display in this illustration taken in Sarajevo Bosnia and Herzegovina December 16 2015 REUTERSDado RuvicFile Photo The probe will examine 8220whether personal data of Israeli citizens was illegally used in a way that infringes upon their right to privacy and the provisions of the Israeli Privacy Law8221 the ministry said in a statement According to the Israeli law it said personal data may only be used to the purpose for which it was given with the consent of the individual The world8217s largest socialmedia network is facing growing government scrutiny in Europe and the United States This follows allegations by a whistleblower that Cambridge Analytica improperly accessed users8217 information to build profiles on American voters that were later used to help elect US President Donald Trump in 2016 Facebook Inc 16939 FBO Nasdaq 124 074 FBO Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has promised tougher steps to restrict developers8217 access to user information Facebook and Cambridge Analytica have both blamed the academic who provided the data Aleksandr Kogan who gathered it by running a survey app on Facebook Kogan has said he is being made a scapegoat Reporting by Dan Williams and Ari Rabinovitch Editing by Mark Potter Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles SAN FRANCISCO Reuters Facebook Inc FBO Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg apologized on Wednesday for mistakes his company made in how it handled data belonging to 50 million of its users and promised tougher steps to restrict developers8217 access to such information The world8217s largest social media network is facing growing government scrutiny in Europe and the United States This follows allegations by a whistleblower that British political consultancy Cambridge Analytica improperly accessed users8217 information to build profiles on American voters that were later used to help elect US President Donald Trump in 2016 8220This was a major breach of trust I8217m really sorry this happened We have a basic responsibility to protect people8217s data8221 Zuckerberg told CNN breaking a public silence since the scandal erupted at the weekend Zuckerberg said in a post on Facebook the company made mistakes theres more to do and we need to step up and do it bitly2DHAlUJ He said the social network planned to conduct an investigation of thousands of apps that have used Facebook8217s platform restrict developer access to data and give members a tool that lets them disable access to their Facebook data more easily His plans did not represent a big reduction of advertisers8217 ability to use Facebook data which is the company8217s lifeblood European governments expressed dissatisfaction with Facebook8217s response and said the scandal showed the need for strong regulation 8220It shouldn8217t be for a company to decide what is the appropriate balance between privacy and innovation and use of data Those rules should be set by society as a whole and so by parliament8221 British minister for Digital Culture Media and Sport Matt Hancock told BBC Radio 8220The big tech companies need to abide by the law and we8217re strengthening the law8221 Germany8217s justice minister Katarina Barley demanded that Facebook executives explain to her whether the site8217s 30 million German users had been affected Zuckerberg said he was open to additional government regulation and happy to testify before the US Congress if he was the right person 8220I8217m not sure we shouldn8217t be regulated8221 he told CNN 8220I actually think the question is more what is the right regulation rather than yes or no should it be regulated People should know who is buying the ads that they see on Facebook8221 Zuckerberg said Facebook was committed to stopping interference in the US midterm election in November and elections in India and Brazil Slideshow 5 Images INVESTOR FEARS Facebook shares fell 15 percent in premarket trading on Thursday as the apology failed to quell Wall Street nerves The company has lost nearly 46 billion of its stock market value over the past three days on investors8217 fears that any failure by big tech firms to protect personal data could deter advertisers and users and invite tougher regulation Zuckerberg told the New York Times in an interview published on Wednesday he had not seen a 8220meaningful number of people8221 deleting their accounts over the scandal Facebook representatives met US congressional staff on Wednesday and planned to continue meetings on Capitol Hill on Thursday Facebook was unable to answer many questions two aides who attended the briefing said Facebook Inc 16939 FBO Nasdaq 124 074 FBO Zuckerberg told the website Recode that fixes to protect users data would cost many millions of dollars bitly2IJbYJS The whistleblower who launched the scandal Christopher Wylie formerly of Cambridge Analytica said on Twitter he had accepted invitations to testify before US and UK lawmakers 8216SCAPEGOAT8217 On Tuesday the board of Cambridge Analytica suspended its Chief Executive Alexander Nix who was caught in a secret recording boasting that his company played a decisive role in Trump8217s victory Psychologist Aleksandr Kogan who provided the data dismissed on Wednesday Cambridge Analytica8217s assertions that the information was 8220incredibly accurate8221 Kogan who gathered the data by running a survey app on Facebook also said he was being made a scapegoat by the social media firm and Cambridge Analytica Both companies have blamed Kogan for alleged data misuse About 300000 Facebook users responded to Kogan8217s quiz but that gave the researcher access to those people8217s Facebook friends as well who had not agreed to share information producing details on 50 million users Facebook has said it subsequently made changes that prevent people from sharing data about friends and maintains that no breach occurred because the original users gave permission Critics say that it essentially was a breach because data of unsuspecting friends was taken Related Coverage Israel investigating Facebook over privacy concerns Russian UK ambassador says we had no links to Cambridge Analytica Cambridge Analytica London search warrant adjourned until Friday ICO Analysts say the incident may reduce user engagement with Facebook lessening its clout with advertisers Three Wall Street brokerages cut their price targets Reporting by David Ingram Additional reporting by Dustin Volz and David Shepardson in Washington and Kate Holton in London Writing by Susan Thomas Editing by Bill Rigby Lisa Shumaker Paul Tait and David Stamp Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters The US Congress was racing on Thursday to approve a massive spending bill and send it to President Donald Trump for enactment before a midnight Friday government shutdown deadline People build a snowman outside the US Capitol in Washington US March 21 2018 REUTERSAaron P Bernstein in a move that would significantly boost defense and nonmilitary funding through Sept 30 The House of Representatives planned to debate and vote on the measure on Thursday If it clears the chamber despite opposition from some conservatives protesting the measure8217s crushing deficit spending it is likely to have an easier time passing the Senate When coupled with recently enacted tax cuts the bill is projected to result in budget deficits hitting more than 800 billion for this year That could create political difficulties for Republicans running for reelection in November if the conservative wing of the party lashes out at this legislation Democrats complained that in the rush to pass the bill few if any lawmakers had time to read through the 2232page tome to see what it actually contained For Trump there are potential difficulties as well beyond the deficitspending Related Coverage House Freedom Caucus rejects 13 trillion US spending bill Trump in a post on Twitter late on Wednesday said the funding bill will allow him to start building a wall on the southwest US border with Mexico 8220Got 16 Billion to start Wall on Southern Border rest will be forthcoming8221 he wrote But Democrats argued the added funds will help build or restore a range of other barriers including existing fencing and would not pay for a concrete edifice that Trump originally said would be financed by Mexico a claim the Mexican government has denounced Passage of the spending bill would end several months of intense bickering between Republicans and Democrats over spending priorities which led to two short government shutdowns earlier this year It also would deliver a further setback to Trump whose proposals for severe cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency State Department and other federal agencies would be scaled back The bill which also excludes some of Trump8217s immigrationrelated funding requests was unveiled late on Wednesday Senate No 2 Republican John Cornyn said his chamber could take it up on Thursday night if no senator acts to slow it On Wednesday the White House signaled that Trump would sign the legislation if Congress sends it to him CONSERVATIVE OPPOSITION House Republicans8217 conservative Freedom Caucus on Thursday said its roughly three dozen members would not back the bill because it massively increases spending while not defunding Obamacare Planned Parenthood and socalled sanctuary cities 8220You8217re going to see lots of conservatives vote against it8221 US Representative Jim Jordan a caucus member told Fox News in an interview Trump at one point wanted 25 billion included in the bill to fully fund construction of his proposed USMexico border wall but negotiations with Democrats to make that happen fell apart early this week according to congressional aides Instead Trump would get nearly 16 billion more for border security this year More border patrol agents could be hired but there would not be the significant increase in immigration agents working the interior of the country The Department of Homeland Security had sought a big buildup in those officers to boost deportation of undocumented immigrants Besides the 80 billion boost in military spending the largest in 15 years the measure includes new money for infrastructure improvements and combating Russian election hacking In response to public anger and frustration over mass shootings including a Feb 14 massacre at a Florida high school the bill contains modest improvements to background checks for gun sales and grants to help schools prevent gun violence These provisions were far short of steps many Democrats and gun control groups say are needed to stop the shooting deaths of school children concertgoers church worshipers and others A socalled 8220grain glitch8221 included in a tax law enacted at the end of last year would be repaired by the legislation Big grain buyers such as Anheuser Busch Inbev NV Cargill Inc and the ethanol industry have complained the glitch gives lucrative tax breaks to grain producers for selling to farming cooperatives and a lesser break for selling to agriculture companies The bill will provide a 307 million increase above the administration8217s request for counterintelligence efforts to fight Russian cyber attacks in 2018 when US midterm congressional elections will be held and 380 million for grants to states to secure their election systems Other components of the bill include 10 billion in infrastructure spending for highways airports railroads and broadband and a 28 billion increase to fund treatment and prevention of opioid addiction and research into the subject Additional reporting by Amanda Becker and Susan Heavey Editing by Bernadette Baum and Bill Trott Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BEIRUTDAMASCUS Reuters The Syrian government moved closer to ending rebel resistance in eastern Ghouta as civilians streamed out of one of its besieged bombbattered towns on Thursday and insurgents prepared to surrender another A woman holds a child during evacuation from the besieged town of Douma Eastern Ghouta in Damascus Syria March 22 2018 REUTERSBassam Khabieh The army assault on eastern Ghouta an area of towns and farmland just outside Damascus has been one of the most intense in Syria8217s sevenyearold war killing more than 1500 people in a relentless bombardment with war planes shells and rockets A Reuters witness said buses had driven into the town of Harasta and a Syrian military source said 600 to 700 fighters were expected to be among about 2000 people leaving in them in the coming hours for opposition areas in northwestern Syria Hundreds of people including scores of fighters had already started boarding buses at an assembly point inside Harasta the military source said Between 1800020000 people were expected to stay in Harasta under government rule the source added Meanwhile state television reported that more than 6000 people had fled the larger rebelheld town of Douma since Wednesday crossing over into governmentheld territory The Ahrar alSham group8217s decision to surrender Harsata leaves only Douma and another rebel pocket in eastern Ghouta that includes the towns of Jobar Ein Terma Arbin and Zamalka Related Coverage More than 5000 civilians leave Syrias Ghouta Russian military says They are all that remain of the main insurgent stronghold near the Syrian capital Damascus the biggest prize for President Bashar alAssad in his fight against the rebels since the recapture of Aleppo in late 2016 Rebels fired rockets from eastern Ghouta into Damascus on Thursday killing two people state media reported Television showed burning projectile parts on streets and in parks Government air strikes had pummeled parts of eastern Ghouta on Thursday morning striking Arbin and Zamalka and killing 19 people according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitoring group An army officer interviewed on state television urged rebels who had not yet negotiated a deal to quit 8220Death is coming for you if you do not surrender8221 he said On Sunday Assad drove himself to a newly captured battlefront in eastern Ghouta a demonstration of his seemingly unassailable position in the war that has been going his way since Russia sent its air force to help him in 2015 The deal to surrender Harasta is the first by eastern Ghouta rebels and began on Thursday with a prisoner swap In an interview with state television a Syrian soldier freed by rebels wept and thanked God and the army for his release The Reuters witness at the crossing with Harasta said the army had removed barriers from the old frontline lying across the road into the town to allow the buses to pass A girl holds her belongings during evacuation from the besieged town of Douma Eastern Ghouta in Damascus Syria March 22 2018 REUTERSBassam Khabieh The Russian Defence Ministry website showed what it said was live footage from the alWafideen crossing point from Douma into government areas Over a period of several minutes it showed dozens of people in small groups coming around a corner and trekking along the dirt road past armed soldiers Some bore bundles of their possessions others carried small children or pushed prams Behind were fields and trees At one point in the road a man could be seen in a red shirt with the logo of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent Douma is the most populous area in eastern Ghouta and for more than a week it has been entirely surrounded by the government The Jaish alIslam rebel group that holds the town has said it is determined to fight on after a monthlong government offensive that has taken 70 percent of the former opposition enclave in eastern Ghouta However the Observatory said people leaving the area were doing so under an agreement between the group and the government8217s closest ally Russia Slideshow 8 Images FEROCITY The Syrian government and Russia have both accused rebels in eastern Ghouta of stopping civilians leaving the area They say their assault which the Observatory says has killed more than 1500 people so far is needed to end Islamist militant rule over the area8217s people They also say it is needed to end rebel shelling of Damascus and other nearby areas On Tuesday a rocket struck a marketplace in a governmentheld town killing dozens However the ferocity of the Syrian army8217s offensive in eastern Ghouta has prompted Western condemnation and urgent pleas from United Nations humanitarian agencies for a ceasefire Over the past week tens of thousands of people have fled across the frontlines into government territory For the Harasta rebels the journey to Idlib is one already well trodden by insurgents from other areas surrendered to Assad after prolonged sieges and intense bombardments of the kind used against eastern Ghouta over the past month The northwestern province is the biggest remaining area under rebel control in Syria and its population has been doubled by refugees fleeing other areas including many opposition supporters A military media unit run by Assad8217s ally Hezbollah on Wednesday said some 1500 fighters along with 6000 family members would depart Harasta under the agreement with the government On Thursday the same Hezbollah media unit said the army and Ahrar alSham had started to exchange prisoners as the Harasta deal got under way Reporting by Firas Makdesi and Kinda Makieh in Damascus Ellen Francis and Angus McDowall editing by Angus MacSwanTom Perry Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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government/NOUN The/DET Jaish/PROPN alIslam/PROPN rebel/NOUN group/NOUN that/PRON holds/VERB the/DET town/NOUN has/AUX said/VERB it/PRON is/AUX determined/ADJ to/PART fight/VERB on/ADP after/ADP a/DET monthlong/PROPN government/NOUN offensive/NOUN that/PRON has/AUX taken/VERB 70/NUM percent/NOUN of/ADP the/DET former/ADJ opposition/NOUN enclave/NOUN in/ADP eastern/ADJ Ghouta/PROPN However/ADV the/DET Observatory/NOUN said/VERB people/NOUN leaving/VERB the/DET area/NOUN were/AUX doing/VERB so/ADV under/ADP an/DET agreement/NOUN between/ADP the/DET group/NOUN and/CCONJ the/DET government8217s/PROPN closest/ADJ ally/NOUN Russia/PROPN Slideshow/PROPN 8/NUM Images/PROPN FEROCITY/VERB The/DET Syrian/ADJ government/NOUN and/CCONJ Russia/PROPN have/AUX both/PRON accused/VERB rebels/NOUN in/ADP eastern/ADJ Ghouta/PROPN of/ADP stopping/VERB civilians/NOUN leaving/VERB the/DET area/NOUN They/PRON say/VERB their/PRON assault/NOUN which/PRON the/DET Observatory/NOUN says/VERB has/AUX killed/VERB more/ADJ than/ADP 1500/NUM people/NOUN so/ADV far/ADV is/AUX needed/VERB to/PART end/VERB Islamist/ADJ militant/ADJ rule/NOUN over/ADP the/DET area8217s/ADJ people/NOUN They/PRON also/ADV say/VERB it/PRON is/AUX needed/VERB to/PART end/VERB rebel/NOUN shelling/NOUN of/ADP Damascus/PROPN and/CCONJ other/ADJ nearby/ADJ areas/NOUN On/ADP Tuesday/PROPN a/DET rocket/NOUN struck/VERB a/DET marketplace/NOUN in/ADP a/DET governmentheld/PROPN town/NOUN killing/VERB dozens/NOUN However/ADV the/DET ferocity/NOUN of/ADP the/DET Syrian/PROPN army8217s/PROPN offensive/NOUN in/ADP eastern/ADJ Ghouta/PROPN has/AUX prompted/VERB Western/ADJ condemnation/NOUN and/CCONJ urgent/ADJ pleas/NOUN from/ADP United/PROPN Nations/PROPN humanitarian/ADJ agencies/NOUN for/ADP a/DET ceasefire/NOUN Over/ADP the/DET past/ADJ week/NOUN tens/NOUN of/ADP thousands/NOUN of/ADP people/NOUN have/AUX fled/VERB across/ADP the/DET frontlines/NOUN into/ADP government/NOUN territory/NOUN For/ADP the/DET Harasta/PROPN rebels/VERB the/DET journey/NOUN to/ADP Idlib/PROPN is/AUX one/NUM already/ADV well/ADV trodden/ADJ by/ADP insurgents/NOUN from/ADP other/ADJ areas/NOUN surrendered/VERB to/ADP Assad/PROPN after/ADP prolonged/VERB sieges/NOUN and/CCONJ intense/ADJ bombardments/NOUN of/ADP the/DET kind/NOUN used/VERB against/ADP eastern/ADJ Ghouta/PROPN over/ADP the/DET past/ADJ month/NOUN The/DET northwestern/ADJ province/NOUN is/AUX the/DET biggest/ADJ remaining/VERB area/NOUN under/ADP rebel/NOUN control/NOUN in/ADP Syria/PROPN and/CCONJ its/PRON population/NOUN has/AUX been/AUX doubled/VERB by/ADP refugees/NOUN fleeing/VERB other/ADJ areas/NOUN including/VERB many/ADJ opposition/NOUN supporters/NOUN A/DET military/ADJ media/NOUN unit/NOUN run/VERB by/ADP Assad8217s/PROPN ally/NOUN Hezbollah/PROPN on/ADP Wednesday/PROPN said/VERB some/DET 1500/NUM fighters/NOUN along/ADP with/ADP 6000/NUM family/NOUN members/NOUN would/AUX depart/VERB Harasta/PROPN under/ADP the/DET agreement/NOUN with/ADP the/DET government/NOUN On/ADP Thursday/PROPN the/DET same/ADJ Hezbollah/PROPN media/NOUN unit/NOUN said/VERB the/DET army/NOUN and/CCONJ Ahrar/PROPN alSham/NOUN had/AUX started/VERB to/PART exchange/VERB prisoners/NOUN as/SCONJ the/DET Harasta/ADJ deal/NOUN got/VERB under/ADP way/NOUN Reporting/VERB by/ADP Firas/PROPN Makdesi/PROPN and/CCONJ Kinda/PROPN Makieh/PROPN in/ADP Damascus/PROPN Ellen/PROPN Francis/PROPN and/CCONJ Angus/PROPN McDowall/PROPN editing/VERB by/ADP Angus/PROPN MacSwanTom/NOUN Perry/PROPN Our/PRON Standards/PROPN The/DET Thomson/PROPN Reuters/PROPN Trust/PROPN Principles/PROPN

<p>WARNING: This commentary may cause anxiety.</p> <p>The United States government has initiated a chain reaction that it can no longer control. The stalled vengeance assault on Fallujah is merely a symptom. So is the uprising triggered by the US closure of a Shia newspaper in Sadr City, Baghdad, followed by gunning down the demonstrators who protested (Ah, yes, we don&#8217;t even hear about that when they talk about the latest demon, Muqtada al-Sadr&#8230; Memory is so short.).</p> <p>The chain reaction is far broader and deeper than the battlefield fiasco in Iraq right now. Once brown people start to pick up guns, other brown people follow suit. The myth of invincibility of the United States military &#8212; called into question even before the Bush Doctrine arrived at this particular Iraqi cul-de-sac &#8212; is shattered. No one is shocked. No one is awed.</p> <p>Nothing left now but plain grimy brutality. Apache helicopters are buzz-sawing through neighborhoods with chain guns and rockets. Bombs are being released onto mosques. The hospitals and morgues are receiving a rich harvest.</p> <p>I remember a sign at the entrance of Camp Mackall in North Carolina, where I began Special Forces training. &#8220;Rule #1: There are no rules. Rule #2: Obey the first rule.&#8221;</p> <p>The post 9/11 renewal of ground wars in Southwest Asia swept me up into a new role. A career soldier who is a leftist; a leftist who is a retired soldier. I became a trump card that antiwar activists could play against the patriot-baiting of the right, so I&#8217;ve been trotted out in front of one audience after another, from town halls to CNN, as a spokesperson against the Bush Doctrine&#8217;s militarism.</p> <p>But people transform their roles. They deviate from the scripts.</p> <p>I&#8217;m a leftist who carried a gun, in a culture where what passes for the left is terrified of guns. So people pay attention to me. In audience after audience, I have noted that people pay attention to me. They are engaged before I even speak, because they know that I can kill, and that gives me an immediacy&#8230; not because I am different than them, but because I am so very much the same. I laugh at good jokes. I rock babies. I take an interest in the weather.</p> <p>This is more than morbid fascination.</p> <p>We are a culture insulated from our own basis. It is a condition of metropolitan modernity, more so even of post-modernity. In a consumer society, where general-purpose money has eaten away every bond of community, where alienation &#8212; and even narcissism &#8212; is defined as normalcy, where nature is seen as something apart from and below us, the very personhood of each of us is deracinated and left to drift through the retail landscape like a grieving banshee. Planned obsolescence applies even to our identities.</p> <p>We really have no idea who pays for this privilege of superficiality, but those billions who are doing the paying &#8212; far out of our reified view &#8212; are getting a clearer idea all the time.</p> <p>Of course, this culture is pure charade. We can pretend we are as disembedded as we like, but we are invariably physical &#8212; diaphragms heaving incessantly, articulating gases in our guts, dissipating heat, concentrating urine, sloughing off dead cells, yawing and eating and scratching and sleeping and fucking and finally, dying.</p> <p>Inside-Outside.</p> <p>Inside this whole charade, where money &#8220;grows&#8221; and media-stunned young women aspire to be models for Victoria&#8217;s Secret, resides liberal hypocrisy. Outside it resides imperial militarism &#8212; the last refuge of capitalism as it devours its own social and material bases like a vampire stranded alone on a desert island.</p> <p>Soldiers who were raised inside this cultural charade are now outside it, in Southwest Asia getting blood on their hands so we can have malls and road trips and household appliances and climate control. The personhood of soldiers (mostly male) has become a battleground, too, between masculinity and cognitive dissonance. Warfare is the practice and masculinity is achieved in the practice, but they are confronted now with other persons &#8212; people who are first reduced in the media, then defined in training (The Enemy), then dehumanized in the word (Raghead!), then commanded by the occupier as subjected persons, then &#8212; if obedience is not swift &#8212; erased. This is where the soldier either recognizes or denies the hypocrisy, because the fuller reality of the system is right there before his eyes. Now he has a choice to make.</p> <p>I&#8217;m talking to you, soldier, and not judging you. This is an invitation to take back your personhood. This is an invitation to confront every fear, breach every obstacle, take every risk; to leap over your old self and enter into a deeper struggle.</p> <p>Capitalism has to build bridges from its metropolitan hypocrisy to the scenes of its imperial crimes, and that bridge is made with the backs of soldiers. We have to build a bridge from the scene of the crime to clarity.</p> <p>To do that, we can&#8217;t back away from this gun-question, this whole issue of violence.</p> <p>When the guerrilla picks up the gun, the imperial soldier must pay attention. When an alienated teenager in Columbine picks up a gun, we metropolitans pay attention. We should.</p> <p>People with guns should be taken seriously. People who have lived with guns should be taken seriously, and they are. Some of us are not going to be bothered with Victoria&#8217;s Secret or any of that other bullshit. We are looking right through those mirages, right through to our animal actuality, right through to the horror vacui of a world where people can and do erase other people, and no deity descends to make things right. There are no decrees from on high, and you are still responsible.</p> <p>Many of my associates in the antiwar movement talk about &#8220;reaching out&#8221; to the military. They want to convert them. They want to transform them from robotic killing machines into Ghandians. These are the liberals.</p> <p>Soldiers don&#8217;t listen to liberals, and neither do the majority of people. They intuit the detachment of them, their other-worldly abstraction, their desire to have their cake and eat it too. When people are frightened or angry, they may be confused about the source of their fear and anger, but they know they want to be with someone who will fight. Liberals have never learned this.</p> <p>A young woman I met recently was surprised by her own first encounter with several soldiers. She is not a Nation Magazine &#8220;leftist,&#8221; but a revolutionary young woman who recognizes that social transformation is neither painless nor bloodless, and she has no illusions about that. What astonished her about these young soldiers was her own recognition that they were, like her, willing to take tremendous risks &#8212; up to and including the loss of their own lives &#8212; to fight for what they thought was right. It was the very quality that she had been seeking from her own political allies.</p> <p>She wondered aloud whether it is easier to turn a person with intellectual clarity into a courageous person, or whether it was easier to help a courageous person to achieve greater clarity.</p> <p>&#8220;Should we be trying to make smart people into fighters, or fighters into smart people?&#8221;</p> <p>Damn good question. May have the elements of a false dichotomy, but it&#8217;s still a good question. She is a hell of a lot closer to the mark than those who see the military as brainwashed aneroids in need of a religious epiphany. She knows that soldiers are not robots, and she doesn&#8217;t want to empty them of their belligerence, which is an appropriate attitude for our Umwelt. She wants to free them from the bonds of their illusions. The cruelty to which these soldiers have been inured has the potential to be turned against hypocrisy, then against the system. Clarity is often cruel; cruelty is often clear.</p> <p>The imperial soldier is constrained by the superstitions of patriotism, and the soldier becomes a danger to power when he recognizes the speciousness of patriotism. For now, he mimics the confident acceptance of the official narratives, but he experiences the contradiction like a recurrent rash. A friend of mine said that soldiers are political scientists. They are embryonic political scientists at least, waiting for midwives&#8230; the right questions, perhaps, or the right nightmares.</p> <p>I think soldiers need to reach out to the left as well. Maybe we soldiers have a contribution to make to your clarity. Academic leftists can talk to you until they are blue in the face about reification &#8212; be it the reification that confuses the transient with the eternal, or that substitutes the abstract for the specific. But every military leader, beginning with a 19-year-old corporal, knows that before every task there must be an assessment of the situation &#8212; one that takes account of the mission, the enemy, the population, the terrain and weather, one&#8217;s own capacity in technology and personnel&#8230; and the time available&#8230; as a unified and changing whole. Dialectics, anyone?</p> <p>While metropolitan leftists will extol the virtues of the Vietnamese NLF &#8212; rightly so &#8212; some of us saw them dying for their struggle. Their corpses were us. We have seen ourselves as corpses. Politics doesn&#8217;t happen in clean, well-lighted places. It happens in the sand and mud. It happens in the rivulets of blood coursing into the edges of an Iraqi hospital floor. It&#8217;s happening in the head of some unnamed Marine or Green Beret or tank gunner, who is looking out over the truth of the imperial landscape in Sadr City or Fallujah or Kut and recognizing that he has been thrust into this drama anonymously and that he now shares a more intimate space with his &#8220;enemy&#8221; than he ever will with the oil companies and military contractors and politicians who sent him here.</p> <p>Ani DiFranco says, &#8220;Those who call the shots are never in the line of fire.&#8221;</p> <p>Non-violence can be an effective tactic, but so can violence. It&#8217;s only liberal hypocrisy that denies the latter. For Iraq, it is the only tactic. And the armed resistance in Iraq &#8212; regardless of its methods or ideologies &#8212; is doing more to halt the runaway train that is global capitalism than anything else in the world right now. (You want white hats and heroes, go by a cinema ticket.)</p> <p>We cannot imagine the sheer joy of rediscovery being felt throughout the region right now as people see these fighters striking back at the source of their long humiliation &#8212; imperialism, and by extension against imperialism&#8217;s local attack dog, Zionism.</p> <p>Ghandi and King were important people, courageous people, people who embraced non-violence as a core principle, yet that non-violence as a tactic is what worked for them. It worked in a specific time and context. The notion that this tactic is a generalized principle, that it can work now, fails to account for that context. Without the Soviet Union, warts and all, there would have been no Ghandi, and there would have been no King. Had the struggle for credibility in the global periphery not been engaged by the US and the USSR, non-violence would have been suicidal. Even that struggle was based &#8212; at the contextual end of the road &#8212; on the military power of the Soviet Union that stood eye-to-eye with imperialism until it collapsed from the effort.</p> <p>There is a difference between imperial thuggery and armed resistance to imperialism, and in this era of exterminist imperialism, armed resistance has become for more and more people the synonym of self-defense. The occupying soldier fragments his personality with the gun. The resistance reclaims its humanity with it.</p> <p>It was Sartre, in his introduction to Fanon&#8217;s The Wretched of the Earth, who said, &#8220;The native cures himself of colonial neurosis by thrusting out the settler through force of arms. When his rage boils over, he rediscovers his lost innocence and he comes to know himself in that he himself creates his self. Far removed from his war, we [the privileged white metropolitans -SG] consider it as a triumph of barbarism; but of its own volition it achieves, slowly but surely, the emancipation of the rebel, for bit by bit it destroys in him and around him the colonial gloom. Once begun, it is a war that gives no quarter. You may fear or be feared; that is to say, abandon yourself to the disassociations of a sham existence or conquer your birthright of unity. When the peasant takes a gun in his hands, the old myths grow dim and the prohibitions are one by one forgotten. The rebel&#8217;s weapon is the proof of his humanity.&#8221;</p> <p>As a solider, I needed this history to understand my own, and to come to terms with my own, and to transform my own into this project. And as a soldier, Sartre&#8217;s words, and Fanon&#8217;s, have special meaning for me precisely because there is nothing abstract about them. I was part of that history &#8212; it doesn&#8217;t matter on what side; that was a pure accident.</p> <p>And so I started helping build this bridge.</p> <p>Soldier, I am saying, here is the cause, here is the side of history your grandchildren will want to see you were on. Soldier, study this history and this movement, so your courage and your blood aren&#8217;t sent into space like those idiotic capsules full of snapshots and mementos for some alien life form to discover.</p> <p>And to my comrades now, I have grim news from those places where soldiers go.</p> <p>You will not win with non-profits. You will not win with non-violence. You will not win with non-committal. To win you must become effective, and when you do, you will be attacked. Then you will fight or you will be exterminated. You may even fight and still be exterminated. No guarantees. We are responsible.</p> <p>You will never make a revolution behind the bourgeoisie&#8217;s back, because the bourgeoisie has eyes in the back of its panopticon head. You will never make a revolution while the ruling class sleeps, because it never sleeps. You will not sneak up on necessity, and no one can evade it.</p> <p>Soldiers have seen it.</p> <p>That&#8217;s why they don&#8217;t listen to liberal platitudes about morality in the abstract. They know about the power from the barrel of the gun. It ends debates. It forces people to pay attention.</p> <p>People listen to me, and I see them peering at me, trying to imagine what I am the way people sometimes try to imagine others having sex. I am arguing against imperialism, and I can talk about commodity fetishism with the best of them &#8212; because I applied myself to it with the same rigor and intensity that I did to trauma protocols as a Special Forces medic or marksmanship fundamentals as a sniper. Yet these audiences can hear about imperialism from a host of others.</p> <p>But there in front of them is someone who has been willing to take life or to give it away. And they are paying attention.</p> <p>Only it&#8217;s not me. I&#8217;m not arrogant enough to believe that. I&#8217;m just a circumstance. What they are really paying attention to is themselves, to the questions they haven&#8217;t confronted, to the doubts that plague them about their politics, to the incessant whisper of mortality.</p> <p>And I&#8217;m paying attention to them. I study Rosa Luxemburg, Alf Hornborg, Robert Connell, Joy James, Robin D. G. Kelley, Mao Zedong&#8230; and I study the academic research and the social theory and science and philosophy. Because simply understanding the final argument of the gun is not enough. We soldiers need to understand before and after the gun, and we need to understand &#8212; as much as we can &#8212; where our personhood is rooted in social constructions and where society is rooted in the biosphere and how there is no clear line of demarcation between biology and symbols. We need the context.</p> <p>So as a leftist I build this bridge toward my brothers and sisters under arms. I don&#8217;t judge&#8230; I can&#8217;t.</p> <p>The ultimate liberal hypocrisy is the one that shuns the soldier as if the soldier lives in a parallel system, not recognizing that militarism doesn&#8217;t float over history any more than the make and model of your automobile. If you turn on your lights with a wall switch and drink clean water from your tap, if you walk in the park, if you wear a stitch of manufactured clothing, if you&#8217;ve shopped on a vacation overseas, if you so much as breathe in the United States of America, you are as much a part of the body of actually-existing imperialism as any nervous, trigger-happy Marine killing a family at a Baghdad roadblock.</p> <p>Different rooms, same house.</p> <p>Deforested Haiti cooks on charcoal so you can cook with electricity. A child in Botswana dies of AIDS so I can work on this computer. And personal ethics will not transform this.</p> <p>It&#8217;s a system, an expression of an immensely complex and dynamic web of relationships and realities, and it will default to its basic program &#8212; capital accumulation &#8212; again and again and again, until it is destroyed.</p> <p>And it will go down like a raving beast, if the reader will forgive this metaphorical shift.</p> <p>We need this bridge between the left and the military, because when the time comes, when the hypocrisy fails at last and confronts us with the painful reality of transformation, when the gun is all that is left and the choice is to seize or diminish our humanity, the soldier will need to become a revolutionary, and the revolutionary will have to become a soldier.</p> <p>The time will come when we are all participants. Most of the world already is.</p> <p>Soldier, leftist&#8230; &#8220;abandon yourself to the disassociations of a sham existence or conquer your birthright of unity.&#8221;</p> <p>Fallujah lives!</p> <p>STAN GOFF is the author of Hideous Dream and Full-Spectrum Disorder. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:sherrynstan@earthlink.net" type="external">sherrynstan@earthlink.net</a> Keep CounterPunch Alive: <a href="" type="internal" /> <a href="http://www.easycarts.net/ecarts/CounterPunch/Donations.html" type="external">Make a Tax&#8211;Deductible Donation Today Online!</a></p> <p><a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/" type="external">home</a> / <a href="http://www.easycarts.net/ecarts/CounterPunch/CounterPunch_Subscriptions.html" type="external">subscribe</a> / <a href="aboutus.html" type="external">about us</a> / <a href="books.html" type="external">books</a> / <a href="archive.html" type="external">archives</a> / <a href="search.html" type="external">search</a> / <a href="links.html" type="external">links</a> / STAN GOFF</p>

The Bridge

https://counterpunch.org/2004/04/13/the-bridge/

2004-04-13

4left

WARNING This commentary may cause anxiety The United States government has initiated a chain reaction that it can no longer control The stalled vengeance assault on Fallujah is merely a symptom So is the uprising triggered by the US closure of a Shia newspaper in Sadr City Baghdad followed by gunning down the demonstrators who protested Ah yes we don8217t even hear about that when they talk about the latest demon Muqtada alSadr8230 Memory is so short The chain reaction is far broader and deeper than the battlefield fiasco in Iraq right now Once brown people start to pick up guns other brown people follow suit The myth of invincibility of the United States military 8212 called into question even before the Bush Doctrine arrived at this particular Iraqi culdesac 8212 is shattered No one is shocked No one is awed Nothing left now but plain grimy brutality Apache helicopters are buzzsawing through neighborhoods with chain guns and rockets Bombs are being released onto mosques The hospitals and morgues are receiving a rich harvest I remember a sign at the entrance of Camp Mackall in North Carolina where I began Special Forces training 8220Rule 1 There are no rules Rule 2 Obey the first rule8221 The post 911 renewal of ground wars in Southwest Asia swept me up into a new role A career soldier who is a leftist a leftist who is a retired soldier I became a trump card that antiwar activists could play against the patriotbaiting of the right so I8217ve been trotted out in front of one audience after another from town halls to CNN as a spokesperson against the Bush Doctrine8217s militarism But people transform their roles They deviate from the scripts I8217m a leftist who carried a gun in a culture where what passes for the left is terrified of guns So people pay attention to me In audience after audience I have noted that people pay attention to me They are engaged before I even speak because they know that I can kill and that gives me an immediacy8230 not because I am different than them but because I am so very much the same I laugh at good jokes I rock babies I take an interest in the weather This is more than morbid fascination We are a culture insulated from our own basis It is a condition of metropolitan modernity more so even of postmodernity In a consumer society where generalpurpose money has eaten away every bond of community where alienation 8212 and even narcissism 8212 is defined as normalcy where nature is seen as something apart from and below us the very personhood of each of us is deracinated and left to drift through the retail landscape like a grieving banshee Planned obsolescence applies even to our identities We really have no idea who pays for this privilege of superficiality but those billions who are doing the paying 8212 far out of our reified view 8212 are getting a clearer idea all the time Of course this culture is pure charade We can pretend we are as disembedded as we like but we are invariably physical 8212 diaphragms heaving incessantly articulating gases in our guts dissipating heat concentrating urine sloughing off dead cells yawing and eating and scratching and sleeping and fucking and finally dying InsideOutside Inside this whole charade where money 8220grows8221 and mediastunned young women aspire to be models for Victoria8217s Secret resides liberal hypocrisy Outside it resides imperial militarism 8212 the last refuge of capitalism as it devours its own social and material bases like a vampire stranded alone on a desert island Soldiers who were raised inside this cultural charade are now outside it in Southwest Asia getting blood on their hands so we can have malls and road trips and household appliances and climate control The personhood of soldiers mostly male has become a battleground too between masculinity and cognitive dissonance Warfare is the practice and masculinity is achieved in the practice but they are confronted now with other persons 8212 people who are first reduced in the media then defined in training The Enemy then dehumanized in the word Raghead then commanded by the occupier as subjected persons then 8212 if obedience is not swift 8212 erased This is where the soldier either recognizes or denies the hypocrisy because the fuller reality of the system is right there before his eyes Now he has a choice to make I8217m talking to you soldier and not judging you This is an invitation to take back your personhood This is an invitation to confront every fear breach every obstacle take every risk to leap over your old self and enter into a deeper struggle Capitalism has to build bridges from its metropolitan hypocrisy to the scenes of its imperial crimes and that bridge is made with the backs of soldiers We have to build a bridge from the scene of the crime to clarity To do that we can8217t back away from this gunquestion this whole issue of violence When the guerrilla picks up the gun the imperial soldier must pay attention When an alienated teenager in Columbine picks up a gun we metropolitans pay attention We should People with guns should be taken seriously People who have lived with guns should be taken seriously and they are Some of us are not going to be bothered with Victoria8217s Secret or any of that other bullshit We are looking right through those mirages right through to our animal actuality right through to the horror vacui of a world where people can and do erase other people and no deity descends to make things right There are no decrees from on high and you are still responsible Many of my associates in the antiwar movement talk about 8220reaching out8221 to the military They want to convert them They want to transform them from robotic killing machines into Ghandians These are the liberals Soldiers don8217t listen to liberals and neither do the majority of people They intuit the detachment of them their otherworldly abstraction their desire to have their cake and eat it too When people are frightened or angry they may be confused about the source of their fear and anger but they know they want to be with someone who will fight Liberals have never learned this A young woman I met recently was surprised by her own first encounter with several soldiers She is not a Nation Magazine 8220leftist8221 but a revolutionary young woman who recognizes that social transformation is neither painless nor bloodless and she has no illusions about that What astonished her about these young soldiers was her own recognition that they were like her willing to take tremendous risks 8212 up to and including the loss of their own lives 8212 to fight for what they thought was right It was the very quality that she had been seeking from her own political allies She wondered aloud whether it is easier to turn a person with intellectual clarity into a courageous person or whether it was easier to help a courageous person to achieve greater clarity 8220Should we be trying to make smart people into fighters or fighters into smart people8221 Damn good question May have the elements of a false dichotomy but it8217s still a good question She is a hell of a lot closer to the mark than those who see the military as brainwashed aneroids in need of a religious epiphany She knows that soldiers are not robots and she doesn8217t want to empty them of their belligerence which is an appropriate attitude for our Umwelt She wants to free them from the bonds of their illusions The cruelty to which these soldiers have been inured has the potential to be turned against hypocrisy then against the system Clarity is often cruel cruelty is often clear The imperial soldier is constrained by the superstitions of patriotism and the soldier becomes a danger to power when he recognizes the speciousness of patriotism For now he mimics the confident acceptance of the official narratives but he experiences the contradiction like a recurrent rash A friend of mine said that soldiers are political scientists They are embryonic political scientists at least waiting for midwives8230 the right questions perhaps or the right nightmares I think soldiers need to reach out to the left as well Maybe we soldiers have a contribution to make to your clarity Academic leftists can talk to you until they are blue in the face about reification 8212 be it the reification that confuses the transient with the eternal or that substitutes the abstract for the specific But every military leader beginning with a 19yearold corporal knows that before every task there must be an assessment of the situation 8212 one that takes account of the mission the enemy the population the terrain and weather one8217s own capacity in technology and personnel8230 and the time available8230 as a unified and changing whole Dialectics anyone While metropolitan leftists will extol the virtues of the Vietnamese NLF 8212 rightly so 8212 some of us saw them dying for their struggle Their corpses were us We have seen ourselves as corpses Politics doesn8217t happen in clean welllighted places It happens in the sand and mud It happens in the rivulets of blood coursing into the edges of an Iraqi hospital floor It8217s happening in the head of some unnamed Marine or Green Beret or tank gunner who is looking out over the truth of the imperial landscape in Sadr City or Fallujah or Kut and recognizing that he has been thrust into this drama anonymously and that he now shares a more intimate space with his 8220enemy8221 than he ever will with the oil companies and military contractors and politicians who sent him here Ani DiFranco says 8220Those who call the shots are never in the line of fire8221 Nonviolence can be an effective tactic but so can violence It8217s only liberal hypocrisy that denies the latter For Iraq it is the only tactic And the armed resistance in Iraq 8212 regardless of its methods or ideologies 8212 is doing more to halt the runaway train that is global capitalism than anything else in the world right now You want white hats and heroes go by a cinema ticket We cannot imagine the sheer joy of rediscovery being felt throughout the region right now as people see these fighters striking back at the source of their long humiliation 8212 imperialism and by extension against imperialism8217s local attack dog Zionism Ghandi and King were important people courageous people people who embraced nonviolence as a core principle yet that nonviolence as a tactic is what worked for them It worked in a specific time and context The notion that this tactic is a generalized principle that it can work now fails to account for that context Without the Soviet Union warts and all there would have been no Ghandi and there would have been no King Had the struggle for credibility in the global periphery not been engaged by the US and the USSR nonviolence would have been suicidal Even that struggle was based 8212 at the contextual end of the road 8212 on the military power of the Soviet Union that stood eyetoeye with imperialism until it collapsed from the effort There is a difference between imperial thuggery and armed resistance to imperialism and in this era of exterminist imperialism armed resistance has become for more and more people the synonym of selfdefense The occupying soldier fragments his personality with the gun The resistance reclaims its humanity with it It was Sartre in his introduction to Fanon8217s The Wretched of the Earth who said 8220The native cures himself of colonial neurosis by thrusting out the settler through force of arms When his rage boils over he rediscovers his lost innocence and he comes to know himself in that he himself creates his self Far removed from his war we the privileged white metropolitans SG consider it as a triumph of barbarism but of its own volition it achieves slowly but surely the emancipation of the rebel for bit by bit it destroys in him and around him the colonial gloom Once begun it is a war that gives no quarter You may fear or be feared that is to say abandon yourself to the disassociations of a sham existence or conquer your birthright of unity When the peasant takes a gun in his hands the old myths grow dim and the prohibitions are one by one forgotten The rebel8217s weapon is the proof of his humanity8221 As a solider I needed this history to understand my own and to come to terms with my own and to transform my own into this project And as a soldier Sartre8217s words and Fanon8217s have special meaning for me precisely because there is nothing abstract about them I was part of that history 8212 it doesn8217t matter on what side that was a pure accident And so I started helping build this bridge Soldier I am saying here is the cause here is the side of history your grandchildren will want to see you were on Soldier study this history and this movement so your courage and your blood aren8217t sent into space like those idiotic capsules full of snapshots and mementos for some alien life form to discover And to my comrades now I have grim news from those places where soldiers go You will not win with nonprofits You will not win with nonviolence You will not win with noncommittal To win you must become effective and when you do you will be attacked Then you will fight or you will be exterminated You may even fight and still be exterminated No guarantees We are responsible You will never make a revolution behind the bourgeoisie8217s back because the bourgeoisie has eyes in the back of its panopticon head You will never make a revolution while the ruling class sleeps because it never sleeps You will not sneak up on necessity and no one can evade it Soldiers have seen it That8217s why they don8217t listen to liberal platitudes about morality in the abstract They know about the power from the barrel of the gun It ends debates It forces people to pay attention People listen to me and I see them peering at me trying to imagine what I am the way people sometimes try to imagine others having sex I am arguing against imperialism and I can talk about commodity fetishism with the best of them 8212 because I applied myself to it with the same rigor and intensity that I did to trauma protocols as a Special Forces medic or marksmanship fundamentals as a sniper Yet these audiences can hear about imperialism from a host of others But there in front of them is someone who has been willing to take life or to give it away And they are paying attention Only it8217s not me I8217m not arrogant enough to believe that I8217m just a circumstance What they are really paying attention to is themselves to the questions they haven8217t confronted to the doubts that plague them about their politics to the incessant whisper of mortality And I8217m paying attention to them I study Rosa Luxemburg Alf Hornborg Robert Connell Joy James Robin D G Kelley Mao Zedong8230 and I study the academic research and the social theory and science and philosophy Because simply understanding the final argument of the gun is not enough We soldiers need to understand before and after the gun and we need to understand 8212 as much as we can 8212 where our personhood is rooted in social constructions and where society is rooted in the biosphere and how there is no clear line of demarcation between biology and symbols We need the context So as a leftist I build this bridge toward my brothers and sisters under arms I don8217t judge8230 I can8217t The ultimate liberal hypocrisy is the one that shuns the soldier as if the soldier lives in a parallel system not recognizing that militarism doesn8217t float over history any more than the make and model of your automobile If you turn on your lights with a wall switch and drink clean water from your tap if you walk in the park if you wear a stitch of manufactured clothing if you8217ve shopped on a vacation overseas if you so much as breathe in the United States of America you are as much a part of the body of actuallyexisting imperialism as any nervous triggerhappy Marine killing a family at a Baghdad roadblock Different rooms same house Deforested Haiti cooks on charcoal so you can cook with electricity A child in Botswana dies of AIDS so I can work on this computer And personal ethics will not transform this It8217s a system an expression of an immensely complex and dynamic web of relationships and realities and it will default to its basic program 8212 capital accumulation 8212 again and again and again until it is destroyed And it will go down like a raving beast if the reader will forgive this metaphorical shift We need this bridge between the left and the military because when the time comes when the hypocrisy fails at last and confronts us with the painful reality of transformation when the gun is all that is left and the choice is to seize or diminish our humanity the soldier will need to become a revolutionary and the revolutionary will have to become a soldier The time will come when we are all participants Most of the world already is Soldier leftist8230 8220abandon yourself to the disassociations of a sham existence or conquer your birthright of unity8221 Fallujah lives STAN GOFF is the author of Hideous Dream and FullSpectrum Disorder He can be reached at sherrynstanearthlinknet Keep CounterPunch Alive Make a Tax8211Deductible Donation Today Online home subscribe about us books archives search links STAN GOFF

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<p>&amp;lt;a href="http://www.defense.gov/photos/newsphoto.aspx?newsphotoid=9147"&amp;gt;Spc. Elisha Dawkins&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;/Department of Defense</p> <p>This <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175704/" type="external">story</a> first appeared on the <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/" type="external">TomDispatch</a> website.</p> <p>For well over a decade now the United States has been &#8220;a nation at war.&#8221; Does that war have a name?</p> <p>It did at the outset. After 9/11, George W. Bush&#8217;s administration wasted no time in announcing that the US was engaged in a Global War on Terrorism, or GWOT. With few dissenters, the media quickly embraced the term. The GWOT promised to be a gargantuan, transformative enterprise. The conflict begun on 9/11 would define the age. In neoconservative circles, it was known as World War IV.</p> <p>Upon succeeding to the presidency in 2009, however, Barack Obama without fanfare junked Bush&#8217;s formulation (as he did again in a speech at the National Defense University last week). Yet if the appellation went away, the conflict itself, shorn of identifying marks, continued.</p> <p>Does it matter that ours has become and remains a nameless war? Very much so.</p> <p>Names bestow meaning. When it comes to war, a name attached to a date can shape our understanding of what the conflict was all about. To specify when a war began and when it ended is to privilege certain explanations of its significance while discrediting others. Let me provide a few illustrations.</p> <p>With rare exceptions, Americans today characterize the horrendous fraternal bloodletting of 1861-1865 as the Civil War. Yet not many decades ago, diehard supporters of the Lost Cause insisted on referring to that conflict as the War Between the States or the War for Southern Independence (or even the War of Northern Aggression). The South may have gone down in defeat, but the purposes for which Southerners had fought&#8212;preserving a distinctive way of life and the principle of states&#8217; rights&#8212;had been worthy, even noble. So at least they professed to believe, with their preferred names for the war reflecting that belief.</p> <p>Schoolbooks tell us that the Spanish-American War began in April 1898 and ended in August of that same year. The name and dates fit nicely with a widespread inclination from President William McKinley&#8217;s day to our own to frame US intervention in Cuba as an altruistic effort to liberate that island from Spanish oppression.</p> <p>Yet the Cubans were not exactly bystanders in that drama. By 1898, they had been fighting for years to oust their colonial overlords. And although hostilities in Cuba itself ended on August 12th, they dragged on in the Philippines, another Spanish colony that the United States had seized for reasons only remotely related to liberating Cubans. Notably, US troops occupying the Philippines waged a brutal war not against Spaniards but against Filipino nationalists no more inclined to accept colonial rule by Washington than by Madrid. So widen the aperture to include this Cuban prelude and the Filipino postlude and you end up with something like this: The Spanish-American-Cuban-Philippines War of 1895-1902. Too clunky? How about the War for the American Empire? This much is for sure: rather than illuminating, the commonplace textbook descriptor serves chiefly to conceal.</p> <p><a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com" type="external" /></p> <p>Strange as it may seem, Europeans once referred to the calamitous events of 1914-1918 as the Great War. When Woodrow Wilson decided in 1917 to send an army of doughboys to fight alongside the Allies, he went beyond Great. According to the president, the Great War was going to be the War To End All Wars. Alas, things did not pan out as he expected. Perhaps anticipating the demise of his vision of permanent peace, War Department General Order 115, issued on October 7, 1919, formally declared that, at least as far as the United States was concerned, the recently concluded hostilities would be known simply as the World War.</p> <p>In September 1939&#8212;presto chango!&#8212;the World War suddenly became the First World War, the Nazi invasion of Poland having inaugurated a Second World War, also known as World War II or more cryptically WWII. To be sure, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin preferred the Great Patriotic War. Although this found instant&#8212;almost unanimous&#8212;favor among Soviet citizens, it did not catch on elsewhere.</p> <p>Does World War II accurately capture the events it purports to encompass? With the crusade against the Axis now ranking alongside the crusade against slavery as a myth-enshrouded chapter in US history to which all must pay homage, Americans are no more inclined to consider that question than to consider why a playoff to determine the professional baseball championship of North America constitutes a &#8220;World Series.&#8221;</p> <p>In fact, however convenient and familiar, World War II is misleading and not especially useful. The period in question saw at least two wars, each only tenuously connected to the other, each having distinctive origins, each yielding a different outcome. To separate them is to transform the historical landscape.</p> <p>On the one hand, there was the Pacific War, pitting the United States against Japan. Formally initiated by the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, it had in fact begun a decade earlier when Japan embarked upon a policy of armed conquest in Manchuria. At stake was the question of who would dominate East Asia. Japan&#8217;s crushing defeat at the hands of the United States, sealed by two atomic bombs in 1945, answered that question (at least for a time).</p> <p>Then there was the European War, pitting Nazi Germany first against Great Britain and France, but ultimately against a grand alliance led by the United States, the Soviet Union, and a fast fading British Empire. At stake was the question of who would dominate Europe. Germany&#8217;s defeat resolved that issue (at least for a time): no one would. To prevent any single power from controlling Europe, two outside powers divided it.</p> <p>This division served as the basis for the ensuing Cold War, which wasn&#8217;t actually cold, but also (thankfully) wasn&#8217;t World War III, the retrospective insistence of bellicose neoconservatives notwithstanding. But when did the Cold War begin? Was it in early 1947, when President Harry Truman decided that Stalin&#8217;s Russia posed a looming threat and committed the United States to a strategy of containment? Or was it in 1919, when Vladimir Lenin decided that Winston Churchill&#8217;s vow to &#8220;strangle Bolshevism in its cradle&#8221; posed a looming threat to the Russian Revolution, with an ongoing Anglo-American military intervention evincing a determination to make good on that vow?</p> <p>Separating the war against Nazi Germany from the war against Imperial Japan opens up another interpretive possibility. If you incorporate the European conflict of 1914-1918 and the European conflict of 1939-1945 into a single narrative, you get a Second Thirty Years War (the first having occurred from 1618-1648)&#8212;not so much a contest of good against evil, as a mindless exercise in self-destruction that represented the ultimate expression of European folly.</p> <p>So, yes, it matters what we choose to call the military enterprise we&#8217;ve been waging not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in any number of other countries scattered hither and yon across the Islamic world. Although the Obama administration appears no more interested than the Bush administration in saying when that enterprise will actually end, the date we choose as its starting point also matters.</p> <p>Although Washington seems in no hurry to name its nameless war&#8212;and will no doubt settle on something self-serving or anodyne if it ever finally addresses the issue&#8212;perhaps we should jump-start the process. Let&#8217;s consider some possible options, names that might actually explain what&#8217;s going on.</p> <p>The Long War: Coined not long after 9/11 by senior officers in the Pentagon, this formulation never gained traction with either civilian officials or the general public. Yet the Long War deserves consideration, even though&#8212;or perhaps because&#8212;it has lost its luster with the passage of time.</p> <p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0805082964/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external" />At the outset, it connoted grand ambitions buoyed by extreme confidence in the efficacy of American military might. This was going to be one for the ages, a multi-generational conflict yielding sweeping results.</p> <p>The Long War did begin on a hopeful note. The initial entry into Afghanistan and then into Iraq seemed to herald &#8220;home by Christmas&#8221; triumphal parades. Yet this soon proved an illusion as victory slipped from Washington&#8217;s grasp. By 2005 at the latest, events in the field had dashed the neo-Wilsonian expectations nurtured back home.</p> <p>With the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan dragging on, &#8220;long&#8221; lost its original connotation. Instead of &#8220;really important,&#8221; it became a synonym for &#8220;interminable.&#8221; Today, the Long War does succinctly capture the experience of American soldiers who have endured multiple combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.</p> <p>For Long War combatants, the object of the exercise has become to persist. As for winning, it&#8217;s not in the cards. The Long War just might conclude by the end of 2014 if President Obama keeps his pledge to end the US combat role in Afghanistan and if he avoids getting sucked into Syria&#8217;s civil war. So the troops may hope.</p> <p>The War Against Al-Qaeda: It began in August 1996 when Osama bin Laden issued a &#8220;Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places,&#8221; i.e., Saudi Arabia. In February 1998, a second bin Laden manifesto announced that killing Americans, military and civilian alike, had become &#8220;an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it.&#8221;</p> <p>Although President Bill Clinton took notice, the US response to bin Laden&#8217;s provocations was limited and ineffectual. Only after 9/11 did Washington take this threat seriously. Since then, apart from a pointless excursion into Iraq (where, in Saddam Hussein&#8217;s day, al-Qaeda did not exist), US attention has been focused on Afghanistan, where US troops have waged the longest war in American history, and on Pakistan&#8217;s tribal borderlands, where a CIA drone campaign is ongoing. By the end of President Obama&#8217;s first term, US intelligence agencies were reporting that a combined CIA/military campaign had largely destroyed bin Laden&#8217;s organization. Bin Laden himself, of course, was dead.</p> <p>Could the United States have declared victory in its unnamed war at this point? Perhaps, but it gave little thought to doing so. Instead, the national security apparatus had already trained its sights on various al-Qaeda &#8220;franchises&#8221; and wannabes, militant groups claiming the bin Laden brand and waging their own version of jihad. These offshoots emerged in the Maghreb, Yemen, Somalia, Nigeria, and&#8212;wouldn&#8217;t you know it&#8212;post-Saddam Iraq, among other places. The question as to whether they actually posed a danger to the United States got, at best, passing attention&#8212;the label &#8220;al-Qaeda&#8221; eliciting the same sort of Pavlovian response that the word &#8220;communist&#8221; once did.</p> <p>Americans should not expect this war to end anytime soon. Indeed, the Pentagon&#8217;s impresario of special operations recently speculated&#8212;by no means unhappily&#8212;that it would continue globally for &#8220;at least 10 to 20 years.&#8221; Freely translated, his statement undoubtedly means: &#8220;No one really knows, but we&#8217;re planning to keep at it for one helluva long time.&#8221;</p> <p>The War For/Against/About Israel: It began in 1948. For many Jews, the founding of the state of Israel signified an ancient hope fulfilled. For many Christians, conscious of the sin of anti-Semitism that had culminated in the Holocaust, it offered a way to ease guilty consciences, albeit mostly at others&#8217; expense. For many Muslims, especially Arabs, and most acutely Arabs who had been living in Palestine, the founding of the Jewish state represented a grave injustice. It was yet another unwelcome intrusion engineered by the West&#8212;colonialism by another name.</p> <p>Recounting the ensuing struggle without appearing to take sides is almost impossible. Yet one thing seems clear: in terms of military involvement, the United States attempted in the late 1940s and 1950s to keep its distance. Over the course of the 1960s, this changed. The US became Israel&#8217;s principal patron, committed to maintaining (and indeed increasing) its military superiority over its neighbors.</p> <p>In the decades that followed, the two countries forged a multifaceted &#8220;strategic relationship.&#8221; A compliant Congress provided Israel with weapons and other assistance worth many billions of dollars, testifying to what has become an unambiguous and irrevocable US commitment to the safety and well-being of the Jewish state. The two countries share technology and intelligence. Meanwhile, just as Israel had disregarded US concerns when it came to developing nuclear weapons, it ignored persistent US requests that it refrain from colonizing territory that it has conquered.</p> <p>When it comes to identifying the minimal essential requirements of Israeli security and the terms that will define any Palestinian-Israeli peace deal, the United States defers to Israel. That may qualify as an overstatement, but only slightly. Given the Israeli perspective on those requirements and those terms&#8212;permanent military supremacy and a permanently demilitarized Palestine allowed limited sovereignty&#8212;the War For/Against/About Israel is unlikely to end anytime soon either. Whether the United States benefits from the perpetuation of this war is difficult to say, but we are in it for the long haul.</p> <p>The War for the Greater Middle East: I confess that this is the name I would choose for Washington&#8217;s unnamed war and is, in fact, the title of a course I teach. (A tempting alternative is the Second Hundred Years War, the &#8220;first&#8221; having begun in 1337 and ended in 1453.)</p> <p>This war is about to hit the century mark, its opening chapter coinciding with the onset of World War I. Not long after the fighting on the Western Front in Europe had settled into a stalemate, the British government, looking for ways to gain the upper hand, set out to dismantle the Ottoman Empire whose rulers had foolishly thrown in their lot with the German Reich against the Allies.</p> <p>By the time the war ended with Germany and the Turks on the losing side, Great Britain had already begun to draw up new boundaries, invent states, and install rulers to suit its predilections, while also issuing mutually contradictory promises to groups inhabiting these new precincts of its empire. Toward what end? Simply put, the British were intent on calling the shots from Egypt to India, whether by governing through intermediaries or ruling directly. The result was a new Middle East and a total mess.</p> <p>London presided over this mess, albeit with considerable difficulty, until the end of World War II. At this point, by abandoning efforts to keep Arabs and Zionists from one another&#8217;s throats in Palestine and by accepting the partition of India, they signaled their intention to throw in the towel. Alas, Washington proved more than willing to assume Britain&#8217;s role. The lure of oil was strong. So too were the fears, however overwrought, of the Soviets extending their influence into the region.</p> <p>Unfortunately, the Americans enjoyed no more success in promoting long-term, pro-Western stability than had the British. In some respects, they only made things worse, with the joint CIA-MI6 overthrow of a democratically elected government in Iran in 1953 offering a prime example of a &#8220;success&#8221; that, to this day, has never stopped breeding disaster.</p> <p>Only after 1980 did things get really interesting, however. The Carter Doctrine promulgated that year designated the Persian Gulf a vital national security interest and opened the door to greatly increased US military activity not just in the Gulf, but also throughout the Greater Middle East (GME). Between 1945 and 1980, considerable numbers of American soldiers lost their lives fighting in Asia and elsewhere. During that period, virtually none were killed fighting in the GME. Since 1990, in contrast, virtually none have been killed fighting anywhere except in the GME.</p> <p>What does the United States hope to achieve in its inherited and unending War for the Greater Middle East? To pacify the region? To remake it in our image? To drain its stocks of petroleum? Or just keeping the lid on? However you define the war&#8217;s aims, things have not gone well, which once again suggests that, in some form, it will continue for some time to come. If there&#8217;s any good news here, it&#8217;s the prospect of having ever more material for my seminar, which may soon expand into a two-semester course.</p> <p>The War Against Islam: This war began nearly 1,000 years ago and continued for centuries, a storied collision between Christendom and the Muslim ummah. For a couple of hundred years, periodic eruptions of large-scale violence occurred until the conflict finally petered out with the last crusade sometime in the fourteenth century.</p> <p>In those days, many people had deemed religion something worth fighting for, a proposition to which the more sophisticated present-day inhabitants of Christendom no longer subscribe. Yet could that religious war have resumed in our own day? Professor Samuel Huntington thought so, although he styled the conflict a &#8220;clash of civilizations.&#8221; Some militant radical Islamists agree with Professor Huntington, citing as evidence the unwelcome meddling of &#8220;infidels,&#8221; mostly wearing American uniforms, in various parts of the Muslim world. Some militant evangelical Christians endorse this proposition, even if they take a more favorable view of US troops occupying and drones targeting Muslim countries.</p> <p>In explaining the position of the United States government, religious scholars like George W. Bush and Barack (Hussein!) Obama have consistently expressed a contrary view. Islam is a religion of peace, they declare, part of the great Abrahamic triad. That the other elements of that triad are likewise committed to peace is a proposition that Bush, Obama, and most Americans take for granted, evidence not required. There should be no reason why Christians, Jews, and Muslims can&#8217;t live together in harmony.</p> <p>Still, remember back in 2001 when, in an unscripted moment, President Bush described the war barely begun as a &#8220;crusade&#8221;? That was just a slip of the tongue, right? If not, we just might end up calling this one the Eternal War.</p> <p>Andrew J. Bacevich is a professor of history and international relations at Boston University and a <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175597/andrew_bacevich_boykinism" type="external">TomDispatch regular</a>. His next book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0805082964/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country</a>, will appear in September.</p> <p>Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/tomdispatch" type="external">Facebook</a> or <a href="http://tomdispatch.tumblr.com/" type="external">Tumblr</a>. Check out the newest Dispatch book, Nick Turse&#8217;s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Changing-Face-Empire-Cyberwarfare/dp/1608463109/" type="external">The Changing Face of Empire: Special Ops, Drones, Proxy Fighters, Secret Bases, and Cyberwarfare.</a> To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com <a href="http://tomdispatch.us2.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=6cb39ff0b1f670c349f828c73&amp;amp;id=1e41682ade" type="external">here</a>.</p>

Naming Our Nameless, Ongoing War

https://motherjones.com/politics/2013/05/ongoing-war-name-suggestions/

2013-05-28

4left

amplta hrefhttpwwwdefensegovphotosnewsphotoaspxnewsphotoid9147ampgtSpc Elisha DawkinsampltaampgtDepartment of Defense This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website For well over a decade now the United States has been 8220a nation at war8221 Does that war have a name It did at the outset After 911 George W Bush8217s administration wasted no time in announcing that the US was engaged in a Global War on Terrorism or GWOT With few dissenters the media quickly embraced the term The GWOT promised to be a gargantuan transformative enterprise The conflict begun on 911 would define the age In neoconservative circles it was known as World War IV Upon succeeding to the presidency in 2009 however Barack Obama without fanfare junked Bush8217s formulation as he did again in a speech at the National Defense University last week Yet if the appellation went away the conflict itself shorn of identifying marks continued Does it matter that ours has become and remains a nameless war Very much so Names bestow meaning When it comes to war a name attached to a date can shape our understanding of what the conflict was all about To specify when a war began and when it ended is to privilege certain explanations of its significance while discrediting others Let me provide a few illustrations With rare exceptions Americans today characterize the horrendous fraternal bloodletting of 18611865 as the Civil War Yet not many decades ago diehard supporters of the Lost Cause insisted on referring to that conflict as the War Between the States or the War for Southern Independence or even the War of Northern Aggression The South may have gone down in defeat but the purposes for which Southerners had fought8212preserving a distinctive way of life and the principle of states8217 rights8212had been worthy even noble So at least they professed to believe with their preferred names for the war reflecting that belief Schoolbooks tell us that the SpanishAmerican War began in April 1898 and ended in August of that same year The name and dates fit nicely with a widespread inclination from President William McKinley8217s day to our own to frame US intervention in Cuba as an altruistic effort to liberate that island from Spanish oppression Yet the Cubans were not exactly bystanders in that drama By 1898 they had been fighting for years to oust their colonial overlords And although hostilities in Cuba itself ended on August 12th they dragged on in the Philippines another Spanish colony that the United States had seized for reasons only remotely related to liberating Cubans Notably US troops occupying the Philippines waged a brutal war not against Spaniards but against Filipino nationalists no more inclined to accept colonial rule by Washington than by Madrid So widen the aperture to include this Cuban prelude and the Filipino postlude and you end up with something like this The SpanishAmericanCubanPhilippines War of 18951902 Too clunky How about the War for the American Empire This much is for sure rather than illuminating the commonplace textbook descriptor serves chiefly to conceal Strange as it may seem Europeans once referred to the calamitous events of 19141918 as the Great War When Woodrow Wilson decided in 1917 to send an army of doughboys to fight alongside the Allies he went beyond Great According to the president the Great War was going to be the War To End All Wars Alas things did not pan out as he expected Perhaps anticipating the demise of his vision of permanent peace War Department General Order 115 issued on October 7 1919 formally declared that at least as far as the United States was concerned the recently concluded hostilities would be known simply as the World War In September 19398212presto chango8212the World War suddenly became the First World War the Nazi invasion of Poland having inaugurated a Second World War also known as World War II or more cryptically WWII To be sure Soviet dictator Josef Stalin preferred the Great Patriotic War Although this found instant8212almost unanimous8212favor among Soviet citizens it did not catch on elsewhere Does World War II accurately capture the events it purports to encompass With the crusade against the Axis now ranking alongside the crusade against slavery as a mythenshrouded chapter in US history to which all must pay homage Americans are no more inclined to consider that question than to consider why a playoff to determine the professional baseball championship of North America constitutes a 8220World Series8221 In fact however convenient and familiar World War II is misleading and not especially useful The period in question saw at least two wars each only tenuously connected to the other each having distinctive origins each yielding a different outcome To separate them is to transform the historical landscape On the one hand there was the Pacific War pitting the United States against Japan Formally initiated by the December 7 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor it had in fact begun a decade earlier when Japan embarked upon a policy of armed conquest in Manchuria At stake was the question of who would dominate East Asia Japan8217s crushing defeat at the hands of the United States sealed by two atomic bombs in 1945 answered that question at least for a time Then there was the European War pitting Nazi Germany first against Great Britain and France but ultimately against a grand alliance led by the United States the Soviet Union and a fast fading British Empire At stake was the question of who would dominate Europe Germany8217s defeat resolved that issue at least for a time no one would To prevent any single power from controlling Europe two outside powers divided it This division served as the basis for the ensuing Cold War which wasn8217t actually cold but also thankfully wasn8217t World War III the retrospective insistence of bellicose neoconservatives notwithstanding But when did the Cold War begin Was it in early 1947 when President Harry Truman decided that Stalin8217s Russia posed a looming threat and committed the United States to a strategy of containment Or was it in 1919 when Vladimir Lenin decided that Winston Churchill8217s vow to 8220strangle Bolshevism in its cradle8221 posed a looming threat to the Russian Revolution with an ongoing AngloAmerican military intervention evincing a determination to make good on that vow Separating the war against Nazi Germany from the war against Imperial Japan opens up another interpretive possibility If you incorporate the European conflict of 19141918 and the European conflict of 19391945 into a single narrative you get a Second Thirty Years War the first having occurred from 161816488212not so much a contest of good against evil as a mindless exercise in selfdestruction that represented the ultimate expression of European folly So yes it matters what we choose to call the military enterprise we8217ve been waging not only in Iraq and Afghanistan but also in any number of other countries scattered hither and yon across the Islamic world Although the Obama administration appears no more interested than the Bush administration in saying when that enterprise will actually end the date we choose as its starting point also matters Although Washington seems in no hurry to name its nameless war8212and will no doubt settle on something selfserving or anodyne if it ever finally addresses the issue8212perhaps we should jumpstart the process Let8217s consider some possible options names that might actually explain what8217s going on The Long War Coined not long after 911 by senior officers in the Pentagon this formulation never gained traction with either civilian officials or the general public Yet the Long War deserves consideration even though8212or perhaps because8212it has lost its luster with the passage of time At the outset it connoted grand ambitions buoyed by extreme confidence in the efficacy of American military might This was going to be one for the ages a multigenerational conflict yielding sweeping results The Long War did begin on a hopeful note The initial entry into Afghanistan and then into Iraq seemed to herald 8220home by Christmas8221 triumphal parades Yet this soon proved an illusion as victory slipped from Washington8217s grasp By 2005 at the latest events in the field had dashed the neoWilsonian expectations nurtured back home With the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan dragging on 8220long8221 lost its original connotation Instead of 8220really important8221 it became a synonym for 8220interminable8221 Today the Long War does succinctly capture the experience of American soldiers who have endured multiple combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan For Long War combatants the object of the exercise has become to persist As for winning it8217s not in the cards The Long War just might conclude by the end of 2014 if President Obama keeps his pledge to end the US combat role in Afghanistan and if he avoids getting sucked into Syria8217s civil war So the troops may hope The War Against AlQaeda It began in August 1996 when Osama bin Laden issued a 8220Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places8221 ie Saudi Arabia In February 1998 a second bin Laden manifesto announced that killing Americans military and civilian alike had become 8220an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it8221 Although President Bill Clinton took notice the US response to bin Laden8217s provocations was limited and ineffectual Only after 911 did Washington take this threat seriously Since then apart from a pointless excursion into Iraq where in Saddam Hussein8217s day alQaeda did not exist US attention has been focused on Afghanistan where US troops have waged the longest war in American history and on Pakistan8217s tribal borderlands where a CIA drone campaign is ongoing By the end of President Obama8217s first term US intelligence agencies were reporting that a combined CIAmilitary campaign had largely destroyed bin Laden8217s organization Bin Laden himself of course was dead Could the United States have declared victory in its unnamed war at this point Perhaps but it gave little thought to doing so Instead the national security apparatus had already trained its sights on various alQaeda 8220franchises8221 and wannabes militant groups claiming the bin Laden brand and waging their own version of jihad These offshoots emerged in the Maghreb Yemen Somalia Nigeria and8212wouldn8217t you know it8212postSaddam Iraq among other places The question as to whether they actually posed a danger to the United States got at best passing attention8212the label 8220alQaeda8221 eliciting the same sort of Pavlovian response that the word 8220communist8221 once did Americans should not expect this war to end anytime soon Indeed the Pentagon8217s impresario of special operations recently speculated8212by no means unhappily8212that it would continue globally for 8220at least 10 to 20 years8221 Freely translated his statement undoubtedly means 8220No one really knows but we8217re planning to keep at it for one helluva long time8221 The War ForAgainstAbout Israel It began in 1948 For many Jews the founding of the state of Israel signified an ancient hope fulfilled For many Christians conscious of the sin of antiSemitism that had culminated in the Holocaust it offered a way to ease guilty consciences albeit mostly at others8217 expense For many Muslims especially Arabs and most acutely Arabs who had been living in Palestine the founding of the Jewish state represented a grave injustice It was yet another unwelcome intrusion engineered by the West8212colonialism by another name Recounting the ensuing struggle without appearing to take sides is almost impossible Yet one thing seems clear in terms of military involvement the United States attempted in the late 1940s and 1950s to keep its distance Over the course of the 1960s this changed The US became Israel8217s principal patron committed to maintaining and indeed increasing its military superiority over its neighbors In the decades that followed the two countries forged a multifaceted 8220strategic relationship8221 A compliant Congress provided Israel with weapons and other assistance worth many billions of dollars testifying to what has become an unambiguous and irrevocable US commitment to the safety and wellbeing of the Jewish state The two countries share technology and intelligence Meanwhile just as Israel had disregarded US concerns when it came to developing nuclear weapons it ignored persistent US requests that it refrain from colonizing territory that it has conquered When it comes to identifying the minimal essential requirements of Israeli security and the terms that will define any PalestinianIsraeli peace deal the United States defers to Israel That may qualify as an overstatement but only slightly Given the Israeli perspective on those requirements and those terms8212permanent military supremacy and a permanently demilitarized Palestine allowed limited sovereignty8212the War ForAgainstAbout Israel is unlikely to end anytime soon either Whether the United States benefits from the perpetuation of this war is difficult to say but we are in it for the long haul The War for the Greater Middle East I confess that this is the name I would choose for Washington8217s unnamed war and is in fact the title of a course I teach A tempting alternative is the Second Hundred Years War the 8220first8221 having begun in 1337 and ended in 1453 This war is about to hit the century mark its opening chapter coinciding with the onset of World War I Not long after the fighting on the Western Front in Europe had settled into a stalemate the British government looking for ways to gain the upper hand set out to dismantle the Ottoman Empire whose rulers had foolishly thrown in their lot with the German Reich against the Allies By the time the war ended with Germany and the Turks on the losing side Great Britain had already begun to draw up new boundaries invent states and install rulers to suit its predilections while also issuing mutually contradictory promises to groups inhabiting these new precincts of its empire Toward what end Simply put the British were intent on calling the shots from Egypt to India whether by governing through intermediaries or ruling directly The result was a new Middle East and a total mess London presided over this mess albeit with considerable difficulty until the end of World War II At this point by abandoning efforts to keep Arabs and Zionists from one another8217s throats in Palestine and by accepting the partition of India they signaled their intention to throw in the towel Alas Washington proved more than willing to assume Britain8217s role The lure of oil was strong So too were the fears however overwrought of the Soviets extending their influence into the region Unfortunately the Americans enjoyed no more success in promoting longterm proWestern stability than had the British In some respects they only made things worse with the joint CIAMI6 overthrow of a democratically elected government in Iran in 1953 offering a prime example of a 8220success8221 that to this day has never stopped breeding disaster Only after 1980 did things get really interesting however The Carter Doctrine promulgated that year designated the Persian Gulf a vital national security interest and opened the door to greatly increased US military activity not just in the Gulf but also throughout the Greater Middle East GME Between 1945 and 1980 considerable numbers of American soldiers lost their lives fighting in Asia and elsewhere During that period virtually none were killed fighting in the GME Since 1990 in contrast virtually none have been killed fighting anywhere except in the GME What does the United States hope to achieve in its inherited and unending War for the Greater Middle East To pacify the region To remake it in our image To drain its stocks of petroleum Or just keeping the lid on However you define the war8217s aims things have not gone well which once again suggests that in some form it will continue for some time to come If there8217s any good news here it8217s the prospect of having ever more material for my seminar which may soon expand into a twosemester course The War Against Islam This war began nearly 1000 years ago and continued for centuries a storied collision between Christendom and the Muslim ummah For a couple of hundred years periodic eruptions of largescale violence occurred until the conflict finally petered out with the last crusade sometime in the fourteenth century In those days many people had deemed religion something worth fighting for a proposition to which the more sophisticated presentday inhabitants of Christendom no longer subscribe Yet could that religious war have resumed in our own day Professor Samuel Huntington thought so although he styled the conflict a 8220clash of civilizations8221 Some militant radical Islamists agree with Professor Huntington citing as evidence the unwelcome meddling of 8220infidels8221 mostly wearing American uniforms in various parts of the Muslim world Some militant evangelical Christians endorse this proposition even if they take a more favorable view of US troops occupying and drones targeting Muslim countries In explaining the position of the United States government religious scholars like George W Bush and Barack Hussein Obama have consistently expressed a contrary view Islam is a religion of peace they declare part of the great Abrahamic triad That the other elements of that triad are likewise committed to peace is a proposition that Bush Obama and most Americans take for granted evidence not required There should be no reason why Christians Jews and Muslims can8217t live together in harmony Still remember back in 2001 when in an unscripted moment President Bush described the war barely begun as a 8220crusade8221 That was just a slip of the tongue right If not we just might end up calling this one the Eternal War Andrew J Bacevich is a professor of history and international relations at Boston University and a TomDispatch regular His next book Breach of Trust How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country will appear in September Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook or Tumblr Check out the newest Dispatch book Nick Turse8217s The Changing Face of Empire Special Ops Drones Proxy Fighters Secret Bases and Cyberwarfare To stay on top of important articles like these sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatchcom here

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<p>DUBLIN (Reuters) - The head of the world&#8217;s largest aircraft leasing company, AerCap ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AER.N" type="external">AER.N</a>), does not expect a significant number of mergers or acquisitions in the sector despite pressure on the owners of two of his largest rivals: GECAS and Avolon.</p> <p>Chief executive Aengus Kelly told the Airline Economics conference in Dublin on Monday that the draw of consistently stable returns would make owners of major aircraft leasing firms very reluctant to sell.</p> <p>&#8220;M&amp;amp;A is a continual theme. But do I think there will be much of it? No,&#8221; Kelly said. &#8220;Sellers that have been in this business a long time are very reluctant to take out an asset that has generated such stable returns historically.&#8221;</p> <p>He said he did not expect to see an attractive acquisition opportunity in the sector unless there was significant stress specific to one of the owners.</p> <p>Asked specifically about rivals GECAS and Avolon, Kelly said it was &#8220;impossible to say&#8221; what might happen, with both businesses showing consistent profitability.</p> <p>GECAS owner General Electric ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=GE.N" type="external">GE.N</a>) indicated last week that it was looking closely at breaking itself up as the conglomerate announced more than $11 billion in charges from its long-term care insurance portfolio and new U.S. tax laws.</p> <p>Avolon&#8217;s ultimate owner HNA group has admitted in recent months to liquidity problems.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AER.N" type="external">AerCap Holdings NV</a> 50.72 AER.N New York Stock Exchange +0.55 (+1.10%) AER.N GE.N <p>Kelly said the aviation sector was facing the prospect of increases in two key input costs: fuel and interest rates.</p> <p>While the oil price could tax some airlines if it climbs to $80 from just under $70, the business models of some airlines could be &#8220;stretched&#8221; he said. [L8N1PH5K5] Higher oil could nudge carriers towards more fuel-efficient newer planes, he said.</p> <p>Higher interest rates should be good for the aviation finance sector so long as the increase does not come too quickly, he added.</p> <p>&#8220;A rising rate environment is a good thing as it generally brings with it some form of asset inflation because it is reflective of a more positive global GDP,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>&#8220;But there can be a lag before that inflation occurs and that is where you have to make sure that the business is soundly funded when you have short periods of volatility.&#8221;</p> <p>While some firms that entered the market in recent years due to low yields elsewhere may leave the sector if interest rates rise, others will likely move in to take advantage of the higher rates, he said.</p> <p>Reporting by Conor Humphries; editing by Alexander Smith</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>LONDON (Reuters) - A committee of British lawmakers published written evidence on Thursday provided by a whistleblower who says information about 50 million Facebook users ended up in the hands of political consultancy Cambridge Analytica.</p> Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie at a news conference in central London. REUTERS/Toby Melville <p>Cambridge Analytica said the documents did not support whistleblower Christopher Wylie&#8217;s testimony to the committee this week.</p> <p>Wylie, who formerly worked for Cambridge Analytica (CA), alleges the data was used to help to build profiles on American voters and raise support for Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.</p> <p>He also alleges that CA was linked to Canadian firm AggregateIQ (AIQ), which he says was involved in the development of the software used to target voters. AggregateIQ, he says, received payment from a pro-Brexit campaign group before the 2016 referendum when Britain voted to quit the European Union.</p> <p>This was co-ordinated with the lead &#8220;Vote Leave&#8221; group in a breach of British electoral funding rules, Wylie alleged. Vote Leave denies any wrongdoing.</p> <p>Wylie appeared before the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee of the British parliament on Tuesday. The committee said Wylie provided it with documents including a services agreement between AIQ and SCL Elections, an affiliate of Cambridge Analytica, dated September 2014.</p> <p>Reuters was unable to independently verify the authenticity of the documents made public by the committee.</p> Window cleaners work outside the offices of Cambridge Analytica in central London, Britain, March 24, 2018. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls <p>&#8220;None of these documents support the false allegations made in Tuesday&#8217;s hearing,&#8221; Cambridge Analytica said in a statement, adding that Wylie had left the company in July 2014 and would have no direct knowledge of its work or practices since then.</p> <p>&#8220;It is wrong to suggest that Cambridge Analytica&#8217;s earlier relationship with Aggregate IQ implies that we were involved with their work for Vote Leave. Cambridge Analytica did no work in any capacity in the 2016 EU referendum.&#8221;</p> <p>AIQ did not respond to a Reuters request for comment after Tuesday&#8217;s committee hearing, but in an earlier statement said it had never entered into a contract with Cambridge Analytica and had never been part of the firm.</p> <p>The parliamentary committee&#8217;s chairman has said it was &#8220;astonishing&#8221; that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg decided not to answer lawmakers&#8217; questions, given the claims that Wylie had made about how data was used.</p> <p>Reporting by Alistair Smout; editing by Andrew Roche and David Stamp</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. power company FirstEnergy Corp ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FE.N" type="external">FE.N</a>) urged the federal government on Thursday to evoke little-used emergency powers to help it keep several struggling nuclear and coal-fired power plants open, a move critics blasted as an attempt at a corporate bailout.</p> FILE PHOTO - The Davis-Beese nuclear power station is seen near Oak Harbor, Ohio February 11, 2010. REUTERS/Aaron Josefczyk <p>On Wednesday, Ohio-based FirstEnergy said it would shut several nuclear plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania in the next three years without some kind of state or federal relief.</p> <p>FirstEnergy&#8217;s FirstEnergy Solutions unit called on U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry to use the emergency powers to order PJM Interconnection, the regional power grid operator, to negotiate a contract that would compensate owners of coal and nuclear plants for the benefits such as reliability and jobs those units provide.</p> <p>PJM, in response, rejected the need for an emergency order. &#8220;Nothing we have seen suggests there is any kind of emergency from these units retiring,&#8221; said Vincent Duane, senior vice president at PJM, calling the problem &#8220;fundamentally a corporate issue.&#8221;</p> <p>A spokesman for FirstEnergy Solutions declined to comment on Thursday about speculation the unit was headed for bankruptcy, but he directed attention to a filing the company made with the Energy Department earlier in the day. The filing included a comment made by FirstEnergy Corp&#8217;s chief executive, Charles Jones, in February that he would be &#8220;shocked&#8221; if FirstEnergy Solutions did not file for some type of bankruptcy protection by the end of March.</p> <p>Coal and nuclear power plant operators have struggled in recent years as low natural gas prices as a result of the shale boom have spurred utilities to retire dirtier coal plants. Last year, Perry proposed a plan that would subsidize coal and nuclear for providing what is known as base-load generation, which refers to units that run around the clock.</p> <p>U.S. regulators rejected that proposal in January and said they would conduct a study on grid resilience. Many grid operators, including PJM, have said they already factor in reliability of their systems and the fuel resources available to generate electricity.</p> <p>Murray Energy Corp, which supplies coal to FirstEnergy and has been lobbying elected officials to keep coal and nuclear plants operating, said it fully supports the request for emergency relief.</p> <p>&#8220;As a result of FERC&#8217;s failure, critical power plants will close, thousands of American jobs will be lost, and the reliability, resiliency, and security of our electric power grids will be forever compromised,&#8221; Murray Energy said in a statement, referring to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission&#8217;s rejection of Perry&#8217;s resiliency proposal.</p> <p>FirstEnergy said in November 2016 that it would exit the competitive generation business overseen by FirstEnergy Solutions as natural gas has taken up a greater part of the power load.</p> <p>On Wednesday, FirstEnergy Solutions said it told PJM it would retire all of its nuclear reactors in Ohio and Pennsylvania, totaling 4,048 megawatts (MW), in 2020 and 2021.</p> <p>One megawatt is enough power for 1,000 U.S. homes.</p> <p>FirstEnergy said it wants an emergency order because the power grid&#8217;s reliability is threatened, due to the &#8220;premature retirement of plants that have many years of useful life but cannot operate profitably under current market conditions.&#8221;</p> <p>PJM said, however, that FirstEnergy&#8217;s assets &#8220;have been financially stressed for some time.&#8221;</p> <p>The Energy Department said it received FirstEnergy&#8217;s request and will go through its standard review process. It did not comment further. PJM said such a request, if granted, would effectively circumvent FERC, putting it in &#8220;uncharted waters.&#8221;</p> <p>Shares in FirstEnergy closed down 1.1 percent to $34.01 on Thursday.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FE.N" type="external">FirstEnergy Corp</a> 34.01 FE.N New York Stock Exchange -0.38 (-1.10%) FE.N <p>The use of emergency orders related to power generation has been minimal, having been evoked only eight times since December 2000, according to the Energy Department, usually in response to natural disasters or blackouts.</p> <p>Groups that rarely agree on anything condemned FirstEnergy&#8217;s request.</p> <p>The American Petroleum Institute (API), a trade group for the oil and natural gas industry, said, &#8220;FirstEnergy&#8217;s claim that the electric grid would be in immediate danger with these power plant retirements is simply untrue.</p> <p>&#8220;PJM is responsible for the reliability of the grid and if there is an emergency, PJM already has the tools to respond,&#8221; API said in a statement</p> <p>The environmental group the Sierra Club said it would sue if Perry issues any order to bail out FirstEnergy.</p> <p>&#8220;Ratepayers and regulators have already rejected multiple attempts by (FirstEnergy) to bail out these coal and nuclear plants that can no longer compete in the marketplace,&#8221; Mary Anne Hitt, director of the Sierra Club&#8217;s Beyond Coal campaign, said in a statement.</p> <p>Other companies have sought assistance from federal, state and regional officials to keep their coal and nuclear plants in service, and some states, including New York and Illinois, have offered subsidies to nuclear plants.</p> <p>These companies argue that the diversification of fuel sources is necessary to keep the power grid operating in the most optimal way. More coal plants are expected to be decommissioned in coming years, and natural gas recently surpassed coal as the biggest source of power generation in the United States.</p> <p>Most states are also putting rules in place to boost generation through renewable sources.</p> <p>Reporting by Scott DiSavino in New York and Valerie Volcovici in Washington; editing by David Gaffen, Tom Brown and Leslie Adler</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - Starbucks Corp ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=SBUX.O" type="external">SBUX.O</a>) and other coffee companies must put a cancer warning label on coffee products sold in California, a Los Angeles judge ruled.</p> FILE PHOTO - A woman holds a Frappuccino at a Starbucks store inside the Tom Bradley terminal at LAX airport in Los Angeles, California, United States, October 27, 2015. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson <p>Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle said in a proposed decision Wednesday that Starbucks and other companies had failed to show that the threat from a chemical compound produced when roasting coffee was insignificant, court documents showed.</p> <p>Starbucks and some 90 other defendants in the case have until April 10 to file objections. Other defendants include Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Inc, the J.M. Smucker Company and Kraft Foods Global, according to court documents.</p> <p>Officials from Starbucks and other coffee sellers such as Dunkin&#8217; Donuts ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=DNKN.O" type="external">DNKN.O</a>) and Peet&#8217;s did not immediately respond to requests for comment.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=SBUX.O" type="external">Starbucks Corp</a> 57.89 SBUX.O Nasdaq -0.01 (-0.02%) SBUX.O DNKN.O <p>The California-based Council for Education and Research on Toxics (CERT) first sued Starbucks and other companies in 2010 alleging they failed to provide warnings to consumers that the coffee they sold contained high levels of acrylamide, a toxic and carcinogenic chemical, court documents showed.</p> <p>CERT argued that since acrylamide was classified as a carcinogen under California law, coffee sellers had to use warning labels to alert the millions of Californians drinking their products.</p> <p>In the first phase of the trial, Starbucks and other defendants failed to show there was no &#8220;significant risk level&#8221; from the acrylamide in brewed coffee, court documents showed.</p> <p>In the second phase of the trial concluded on Wednesday, the companies tried to establish that there was an acceptable &#8220;alternative significant risk level&#8221; of exposure to acrylamide, that consumers would stay within during a lifetime of coffee drinking.</p> <p>Berle ruled that the companies failed to prove that there was such a level and therefore their products had to carry warning labels for acrylamide.</p> <p>Reporting by Nate Raymond; additional reporting by Lisa Baertlein; Editing by Tom Brown and Richard Chang</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - Three firms that bought crude oil last year from U.S. emergency stockpiles raised concerns about dangerous levels of a poisonous chemical in the cargoes, according to internal Energy Department emails and shipping documents reviewed by Reuters.</p> <p>Problems with crude quality would make the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) less useful in an emergency because refiners would need to spend time and money removing contamination before producing fuel. The reserve is the world&#8217;s largest government stockpile, currently holding 665 million barrels.</p> <p>Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) occurs naturally in crude and natural gas, but oil producers typically decontaminate such products before delivery to buyers. High levels of H2S can corrode refinery parts and pipelines - and can be lethal to humans in gas form.</p> <p>Authorities in all major consuming countries keep oil in reserve to ensure that they do not run out of crude to refine into fuels if a natural disaster or war disrupts global supplies. The U.S. government established its reserve in 1975 following the Arab oil embargo.</p> <p>The U.S. Department of Energy oversees the reserve and periodically sells some of its oil at times when there are no emergencies, as it did with the sales that sparked contamination concerns.</p> <p>Department Spokeswoman Shaylyn Hynes declined to comment about the contamination complaints uncovered by Reuters.</p> <p>The three firms that raised concerns about high H2S levels were Royal Dutch Shell Co ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=RDSa.L" type="external">RDSa.L</a>), Australian bank Macquarie Group and PetroChina International America, the U.S. trading arm of state-owned energy firm PetroChina Co Ltd [601857.SS], according to the shipping documents, emails provided by the Energy Department in response to a public records request, and a department official who declined to be identified.</p> <p>The department took responsibility for cleaning the shipment to PetroChina with an additive after it determined in May of last year that levels of H2S were too high, according to the department official. The department disputes tests showing levels were too high in the other two cargoes, the official said.</p> <p>All three firms bought cargoes of SPR oil stored in an underground salt cavern in Bryan Mound, Texas last year. The oil was pumped from Bryan Mound through pipelines to the nearest oil terminal at Freeport, Texas before being loaded onto ships, according to records reviewed by Reuters and the department official.</p> <p>The Freeport facility is owned by Houston-based Enterprise Products Partners LP ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=EPD.N" type="external">EPD.N</a>). Enterprise knew about higher levels of H2S in a small number of cargoes traded between private firms that passed through its terminal, Enterprise Senior Vice President Brent Secrest told Reuters in an interview.</p> <p>&#8220;Of the hundreds of cargoes we&#8217;ve loaded across Freeport and other Enterprise terminals, we&#8217;ve only had a handful of customers give us feedback regarding high levels of H2S,&#8221; he said.</p> UNPLEASANT SURPRISE <p>In March, Shell complained to the Energy Department after finding high levels of H2S in a cargo the company bought as part of a 6.2 million-barrel purchase from the U.S. government in January, according to emails provided by the department in response to the Reuters public records request.</p> <p>The firm was &#8220;unpleasantly surprised&#8221; to find the high levels, Shell oil trader Steve Sellers wrote to the department, adding that the issue caused concern at Shell about the quality of SPR crude for future purchases.</p> <p>Shell declined to comment on its complaint to the government.</p> <p>The oil firm&#8217;s emails said an initial test sample detected H2S gas at levels of less than five parts per million (ppm). But a later test by Shell - after it shipped the crude by boat to another U.S. location - showed H2S levels of 600 parts per million, according to Shell&#8217;s emails to the department.</p> <p>Exposure to vapors containing 500-700 ppm of H2S could cause a person to collapse in five minutes and die within an hour, according to the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration.</p> SAFETY CONCERNS <p>In November, Australian bank Macquarie Group bought the third shipment from the SPR and sold it to PetroChina, according to the shipping documents reviewed by Reuters.</p> Slideshow (3 Images) <p>The cargo was loaded at Freeport onto a ship called the Stena Sunrise, the documents show.</p> <p>A testing company named Inspectorate tested a sample from the SPR cargo purchased by Macquarie, according to the documents, and found H2S levels of up to 9,000 ppm.</p> <p>Inspectorate declined to comment and referred questions to the Energy Department. Macquarie declined to comment.</p> <p>After the Inspectorate testing, the terminal operator refused to allow workers to perform additional tests out of concern about violating safety regulations, according to the shipping documents.</p> <p>It is unclear if PetroChina or Macquarie decontaminated the cargo. PetroChina shipped the oil to China, where it arrived on Jan. 18, according to Thomson Reuters shipping data.</p> RARE INCIDENTS <p>Reuters was not able to determine how often high levels of H2S are detected across the industry, but industry experts and chemical petroleum engineers said such incidents are rare.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=RDSa.L" type="external">Royal Dutch Shell PLC</a> 2233.5 RDSa.L London Stock Exchange +2.00 (+0.09%) RDSa.L EPD.N <p>Some crude grades can have H2S levels as high as 1000 ppm when produced, said Ramanan Krishnamoorti, chief energy officer and a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of Houston. But producers remove most of that before transporting crude to customers.</p> <p>Contamination could result from blending different crude grades, for example when one grade of crude is stored in a tank that previously contained a different grade, Krishnamoorti said.</p> <p>&#8220;There has to be some concentrated source of it,&#8221; Krishnamoorti said. &#8220;It&#8217;s just very odd.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Catherine Ngai; Editing by David Gaffen, Simon Webb and Brian Thevenot</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

AerCap CEO does not expect wave of aircraft finance M&A UK lawmakers publish evidence from Cambridge Analytica whistleblower FirstEnergy seeks emergency lifeline for U.S. nuclear, coal plants Starbucks must put cancer warning on California coffee: judge Exclusive: Firms complain of contaminated crude from U.S. reserve

https://reuters.com/article/us-aviation-finance-aercap-hldg/aercap-ceo-does-not-expect-wave-of-aircraft-finance-ma-idUSKBN1FB255

2018-01-22

2least

DUBLIN Reuters The head of the world8217s largest aircraft leasing company AerCap AERN does not expect a significant number of mergers or acquisitions in the sector despite pressure on the owners of two of his largest rivals GECAS and Avolon Chief executive Aengus Kelly told the Airline Economics conference in Dublin on Monday that the draw of consistently stable returns would make owners of major aircraft leasing firms very reluctant to sell 8220MampampA is a continual theme But do I think there will be much of it No8221 Kelly said 8220Sellers that have been in this business a long time are very reluctant to take out an asset that has generated such stable returns historically8221 He said he did not expect to see an attractive acquisition opportunity in the sector unless there was significant stress specific to one of the owners Asked specifically about rivals GECAS and Avolon Kelly said it was 8220impossible to say8221 what might happen with both businesses showing consistent profitability GECAS owner General Electric GEN indicated last week that it was looking closely at breaking itself up as the conglomerate announced more than 11 billion in charges from its longterm care insurance portfolio and new US tax laws Avolon8217s ultimate owner HNA group has admitted in recent months to liquidity problems AerCap Holdings NV 5072 AERN New York Stock Exchange 055 110 AERN GEN Kelly said the aviation sector was facing the prospect of increases in two key input costs fuel and interest rates While the oil price could tax some airlines if it climbs to 80 from just under 70 the business models of some airlines could be 8220stretched8221 he said L8N1PH5K5 Higher oil could nudge carriers towards more fuelefficient newer planes he said Higher interest rates should be good for the aviation finance sector so long as the increase does not come too quickly he added 8220A rising rate environment is a good thing as it generally brings with it some form of asset inflation because it is reflective of a more positive global GDP8221 he said 8220But there can be a lag before that inflation occurs and that is where you have to make sure that the business is soundly funded when you have short periods of volatility8221 While some firms that entered the market in recent years due to low yields elsewhere may leave the sector if interest rates rise others will likely move in to take advantage of the higher rates he said Reporting by Conor Humphries editing by Alexander Smith Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles LONDON Reuters A committee of British lawmakers published written evidence on Thursday provided by a whistleblower who says information about 50 million Facebook users ended up in the hands of political consultancy Cambridge Analytica Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie at a news conference in central London REUTERSToby Melville Cambridge Analytica said the documents did not support whistleblower Christopher Wylie8217s testimony to the committee this week Wylie who formerly worked for Cambridge Analytica CA alleges the data was used to help to build profiles on American voters and raise support for Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential election He also alleges that CA was linked to Canadian firm AggregateIQ AIQ which he says was involved in the development of the software used to target voters AggregateIQ he says received payment from a proBrexit campaign group before the 2016 referendum when Britain voted to quit the European Union This was coordinated with the lead 8220Vote Leave8221 group in a breach of British electoral funding rules Wylie alleged Vote Leave denies any wrongdoing Wylie appeared before the Digital Culture Media and Sport Committee of the British parliament on Tuesday The committee said Wylie provided it with documents including a services agreement between AIQ and SCL Elections an affiliate of Cambridge Analytica dated September 2014 Reuters was unable to independently verify the authenticity of the documents made public by the committee Window cleaners work outside the offices of Cambridge Analytica in central London Britain March 24 2018 REUTERSPeter Nicholls 8220None of these documents support the false allegations made in Tuesday8217s hearing8221 Cambridge Analytica said in a statement adding that Wylie had left the company in July 2014 and would have no direct knowledge of its work or practices since then 8220It is wrong to suggest that Cambridge Analytica8217s earlier relationship with Aggregate IQ implies that we were involved with their work for Vote Leave Cambridge Analytica did no work in any capacity in the 2016 EU referendum8221 AIQ did not respond to a Reuters request for comment after Tuesday8217s committee hearing but in an earlier statement said it had never entered into a contract with Cambridge Analytica and had never been part of the firm The parliamentary committee8217s chairman has said it was 8220astonishing8221 that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg decided not to answer lawmakers8217 questions given the claims that Wylie had made about how data was used Reporting by Alistair Smout editing by Andrew Roche and David Stamp Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORKWASHINGTON Reuters US power company FirstEnergy Corp FEN urged the federal government on Thursday to evoke littleused emergency powers to help it keep several struggling nuclear and coalfired power plants open a move critics blasted as an attempt at a corporate bailout FILE PHOTO The DavisBeese nuclear power station is seen near Oak Harbor Ohio February 11 2010 REUTERSAaron Josefczyk On Wednesday Ohiobased FirstEnergy said it would shut several nuclear plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania in the next three years without some kind of state or federal relief FirstEnergy8217s FirstEnergy Solutions unit called on US Energy Secretary Rick Perry to use the emergency powers to order PJM Interconnection the regional power grid operator to negotiate a contract that would compensate owners of coal and nuclear plants for the benefits such as reliability and jobs those units provide PJM in response rejected the need for an emergency order 8220Nothing we have seen suggests there is any kind of emergency from these units retiring8221 said Vincent Duane senior vice president at PJM calling the problem 8220fundamentally a corporate issue8221 A spokesman for FirstEnergy Solutions declined to comment on Thursday about speculation the unit was headed for bankruptcy but he directed attention to a filing the company made with the Energy Department earlier in the day The filing included a comment made by FirstEnergy Corp8217s chief executive Charles Jones in February that he would be 8220shocked8221 if FirstEnergy Solutions did not file for some type of bankruptcy protection by the end of March Coal and nuclear power plant operators have struggled in recent years as low natural gas prices as a result of the shale boom have spurred utilities to retire dirtier coal plants Last year Perry proposed a plan that would subsidize coal and nuclear for providing what is known as baseload generation which refers to units that run around the clock US regulators rejected that proposal in January and said they would conduct a study on grid resilience Many grid operators including PJM have said they already factor in reliability of their systems and the fuel resources available to generate electricity Murray Energy Corp which supplies coal to FirstEnergy and has been lobbying elected officials to keep coal and nuclear plants operating said it fully supports the request for emergency relief 8220As a result of FERC8217s failure critical power plants will close thousands of American jobs will be lost and the reliability resiliency and security of our electric power grids will be forever compromised8221 Murray Energy said in a statement referring to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission8217s rejection of Perry8217s resiliency proposal FirstEnergy said in November 2016 that it would exit the competitive generation business overseen by FirstEnergy Solutions as natural gas has taken up a greater part of the power load On Wednesday FirstEnergy Solutions said it told PJM it would retire all of its nuclear reactors in Ohio and Pennsylvania totaling 4048 megawatts MW in 2020 and 2021 One megawatt is enough power for 1000 US homes FirstEnergy said it wants an emergency order because the power grid8217s reliability is threatened due to the 8220premature retirement of plants that have many years of useful life but cannot operate profitably under current market conditions8221 PJM said however that FirstEnergy8217s assets 8220have been financially stressed for some time8221 The Energy Department said it received FirstEnergy8217s request and will go through its standard review process It did not comment further PJM said such a request if granted would effectively circumvent FERC putting it in 8220uncharted waters8221 Shares in FirstEnergy closed down 11 percent to 3401 on Thursday FirstEnergy Corp 3401 FEN New York Stock Exchange 038 110 FEN The use of emergency orders related to power generation has been minimal having been evoked only eight times since December 2000 according to the Energy Department usually in response to natural disasters or blackouts Groups that rarely agree on anything condemned FirstEnergy8217s request The American Petroleum Institute API a trade group for the oil and natural gas industry said 8220FirstEnergy8217s claim that the electric grid would be in immediate danger with these power plant retirements is simply untrue 8220PJM is responsible for the reliability of the grid and if there is an emergency PJM already has the tools to respond8221 API said in a statement The environmental group the Sierra Club said it would sue if Perry issues any order to bail out FirstEnergy 8220Ratepayers and regulators have already rejected multiple attempts by FirstEnergy to bail out these coal and nuclear plants that can no longer compete in the marketplace8221 Mary Anne Hitt director of the Sierra Club8217s Beyond Coal campaign said in a statement Other companies have sought assistance from federal state and regional officials to keep their coal and nuclear plants in service and some states including New York and Illinois have offered subsidies to nuclear plants These companies argue that the diversification of fuel sources is necessary to keep the power grid operating in the most optimal way More coal plants are expected to be decommissioned in coming years and natural gas recently surpassed coal as the biggest source of power generation in the United States Most states are also putting rules in place to boost generation through renewable sources Reporting by Scott DiSavino in New York and Valerie Volcovici in Washington editing by David Gaffen Tom Brown and Leslie Adler Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters Starbucks Corp SBUXO and other coffee companies must put a cancer warning label on coffee products sold in California a Los Angeles judge ruled FILE PHOTO A woman holds a Frappuccino at a Starbucks store inside the Tom Bradley terminal at LAX airport in Los Angeles California United States October 27 2015 REUTERSLucy Nicholson Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle said in a proposed decision Wednesday that Starbucks and other companies had failed to show that the threat from a chemical compound produced when roasting coffee was insignificant court documents showed Starbucks and some 90 other defendants in the case have until April 10 to file objections Other defendants include Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Inc the JM Smucker Company and Kraft Foods Global according to court documents Officials from Starbucks and other coffee sellers such as Dunkin8217 Donuts DNKNO and Peet8217s did not immediately respond to requests for comment Starbucks Corp 5789 SBUXO Nasdaq 001 002 SBUXO DNKNO The Californiabased Council for Education and Research on Toxics CERT first sued Starbucks and other companies in 2010 alleging they failed to provide warnings to consumers that the coffee they sold contained high levels of acrylamide a toxic and carcinogenic chemical court documents showed CERT argued that since acrylamide was classified as a carcinogen under California law coffee sellers had to use warning labels to alert the millions of Californians drinking their products In the first phase of the trial Starbucks and other defendants failed to show there was no 8220significant risk level8221 from the acrylamide in brewed coffee court documents showed In the second phase of the trial concluded on Wednesday the companies tried to establish that there was an acceptable 8220alternative significant risk level8221 of exposure to acrylamide that consumers would stay within during a lifetime of coffee drinking Berle ruled that the companies failed to prove that there was such a level and therefore their products had to carry warning labels for acrylamide Reporting by Nate Raymond additional reporting by Lisa Baertlein Editing by Tom Brown and Richard Chang Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORK Reuters Three firms that bought crude oil last year from US emergency stockpiles raised concerns about dangerous levels of a poisonous chemical in the cargoes according to internal Energy Department emails and shipping documents reviewed by Reuters Problems with crude quality would make the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve SPR less useful in an emergency because refiners would need to spend time and money removing contamination before producing fuel The reserve is the world8217s largest government stockpile currently holding 665 million barrels Hydrogen sulfide H2S occurs naturally in crude and natural gas but oil producers typically decontaminate such products before delivery to buyers High levels of H2S can corrode refinery parts and pipelines and can be lethal to humans in gas form Authorities in all major consuming countries keep oil in reserve to ensure that they do not run out of crude to refine into fuels if a natural disaster or war disrupts global supplies The US government established its reserve in 1975 following the Arab oil embargo The US Department of Energy oversees the reserve and periodically sells some of its oil at times when there are no emergencies as it did with the sales that sparked contamination concerns Department Spokeswoman Shaylyn Hynes declined to comment about the contamination complaints uncovered by Reuters The three firms that raised concerns about high H2S levels were Royal Dutch Shell Co RDSaL Australian bank Macquarie Group and PetroChina International America the US trading arm of stateowned energy firm PetroChina Co Ltd 601857SS according to the shipping documents emails provided by the Energy Department in response to a public records request and a department official who declined to be identified The department took responsibility for cleaning the shipment to PetroChina with an additive after it determined in May of last year that levels of H2S were too high according to the department official The department disputes tests showing levels were too high in the other two cargoes the official said All three firms bought cargoes of SPR oil stored in an underground salt cavern in Bryan Mound Texas last year The oil was pumped from Bryan Mound through pipelines to the nearest oil terminal at Freeport Texas before being loaded onto ships according to records reviewed by Reuters and the department official The Freeport facility is owned by Houstonbased Enterprise Products Partners LP EPDN Enterprise knew about higher levels of H2S in a small number of cargoes traded between private firms that passed through its terminal Enterprise Senior Vice President Brent Secrest told Reuters in an interview 8220Of the hundreds of cargoes we8217ve loaded across Freeport and other Enterprise terminals we8217ve only had a handful of customers give us feedback regarding high levels of H2S8221 he said UNPLEASANT SURPRISE In March Shell complained to the Energy Department after finding high levels of H2S in a cargo the company bought as part of a 62 millionbarrel purchase from the US government in January according to emails provided by the department in response to the Reuters public records request The firm was 8220unpleasantly surprised8221 to find the high levels Shell oil trader Steve Sellers wrote to the department adding that the issue caused concern at Shell about the quality of SPR crude for future purchases Shell declined to comment on its complaint to the government The oil firm8217s emails said an initial test sample detected H2S gas at levels of less than five parts per million ppm But a later test by Shell after it shipped the crude by boat to another US location showed H2S levels of 600 parts per million according to Shell8217s emails to the department Exposure to vapors containing 500700 ppm of H2S could cause a person to collapse in five minutes and die within an hour according to the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration SAFETY CONCERNS In November Australian bank Macquarie Group bought the third shipment from the SPR and sold it to PetroChina according to the shipping documents reviewed by Reuters Slideshow 3 Images The cargo was loaded at Freeport onto a ship called the Stena Sunrise the documents show A testing company named Inspectorate tested a sample from the SPR cargo purchased by Macquarie according to the documents and found H2S levels of up to 9000 ppm Inspectorate declined to comment and referred questions to the Energy Department Macquarie declined to comment After the Inspectorate testing the terminal operator refused to allow workers to perform additional tests out of concern about violating safety regulations according to the shipping documents It is unclear if PetroChina or Macquarie decontaminated the cargo PetroChina shipped the oil to China where it arrived on Jan 18 according to Thomson Reuters shipping data RARE INCIDENTS Reuters was not able to determine how often high levels of H2S are detected across the industry but industry experts and chemical petroleum engineers said such incidents are rare Royal Dutch Shell PLC 22335 RDSaL London Stock Exchange 200 009 RDSaL EPDN Some crude grades can have H2S levels as high as 1000 ppm when produced said Ramanan Krishnamoorti chief energy officer and a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of Houston But producers remove most of that before transporting crude to customers Contamination could result from blending different crude grades for example when one grade of crude is stored in a tank that previously contained a different grade Krishnamoorti said 8220There has to be some concentrated source of it8221 Krishnamoorti said 8220It8217s just very odd8221 Reporting by Catherine Ngai Editing by David Gaffen Simon Webb and Brian Thevenot Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>In one of history&#8217;s lucky accidents, the juxtaposition of two extraordinary events has stripped the architecture of American global power bare for all to see. Last November, WikiLeaks splashed snippets from U.S. embassy cables, loaded with scurrilous comments about national leaders from Argentina to Zimbabwe, on the front pages of newspapers worldwide. Then just a few weeks later, the Middle East erupted in pro-democracy protests against the region&#8217;s autocratic leaders, many of whom were close U.S. allies whose foibles had been so conveniently detailed in those same diplomatic cables.</p> <p>Suddenly, it was possible to see the foundations of a U.S. world order that rested significantly on national leaders who serve Washington as loyal &#8220;subordinate elites&#8221; and who are, in reality, a motley collection of autocrats, aristocrats, and uniformed thugs. Visible as well was the larger logic of otherwise inexplicable U.S. foreign policy choices over the past half-century.</p> <p>Why would the CIA risk controversy in 1965, at the height of the Cold War, by overthrowing an accepted leader like Sukarno in Indonesia or encouraging the assassination of the Catholic autocrat Ngo Dinh Diem in Saigon in 1963? The answer &#8212; and thanks to WikiLeaks and the &#8220;Arab spring,&#8221; this is now so much clearer &#8212; is that both were Washington&#8217;s chosen subordinates until each became insubordinate and expendable.</p> <p>Why, half a century later, would Washington betray its stated democratic principles by backing Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak against millions of demonstrators and then, when he faltered, use its leverage to replace him, at least initially with his intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, a man best known for running Cairo&#8217;s torture chambers (and lending them out to Washington)? The answer again: because both were reliable subordinates who had long served Washington&#8217;s interests well in this key Arab state.</p> <p>Across the Greater Middle East from Tunisia and Egypt to Bahrain and Yemen, democratic protests are threatening to sweep away subordinate elites crucial to the wielding of American power. Of course, all modern empires have relied on dependable surrogates to translate their global power into local control &#8212; and for most of them, the moment when those elites began to stir, talk back, and set their own agendas was also the moment when it became clear that imperial collapse was in the cards.</p> <p>If the &#8220;velvet revolutions&#8221; that swept Eastern Europe in 1989 tolled the death knell for the Soviet empire, then the &#8220;jasmine revolutions&#8221; now spreading across the Middle East may well mark the beginning of the end for American global power.</p> <p>Putting the Military in Charge</p> <p>To understand the importance of local elites, look back to the Cold War&#8217;s early days when a desperate White House was searching for something, anything that could halt the seemingly unstoppable spread of what Washington saw as anti-American and pro-communist sentiment. In December 1954, the National Security Council (NSC) met in the White House to stake out a strategy that could tame the powerful nationalist forces of change then sweeping the globe.</p> <p>Across Asia and Africa, a half-dozen European empires that had guaranteed global order for more than a century were giving way to 100 new nations, many &#8212; as Washington saw it &#8212; susceptible to &#8220;communist subversion.&#8221; In Latin America, there were stirrings of leftist opposition to the region&#8217;s growing urban poverty and rural landlessness.</p> <p>After a review of the &#8220;threats&#8221; facing the U.S. in Latin America, influential Treasury Secretary George Humphrey informed his NSC colleagues that they should &#8220;stop talking so much about democracy&#8221; and instead &#8220;support dictatorships of the right if their policies are pro-American.&#8221; At that moment with a flash of strategic insight, Dwight Eisenhower interrupted to observe that Humphrey was, in effect, saying, &#8220;They&#8217;re OK if they&#8217;re our s.o.b.&#8217;s.&#8221;</p> <p>It was a moment to remember, for the President of the United States had just articulated with crystalline clarity the system of global dominion that Washington would implement for the next 50 years &#8212; setting aside democratic principles for a tough realpolitik policy of backing any reliable leader willing to support the U.S., thereby building a worldwide network of national (and often nationalist) leaders who would, in a pinch, put Washington&#8217;s needs above local ones.</p> <p>Throughout the Cold War, the U.S. would favor military autocrats in Latin America, aristocrats across the Middle East, and a mixture of democrats and dictators in Asia. In 1958, military coups in Thailand and Iraq suddenly put the spotlight on Third World militaries as forces to be reckoned with. It was then that the Eisenhower administration decided to bring foreign military leaders to the U.S. for further &#8220;training&#8221; to facilitate &#8220;the &#8216;management&#8217; of the forces of change released by the development&#8221; of these emerging nations. Henceforth, Washington would pour military aid into the cultivation of the armed forces of allies and potential allies worldwide, while &#8220;training missions&#8221; would be used to create crucial ties between the U.S. military and the officer corps in country after country &#8212; or where subordinate elites did not seem subordinate enough, help identify alternative leaders.</p> <p>When civilian presidents proved insubordinate, the Central Intelligence Agency went to work, promoting coups that would install reliable military successors &#8211;replacing Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq, who tried to nationalize his country&#8217;s oil, with General Fazlollah Zahedi (and then the young Shah) in 1953; President Sukarno with General Suharto in Indonesia during the next decade; and of course President Salvador Allende with General Augusto Pinochet in Chile in 1973, to name just three such moments.</p> <p>In the first years of the twenty-first century, Washington&#8217;s trust in the militaries of its client states would only grow. The U.S. was, for example, lavishing $1.3 billion in aid on Egypt&#8217;s military annually, but investing only $250 million a year in the country&#8217;s economic development. As a result, when demonstrations rocked the regime in Cairo last January, as the New York Times reported, &#8220;a 30-year investment paid off as American generals&#8230; and intelligence officers quietly called&#8230; friends they had trained with,&#8221; successfully urging the army&#8217;s support for a &#8220;peaceful transition&#8221; to, yes indeed, military rule.</p> <p>Elsewhere in the Middle East, Washington has, since the 1950s, followed the British imperial preference for Arab aristocrats by cultivating allies that included a shah (Iran), sultans (Abu Dhabi, Oman), emirs (Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Dubai), and kings (Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco). Across this vast, volatile region from Morocco to Iran, Washington courted these royalist regimes with military alliances, U.S. weapons systems, CIA support for local security, a safe American haven for their capital, and special favors for their elites, including access to educational institutions in the U.S. or Department of Defense overseas schools for their children.</p> <p>In 2005, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice summed up this record thusly: &#8220;For 60 years, the United States pursued stability at the expense of democracy&#8230; in the Middle East, and we achieved neither.&#8221;</p> <p>How It Used to Work</p> <p>America is by no means the first hegemon to build its global power on the gossamer threads of personal ties to local leaders. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Britain may have ruled the waves (as America would later rule the skies), but when it came to the ground, like empires past it needed local allies who could serve as intermediaries in controlling complex, volatile societies. Otherwise, how in 1900 could a small island nation of just 40 million with an army of only 99,000 men rule a global empire of some 400 million, nearly a quarter of all humanity?</p> <p>From 1850 to 1950, Britain controlled its formal colonies through an extraordinary array of local allies &#8212; from Fiji island chiefs and Malay sultans to Indian maharajas and African emirs. Simultaneously, through subordinate elites Britain reigned over an even larger &#8220;informal empire&#8221; that encompassed emperors (from Beijing to Istanbul), kings (from Bangkok to Cairo), and presidents (from Buenos Aires to Caracas). At its peak in 1880, Britain&#8217;s informal empire in Latin America, the Middle East, and China was larger, in population, than its formal colonial holdings in India and Africa. Its entire global empire, encompassing nearly half of humanity, rested on these slender ties of cooperation to loyal local elites.</p> <p>Following four centuries of relentless imperial expansion, however, Europe&#8217;s five major overseas empires were suddenly erased from the globe in a quarter-century of decolonization. Between 1947 and 1974, the Belgian, British, Dutch, French, and Portuguese empires faded fast from Asia and Africa, giving way to a hundred new nations, more than half of today&#8217;s sovereign states. In searching for an explanation for this sudden, sweeping change, most scholars agree with British imperial historian Ronald Robinson who famously argued that &#8220;when colonial rulers had run out of indigenous collaborators,&#8221; their power began to fade.</p> <p>During the Cold War that coincided with this era of rapid decolonization, the world&#8217;s two superpowers turned to the same methods regularly using their espionage agencies to manipulate the leaders of newly independent states. The Soviet Union&#8217;s KGB and its surrogates like the Stasi in East Germany and the Securitate in Romania enforced political conformity among the 14 Soviet satellite states in Eastern Europe and challenged the U.S. for loyal allies across the Third World. Simultaneously, the CIA monitored the loyalties of presidents, autocrats, and dictators on four continents, employing coups, bribery, and covert penetration to control and, when necessary, remove nettlesome leaders.</p> <p>In an era of nationalist feeling, however, the loyalty of local elites proved a complex matter indeed. Many of them were driven by conflicting loyalties and often deep feelings of nationalism, which meant that they had to be monitored closely. So critical were these subordinate elites, and so troublesome were their insubordinate iterations, that the CIA repeatedly launched risky covert operations to bring them to heel, sparking some of the great crises of the Cold War.</p> <p>Given the rise of its system of global control in a post-World War II age of independence, Washington had little choice but to work not simply with surrogates or puppets, but with allies who &#8212; admittedly from weaker positions &#8212; still sought to maximize what they saw as their nations&#8217; interests (as well as their own). Even at the height of American global power in the 1950s, when its dominance was relatively unquestioned, Washington was forced into hard bargaining with the likes of the Philippines&#8217; Raymond Magsaysay, South Korean autocrat Syngman Rhee, and South Vietnam&#8217;s Ngo Dinh Diem.</p> <p>In South Korea during the 1960s, for instance, General Park Chung Hee, then president, bartered troop deployments to Vietnam for billions of U.S. development dollars, which helped spark the country&#8217;s economic &#8220;miracle.&#8221; In the process, Washington paid up, but got what it most wanted: 50,000 of those tough Korean troops as guns-for-hire helpers in its unpopular war in Vietnam.</p> <p>Post-Cold War World</p> <p>After the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, ending the Cold War, Moscow quickly lost its satellite states from Estonia to Azerbaijan, as once-loyal Soviet surrogates were ousted or leapt off the sinking ship of empire. For Washington, the &#8220;victor&#8221; and soon to be the &#8220;sole superpower&#8221; on planet Earth, the same process would begin to happen, but at a far slower pace.</p> <p>Over the next two decades, globalization fostered a multipolar system of rising powers in Beijing, New Delhi, Moscow, Ankara, and Brasilia, even as a denationalized system of corporate power reduced the dependency of developing economies on any single state, however imperial. With its capacity for controlling elites receding, Washington has faced ideological competition from Islamic fundamentalism, European regulatory regimes, Chinese state capitalism, and a rising tide of economic nationalism in Latin America.</p> <p>As U.S. power and influence declined, Washington&#8217;s attempts to control its subordinate elites began to fail, often spectacularly &#8212; including its efforts to topple b&#234;te noire Hugo Chavez of Venezuela in a badly bungled 2002 coup, to detach ally Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia from Russia&#8217;s orbit in 2008, and to oust nemesis Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the 2009 Iranian elections. Where a CIA coup or covert cash once sufficed to defeat an antagonist, the Bush administration needed a massive invasion to topple just one troublesome dictator, Saddam Hussein. Even then, it found its plans for subsequent regime change in Syria and Iran blocked when these states instead aided a devastating insurgency against U.S. forces inside Iraq.</p> <p>Similarly, despite the infusions of billions of dollars in foreign aid, Washington has found it nearly impossible to control the Afghan president it installed in power, Hamid Karzai, who memorably summed up his fractious relationship with Washington to American envoys this way: &#8220;If you&#8217;re looking for a stooge and calling a stooge a partner, no. If you&#8217;re looking for a partner, yes.&#8221;</p> <p>Then, late in 2010, WikiLeaks began distributing those thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables that offer uncensored insights into Washington&#8217;s weakening control over the system of surrogate power that it had built up for 50 years. In reading these documents, Israeli journalist Aluf Benn of Haaretz could see &#8220;the fall of the American empire, the decline of a superpower that ruled the world by the dint of its military and economic supremacy.&#8221; No longer, he added, are &#8220;American ambassadors&#8230; received in world capitals as &#8216;high commissioners&#8217;&#8230; [instead they are] tired bureaucrats [who] spend their days listening wearily to their hosts&#8217; talking points, never reminding them who is the superpower and who the client state.&#8221;</p> <p>Indeed, what the WikiLeaks documents show is a State Department struggling to manage an unruly global system of increasingly insubordinate elites by any means possible &#8212; via intrigue to collect needed information and intelligence, friendly acts meant to coax compliance, threats to coerce cooperation, and billions of dollars in misspent aid to court influence. In early 2009, for instance, the State Department instructed its embassies worldwide to play imperial police by collecting comprehensive data on local leaders, including &#8220;email addresses, telephone and fax numbers, fingerprints, facial images, DNA, and iris scans.&#8221; Showing its need, like some colonial governor, for incriminating information on the locals, the State Department also pressed its Bahrain embassy for sordid details, damaging in an Islamic society, about the kingdom&#8217;s crown princes, asking: &#8220;Is there any derogatory information on either prince? Does either prince drink alcohol? Does either one use drugs?&#8221;</p> <p>With the hauteur of latter-day imperial envoys, U.S. diplomats seemed to empower themselves for dominance by dismissing &#8220;the Turks neo-Ottoman posturing around the Middle East and Balkans,&#8221; or by knowing the weaknesses of their subordinate elites, notably Colonel Muammar Gaddafi&#8217;s &#8220;voluptuous blonde&#8221; nurse, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari&#8217;s morbid fear of military coups, or Afghan Vice President Ahmad Zia Massoud&#8217;s $52 million in stolen funds.</p> <p>As its influence declines, however, Washington is finding many of its chosen local allies either increasingly insubordinate or irrelevant, particularly in the strategic Middle East. In mid-2009, for instance, the U.S. ambassador to Tunisia reported that &#8220;President Ben Ali&#8230; and his regime have lost touch with the Tunisian people,&#8221; relying &#8220;on the police for control,&#8221; while &#8220;corruption in the inner circle is growing&#8221; and &#8220;the risks to the regime&#8217;s long-term stability are increasing.&#8221; Even so, the U.S. envoy could only recommend that Washington &#8220;dial back the public criticism&#8221; and instead rely only on &#8220;frequent high-level private candor&#8221; &#8212; a policy that failed to produce any reforms before demonstrations toppled the regime just 18 months later.</p> <p>Similarly, in late 2008 the American Embassy in Cairo feared that &#8220;Egyptian democracy and human rights efforts&#8230; are being suffocated.&#8221; However, as the embassy admitted, &#8220;we would not like to contemplate complications for U.S. regional interests should the U.S.-Egyptian bond be seriously weakened.&#8221; When Mubarak visited Washington a few months later, the Embassy urged the White House &#8220;to restore the sense of warmth that has traditionally characterized the U.S.-Egyptian partnership.&#8221; And so in June 2009, just 18 months before the Egyptian president&#8217;s downfall, President Obama hailed this useful dictator as &#8220;a stalwart ally&#8230; a force for stability and good in the region.&#8221;</p> <p>As the crisis in Cairo&#8217;s Tahrir Square unfolded, respected opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei complained bitterly that Washington was pushing &#8220;the whole Arab world into radicalization with this inept policy of supporting repression.&#8221; After 40 years of U.S. dominion, the Middle East was, he said, &#8220;a collection of failed states that add nothing to humanity or science&#8221; because &#8220;people were taught not to think or to act, and were consistently given an inferior education.&#8221;</p> <p>Absent a global war capable of simply sweeping away an empire, the decline of a great power is often a fitful, painful, drawn-out affair. In addition to the two American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan winding down to something not so far short of defeat, the nation&#8217;s capital is now writhing in fiscal crisis, the coin of the realm is losing its creditworthiness, and longtime allies are forging economic and even military ties to rival China. To all of this, we must now add the possible loss of loyal surrogates across the Middle East.</p> <p>For more than 50 years, Washington has been served well by a system of global power based on subordinate elites. That system once facilitated the extension of American influence worldwide with a surprising efficiency and (relatively speaking) an economy of force. Now, however, those loyal allies increasingly look like an empire of failed or insubordinate states. Make no mistake: the degradation of, or ending of, half a century of such ties is likely to leave Washington on the rocks.</p> <p>Alfred W. McCoy is professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a TomDispatch regular, and author most recently of the award-winning book, <a href="" type="internal">Policing America&#8217;s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State</a>. He has also convened the &#8220;Empires in Transition&#8221; project, a global working group of 140 historians from universities on four continents. The results of their first meetings were published as <a href="" type="internal">Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making of the Modern American State</a>, and the findings from their latest conference, at Barcelona last June, will appear next year as Endless Empires: Spain&#8217;s Retreat, Europe&#8217;s Eclipse, and America&#8217;s Decline.</p> <p>Brett Reilly is a graduate student in History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he is studying U.S. foreign policy in Asia.</p> <p>This article was originally published by <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/" type="external">TomDispatch</a>.</p> <p>Copyright 2011 ALFRED W. McCOY and BRETT REILLY.</p> <p /> <p /> <p /> <p /> <p />

Washington on the Rocks

https://counterpunch.org/2011/04/26/washington-on-the-rocks/

2011-04-26

4left

In one of history8217s lucky accidents the juxtaposition of two extraordinary events has stripped the architecture of American global power bare for all to see Last November WikiLeaks splashed snippets from US embassy cables loaded with scurrilous comments about national leaders from Argentina to Zimbabwe on the front pages of newspapers worldwide Then just a few weeks later the Middle East erupted in prodemocracy protests against the region8217s autocratic leaders many of whom were close US allies whose foibles had been so conveniently detailed in those same diplomatic cables Suddenly it was possible to see the foundations of a US world order that rested significantly on national leaders who serve Washington as loyal 8220subordinate elites8221 and who are in reality a motley collection of autocrats aristocrats and uniformed thugs Visible as well was the larger logic of otherwise inexplicable US foreign policy choices over the past halfcentury Why would the CIA risk controversy in 1965 at the height of the Cold War by overthrowing an accepted leader like Sukarno in Indonesia or encouraging the assassination of the Catholic autocrat Ngo Dinh Diem in Saigon in 1963 The answer 8212 and thanks to WikiLeaks and the 8220Arab spring8221 this is now so much clearer 8212 is that both were Washington8217s chosen subordinates until each became insubordinate and expendable Why half a century later would Washington betray its stated democratic principles by backing Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak against millions of demonstrators and then when he faltered use its leverage to replace him at least initially with his intelligence chief Omar Suleiman a man best known for running Cairo8217s torture chambers and lending them out to Washington The answer again because both were reliable subordinates who had long served Washington8217s interests well in this key Arab state Across the Greater Middle East from Tunisia and Egypt to Bahrain and Yemen democratic protests are threatening to sweep away subordinate elites crucial to the wielding of American power Of course all modern empires have relied on dependable surrogates to translate their global power into local control 8212 and for most of them the moment when those elites began to stir talk back and set their own agendas was also the moment when it became clear that imperial collapse was in the cards If the 8220velvet revolutions8221 that swept Eastern Europe in 1989 tolled the death knell for the Soviet empire then the 8220jasmine revolutions8221 now spreading across the Middle East may well mark the beginning of the end for American global power Putting the Military in Charge To understand the importance of local elites look back to the Cold War8217s early days when a desperate White House was searching for something anything that could halt the seemingly unstoppable spread of what Washington saw as antiAmerican and procommunist sentiment In December 1954 the National Security Council NSC met in the White House to stake out a strategy that could tame the powerful nationalist forces of change then sweeping the globe Across Asia and Africa a halfdozen European empires that had guaranteed global order for more than a century were giving way to 100 new nations many 8212 as Washington saw it 8212 susceptible to 8220communist subversion8221 In Latin America there were stirrings of leftist opposition to the region8217s growing urban poverty and rural landlessness After a review of the 8220threats8221 facing the US in Latin America influential Treasury Secretary George Humphrey informed his NSC colleagues that they should 8220stop talking so much about democracy8221 and instead 8220support dictatorships of the right if their policies are proAmerican8221 At that moment with a flash of strategic insight Dwight Eisenhower interrupted to observe that Humphrey was in effect saying 8220They8217re OK if they8217re our sob8217s8221 It was a moment to remember for the President of the United States had just articulated with crystalline clarity the system of global dominion that Washington would implement for the next 50 years 8212 setting aside democratic principles for a tough realpolitik policy of backing any reliable leader willing to support the US thereby building a worldwide network of national and often nationalist leaders who would in a pinch put Washington8217s needs above local ones Throughout the Cold War the US would favor military autocrats in Latin America aristocrats across the Middle East and a mixture of democrats and dictators in Asia In 1958 military coups in Thailand and Iraq suddenly put the spotlight on Third World militaries as forces to be reckoned with It was then that the Eisenhower administration decided to bring foreign military leaders to the US for further 8220training8221 to facilitate 8220the 8216management8217 of the forces of change released by the development8221 of these emerging nations Henceforth Washington would pour military aid into the cultivation of the armed forces of allies and potential allies worldwide while 8220training missions8221 would be used to create crucial ties between the US military and the officer corps in country after country 8212 or where subordinate elites did not seem subordinate enough help identify alternative leaders When civilian presidents proved insubordinate the Central Intelligence Agency went to work promoting coups that would install reliable military successors 8211replacing Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq who tried to nationalize his country8217s oil with General Fazlollah Zahedi and then the young Shah in 1953 President Sukarno with General Suharto in Indonesia during the next decade and of course President Salvador Allende with General Augusto Pinochet in Chile in 1973 to name just three such moments In the first years of the twentyfirst century Washington8217s trust in the militaries of its client states would only grow The US was for example lavishing 13 billion in aid on Egypt8217s military annually but investing only 250 million a year in the country8217s economic development As a result when demonstrations rocked the regime in Cairo last January as the New York Times reported 8220a 30year investment paid off as American generals8230 and intelligence officers quietly called8230 friends they had trained with8221 successfully urging the army8217s support for a 8220peaceful transition8221 to yes indeed military rule Elsewhere in the Middle East Washington has since the 1950s followed the British imperial preference for Arab aristocrats by cultivating allies that included a shah Iran sultans Abu Dhabi Oman emirs Bahrain Kuwait Qatar Dubai and kings Saudi Arabia Jordan Morocco Across this vast volatile region from Morocco to Iran Washington courted these royalist regimes with military alliances US weapons systems CIA support for local security a safe American haven for their capital and special favors for their elites including access to educational institutions in the US or Department of Defense overseas schools for their children In 2005 Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice summed up this record thusly 8220For 60 years the United States pursued stability at the expense of democracy8230 in the Middle East and we achieved neither8221 How It Used to Work America is by no means the first hegemon to build its global power on the gossamer threads of personal ties to local leaders In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Britain may have ruled the waves as America would later rule the skies but when it came to the ground like empires past it needed local allies who could serve as intermediaries in controlling complex volatile societies Otherwise how in 1900 could a small island nation of just 40 million with an army of only 99000 men rule a global empire of some 400 million nearly a quarter of all humanity From 1850 to 1950 Britain controlled its formal colonies through an extraordinary array of local allies 8212 from Fiji island chiefs and Malay sultans to Indian maharajas and African emirs Simultaneously through subordinate elites Britain reigned over an even larger 8220informal empire8221 that encompassed emperors from Beijing to Istanbul kings from Bangkok to Cairo and presidents from Buenos Aires to Caracas At its peak in 1880 Britain8217s informal empire in Latin America the Middle East and China was larger in population than its formal colonial holdings in India and Africa Its entire global empire encompassing nearly half of humanity rested on these slender ties of cooperation to loyal local elites Following four centuries of relentless imperial expansion however Europe8217s five major overseas empires were suddenly erased from the globe in a quartercentury of decolonization Between 1947 and 1974 the Belgian British Dutch French and Portuguese empires faded fast from Asia and Africa giving way to a hundred new nations more than half of today8217s sovereign states In searching for an explanation for this sudden sweeping change most scholars agree with British imperial historian Ronald Robinson who famously argued that 8220when colonial rulers had run out of indigenous collaborators8221 their power began to fade During the Cold War that coincided with this era of rapid decolonization the world8217s two superpowers turned to the same methods regularly using their espionage agencies to manipulate the leaders of newly independent states The Soviet Union8217s KGB and its surrogates like the Stasi in East Germany and the Securitate in Romania enforced political conformity among the 14 Soviet satellite states in Eastern Europe and challenged the US for loyal allies across the Third World Simultaneously the CIA monitored the loyalties of presidents autocrats and dictators on four continents employing coups bribery and covert penetration to control and when necessary remove nettlesome leaders In an era of nationalist feeling however the loyalty of local elites proved a complex matter indeed Many of them were driven by conflicting loyalties and often deep feelings of nationalism which meant that they had to be monitored closely So critical were these subordinate elites and so troublesome were their insubordinate iterations that the CIA repeatedly launched risky covert operations to bring them to heel sparking some of the great crises of the Cold War Given the rise of its system of global control in a postWorld War II age of independence Washington had little choice but to work not simply with surrogates or puppets but with allies who 8212 admittedly from weaker positions 8212 still sought to maximize what they saw as their nations8217 interests as well as their own Even at the height of American global power in the 1950s when its dominance was relatively unquestioned Washington was forced into hard bargaining with the likes of the Philippines8217 Raymond Magsaysay South Korean autocrat Syngman Rhee and South Vietnam8217s Ngo Dinh Diem In South Korea during the 1960s for instance General Park Chung Hee then president bartered troop deployments to Vietnam for billions of US development dollars which helped spark the country8217s economic 8220miracle8221 In the process Washington paid up but got what it most wanted 50000 of those tough Korean troops as gunsforhire helpers in its unpopular war in Vietnam PostCold War World After the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 ending the Cold War Moscow quickly lost its satellite states from Estonia to Azerbaijan as onceloyal Soviet surrogates were ousted or leapt off the sinking ship of empire For Washington the 8220victor8221 and soon to be the 8220sole superpower8221 on planet Earth the same process would begin to happen but at a far slower pace Over the next two decades globalization fostered a multipolar system of rising powers in Beijing New Delhi Moscow Ankara and Brasilia even as a denationalized system of corporate power reduced the dependency of developing economies on any single state however imperial With its capacity for controlling elites receding Washington has faced ideological competition from Islamic fundamentalism European regulatory regimes Chinese state capitalism and a rising tide of economic nationalism in Latin America As US power and influence declined Washington8217s attempts to control its subordinate elites began to fail often spectacularly 8212 including its efforts to topple b234te noire Hugo Chavez of Venezuela in a badly bungled 2002 coup to detach ally Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia from Russia8217s orbit in 2008 and to oust nemesis Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the 2009 Iranian elections Where a CIA coup or covert cash once sufficed to defeat an antagonist the Bush administration needed a massive invasion to topple just one troublesome dictator Saddam Hussein Even then it found its plans for subsequent regime change in Syria and Iran blocked when these states instead aided a devastating insurgency against US forces inside Iraq Similarly despite the infusions of billions of dollars in foreign aid Washington has found it nearly impossible to control the Afghan president it installed in power Hamid Karzai who memorably summed up his fractious relationship with Washington to American envoys this way 8220If you8217re looking for a stooge and calling a stooge a partner no If you8217re looking for a partner yes8221 Then late in 2010 WikiLeaks began distributing those thousands of US diplomatic cables that offer uncensored insights into Washington8217s weakening control over the system of surrogate power that it had built up for 50 years In reading these documents Israeli journalist Aluf Benn of Haaretz could see 8220the fall of the American empire the decline of a superpower that ruled the world by the dint of its military and economic supremacy8221 No longer he added are 8220American ambassadors8230 received in world capitals as 8216high commissioners82178230 instead they are tired bureaucrats who spend their days listening wearily to their hosts8217 talking points never reminding them who is the superpower and who the client state8221 Indeed what the WikiLeaks documents show is a State Department struggling to manage an unruly global system of increasingly insubordinate elites by any means possible 8212 via intrigue to collect needed information and intelligence friendly acts meant to coax compliance threats to coerce cooperation and billions of dollars in misspent aid to court influence In early 2009 for instance the State Department instructed its embassies worldwide to play imperial police by collecting comprehensive data on local leaders including 8220email addresses telephone and fax numbers fingerprints facial images DNA and iris scans8221 Showing its need like some colonial governor for incriminating information on the locals the State Department also pressed its Bahrain embassy for sordid details damaging in an Islamic society about the kingdom8217s crown princes asking 8220Is there any derogatory information on either prince Does either prince drink alcohol Does either one use drugs8221 With the hauteur of latterday imperial envoys US diplomats seemed to empower themselves for dominance by dismissing 8220the Turks neoOttoman posturing around the Middle East and Balkans8221 or by knowing the weaknesses of their subordinate elites notably Colonel Muammar Gaddafi8217s 8220voluptuous blonde8221 nurse Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari8217s morbid fear of military coups or Afghan Vice President Ahmad Zia Massoud8217s 52 million in stolen funds As its influence declines however Washington is finding many of its chosen local allies either increasingly insubordinate or irrelevant particularly in the strategic Middle East In mid2009 for instance the US ambassador to Tunisia reported that 8220President Ben Ali8230 and his regime have lost touch with the Tunisian people8221 relying 8220on the police for control8221 while 8220corruption in the inner circle is growing8221 and 8220the risks to the regime8217s longterm stability are increasing8221 Even so the US envoy could only recommend that Washington 8220dial back the public criticism8221 and instead rely only on 8220frequent highlevel private candor8221 8212 a policy that failed to produce any reforms before demonstrations toppled the regime just 18 months later Similarly in late 2008 the American Embassy in Cairo feared that 8220Egyptian democracy and human rights efforts8230 are being suffocated8221 However as the embassy admitted 8220we would not like to contemplate complications for US regional interests should the USEgyptian bond be seriously weakened8221 When Mubarak visited Washington a few months later the Embassy urged the White House 8220to restore the sense of warmth that has traditionally characterized the USEgyptian partnership8221 And so in June 2009 just 18 months before the Egyptian president8217s downfall President Obama hailed this useful dictator as 8220a stalwart ally8230 a force for stability and good in the region8221 As the crisis in Cairo8217s Tahrir Square unfolded respected opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei complained bitterly that Washington was pushing 8220the whole Arab world into radicalization with this inept policy of supporting repression8221 After 40 years of US dominion the Middle East was he said 8220a collection of failed states that add nothing to humanity or science8221 because 8220people were taught not to think or to act and were consistently given an inferior education8221 Absent a global war capable of simply sweeping away an empire the decline of a great power is often a fitful painful drawnout affair In addition to the two American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan winding down to something not so far short of defeat the nation8217s capital is now writhing in fiscal crisis the coin of the realm is losing its creditworthiness and longtime allies are forging economic and even military ties to rival China To all of this we must now add the possible loss of loyal surrogates across the Middle East For more than 50 years Washington has been served well by a system of global power based on subordinate elites That system once facilitated the extension of American influence worldwide with a surprising efficiency and relatively speaking an economy of force Now however those loyal allies increasingly look like an empire of failed or insubordinate states Make no mistake the degradation of or ending of half a century of such ties is likely to leave Washington on the rocks Alfred W McCoy is professor of history at the University of WisconsinMadison a TomDispatch regular and author most recently of the awardwinning book Policing America8217s Empire The United States the Philippines and the Rise of the Surveillance State He has also convened the 8220Empires in Transition8221 project a global working group of 140 historians from universities on four continents The results of their first meetings were published as Colonial Crucible Empire in the Making of the Modern American State and the findings from their latest conference at Barcelona last June will appear next year as Endless Empires Spain8217s Retreat Europe8217s Eclipse and America8217s Decline Brett Reilly is a graduate student in History at the University of WisconsinMadison where he is studying US foreign policy in Asia This article was originally published by TomDispatch Copyright 2011 ALFRED W McCOY and BRETT REILLY

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<p>CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. soybean growers are losing market share in the all-important China market because the race to grow higher-yielding crops has robbed their most prized nutrient: protein.</p> FILE PHOTO: Soybeans being sorted according to their weight and density on a gravity sorter machine at Peterson Farms Seed facility in Fargo, North Dakota, U.S., December 6, 2017. REUTERS/Dan Koeck/File Photo <p>Declining protein levels make soybeans less valuable to the $400 billion industry that produces feed for cattle, pigs, chickens and fish. And the problem is a key factor driving soybean buyers from the U.S. to Brazil, where warmer weather helps offset the impact of higher crop yields on protein levels.</p> <p>A decade ago, the United States supplied 38 percent of soybeans to China, the world&#8217;s top importer, compared to 34 percent from Brazil. Now, Brazil supplies 57 percent of Chinese imports compared to 31 from the United States, according to China&#8217;s General Administration of Customs.</p> <p>Soybeans are by far the most valuable U.S. agricultural export, with $22.8 billion in shipments in 2016. Declining protein levels and market share pose another vexing problem for soy farmers already reeling from a global grains glut and years of depressed prices.</p> <p>The U.S. soybean industry also faces rising competition from a growing number of synthetic and organic alternative feeds that provide more protein for less money.</p> <p>These are troubling trends for the $41 billion U.S. soybean sector, but the industry&#8217;s response has yet to take on much urgency. That&#8217;s because the erosion of protein levels has come over many years, and many industry players still have short-term economic incentives to prioritize higher yields over higher protein.</p> <p>(For graphic on soybean yield, protein content and market share, see: <a href="http://tmsnrt.rs/2CXgKQE" type="external">tmsnrt.rs/2CXgKQE</a>)</p> <p>Protein levels have fallen as biotechnology and other breeding advances have pushed yield per acre to record highs, which dilutes protein content. But U.S. farmers can still make more money producing higher volumes of lower-protein crops because they only get an additional 3 to 5 cents a bushel for higher-protein beans.</p> <p>Over the long term, however, falling protein levels could have dire consequences for the U.S. industry as a whole - especially in China, which buys two-thirds of all soybeans traded in the world market to feed its vast livestock operations.</p> <p>&#8220;China needs soybeans, and we&#8217;re at risk of becoming a residual supplier if we don&#8217;t work on protein improvements,&#8221; said North Dakota farmer Jared Hagert, a director and past chairman of the United Soybean Board (USB), an industry association.</p> HIGHER YIELDS, LOWER PROTEIN <p>The USB and other industry advocates are starting to take the protein problem seriously. The industry group will spend $5.6 million in fiscal year 2018 on research and other efforts to boost protein, up from $3.7 million last year.</p> <p>They face a tough task. Like many farmers, the agribusiness giants that develop seed technology, such as Monsanto Co and DowDuPont Inc, have little incentive to focus on raising protein levels.</p> <p>Seed developers have had great success boosting yields through traditional breeding methods and genetic engineering to make crops use less water, tolerate weed killers and grow better in colder or drier climates. But they have yet to crack the genetic code that would raise protein content without hurting yield, seed breeders said.</p> <p>At DowDuPont, scientists have identified some promising leads in boosting protein without hurting crop yields, said Steve Schnebly, senior research manager with the agriculture division of DowDuPont. But any commercially viable solution could be two decades away, he said, and isn&#8217;t a company priority.</p> <p>&#8220;Our major objective to our farmer customers is maximum yield,&#8221; Schnebly said.</p> <p>Monsanto, the world&#8217;s largest seed producer, currently has no genetic research projects focusing on elevating protein, spokeswoman Christi Dixon said in a written statement.</p> <p>&#8220;Market potential and demand doesn&#8217;t warrant the R&amp;amp;D investment,&#8221; she said.</p> <p>The protein decline coincides with a rise of cheaper and more abundant alternative feeds available to livestock and poultry producers. They include distillers grains, a byproduct of the ethanol production process, and synthetic amino acids that are mixed with corn to mimic soymeal.</p> <p>Jeff Knott, a swine nutrition consultant and owner of Minnesota-based Ideal Animal Nutrition, creates recipes with such alternatives for hog feed used by producers in several Midwest states.</p> <p>&#8220;Compared to 20 years ago, we&#8217;re probably feeding 70 percent less soybean meal than we used to,&#8221; he said. &#8220;And it&#8217;s all economically driven.&#8221;</p> LOWER PROTEIN, LOWER EXPORTS <p>Brazilian soybean producers use the same genetically modified seeds as their U.S. counterparts, and have also seen a reduction in protein content.</p> <p>But Brazilian growers retain an crucial edge in protein thanks to warmer weather and longer days. The nation&#8217;s soybeans contain 37 percent protein on average, according to data from Embrapa, the government&#8217;s agriculture research agency.</p> <p>That compares to 34.1 percent for U.S. crops in 2017 - a record low, according to the U.S. Soybean Export Council.</p> <p>The protein shortfall in this season&#8217;s crop has prompted U.S. processors such as Bunge Ltd to cut the amount of protein they can guarantee in soymeal they sell.</p> <p>Brazil&#8217;s three-percentage-point protein advantage is plenty enough to sway many buyers, especially when combined with the nation&#8217;s recent efforts to expand production and reduce shipping delays. Since overtaking the United States as the world&#8217;s top soybean exporter in 2013, Brazil has boosted production by about 40 percent.</p> <p>Expanded port capacity in northern Brazil and lower freight costs have widened the country&#8217;s advantage in China, said a Brazilian trader with a large exporting company.</p> <p>&#8220;Brazil&#8217;s soybeans on average have less impurities and higher protein content,&#8221; said the trader, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. &#8220;Some destinations will pay a premium for that.&#8221;</p> <p>Protein is paramount for Chinese importers, two managers at soy crushing plants and one soy meal buyer at a pig producer told Reuters in interviews.</p> <p>&#8220;Feed producers mainly consider the cost of the soy meal - the price, and the amount of protein it contains,&#8221; said a swine feed buyer who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak. &#8220;With more supplies from Brazil ... we don&#8217;t necessarily need to buy beans from the U.S.&#8221;</p> SCRAMBLING FOR SOLUTIONS <p>The United Soybean Board has launched a pilot project at a small number of processors and grain elevators - facilities that store and load grain for shipping - to record and analyze the protein content of soybeans delivered by local farmers.</p> <p>The effort aims to provide highly localized data in the hope that farmers will select seed varieties that produce higher-protein crops and that soybean buyers will pay them a premium.</p> <p>Other USB efforts include financing genetics research to boost protein, including studies by researchers at the University of Illinois and by scientists at DuPont Pioneer.</p> <p>&#8220;We&#8217;ve got to be cognizant as to what kind of product we are providing the end user,&#8221; said Hagert, the USB director.</p> <p>Another study - conducted by the University of Wisconsin and paid for by the Illinois Soybean Association and the U.S. Soybean Export Council - suggests that farmers can better compete with synthetic alternatives by planting beans with a specific amino acid balance.</p> <p>Such soybeans can save hog feeders up to $3 a head and save chicken producers 7 cents a bird, said the study&#8217;s lead author, John Osthus.</p> <p>&#8220;Right now, there are synthetic amino acid companies that are undermining U.S. market share,&#8221; Osthus said. &#8220;If we don&#8217;t do something about this, we&#8217;re missing a huge market opportunity.&#8221;</p> <p>Additional reporting by Ana Mano in Sao Paulo and Dominique Patton and Hallie Gu in Beijing; Editing by Simon Webb and Brian Thevenot</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>OSLO (Reuters) - Norway&#8217;s Statoil plans to change its name to Equinor, reflecting its commitment to become a broad energy company rather than one focused only on oil, it said on Thursday.</p> FILE PHOTO: Norwegian oil company Statoil's headquarters in Fornebu, Norway, June 1, 2017. REUTERS/Ints Kalnins/File Photo <p>In a video posted on social media, Statoil presented the switch as a way to show its determination to develop investments in renewable energy.</p> <p>Reactions by various social media users were mixed.</p> <p>&#8220;Equinor sounds like a princess on a horse in Game of Thrones,&#8221; one Twitter user said. &#8220;Equi&#8221; is the genitive singular in Latin for &#8220;horse&#8221;.</p> <p>Others liked the change. &#8220;Congratulations on an exciting name change. The green shift is happening faster and faster. Norway must be a part of it. Good luck with the process,&#8221; tweeted Norwegian Culture Minister Trine Skei Grande.</p> <p>Equinor is a combination of &#8220;equi&#8221;, the starting point for words like equal, equality and equilibrium, and &#8220;nor&#8221; for Norway, the company said.</p> <p>&#8220;Reflecting on the global energy transition and how we are developing as a broad energy company, it has become natural to change our name,&#8221; Statoil CEO Eldar Saetre said in a statement.</p> FILE PHOTO: Energy company Statoil's gas processing and CO2 removal platform near Stavanger, Norway, February 11, 2016. REUTERS/Nerijus Adomaitis/File Photo <p>Rebranding would cost up to 250 million Norwegian crowns ($32.5 million), he later told a news conference.</p> <p>Statoil, which is headquartered in the port city and oil industry hub of Stavanger, has come to symbolize Norway&#8217;s rise in the past half-century to one of the world&#8217;s richest nations.</p> <p>Local newspaper Stavanger Aftenblad ran a straw poll asking readers whether they liked the name change, with 4,730 people saying &#8220;no&#8221; and 809 saying &#8220;yes&#8221;.</p> FILE PHOTO: Norwegian oil company's Statoil logo is seen at their headquarters in Fornebu, Norway, June 1, 2017. REUTERS/Ints Kalnins/File Photo <p>The proposal will be put to the annual general meeting on May 15, but Statoil said it already had the backing of the Norwegian state, which has a 67 percent stake in the company.</p> <p>&#8220;The decision reflects that Statoil is developing itself into a broad energy company in line with global developments in the energy sector,&#8221; Oil and Energy Minister Terje Soeviknes told Reuters.</p> <p>Statoil said it expects to invest 15-20 percent of capital spending by 2030 in what it calls new energy solutions, up from about 5 percent last year.</p> <p>Saetre declined to say how much Statoil was planning to spend on renewables in 2018, but the company has said previously that spending for renewable and low-carbon solutions are expected to total $500 million to $750 million from 2017 to 2020 and $750 million to $1.5 billion for the 2020-2025 period.</p> <p>Statoil developed the world&#8217;s first floating offshore wind park off Scotland and is looking to install others off countries including the United States and Japan.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Terje Solsvik in Oslo and Stine Jacobsen in Copenhagen Writing by Gwladys Fouche; Editing by Edmund Blair and David Goodman</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>FRANKFURT (Reuters) - German potash miner K+S ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=SDFGn.DE" type="external">SDFGn.DE</a>) vowed to increase earnings significantly this year, as it ramps up production at its new Bethune mine in Canada and after overcoming temporary restrictions on waste water at its main domestic mine.</p> <p>Revenues would be tangibly higher and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) would see significant gains, it said on Thursday.</p> <p>Fourth-quarter operating profit adjusted for currency hedging effects (EBIT I) came in at 92.7 million euros ($14 million), up from 27.5 million a year earlier but slightly below the 95 million euros expected on average by analysts in a Reuters poll.</p> <p>Global potash prices are slowly perking up as plant closures ease oversupply in the industry. K+S said the average price of its potash products edged up by 1.6 percent to 250 euros per ton during the quarter.</p> <p>A 180-million-euro waste water treatment plant in Germany will help the mineral miner to cope with what remains of local environmental restrictions after painful temporary limits were lifted.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=SDFGn.DE" type="external">K&amp;amp;S AG</a> 23.77 SDFGn.DE Xetra +0.54 (+2.32%) SDFGn.DE <p>It has also settled legal disputes with local communities and environmentalists, who were fighting its practice of injecting salty waste water - a byproduct of processing potassium ore into fertilizer products - into porous layers of rock.</p> <p>Reporting by Ludwig Burger; Editing by Maria Sheahan</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>KUALA LUMPUR (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Natural disasters such as drought and floods cost developing countries $96 billion in damage to crops and livestock between 2005 and 2015, highlighting the need to step up protection for poor farmers, the United Nations said.</p> <p>Half the total damage - $48 billion - occurred in Asia, according to a report from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) launched at a Hanoi conference on Thursday.</p> <p>&#8220;Asia is always, in terms of natural hazards, the most-hit area simply because so many tropical storms and heavy monsoon rains hit that region,&#8221; Stephan Baas, a risk advisor at FAO and one of the study&#8217;s authors, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.</p> <p>Besides precipitation, Asian agriculture was also affected by earthquakes, tsunamis and extreme temperatures, the report said.</p> <p>Drought alone caused $29 billion of the damage to the agriculture sector across all developing countries, the study showed, making it a major threat to food security and incomes.</p> <p>In Africa, agricultural losses from natural disasters amounted to $26 billion over the decade, and in Latin America and the Caribbean, $22 billion. Drought was the costliest disaster for crops and livestock in those two regions.</p> <p>Crop pests and animal diseases caused about $6 billion of the losses to African farmers.</p> <p>Climate change is likely to worsen the threats and challenges from natural disasters, FAO Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva said in a statement.</p> <p>Efforts to reduce the risks of disasters and manage them better must be part of modern agriculture if sustainable development is to be achieved, officials added.</p> <p>&#8220;The main purpose of the report is to give evidence to policymakers and planners so they know what can be avoided,&#8221; said Baas.</p> <p>Measures to curb risks include using seeds that are resilient to drought or floods, early warning systems for extreme weather, and access to insurance and finance for farmers, he added.</p> <p>The report, which excludes industrialized countries, will be updated every two years, and used as a tool to monitor global commitments to tackle poverty and climate change, noted Baas.</p> <p>Globally, about 2.5 billion people rely on agriculture for their livelihoods, the FAO report said.</p> <p>Reporting by Michael Taylor, Editing by Megan Rowling. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights, climate change and resilience. Visit <a href="http://news.trust.org" type="external">news.trust.org</a></p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>SINGAPORE/SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea&#8217;s move to shut coal-fired generators to control air pollution at the same time as nuclear reactors are going into scheduled maintenance is resulting in surging fuel oil imports, as utilities burn the dirty feedstock to meet power demand.</p> FILE PHOTO - A gas pump is seen hanging from the ceiling at a petrol station in Seoul June 27, 2011. REUTERS/Jo Yong-Hak/File Photo <p>South Korea&#8217;s trade ministry said in February it would suspend five coal-fired power plants, with a combined capacity of 2.32 gigawatts (GW), from March to June, part of a broad campaign to reduce pollution.</p> <p>That plan may backfire, at least in the short-term. A cold winter has raised power and heating demand, forcing utilities to burn more fuel oil in order to meet demand.</p> <p>&#8220;Both from a pollution reduction and cost reduction perspective, it does not make sense to burn fuel oil,&#8221; said Bikal Pokharel, principal analyst at Wood Mackenzie.</p> <p>While carbon emissions from fuel oil are just around 10 percent less than coal, the operating cost of fuel oil is almost three times than that of coal, Pokharel said, while liquefied natural gas (LNG)-fired plants emit half the carbon compared to coal but cost almost twice as much to operate at current fuel prices.</p> <p>A by-product of the crude oil refining process, fuel oil&#8217;s biggest use ahead of power generation is as a shipping fuel.</p> <p>&#8220;In the near-term, fuel oil imports will increase to make up for the shortfall in coal-fired generation capacity,&#8221; said Pat Markey, managing director of consultancy Sierra Vista Resources.</p> <p>Fuel oil imports by power producers into Asia&#8217;s fourth-largest economy have jumped to 200,000 tonnes in March so far, up from 92,000 tonnes in February, tender data compiled by Reuters showed.</p> <p>(GRAPHIC: South Korea fuel oil imports - <a href="http://reut.rs/2Fz7PKS" type="external">reut.rs/2Fz7PKS</a>)</p> <p>First-quarter fuel oil imports are expected at 417,000 tonnes, up 28 percent from a year ago and already more than 60 percent of the 660,000 tonnes taken for all of last year.</p> <p>Burning fuel oil for power results in lower carbon dioxide emissions than coal-fired plants, but releases more toxic particles into the air.</p> <p>&#8220;Pollutants generated during combustion of fuel oils are nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, greenhouse gases, volatile compounds (like unburned hydrocarbons) and toxic trace metals,&#8221; according to the U.S. Commission for Environmental Cooperation.</p> <p>An official from a South Korean state-owned utility, said the increased fuel oil demand was partly a result of the government&#8217;s decision to halt coal-fired plants temporarily due to pollution and reduced nuclear power because of planned maintenance.</p> <p>The official, who declined to be identified as he is not authorized to speak to the media, said some 110,000 tonnes of fuel oil would&amp;#160;be needed in April.</p> <p>Only two of South Korea&#8217;s major utilities, Korea East-West Power Co Ltd (EWP) and Korea Western Power Co (WP), issue tenders for fuel oil for power generation, mostly during peak summer and winter demand, data on Thomson Reuters Eikon shows.</p> <p>The two utilities declined to comment.</p> <p>Coal power generates about 40 percent of South Korea&#8217;s total electricity needs, nuclear around 30 percent, and natural gas meets 20 percent. The rest comes from oil and renewables.</p> <p>Even with the increase in fuel oil purchases, South Korea will have to raise imports of other fuels to meet demand as nearly half of its nuclear power plants are down for maintenance.</p> <p>LNG is the most likely fuel to fill the gaps. Thomson Reuters Eikon data shows South Korea&#8217;s LNG shipments reached nearly 12 million tonnes between January and March 14, up 1.5 percent from the first quarter of last year.</p> <p>Reporting by Roslan Khasawneh and Jessica Jaganathan in SINGAPORE, and Jane Chung and Yuna Park in SEOUL; Editing by Henning Gloystein, Tom Hogue and Christian Schmollinger</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Protein plight: Brazil steals U.S. soybean share in China Statoil to rebrand as Equinor in green energy push New mine to help K+S post significant earnings gain in 2018 Poor farmers need better protection from costly disasters: U.N. South Korea fuel oil imports soar as coal, nuclear plants shut

https://reuters.com/article/usa-soybeans-protein/insight-protein-plight-brazil-steals-us-soybean-share-in-china-idUSL1N1OL1JD

2018-01-25

2least

CHICAGO Reuters US soybean growers are losing market share in the allimportant China market because the race to grow higheryielding crops has robbed their most prized nutrient protein FILE PHOTO Soybeans being sorted according to their weight and density on a gravity sorter machine at Peterson Farms Seed facility in Fargo North Dakota US December 6 2017 REUTERSDan KoeckFile Photo Declining protein levels make soybeans less valuable to the 400 billion industry that produces feed for cattle pigs chickens and fish And the problem is a key factor driving soybean buyers from the US to Brazil where warmer weather helps offset the impact of higher crop yields on protein levels A decade ago the United States supplied 38 percent of soybeans to China the world8217s top importer compared to 34 percent from Brazil Now Brazil supplies 57 percent of Chinese imports compared to 31 from the United States according to China8217s General Administration of Customs Soybeans are by far the most valuable US agricultural export with 228 billion in shipments in 2016 Declining protein levels and market share pose another vexing problem for soy farmers already reeling from a global grains glut and years of depressed prices The US soybean industry also faces rising competition from a growing number of synthetic and organic alternative feeds that provide more protein for less money These are troubling trends for the 41 billion US soybean sector but the industry8217s response has yet to take on much urgency That8217s because the erosion of protein levels has come over many years and many industry players still have shortterm economic incentives to prioritize higher yields over higher protein For graphic on soybean yield protein content and market share see tmsnrtrs2CXgKQE Protein levels have fallen as biotechnology and other breeding advances have pushed yield per acre to record highs which dilutes protein content But US farmers can still make more money producing higher volumes of lowerprotein crops because they only get an additional 3 to 5 cents a bushel for higherprotein beans Over the long term however falling protein levels could have dire consequences for the US industry as a whole especially in China which buys twothirds of all soybeans traded in the world market to feed its vast livestock operations 8220China needs soybeans and we8217re at risk of becoming a residual supplier if we don8217t work on protein improvements8221 said North Dakota farmer Jared Hagert a director and past chairman of the United Soybean Board USB an industry association HIGHER YIELDS LOWER PROTEIN The USB and other industry advocates are starting to take the protein problem seriously The industry group will spend 56 million in fiscal year 2018 on research and other efforts to boost protein up from 37 million last year They face a tough task Like many farmers the agribusiness giants that develop seed technology such as Monsanto Co and DowDuPont Inc have little incentive to focus on raising protein levels Seed developers have had great success boosting yields through traditional breeding methods and genetic engineering to make crops use less water tolerate weed killers and grow better in colder or drier climates But they have yet to crack the genetic code that would raise protein content without hurting yield seed breeders said At DowDuPont scientists have identified some promising leads in boosting protein without hurting crop yields said Steve Schnebly senior research manager with the agriculture division of DowDuPont But any commercially viable solution could be two decades away he said and isn8217t a company priority 8220Our major objective to our farmer customers is maximum yield8221 Schnebly said Monsanto the world8217s largest seed producer currently has no genetic research projects focusing on elevating protein spokeswoman Christi Dixon said in a written statement 8220Market potential and demand doesn8217t warrant the RampampD investment8221 she said The protein decline coincides with a rise of cheaper and more abundant alternative feeds available to livestock and poultry producers They include distillers grains a byproduct of the ethanol production process and synthetic amino acids that are mixed with corn to mimic soymeal Jeff Knott a swine nutrition consultant and owner of Minnesotabased Ideal Animal Nutrition creates recipes with such alternatives for hog feed used by producers in several Midwest states 8220Compared to 20 years ago we8217re probably feeding 70 percent less soybean meal than we used to8221 he said 8220And it8217s all economically driven8221 LOWER PROTEIN LOWER EXPORTS Brazilian soybean producers use the same genetically modified seeds as their US counterparts and have also seen a reduction in protein content But Brazilian growers retain an crucial edge in protein thanks to warmer weather and longer days The nation8217s soybeans contain 37 percent protein on average according to data from Embrapa the government8217s agriculture research agency That compares to 341 percent for US crops in 2017 a record low according to the US Soybean Export Council The protein shortfall in this season8217s crop has prompted US processors such as Bunge Ltd to cut the amount of protein they can guarantee in soymeal they sell Brazil8217s threepercentagepoint protein advantage is plenty enough to sway many buyers especially when combined with the nation8217s recent efforts to expand production and reduce shipping delays Since overtaking the United States as the world8217s top soybean exporter in 2013 Brazil has boosted production by about 40 percent Expanded port capacity in northern Brazil and lower freight costs have widened the country8217s advantage in China said a Brazilian trader with a large exporting company 8220Brazil8217s soybeans on average have less impurities and higher protein content8221 said the trader who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly 8220Some destinations will pay a premium for that8221 Protein is paramount for Chinese importers two managers at soy crushing plants and one soy meal buyer at a pig producer told Reuters in interviews 8220Feed producers mainly consider the cost of the soy meal the price and the amount of protein it contains8221 said a swine feed buyer who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak 8220With more supplies from Brazil we don8217t necessarily need to buy beans from the US8221 SCRAMBLING FOR SOLUTIONS The United Soybean Board has launched a pilot project at a small number of processors and grain elevators facilities that store and load grain for shipping to record and analyze the protein content of soybeans delivered by local farmers The effort aims to provide highly localized data in the hope that farmers will select seed varieties that produce higherprotein crops and that soybean buyers will pay them a premium Other USB efforts include financing genetics research to boost protein including studies by researchers at the University of Illinois and by scientists at DuPont Pioneer 8220We8217ve got to be cognizant as to what kind of product we are providing the end user8221 said Hagert the USB director Another study conducted by the University of Wisconsin and paid for by the Illinois Soybean Association and the US Soybean Export Council suggests that farmers can better compete with synthetic alternatives by planting beans with a specific amino acid balance Such soybeans can save hog feeders up to 3 a head and save chicken producers 7 cents a bird said the study8217s lead author John Osthus 8220Right now there are synthetic amino acid companies that are undermining US market share8221 Osthus said 8220If we don8217t do something about this we8217re missing a huge market opportunity8221 Additional reporting by Ana Mano in Sao Paulo and Dominique Patton and Hallie Gu in Beijing Editing by Simon Webb and Brian Thevenot Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles OSLO Reuters Norway8217s Statoil plans to change its name to Equinor reflecting its commitment to become a broad energy company rather than one focused only on oil it said on Thursday FILE PHOTO Norwegian oil company Statoils headquarters in Fornebu Norway June 1 2017 REUTERSInts KalninsFile Photo In a video posted on social media Statoil presented the switch as a way to show its determination to develop investments in renewable energy Reactions by various social media users were mixed 8220Equinor sounds like a princess on a horse in Game of Thrones8221 one Twitter user said 8220Equi8221 is the genitive singular in Latin for 8220horse8221 Others liked the change 8220Congratulations on an exciting name change The green shift is happening faster and faster Norway must be a part of it Good luck with the process8221 tweeted Norwegian Culture Minister Trine Skei Grande Equinor is a combination of 8220equi8221 the starting point for words like equal equality and equilibrium and 8220nor8221 for Norway the company said 8220Reflecting on the global energy transition and how we are developing as a broad energy company it has become natural to change our name8221 Statoil CEO Eldar Saetre said in a statement FILE PHOTO Energy company Statoils gas processing and CO2 removal platform near Stavanger Norway February 11 2016 REUTERSNerijus AdomaitisFile Photo Rebranding would cost up to 250 million Norwegian crowns 325 million he later told a news conference Statoil which is headquartered in the port city and oil industry hub of Stavanger has come to symbolize Norway8217s rise in the past halfcentury to one of the world8217s richest nations Local newspaper Stavanger Aftenblad ran a straw poll asking readers whether they liked the name change with 4730 people saying 8220no8221 and 809 saying 8220yes8221 FILE PHOTO Norwegian oil companys Statoil logo is seen at their headquarters in Fornebu Norway June 1 2017 REUTERSInts KalninsFile Photo The proposal will be put to the annual general meeting on May 15 but Statoil said it already had the backing of the Norwegian state which has a 67 percent stake in the company 8220The decision reflects that Statoil is developing itself into a broad energy company in line with global developments in the energy sector8221 Oil and Energy Minister Terje Soeviknes told Reuters Statoil said it expects to invest 1520 percent of capital spending by 2030 in what it calls new energy solutions up from about 5 percent last year Saetre declined to say how much Statoil was planning to spend on renewables in 2018 but the company has said previously that spending for renewable and lowcarbon solutions are expected to total 500 million to 750 million from 2017 to 2020 and 750 million to 15 billion for the 20202025 period Statoil developed the world8217s first floating offshore wind park off Scotland and is looking to install others off countries including the United States and Japan Additional reporting by Terje Solsvik in Oslo and Stine Jacobsen in Copenhagen Writing by Gwladys Fouche Editing by Edmund Blair and David Goodman Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles FRANKFURT Reuters German potash miner KS SDFGnDE vowed to increase earnings significantly this year as it ramps up production at its new Bethune mine in Canada and after overcoming temporary restrictions on waste water at its main domestic mine Revenues would be tangibly higher and earnings before interest taxes depreciation and amortization EBITDA would see significant gains it said on Thursday Fourthquarter operating profit adjusted for currency hedging effects EBIT I came in at 927 million euros 14 million up from 275 million a year earlier but slightly below the 95 million euros expected on average by analysts in a Reuters poll Global potash prices are slowly perking up as plant closures ease oversupply in the industry KS said the average price of its potash products edged up by 16 percent to 250 euros per ton during the quarter A 180millioneuro waste water treatment plant in Germany will help the mineral miner to cope with what remains of local environmental restrictions after painful temporary limits were lifted KampampS AG 2377 SDFGnDE Xetra 054 232 SDFGnDE It has also settled legal disputes with local communities and environmentalists who were fighting its practice of injecting salty waste water a byproduct of processing potassium ore into fertilizer products into porous layers of rock Reporting by Ludwig Burger Editing by Maria Sheahan Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles KUALA LUMPUR Thomson Reuters Foundation Natural disasters such as drought and floods cost developing countries 96 billion in damage to crops and livestock between 2005 and 2015 highlighting the need to step up protection for poor farmers the United Nations said Half the total damage 48 billion occurred in Asia according to a report from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization FAO launched at a Hanoi conference on Thursday 8220Asia is always in terms of natural hazards the mosthit area simply because so many tropical storms and heavy monsoon rains hit that region8221 Stephan Baas a risk advisor at FAO and one of the study8217s authors told the Thomson Reuters Foundation Besides precipitation Asian agriculture was also affected by earthquakes tsunamis and extreme temperatures the report said Drought alone caused 29 billion of the damage to the agriculture sector across all developing countries the study showed making it a major threat to food security and incomes In Africa agricultural losses from natural disasters amounted to 26 billion over the decade and in Latin America and the Caribbean 22 billion Drought was the costliest disaster for crops and livestock in those two regions Crop pests and animal diseases caused about 6 billion of the losses to African farmers Climate change is likely to worsen the threats and challenges from natural disasters FAO DirectorGeneral Jose Graziano da Silva said in a statement Efforts to reduce the risks of disasters and manage them better must be part of modern agriculture if sustainable development is to be achieved officials added 8220The main purpose of the report is to give evidence to policymakers and planners so they know what can be avoided8221 said Baas Measures to curb risks include using seeds that are resilient to drought or floods early warning systems for extreme weather and access to insurance and finance for farmers he added The report which excludes industrialized countries will be updated every two years and used as a tool to monitor global commitments to tackle poverty and climate change noted Baas Globally about 25 billion people rely on agriculture for their livelihoods the FAO report said Reporting by Michael Taylor Editing by Megan Rowling Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters that covers humanitarian news womens rights trafficking property rights climate change and resilience Visit newstrustorg Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles SINGAPORESEOUL Reuters South Korea8217s move to shut coalfired generators to control air pollution at the same time as nuclear reactors are going into scheduled maintenance is resulting in surging fuel oil imports as utilities burn the dirty feedstock to meet power demand FILE PHOTO A gas pump is seen hanging from the ceiling at a petrol station in Seoul June 27 2011 REUTERSJo YongHakFile Photo South Korea8217s trade ministry said in February it would suspend five coalfired power plants with a combined capacity of 232 gigawatts GW from March to June part of a broad campaign to reduce pollution That plan may backfire at least in the shortterm A cold winter has raised power and heating demand forcing utilities to burn more fuel oil in order to meet demand 8220Both from a pollution reduction and cost reduction perspective it does not make sense to burn fuel oil8221 said Bikal Pokharel principal analyst at Wood Mackenzie While carbon emissions from fuel oil are just around 10 percent less than coal the operating cost of fuel oil is almost three times than that of coal Pokharel said while liquefied natural gas LNGfired plants emit half the carbon compared to coal but cost almost twice as much to operate at current fuel prices A byproduct of the crude oil refining process fuel oil8217s biggest use ahead of power generation is as a shipping fuel 8220In the nearterm fuel oil imports will increase to make up for the shortfall in coalfired generation capacity8221 said Pat Markey managing director of consultancy Sierra Vista Resources Fuel oil imports by power producers into Asia8217s fourthlargest economy have jumped to 200000 tonnes in March so far up from 92000 tonnes in February tender data compiled by Reuters showed GRAPHIC South Korea fuel oil imports reutrs2Fz7PKS Firstquarter fuel oil imports are expected at 417000 tonnes up 28 percent from a year ago and already more than 60 percent of the 660000 tonnes taken for all of last year Burning fuel oil for power results in lower carbon dioxide emissions than coalfired plants but releases more toxic particles into the air 8220Pollutants generated during combustion of fuel oils are nitrogen oxides carbon monoxide greenhouse gases volatile compounds like unburned hydrocarbons and toxic trace metals8221 according to the US Commission for Environmental Cooperation An official from a South Korean stateowned utility said the increased fuel oil demand was partly a result of the government8217s decision to halt coalfired plants temporarily due to pollution and reduced nuclear power because of planned maintenance The official who declined to be identified as he is not authorized to speak to the media said some 110000 tonnes of fuel oil wouldamp160be needed in April Only two of South Korea8217s major utilities Korea EastWest Power Co Ltd EWP and Korea Western Power Co WP issue tenders for fuel oil for power generation mostly during peak summer and winter demand data on Thomson Reuters Eikon shows The two utilities declined to comment Coal power generates about 40 percent of South Korea8217s total electricity needs nuclear around 30 percent and natural gas meets 20 percent The rest comes from oil and renewables Even with the increase in fuel oil purchases South Korea will have to raise imports of other fuels to meet demand as nearly half of its nuclear power plants are down for maintenance LNG is the most likely fuel to fill the gaps Thomson Reuters Eikon data shows South Korea8217s LNG shipments reached nearly 12 million tonnes between January and March 14 up 15 percent from the first quarter of last year Reporting by Roslan Khasawneh and Jessica Jaganathan in SINGAPORE and Jane Chung and Yuna Park in SEOUL Editing by Henning Gloystein Tom Hogue and Christian Schmollinger Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>"Landmark" Abortion Case "Could Shape Abortion Rules For Years To Come." The Supreme Court heard oral arguments for Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt on March 2. The case involves a Texas abortion law that "requires abortion doctors to be affiliated with nearby hospitals and also limits abortion to ambulatory surgical centers," according to The New York Times. Pro-choice advocates and "major medical groups say [the law] will not enhance patient safety and will only reduce women's access to abortion." The Times wrote that the challenge is seen as a "landmark case" that "could shape abortion rules for years to come":</p> <p>On March 2, the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments on the challenge to the Texas law, which requires abortion doctors to be affiliated with nearby hospitals and also limits abortion to ambulatory surgical centers. Abortion opponents say such measures are needed to protect women, but major medical groups say they will not enhance patient safety and will only reduce women's access to abortion.</p> <p>Overruling a lower court's injunction, the Fifth Circuit appeals court allowed the Texas admitting-privilege rule to take effect throughout the state in 2013, immediately shuttering about half of what had been more than 40 abortion clinics, although exceptions were later granted for geographically isolated clinics in McAllen and El Paso. The second requirement, mandating costly surgical center facilities, has been temporarily stayed by the Supreme Court, but it would force still more reductions if upheld.</p> <p>At stake in the case, Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt, is not only the future of abortion access in Texas and in the nine other states that, like Alabama and Louisiana, have adopted similar physician rules. It could also affect dozens of other regulations of disputed medical value that have been adopted by numerous states, including limits on nonsurgical drug-induced abortions, mandated building standards for clinics and two-day or three-day waiting periods. [The New York Times, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/25/us/whole-womans-health-v-hellerstedt-supreme-court.html?_r=0" type="external">2/24/16</a>]</p> <p>Solicitor General Keller: HB 2 Restrictions "Passed In The Wake Of The Kermit Gosnell Scandal That Prompted Texas ... To Reexamine Their Abortion Regulations." In oral arguments for Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt, Texas Solicitor General Scott Keller was asked why the state of Texas needed to change its regulation of abortion clinics, to which he replied that HB 2 was "passed in the wake of the Kermit Gosnell scandal" in order to improve patient safety. As Justices Kagan and Ginsburg explained, however, the case of Kermit Gosnell -- which concerns the illegal operations of a Philadelphia abortion provider -- is actually an example of Pennsylvania's failure to regularly inspect medical facilities and not a evidence of a widespread lack of safety in abortion care. From the transcript of the oral arguments (emphasis added):</p> <p>JUSTICE KAGAN: General, could -- &#173;&#173; could I ask &#173;&#173; -- could I go back to a question that -- &#173;&#173; something that you said earlier? And tell me if I'm misquoting you. You said that as the law is now, under your interpretation of it, Texas is allowed to set much, much higher medical standards, whether it has to do with the personnel or procedures or the facilities themselves, higher medical standards, including much higher medical standards for abortion facilities than for facilities that do any other kind of medical work, even much more risky medical work. And you said that that was your understanding of the law; am I right?</p> <p>MR. KELLER: Correct, in this Court's &#173;&#173; -- in Simopoulos.</p> <p>JUSTICE KAGAN: And I guess I just want to know why would Texas do that?</p> <p>(Laughter.)</p> <p>MR. KELLER: When there are complications from abortion that's in the record, Texas can enact laws to promote safety.</p> <p>JUSTICE KAGAN: No, I know, but -- &#173;&#173;but the assumption of the question, and I think you haven't challenged this assumption, is that there are many procedures that are much higher risk: Colonoscopies, liposuctions, we could go on and on. And --&#173;&#173; and you're saying, that's okay, we get to set much higher standards for abortion. And I just want to know why that is.</p> <p>MR. KELLER: Justice Kagan, this bill was passed in the wake of the Kermit Gosnell scandal that prompted Texas and many other States to reexamine their abortion regulations.</p> <p>JUSTICE KAGAN: But, of course, the --&#173;&#173; I mean, Texas' own regulations actually have made abortion facilities such that that can never happen, because you have continual inspections, I mean, to your credit. So that was really not a problem in Texas, having a kind of rogue outfit there. Texas has taken actions to prevent that.</p> <p>So, again, I just sort of --&#173;&#173; I'm left wondering, given this baseline of regulation that prevents rogue outfits of &#173;&#173;-- like that, why it is that Texas would make this choice. And you say you're allowed to make this choice, and we can argue about that. I just want to know why Texas would make it.</p> <p>[...]</p> <p>JUSTICE GINSBURG: Random &#173;&#173;-- Texas, under the prior law, has the right to make random inspections. Was --&#173;&#173; the problem in Pennsylvania was this filthy clinic hadn't been looked at by anyone from the State in 16 years. But Texas can go into any one of these clinics and immediate&#173;&#173; -- immediately spots a violation? It says you can't operate till you come up to speed.</p> <p>So Texas has had, as Justice Kagan pointed out, its own mechanism for preventing that kind of thing from happening.</p> <p>MR. KELLER: Texas did have existing regulations, but increasing the standard of care is valid, particularly not only in light of&#173;&#173; --</p> <p>JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: It's valid only if it's taking care of a real problem.</p> <p>MR. KELLER: And there were - &#173;&#173;the -- &#173;&#173;abortion complications and underreported questions &#173;&#173;--</p> <p>JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: Well, no, no, no. A real problem, meaning, Gosnell, the governor of Pennsylvania, said was a regulatory failure. And only in that, not &#173;&#173;-- this clinic had not been inspected for 15 years. He -- &#173;&#173;the doctor was fabricating his reports. That could happen almost in any setting. Anyone who intends to break the law is going to break the law, whatever the regulatory rules are.</p> <p>You're going to have doctors, as happened pre our laws, who were performing abortions without permission in their offices or without licenses. And I don't want to suggest that we should presume that's going to happen, but it will happen.</p> <p>MR. KELLER: The constitutional standard for whether a State can make abortion safer can't be that it can only prevent the Gosnell situation, and there are complications.</p> <p>JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: Well, but &#173;&#173;-- yeah, but --&#173;&#173; but you have to see, as Justice Breyer asked you earlier, why are the problems? Isn't this a self-&#173;created problem? What happened in Texas independent of Gosnell that raised the Gosnell&#173;-like situation concerned in Texas that made &#173;&#173; --</p> <p>JUSTICE ALITO: Gosnell.</p> <p>JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: &#173;&#173; -- the legislature so after so many years about taking care of this greater risk in abortions, as opposed to all the other procedures that are performed in non&#173;-ASC facilities?</p> <p>MR. KELLER: Because there are complications in abortion, and this was a top &#173;&#173; --</p> <p>JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: But there's complications in colonoscopies, and colonoscopies are, what, 15 times --</p> <p>JUSTICE BREYER: 28.</p> <p>JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: 28. Justice Breyer just corrected me.</p> <p>(Laughter.)</p> <p>JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: 28 percent higher. [Supreme Court of the United States, Oral Arguments, Whole Womans' Health v. Hellerstedt, <a href="http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/15-274_l53m.pdf#page=62" type="external">3/2/16</a>]</p> <p>Phyllis Schlafly: HB 2 Will Help "Ensure That There Is Never Again Another Kermit Gosnell." In a February 29 post on WND, Phyllis Schlafly, founder of the conservative Eagle Forum, claimed that HB 2 will "ensure that there is never against another Kermit Gosnell":</p> <p>Without the late Justice Antonin Scalia, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a full hour of oral argument Wednesday on the biggest abortion case in a quarter century. This case, Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt, arises from a Texas law requiring that abortionists have hospital medical staff privileges within 30 miles of the abortion, and also that abortion clinics comply with the same standards as ambulatory surgery centers.</p> <p>Abortion supporters claim that this good law has forced about half of Texas' 40 abortion clinics to close, and that even more may close if the U.S. Supreme Court does not rule in their favor. The gruesome reality is that many abortions are performed by physicians who lack nearby hospital admitting privileges, and many abortions are performed in degrading clinics whose facilities are below the minimal standards of a modern surgery center.</p> <p>[...]</p> <p>Even after the sudden and tragic loss of Justice Scalia, it's hard to imagine why the U.S. Supreme Court would prevent states from taking reasonable steps, as Texas and other states have done, to ensure that there is never again another Kermit Gosnell. [WND, <a href="http://www.wnd.com/2016/02/end-favoritism-for-abortion-doctors/" type="external">2/29/16</a>]</p> <p>Fox's Manny Alvarez: "Given The Severity" Of Gosnell's Case, Texas Should "Construct More Regulated" Abortion Facilities Under HB 2. In a June 29, 2015, article following the Supreme Court's decision to hear arguments about the constitutionality of HB 2, Fox News senior managing editor for health news Manny Alvarez claimed that Gosnell's crimes were "a reason for the state to address its needs and construct more regulated, safe facilities" through the Texas law:</p> <p>Let me be clear, the regulations that were being placed on these clinics were mainly focused on enforcing safety and guidelines for a very delicate procedure. What the state of Texas is asking for is that these independent clinics performing these procedures be held to the same clinical standards as any other surgical center in the country.</p> <p>[...]</p> <p>Have we already forgotten what happened in Philadelphia with Dr. Kermit Gosnell who was arrested on Jan. 19 and charged with eight counts of murder? One count stemmed from the death of a woman who received an overdose of anesthetic at his clinic, while seven involved infants that officials say were delivered live and then killed. He was later convicted of killing three of the infants at his Women's Medical Society practice, and of involuntary manslaughter in the death of a patient. He is currently serving life in prison without parole.</p> <p>[...]</p> <p>Given the severity of that case and many others, I don't understand this Supreme Court ruling, I really do not. I believe that if you are going to perform any kind of medical procedure on any type of patient you must have medical standards that ensure quality medicine and focus on patient safety. Just because some clinics do not want to adhere to these rules does not mean our country's patients must suffer. The opposition argued that the new regulations would have forced a major wave of clinic closures, leaving some areas across the state without any centers. That should not have been a reason to block this rule, but rather a reason for the state to address its needs and construct more regulated, safe facilities. [FoxNews.com, <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/health/2015/06/29/dr-manny-supreme-court-decision-on-texas-abortions-is-dangerous.html" type="external">6/29/15</a>]</p> <p>Fox Contributors Argue HB 2's Restrictions Are "Completely Reasonable" Because "One Of The Women Who Died Wouldn't Have" If Gosnell "Had Met Some Of These Requirements." On the June 26, 2013, edition of Fox News' America Live, Megyn Kelly hosted Fox contributors Kirsten Powers and Monica Crowley to discuss the failure of the Texas legislature to pass the earlier version of HB 2. During the segment, Powers argued that "what Texas is trying to do is exactly the same as what they did in Pennsylvania after the Gosnell tragedy." Crowley further disputed the dangers associated with greater clinic restrictions, stating that HB 2 was "completely reasonable" and that "one of the women who died wouldn't have" if Gosnell had "met some of these [HB 2's] requirements":</p> <p>MEGYN KELLY (HOST): They [Texas Republicans] wanted to restrict abortions to just 20 -- I don't mean to say just, because a lot of people think, 20 weeks, that's halfway there -- but to 20 weeks. Whereas right now most of the states say 24 weeks or after, so it's a four-week -- you know moving the date back four weeks, and to tighten restrictions on clinics. Why was the Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro Choice America crowd so upset?</p> <p>KIRSTEN POWERS: Well, they opposed this in every state. Basically, what Texas is trying to do is exactly what happened in Pennsylvania after the Gosnell tragedy in terms of, not so much in the moving the date, but all of the stuff of making them into ambulatory service centers, saying that you have to have admitting privileges, because in the Gosnell case they actually found that -- independent investigation found -- that probably one of the women who died wouldn't have died had they had met some of these requirements.</p> <p>KELLY: Better facilities?</p> <p>POWERS: Yeah, so Planned Parenthood, they opposed this across the country. This is an ongoing battle that goes on all over the country.</p> <p>[...]</p> <p>CROWLEY: Everything in this bill is completely reasonable from the 20-week mark to upgrading these facilities to demanding that doctors have hospital privileges within a 30-mile radius in case anything goes wrong. This is a direct response to the horrors that we saw in the Gosnell case. [Fox News, America Live, via Media Matters, <a href="/blog/2013/06/26/fox-guests-use-texas-anti-choice-bill-to-downpl/194637" type="external">6/26/13</a>]</p> <p>Michelle Malkin: "Kermit Gosnell Is No Exception," And HB 2 Protects Women From Another "Awful Kermit Gosnell House Of Horrors Situation." Conservative columnist Michelle Malkin also invoked Gosnell to justify the passage of highly restrictive anti-choice laws. Appearing in a segment during the July 8, 2013, edition of Fox News' America Live, Malkin asserted that HB 2 was designed to protect "women and ... unborn children" from another "awful Kermit Gosnell house of horrors situation." When questioned by host Alisyn Camerota on the questionable rationale of basing new restrictions on the actions of "one homicidal maniac," Malkin argued that it wasn't "just a case of picking the Gosnell case and then demonizing every abortion clinic" because "Kermit Gosnell is no exception" (emphasis added):</p> <p>ALISYN CAMEROTA (HOST): Obviously an incredibly heated topic and you can see that played out in front of the state house today where abortion opponents and supporters are sort of having a showdown in front of the state house. What are we expecting?</p> <p>MICHELLE MALKIN: Well, I think what we can expect is more of the same: rude, uncivil and unhinged behavior on the part of many of these pro-abortion supporters, and a lot of them -- as many Texas natives have been pointing out -- are coming from outside of the state. Supported by the national pro-abortion organizations NARAL and Planned Parenthood, along with a lot of these Hollywood celebrities who've taken to Twitter -- and my Twitter aggregation and curation site, Twitchy.com, has been monitoring them for the last week or so -- where they've ratcheted up vulgar rhetoric against peaceful, pro-life supporters and pro-life legislators and of course a staunchly pro-life governor, Rick Perry, who are really putting a test to these forces on the other side. Do they really believe in ensuring that abortions are conducted in a safe manner? And I think that's what we have to remember, Alisyn, as these debates become more heated, not just in Texas but around the country where other state legislatures are trying to, in the wake of that awful Kermit Gosnell house of horrors situation, make sure that women and unborn children are protected.</p> <p>CAMEROTA: But in terms of the Gosnell issue, Michelle, couldn't you argue that it's never a good idea to base policy on one homicidal maniac?</p> <p>MALKIN: Well, I think the problem is that over the course of the last several decades is the pro-life forces who have tried to expose and report time and time again that Kermit Gosnell is no exception. That in fact, there are many barbaric practices that have gone whitewashed not just in Pennsylvania but in many states and of course including Texas itself. Very recently there were pro-life reporters and investigators, [inaudible] people who have worked in these abortion clinics who've been blowing the whistle on practices that have endangered women and obviously unborn children. So it's not just a case of picking the Gosnell case and then demonizing every abortion clinic, but as I said, will they abide by standards that will ensure safety? [Fox News, America Live, via Media Matters, <a href="/blog/2013/07/08/foxs-michelle-malkin-misleads-on-the-consequenc/194772" type="external">7/8/13</a>]</p> <p>MSNBC's Irin Carmon: Gosnell's Clinic Operated In Violation Of The Law And Women Went Only Because "They Felt They Had No Alternative." While working as a staff writer for Salon, Irin Carmon -- now of MSNBC -- rebuked right-wing media attempts to politicize Gosnell's actions as evidence of widespread malfeasance by other abortion providers. Carmon wrote that Gosnell was not representative of other providers because it was his "willingness to break the law" that made him many women's last resort. She argued that it was "existing policies and public indifference to low-income communities" that forced women to seek out Gosnell despite multiple warnings from other, reputable abortion providers. According to Carmon, Gosnell's illegal practice was sustained only because women "felt they have no alternative." [Salon, <a href="http://www.salon.com/2013/04/12/there_is_no_gosnell_coverup/" type="external">4/12/13</a>]</p> <p>Tracy Weitz: Gosnell's Actions Have Nothing To Do With "The Way In Which Later Abortion Procedures Are Performed In The United States." University of California reproductive health professor Tracy Weitz pointed out that the procedures Gosnell was accused of performing have "nothing to do with the way in which the standard of care and later abortion procedures are performed in the United States," and that his actions are "nowhere in the medical literature." [The Washington Examiner, via Media Matters, <a href="/blog/2013/04/17/wash-examiners-tim-carney-uses-gosnell-case-to/193664" type="external">4/17/13</a>]</p> <p>Philadelphia Grand Jury: Breaking The Law Was Gosnell's "Competitive Edge." According to the grand jury report in the Dr. Kermit Gosnell case, the grand jury found that "Gosnell's approach was simple: keep volume high, expenses low - and break the law. That was his competitive edge." The grand jury report elaborated:</p> <p>Pennsylvania, like other states, permits legal abortion within a regulatory framework. Physicians must, for example, provide counseling about the nature of the procedure. Minors must have parental or judicial consent. All women must wait 24 hours after first visiting the facility, in order to fully consider their decision. But Gosnell's compliance with such requirements was casual at best. At the Women's Medical Society, the only question that really mattered was whether you had the cash. Too young? No problem. Didn't want to wait? Gosnell provided same-day service. [Gosnell Grand Jury Report, <a href="http://www.phila.gov/districtattorney/pdfs/grandjurywomensmedical.pdf" type="external">1/14/11</a>]</p>

How A Right-Wing Media Myth Made It Into Oral Arguments For A Case Challenging Texas' Restrictive Abortion Law

http://mediamatters.org/research/2016/03/02/how-a-right-wing-media-myth-made-it-into-oral-a/208976

2016-03-03

4left

Landmark Abortion Case Could Shape Abortion Rules For Years To Come The Supreme Court heard oral arguments for Whole Womans Health v Hellerstedt on March 2 The case involves a Texas abortion law that requires abortion doctors to be affiliated with nearby hospitals and also limits abortion to ambulatory surgical centers according to The New York Times Prochoice advocates and major medical groups say the law will not enhance patient safety and will only reduce womens access to abortion The Times wrote that the challenge is seen as a landmark case that could shape abortion rules for years to come On March 2 the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments on the challenge to the Texas law which requires abortion doctors to be affiliated with nearby hospitals and also limits abortion to ambulatory surgical centers Abortion opponents say such measures are needed to protect women but major medical groups say they will not enhance patient safety and will only reduce womens access to abortion Overruling a lower courts injunction the Fifth Circuit appeals court allowed the Texas admittingprivilege rule to take effect throughout the state in 2013 immediately shuttering about half of what had been more than 40 abortion clinics although exceptions were later granted for geographically isolated clinics in McAllen and El Paso The second requirement mandating costly surgical center facilities has been temporarily stayed by the Supreme Court but it would force still more reductions if upheld At stake in the case Whole Womans Health v Hellerstedt is not only the future of abortion access in Texas and in the nine other states that like Alabama and Louisiana have adopted similar physician rules It could also affect dozens of other regulations of disputed medical value that have been adopted by numerous states including limits on nonsurgical druginduced abortions mandated building standards for clinics and twoday or threeday waiting periods The New York Times 22416 Solicitor General Keller HB 2 Restrictions Passed In The Wake Of The Kermit Gosnell Scandal That Prompted Texas To Reexamine Their Abortion Regulations In oral arguments for Whole Womans Health v Hellerstedt Texas Solicitor General Scott Keller was asked why the state of Texas needed to change its regulation of abortion clinics to which he replied that HB 2 was passed in the wake of the Kermit Gosnell scandal in order to improve patient safety As Justices Kagan and Ginsburg explained however the case of Kermit Gosnell which concerns the illegal operations of a Philadelphia abortion provider is actually an example of Pennsylvanias failure to regularly inspect medical facilities and not a evidence of a widespread lack of safety in abortion care From the transcript of the oral arguments emphasis added JUSTICE KAGAN General could 173173 could I ask 173173 could I go back to a question that 173173 something that you said earlier And tell me if Im misquoting you You said that as the law is now under your interpretation of it Texas is allowed to set much much higher medical standards whether it has to do with the personnel or procedures or the facilities themselves higher medical standards including much higher medical standards for abortion facilities than for facilities that do any other kind of medical work even much more risky medical work And you said that that was your understanding of the law am I right MR KELLER Correct in this Courts 173173 in Simopoulos JUSTICE KAGAN And I guess I just want to know why would Texas do that Laughter MR KELLER When there are complications from abortion thats in the record Texas can enact laws to promote safety JUSTICE KAGAN No I know but 173173but the assumption of the question and I think you havent challenged this assumption is that there are many procedures that are much higher risk Colonoscopies liposuctions we could go on and on And 173173 and youre saying thats okay we get to set much higher standards for abortion And I just want to know why that is MR KELLER Justice Kagan this bill was passed in the wake of the Kermit Gosnell scandal that prompted Texas and many other States to reexamine their abortion regulations JUSTICE KAGAN But of course the 173173 I mean Texas own regulations actually have made abortion facilities such that that can never happen because you have continual inspections I mean to your credit So that was really not a problem in Texas having a kind of rogue outfit there Texas has taken actions to prevent that So again I just sort of 173173 Im left wondering given this baseline of regulation that prevents rogue outfits of 173173 like that why it is that Texas would make this choice And you say youre allowed to make this choice and we can argue about that I just want to know why Texas would make it JUSTICE GINSBURG Random 173173 Texas under the prior law has the right to make random inspections Was 173173 the problem in Pennsylvania was this filthy clinic hadnt been looked at by anyone from the State in 16 years But Texas can go into any one of these clinics and immediate173173 immediately spots a violation It says you cant operate till you come up to speed So Texas has had as Justice Kagan pointed out its own mechanism for preventing that kind of thing from happening MR KELLER Texas did have existing regulations but increasing the standard of care is valid particularly not only in light of173173 JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR Its valid only if its taking care of a real problem MR KELLER And there were 173173the 173173abortion complications and underreported questions 173173 JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR Well no no no A real problem meaning Gosnell the governor of Pennsylvania said was a regulatory failure And only in that not 173173 this clinic had not been inspected for 15 years He 173173the doctor was fabricating his reports That could happen almost in any setting Anyone who intends to break the law is going to break the law whatever the regulatory rules are Youre going to have doctors as happened pre our laws who were performing abortions without permission in their offices or without licenses And I dont want to suggest that we should presume thats going to happen but it will happen MR KELLER The constitutional standard for whether a State can make abortion safer cant be that it can only prevent the Gosnell situation and there are complications JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR Well but 173173 yeah but 173173 but you have to see as Justice Breyer asked you earlier why are the problems Isnt this a self173created problem What happened in Texas independent of Gosnell that raised the Gosnell173like situation concerned in Texas that made 173173 JUSTICE ALITO Gosnell JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR 173173 the legislature so after so many years about taking care of this greater risk in abortions as opposed to all the other procedures that are performed in non173ASC facilities MR KELLER Because there are complications in abortion and this was a top 173173 JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR But theres complications in colonoscopies and colonoscopies are what 15 times JUSTICE BREYER 28 JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR 28 Justice Breyer just corrected me Laughter JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR 28 percent higher Supreme Court of the United States Oral Arguments Whole Womans Health v Hellerstedt 3216 Phyllis Schlafly HB 2 Will Help Ensure That There Is Never Again Another Kermit Gosnell In a February 29 post on WND Phyllis Schlafly founder of the conservative Eagle Forum claimed that HB 2 will ensure that there is never against another Kermit Gosnell Without the late Justice Antonin Scalia the US Supreme Court will hear a full hour of oral argument Wednesday on the biggest abortion case in a quarter century This case Whole Womans Health v Hellerstedt arises from a Texas law requiring that abortionists have hospital medical staff privileges within 30 miles of the abortion and also that abortion clinics comply with the same standards as ambulatory surgery centers Abortion supporters claim that this good law has forced about half of Texas 40 abortion clinics to close and that even more may close if the US Supreme Court does not rule in their favor The gruesome reality is that many abortions are performed by physicians who lack nearby hospital admitting privileges and many abortions are performed in degrading clinics whose facilities are below the minimal standards of a modern surgery center Even after the sudden and tragic loss of Justice Scalia its hard to imagine why the US Supreme Court would prevent states from taking reasonable steps as Texas and other states have done to ensure that there is never again another Kermit Gosnell WND 22916 Foxs Manny Alvarez Given The Severity Of Gosnells Case Texas Should Construct More Regulated Abortion Facilities Under HB 2 In a June 29 2015 article following the Supreme Courts decision to hear arguments about the constitutionality of HB 2 Fox News senior managing editor for health news Manny Alvarez claimed that Gosnells crimes were a reason for the state to address its needs and construct more regulated safe facilities through the Texas law Let me be clear the regulations that were being placed on these clinics were mainly focused on enforcing safety and guidelines for a very delicate procedure What the state of Texas is asking for is that these independent clinics performing these procedures be held to the same clinical standards as any other surgical center in the country Have we already forgotten what happened in Philadelphia with Dr Kermit Gosnell who was arrested on Jan 19 and charged with eight counts of murder One count stemmed from the death of a woman who received an overdose of anesthetic at his clinic while seven involved infants that officials say were delivered live and then killed He was later convicted of killing three of the infants at his Womens Medical Society practice and of involuntary manslaughter in the death of a patient He is currently serving life in prison without parole Given the severity of that case and many others I dont understand this Supreme Court ruling I really do not I believe that if you are going to perform any kind of medical procedure on any type of patient you must have medical standards that ensure quality medicine and focus on patient safety Just because some clinics do not want to adhere to these rules does not mean our countrys patients must suffer The opposition argued that the new regulations would have forced a major wave of clinic closures leaving some areas across the state without any centers That should not have been a reason to block this rule but rather a reason for the state to address its needs and construct more regulated safe facilities FoxNewscom 62915 Fox Contributors Argue HB 2s Restrictions Are Completely Reasonable Because One Of The Women Who Died Wouldnt Have If Gosnell Had Met Some Of These Requirements On the June 26 2013 edition of Fox News America Live Megyn Kelly hosted Fox contributors Kirsten Powers and Monica Crowley to discuss the failure of the Texas legislature to pass the earlier version of HB 2 During the segment Powers argued that what Texas is trying to do is exactly the same as what they did in Pennsylvania after the Gosnell tragedy Crowley further disputed the dangers associated with greater clinic restrictions stating that HB 2 was completely reasonable and that one of the women who died wouldnt have if Gosnell had met some of these HB 2s requirements MEGYN KELLY HOST They Texas Republicans wanted to restrict abortions to just 20 I dont mean to say just because a lot of people think 20 weeks thats halfway there but to 20 weeks Whereas right now most of the states say 24 weeks or after so its a fourweek you know moving the date back four weeks and to tighten restrictions on clinics Why was the Planned Parenthood NARAL Pro Choice America crowd so upset KIRSTEN POWERS Well they opposed this in every state Basically what Texas is trying to do is exactly what happened in Pennsylvania after the Gosnell tragedy in terms of not so much in the moving the date but all of the stuff of making them into ambulatory service centers saying that you have to have admitting privileges because in the Gosnell case they actually found that independent investigation found that probably one of the women who died wouldnt have died had they had met some of these requirements KELLY Better facilities POWERS Yeah so Planned Parenthood they opposed this across the country This is an ongoing battle that goes on all over the country CROWLEY Everything in this bill is completely reasonable from the 20week mark to upgrading these facilities to demanding that doctors have hospital privileges within a 30mile radius in case anything goes wrong This is a direct response to the horrors that we saw in the Gosnell case Fox News America Live via Media Matters 62613 Michelle Malkin Kermit Gosnell Is No Exception And HB 2 Protects Women From Another Awful Kermit Gosnell House Of Horrors Situation Conservative columnist Michelle Malkin also invoked Gosnell to justify the passage of highly restrictive antichoice laws Appearing in a segment during the July 8 2013 edition of Fox News America Live Malkin asserted that HB 2 was designed to protect women and unborn children from another awful Kermit Gosnell house of horrors situation When questioned by host Alisyn Camerota on the questionable rationale of basing new restrictions on the actions of one homicidal maniac Malkin argued that it wasnt just a case of picking the Gosnell case and then demonizing every abortion clinic because Kermit Gosnell is no exception emphasis added ALISYN CAMEROTA HOST Obviously an incredibly heated topic and you can see that played out in front of the state house today where abortion opponents and supporters are sort of having a showdown in front of the state house What are we expecting MICHELLE MALKIN Well I think what we can expect is more of the same rude uncivil and unhinged behavior on the part of many of these proabortion supporters and a lot of them as many Texas natives have been pointing out are coming from outside of the state Supported by the national proabortion organizations NARAL and Planned Parenthood along with a lot of these Hollywood celebrities whove taken to Twitter and my Twitter aggregation and curation site Twitchycom has been monitoring them for the last week or so where theyve ratcheted up vulgar rhetoric against peaceful prolife supporters and prolife legislators and of course a staunchly prolife governor Rick Perry who are really putting a test to these forces on the other side Do they really believe in ensuring that abortions are conducted in a safe manner And I think thats what we have to remember Alisyn as these debates become more heated not just in Texas but around the country where other state legislatures are trying to in the wake of that awful Kermit Gosnell house of horrors situation make sure that women and unborn children are protected CAMEROTA But in terms of the Gosnell issue Michelle couldnt you argue that its never a good idea to base policy on one homicidal maniac MALKIN Well I think the problem is that over the course of the last several decades is the prolife forces who have tried to expose and report time and time again that Kermit Gosnell is no exception That in fact there are many barbaric practices that have gone whitewashed not just in Pennsylvania but in many states and of course including Texas itself Very recently there were prolife reporters and investigators inaudible people who have worked in these abortion clinics whove been blowing the whistle on practices that have endangered women and obviously unborn children So its not just a case of picking the Gosnell case and then demonizing every abortion clinic but as I said will they abide by standards that will ensure safety Fox News America Live via Media Matters 7813 MSNBCs Irin Carmon Gosnells Clinic Operated In Violation Of The Law And Women Went Only Because They Felt They Had No Alternative While working as a staff writer for Salon Irin Carmon now of MSNBC rebuked rightwing media attempts to politicize Gosnells actions as evidence of widespread malfeasance by other abortion providers Carmon wrote that Gosnell was not representative of other providers because it was his willingness to break the law that made him many womens last resort She argued that it was existing policies and public indifference to lowincome communities that forced women to seek out Gosnell despite multiple warnings from other reputable abortion providers According to Carmon Gosnells illegal practice was sustained only because women felt they have no alternative Salon 41213 Tracy Weitz Gosnells Actions Have Nothing To Do With The Way In Which Later Abortion Procedures Are Performed In The United States University of California reproductive health professor Tracy Weitz pointed out that the procedures Gosnell was accused of performing have nothing to do with the way in which the standard of care and later abortion procedures are performed in the United States and that his actions are nowhere in the medical literature The Washington Examiner via Media Matters 41713 Philadelphia Grand Jury Breaking The Law Was Gosnells Competitive Edge According to the grand jury report in the Dr Kermit Gosnell case the grand jury found that Gosnells approach was simple keep volume high expenses low and break the law That was his competitive edge The grand jury report elaborated Pennsylvania like other states permits legal abortion within a regulatory framework Physicians must for example provide counseling about the nature of the procedure Minors must have parental or judicial consent All women must wait 24 hours after first visiting the facility in order to fully consider their decision But Gosnells compliance with such requirements was casual at best At the Womens Medical Society the only question that really mattered was whether you had the cash Too young No problem Didnt want to wait Gosnell provided sameday service Gosnell Grand Jury Report 11411

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<p>DUBAI, Jan 24 (Reuters) - Emirates NBD, Dubai&#8217;s largest bank, has priced on Tuesday a $285 million Formosa bond, sources familiar with the matter said.</p> <p>Formosa bonds, which are notes sold in Taiwan by foreign issuers in currencies other than Taiwanese dollars, have been increasingly popular for Gulf banks over the past few weeks because of the low cost of issuance they guarantee for five-year maturities.</p> <p>Prior to Emirates NBD&#8217;s transaction, major lenders such as First Abu Dhabi Bank, Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank and Qatar National Bank have issued $610 million, $540 million and $720 million in Formosa bonds this year.</p> <p>Emirates NBD&#8217;s bond was led by Cathay United Bank, Credit Agricole and Standard Chartered. It has a 30-year tenor and is callable &#8211; or redeemable by the issuer &#8211; every five years.</p> <p>Emirates NBD, majority owned by Dubai&#8217;s Investment Corporation, reported a 17 percent rise in fourth-quarter net profit last week boosted by loan growth, interest rate rises and higher sales. (Reporting by Davide Barbuscia, editing by Louise Heavens)</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - Oil and gas drillers bid on only a tiny fraction of Gulf of Mexico acreage offered on Wednesday in the largest lease sale in American history, a setback to the Trump administration&#8217;s efforts to rapidly pump up investment in the region.</p> FILE PHOTO: A general view of the Centenario deep-water oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Veracruz, Mexico January 17, 2014. Picture taken January 17, 2014. REUTERS/Henry Romero/File Photo <p>The Interior Department had offered up a record 77 million acres (31.2 million hectares) for development in the Gulf - an area twice the size of Florida - with discounted royalty rates on the shallower tracts as part of a broader effort by President Donald Trump to ramp up fossil fuels output.</p> <p>But companies facing multi-billion dollar price tags to develop the acreage and tempted by better terms overseas bid on just 1 percent of the area up for grabs, winning with bids that averaged just $153 an acre - 35 percent below levels last year, and a fraction of those in the region in 2013 when oil prices were higher, according to the data.</p> <p>In all, the auction yielded $124.76 million in winning bids, slightly more than a smaller Gulf of Mexico auction last year, but a tenth of the amount pulled in during a much smaller lease sale in the Central Gulf in 2013.</p> <p>The Interior Department&#8217;s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which administered the auction, characterized the results as robust: &#8220;I think we&#8217;re seeing continued consistent investment in the Gulf of Mexico,&#8221; BOEM spokesman Mike Celata said in a conference call with reporters, adding he forecast increasing oil and gas production from the region for years.</p> <p>He said 33 companies, including majors Royal Dutch Shell Plc, BP Plc, Chevron Corp, and Total SA, had placed 159 bids on 148 blocks.</p> <p>But critics of the administration called the unusually large lease sale ill-timed. U.S. crude oil and natural gas output is already smashing records thanks to improved drilling technology that has opened up cheaper onshore reservoirs, and Brazil and Mexico are also competing for drilling investment in their own deepwater acreage - often with better terms.</p> <p>&#8220;Offering a nearly unrestricted supply in a low demand market with a cut rate royalty and almost no competition is bad policy and an inexcusable waste of taxpayer resources,&#8221; the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning policy think tank, said in a statement.</p> <p>William Turner, senior research analyst at Wood Mackenzie, said the sales statistics were &#8220;on par with the all-time lows that we saw last year,&#8221; referring to a lease sale in 2017 that had yielded $121 million in winning bids.</p> <p>Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke had said ahead of the sale that the record-sized offering would be a &#8220;bellwether&#8221; of industry demand in the region, and billed the effort as a way to help the United States become more &#8220;energy dominant.&#8221;</p> <p>After the sale, Interior Assistant Secretary Joe Balash said: &#8220;Today&#8217;s lease sale is yet another step our nation has taken to achieve economic security and energy dominance.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;ALL-TIME LOWS?&#8221;</p> <p>The U.S. government offers Gulf of Mexico leases annually, but usually in smaller regional batches. An auction in March 2017, for example, offered up 48 million acres in the Central Gulf of Mexico planning region.</p> FILE PHOTO: Unused oil rigs sit in the Gulf of Mexico near Port Fourchon, Louisiana August 11, 2010. REUTERS/Lee Celano/File Photo <p>Consultancy Wood Mackenzie had expected demand for the acreage to get a boost from higher oil prices compared with a year ago, and lower corporate taxes. But it pointed out interest would be tempered by competition from Latin America, and concerns over the impact that U.S. tariffs on steel imports could have on costs.</p> <p>The National Ocean Industries Association, which represents offshore drillers, also sounded a note of caution.</p> <p>&#8220;The United States must continue to evaluate how to keep the Gulf of Mexico and other parts of the U.S. outer continental shelf attractive in light of competition from Brazil and Mexico,&#8221; it said in an emailed statement.</p> <p>Drillers have been trying to trim their Gulf of Mexico drilling costs in recent years to make certain projects there more competitive. BP, for example, has said its Mad Dog 2 platform will be economic with crude at just $40 a barrel.</p> <p>Current oil prices are over $65 a barrel.</p> <p>BP, which bid over $20 million on 27 parcels on Wednesday, structured its bids around its existing production platforms and areas it has already identified as being &#8220;highly prospective,&#8221; spokesman Jason Ryan said in a statement.</p> <p>Still, many new projects in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico come with multi-billion dollar price tags and require major investment up front - making them a tough sell.</p> <p>Some U.S. oil companies like Exxon Mobil Corp are focusing on new deepwater projects outside of the United States, where royalties and tax structures can be more favorable.</p> <p>&#8220;In terms of Exxon, they have plenty of things to do in Guyana, so why bother getting too active in this round in Gulf of Mexico,&#8221; said Lysle Brinker, a research director at IHS Markit, noting Exxon&#8217;s absence from the bidding.</p> <p>In an effort to pump up interest, the Interior Department had cut the royalty rate companies must pay in shallow offshore waters by a third to 12.5 percent, and is considering cutting the rate for deeper waters too.</p> <p>The BOEM&#8217;s Celata pointed out that shallow-water tracts received 43 bids on Wednesday, an increase from past lease sales that he attributed to the lower royalty rates.</p> <p>The administration is eyeing further vast lease sales offshore in the future, having proposed opening up parts of the Arctic, Atlantic and Pacific - an idea that has faced pushback from several governors in U.S. coastal states.</p> <p>Democratic lawmakers have also warned the Interior Department not to extend the lower royalty rates to deepwater acreage, saying the move would short-change taxpayers.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Jessica Resnick-Ault in New York, Valerie Volcovici in Washington and Gary McWilliams in Houston; Writing by Richard Valdmanis; Editing by Marguerita Choy and Paul Simao</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BRUSSELS (Reuters) - German conglomerate Bayer won EU antitrust approval on Wednesday for its $62.5 billion buy of U.S. peer Monsanto, the latest in a trio of mega mergers that will reshape the agrochemicals industry.</p> <p>The tie-up is set to create a company with control of more than a quarter of the world&#8217;s seed and pesticides market.</p> <p>Driven by shifting weather patterns, competition in grain exports and a faltering global farm economy, Dow and Dupont, and ChemChina and Syngenta had earlier led a wave of consolidation in the sector.</p> <p>Both deals secured EU approval only after the companies offered substantial asset sales to boost rivals.</p> <p>Environmental and farming groups have opposed all three deals, worried about their power and their advantage in digital farming data, which can tell farmers how and when to till, sow, spray, fertilize and pick crops based on algorithms.</p> <p>The European Commission said Bayer addressed its concerns with its offer to sell a swathe of assets to boost rival BASF, confirming a Reuters story on Feb. 28.</p> <p>&#8220;Our decision ensures that there will be effective competition and innovation in seeds, pesticides and digital agriculture markets also after this merger,&#8221; European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said in a statement.</p> <p>&#8220;In particular, we have made sure that the number of global players actively competing in these markets stays the same.&#8221;</p> <p>Vestager said the Commission, which received more than a million petitions concerning the deal, had been thorough by examining more than 2,000 different product markets and 2.7 million internal documents to produce a 1,285-page ruling.</p> <p>The U.S. Justice Department, which is also reviewing the merger, said in a statement on its website that it would press on with its review and that the market in the two regions was quite different.</p> European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager holds a news conference at the EU Commission's headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, March 21, 2018. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir <p>&#8220;While genetically modified seeds are largely prohibited in Europe, they are widely used throughout the United States,&#8221; the department noted. &#8220;The Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice continues to examine the effects of the proposed transaction on American farmers and consumers.&#8221;</p> <p>China has given conditional approval to the Bayer and Monsanto deal, which has won a green light in Brazil. It is currently being reviewed by Russian antitrust authorities too.</p> <p>Australia said on Thursday it would not oppose the deal following the divestment commitment.</p> Slideshow (3 Images) <p>Bayer has already reached a deal to sell certain seed and herbicide assets for 5.9 billion euros ($7.2 billion) to BASF and to give it a license to its global digital farming data. It will also divest its vegetable seeds business to BASF.</p> <p>The Commission is due to rule on the BASF deal by April 16.</p> <p>Online campaigns group Avaaz criticized the EU approval.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-monsanto-m-a-bayer-usa/u-s-says-it-is-still-reviewing-bayers-planned-monsanto-acquisition-idUSKBN1GX2HZ" type="external">U.S. says it is still reviewing Bayer's planned Monsanto acquisition</a> <p>&#8220;This is a marriage made in hell. The Commission ignored a million people who called on them to block this deal, and caved in to lobbying to create a mega-corporation which will dominate our food supply,&#8221; Avaaz legal director Nick Flynn said.</p> <p>U.S.-incorporated Avaaz, funded by its members, is active in climate change, poverty, conflict and corruption issues.</p> <p>The Greens grouping in the European Parliament echoed the sentiment, saying smaller players in the agriculture industry needed to be helped too.</p> <p>&#8220;The agriculture industry is already far too concentrated, giving a handful of massive firms a stranglehold on food production. Merging two of the biggest players only makes a bad situation worse,&#8221; Greens spokesman Bart Staes said.</p> <p>Reporting by Foo Yun Chee with additional reporting by Diane Bartz in Washington; editing by Robin Emmott, David Evans and Cynthia Osterman</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - U.S. media company Meredith Corp ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=MDP.N" type="external">MDP.N</a>) said on Wednesday it cut about 200 jobs and would lay off another 1,000 as it streamlines its operations following the completion of its Time Inc acquisition.</p> A stack of new issues of Time magazine is seen in a photo illustration taken at a book store in Toronto, Ontario, Canada March 21, 2018. REUTERS/Chris Helgren <p>Meredith also said it had decided to explore a sale of Time, Sports Illustrated, Fortune and Money magazines after a review.</p> <p>The move to sell the brands illustrates how Meredith sees some of Time&#8217;s titles that attract primarily a male readership as not playing to its core strength in women&#8217;s magazines.</p> <p>Meredith, which owns lifestyle magazines such as Better Homes &amp;amp; Gardens and Family Circle, agreed to buy Time Inc in a $1.84 billion all-cash deal backed by conservative billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch.</p> <p>Reuters reported last week about the company&#8217;s plan to sell the Time Inc brands.</p> <p>&#8220;There are guys who would like to own these marquee brands and are probably gonna pay more than what Meredith paid to acquire them,&#8221; said Daniel Kurnos, an analyst with Benchmark Co.</p> <p>The company last month said it would sell Time Inc&#8217;s UK arm to private equity firm Epiris Fund II.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=MDP.N" type="external">Meredith Corp</a> 53.8 MDP.N New York Stock Exchange +0.00 (+0.00%) MDP.N GOOGL.O FB.O <p>The media company said the job cuts were part of a plan to achieve annual savings in the $400 million to $500 million range from the Time Inc acquisition, which closed in January.</p> <p>The company has notified about 200 employees, while the around 1,000 more positions will be eliminated over the next 10 months.</p> <p>Meredith needs to be more aggressive to reach its cost-cut targets and will likely have to lay off a lot more, said Craig Huber, an analyst with Huber Research Partners.</p> <p>With its roots in traditional publishing, Meredith has been facing a fierce competitive online race against internet giants such as Alphabet Inc&#8217;s ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=GOOGL.O" type="external">GOOGL.O</a>) Google and Facebook Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FB.O" type="external">FB.O</a>) for consumer eyeballs and advertising dollars.</p> <p>Reporting by Laharee Chatterjee and Supantha Mukherjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta and Sriraj Kalluvila</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Reserve raised interest rates on Wednesday and forecast at least two more hikes for 2018, highlighting its growing confidence that tax cuts and government spending will boost the economy and inflation and spur more aggressive future tightening.</p> <p>In its first policy meeting under new Fed chief Jerome Powell, the U.S. central bank indicated that inflation should finally move higher after years below its 2 percent target and that the economy had recently gained momentum.</p> <p>The Fed also raised the estimated longer-term &#8220;neutral&#8221; rate, the level at which monetary policy neither boosts nor slows the economy, a touch, in a sign the current gradual rate hike cycle could go on longer than previously thought.</p> <p>&#8220;The economic outlook has strengthened in recent months,&#8221; the Fed said in a statement at the end of a two-day meeting in which it lifted its benchmark overnight lending rate by a quarter of a percentage point to a range of 1.50 percent to 1.75 percent.</p> <p>Powell, who took over from former Fed chief Janet Yellen in early February, said the central bank was staying on a path of gradual rate increases but needed to be on guard against inflation.</p> <p>&#8220;We are trying to take the middle ground here,&#8221; Powell said in a press conference after the end of the policy meeting, adding that there were no signs the economy was on the cusp of accelerating inflation.</p> <p>The rate hike was widely expected. All 104 economists polled by Reuters from March 5-13 said the Fed would increase borrowing costs this week.</p> <p>U.S. stocks rose after the policy statement before paring gains to close lower. U.S. Treasury yields fell and then recovered. The dollar .DXY recorded its steepest one-day loss in nearly two months against a basket of currencies.</p> <p>&#8220;The guidance in terms of the future rate hikes is a touch more hawkish than originally expected. 2019 looks like we&#8217;re going to get a faster pace of rate hikes,&#8221; said Matt Miskin, market strategist at John Hancock Investments.</p> <p>&#8220;This a new Fed chairman starting with a bit of a hawkish tone as he takes leadership.&#8221;</p> Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell speaks at a news conference following the Federal Open Market Committee meetings in Washington, U.S., March 21, 2018. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein CONFIDENCE IN THE ECONOMY <p>The rate hike was the latest step away from years of stimulating the world&#8217;s largest economy in the wake of the 2007-2009 financial crisis and recession. The Fed tightened policy three times last year.</p> <p>The combination of $1.8 trillion in expected fiscal stimulus from the Trump administration and recent hints of price and wage pressures had prompted some Fed officials to speculate more Americans could be drawn into an already tight labor market.</p> <p>Some even worried inflation could rise well above the Fed&#8217;s target if the economy got too hot.</p> Slideshow (6 Images) <p>Policymakers were largely split on Wednesday as to whether a total of three or four rate hikes would be needed this year. They predicted rates would rise three times next year and two times in 2020, a further indication of their view that the economy is on solid footing.</p> <p>&#8220;The Fed seems to be gaining confidence,&#8221; said Brian Coulton, an economist at Fitch Rating in London.</p> <p>Fed policymakers projected U.S. economic growth of 2.7 percent in 2018, an increase from the 2.5 percent forecast in December, and also marked up growth for next year. The Fed&#8217;s preferred measure of inflation was expected to end 2018 at 1.9 percent, unchanged from the previous forecast, but it is seen rising a bit above the target next year.</p> <p>The U.S. unemployment rate by the end of 2018 is expected to edge down to 3.8 percent, indicating the Fed sees more room for the labor market to run. Fed officials predicted the longer-run rate would settle at 4.5 percent, slightly lower than the forecast from December.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-usa-fed-powell/powell-sets-record-for-shortest-quarterly-news-conference-by-fed-chair-idUSKBN1GX38N" type="external">Powell sets record for shortest quarterly news conference by Fed chair</a> <a href="/article/us-usa-fed-taxation/as-trump-stimulus-fades-fed-sees-tight-monetary-policy-on-the-horizon-idUSKBN1GX36H" type="external">As Trump stimulus fades, Fed sees tight monetary policy on the horizon</a> <a href="/article/us-usa-fed-fomc-text/fomc-statement-from-march-20-21-meeting-idUSKBN1GX2OJ" type="external">FOMC statement from March 20-21 meeting</a> <p>U.S. joblessness stood at 4.1 percent last month.</p> <p>While recent home sales and retail spending data have been on the weak side, the overall economic picture has brightened after growth accelerated to 2.3 percent last year.</p> <p>Before the meeting, analysts were split over whether the Fed, which is wary of an early misstep under its new leadership, would raise policy tightening expectations until more price pressures are clearly evident. There are also looming outside risks to the economy such as a possible global trade war.</p> <p>&#8220;This is a new risk (that) had been probably a low-profile risk, but which has become ... a more prominent risk to the outlook,&#8221; Powell said, adding, however, that the trade tensions had not affected the Fed&#8217;s expectations for the economy.</p> <p>Reporting by Jonathan Spicer and Jason Lange in Washington; Additional reporting by Daniel Bases in New York and Ann Saphir in San Francisco; Editing by Paul Simao</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Emirates NBD issues $285 million Formosa bond Drillers give tepid response to record U.S. offshore lease sale Bayer wins EU approval for $62.5 billion Monsanto buy Meredith to cut about 1,200 jobs, sell some Time publications Fed lifts rates, signals tougher stance as economy strengthens

https://reuters.com/article/emirates-nbd-bond/emirates-nbd-issues-285-million-formosa-bond-idUSL8N1PJ1BE

2018-01-24

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DUBAI Jan 24 Reuters Emirates NBD Dubai8217s largest bank has priced on Tuesday a 285 million Formosa bond sources familiar with the matter said Formosa bonds which are notes sold in Taiwan by foreign issuers in currencies other than Taiwanese dollars have been increasingly popular for Gulf banks over the past few weeks because of the low cost of issuance they guarantee for fiveyear maturities Prior to Emirates NBD8217s transaction major lenders such as First Abu Dhabi Bank Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank and Qatar National Bank have issued 610 million 540 million and 720 million in Formosa bonds this year Emirates NBD8217s bond was led by Cathay United Bank Credit Agricole and Standard Chartered It has a 30year tenor and is callable 8211 or redeemable by the issuer 8211 every five years Emirates NBD majority owned by Dubai8217s Investment Corporation reported a 17 percent rise in fourthquarter net profit last week boosted by loan growth interest rate rises and higher sales Reporting by Davide Barbuscia editing by Louise Heavens Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters Oil and gas drillers bid on only a tiny fraction of Gulf of Mexico acreage offered on Wednesday in the largest lease sale in American history a setback to the Trump administration8217s efforts to rapidly pump up investment in the region FILE PHOTO A general view of the Centenario deepwater oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Veracruz Mexico January 17 2014 Picture taken January 17 2014 REUTERSHenry RomeroFile Photo The Interior Department had offered up a record 77 million acres 312 million hectares for development in the Gulf an area twice the size of Florida with discounted royalty rates on the shallower tracts as part of a broader effort by President Donald Trump to ramp up fossil fuels output But companies facing multibillion dollar price tags to develop the acreage and tempted by better terms overseas bid on just 1 percent of the area up for grabs winning with bids that averaged just 153 an acre 35 percent below levels last year and a fraction of those in the region in 2013 when oil prices were higher according to the data In all the auction yielded 12476 million in winning bids slightly more than a smaller Gulf of Mexico auction last year but a tenth of the amount pulled in during a much smaller lease sale in the Central Gulf in 2013 The Interior Department8217s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management which administered the auction characterized the results as robust 8220I think we8217re seeing continued consistent investment in the Gulf of Mexico8221 BOEM spokesman Mike Celata said in a conference call with reporters adding he forecast increasing oil and gas production from the region for years He said 33 companies including majors Royal Dutch Shell Plc BP Plc Chevron Corp and Total SA had placed 159 bids on 148 blocks But critics of the administration called the unusually large lease sale illtimed US crude oil and natural gas output is already smashing records thanks to improved drilling technology that has opened up cheaper onshore reservoirs and Brazil and Mexico are also competing for drilling investment in their own deepwater acreage often with better terms 8220Offering a nearly unrestricted supply in a low demand market with a cut rate royalty and almost no competition is bad policy and an inexcusable waste of taxpayer resources8221 the Center for American Progress a leftleaning policy think tank said in a statement William Turner senior research analyst at Wood Mackenzie said the sales statistics were 8220on par with the alltime lows that we saw last year8221 referring to a lease sale in 2017 that had yielded 121 million in winning bids Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke had said ahead of the sale that the recordsized offering would be a 8220bellwether8221 of industry demand in the region and billed the effort as a way to help the United States become more 8220energy dominant8221 After the sale Interior Assistant Secretary Joe Balash said 8220Today8217s lease sale is yet another step our nation has taken to achieve economic security and energy dominance8221 8220ALLTIME LOWS8221 The US government offers Gulf of Mexico leases annually but usually in smaller regional batches An auction in March 2017 for example offered up 48 million acres in the Central Gulf of Mexico planning region FILE PHOTO Unused oil rigs sit in the Gulf of Mexico near Port Fourchon Louisiana August 11 2010 REUTERSLee CelanoFile Photo Consultancy Wood Mackenzie had expected demand for the acreage to get a boost from higher oil prices compared with a year ago and lower corporate taxes But it pointed out interest would be tempered by competition from Latin America and concerns over the impact that US tariffs on steel imports could have on costs The National Ocean Industries Association which represents offshore drillers also sounded a note of caution 8220The United States must continue to evaluate how to keep the Gulf of Mexico and other parts of the US outer continental shelf attractive in light of competition from Brazil and Mexico8221 it said in an emailed statement Drillers have been trying to trim their Gulf of Mexico drilling costs in recent years to make certain projects there more competitive BP for example has said its Mad Dog 2 platform will be economic with crude at just 40 a barrel Current oil prices are over 65 a barrel BP which bid over 20 million on 27 parcels on Wednesday structured its bids around its existing production platforms and areas it has already identified as being 8220highly prospective8221 spokesman Jason Ryan said in a statement Still many new projects in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico come with multibillion dollar price tags and require major investment up front making them a tough sell Some US oil companies like Exxon Mobil Corp are focusing on new deepwater projects outside of the United States where royalties and tax structures can be more favorable 8220In terms of Exxon they have plenty of things to do in Guyana so why bother getting too active in this round in Gulf of Mexico8221 said Lysle Brinker a research director at IHS Markit noting Exxon8217s absence from the bidding In an effort to pump up interest the Interior Department had cut the royalty rate companies must pay in shallow offshore waters by a third to 125 percent and is considering cutting the rate for deeper waters too The BOEM8217s Celata pointed out that shallowwater tracts received 43 bids on Wednesday an increase from past lease sales that he attributed to the lower royalty rates The administration is eyeing further vast lease sales offshore in the future having proposed opening up parts of the Arctic Atlantic and Pacific an idea that has faced pushback from several governors in US coastal states Democratic lawmakers have also warned the Interior Department not to extend the lower royalty rates to deepwater acreage saying the move would shortchange taxpayers Additional reporting by Jessica ResnickAult in New York Valerie Volcovici in Washington and Gary McWilliams in Houston Writing by Richard Valdmanis Editing by Marguerita Choy and Paul Simao Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BRUSSELS Reuters German conglomerate Bayer won EU antitrust approval on Wednesday for its 625 billion buy of US peer Monsanto the latest in a trio of mega mergers that will reshape the agrochemicals industry The tieup is set to create a company with control of more than a quarter of the world8217s seed and pesticides market Driven by shifting weather patterns competition in grain exports and a faltering global farm economy Dow and Dupont and ChemChina and Syngenta had earlier led a wave of consolidation in the sector Both deals secured EU approval only after the companies offered substantial asset sales to boost rivals Environmental and farming groups have opposed all three deals worried about their power and their advantage in digital farming data which can tell farmers how and when to till sow spray fertilize and pick crops based on algorithms The European Commission said Bayer addressed its concerns with its offer to sell a swathe of assets to boost rival BASF confirming a Reuters story on Feb 28 8220Our decision ensures that there will be effective competition and innovation in seeds pesticides and digital agriculture markets also after this merger8221 European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said in a statement 8220In particular we have made sure that the number of global players actively competing in these markets stays the same8221 Vestager said the Commission which received more than a million petitions concerning the deal had been thorough by examining more than 2000 different product markets and 27 million internal documents to produce a 1285page ruling The US Justice Department which is also reviewing the merger said in a statement on its website that it would press on with its review and that the market in the two regions was quite different European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager holds a news conference at the EU Commissions headquarters in Brussels Belgium March 21 2018 REUTERSFrancois Lenoir 8220While genetically modified seeds are largely prohibited in Europe they are widely used throughout the United States8221 the department noted 8220The Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice continues to examine the effects of the proposed transaction on American farmers and consumers8221 China has given conditional approval to the Bayer and Monsanto deal which has won a green light in Brazil It is currently being reviewed by Russian antitrust authorities too Australia said on Thursday it would not oppose the deal following the divestment commitment Slideshow 3 Images Bayer has already reached a deal to sell certain seed and herbicide assets for 59 billion euros 72 billion to BASF and to give it a license to its global digital farming data It will also divest its vegetable seeds business to BASF The Commission is due to rule on the BASF deal by April 16 Online campaigns group Avaaz criticized the EU approval Related Coverage US says it is still reviewing Bayers planned Monsanto acquisition 8220This is a marriage made in hell The Commission ignored a million people who called on them to block this deal and caved in to lobbying to create a megacorporation which will dominate our food supply8221 Avaaz legal director Nick Flynn said USincorporated Avaaz funded by its members is active in climate change poverty conflict and corruption issues The Greens grouping in the European Parliament echoed the sentiment saying smaller players in the agriculture industry needed to be helped too 8220The agriculture industry is already far too concentrated giving a handful of massive firms a stranglehold on food production Merging two of the biggest players only makes a bad situation worse8221 Greens spokesman Bart Staes said Reporting by Foo Yun Chee with additional reporting by Diane Bartz in Washington editing by Robin Emmott David Evans and Cynthia Osterman Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters US media company Meredith Corp MDPN said on Wednesday it cut about 200 jobs and would lay off another 1000 as it streamlines its operations following the completion of its Time Inc acquisition A stack of new issues of Time magazine is seen in a photo illustration taken at a book store in Toronto Ontario Canada March 21 2018 REUTERSChris Helgren Meredith also said it had decided to explore a sale of Time Sports Illustrated Fortune and Money magazines after a review The move to sell the brands illustrates how Meredith sees some of Time8217s titles that attract primarily a male readership as not playing to its core strength in women8217s magazines Meredith which owns lifestyle magazines such as Better Homes ampamp Gardens and Family Circle agreed to buy Time Inc in a 184 billion allcash deal backed by conservative billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch Reuters reported last week about the company8217s plan to sell the Time Inc brands 8220There are guys who would like to own these marquee brands and are probably gonna pay more than what Meredith paid to acquire them8221 said Daniel Kurnos an analyst with Benchmark Co The company last month said it would sell Time Inc8217s UK arm to private equity firm Epiris Fund II Meredith Corp 538 MDPN New York Stock Exchange 000 000 MDPN GOOGLO FBO The media company said the job cuts were part of a plan to achieve annual savings in the 400 million to 500 million range from the Time Inc acquisition which closed in January The company has notified about 200 employees while the around 1000 more positions will be eliminated over the next 10 months Meredith needs to be more aggressive to reach its costcut targets and will likely have to lay off a lot more said Craig Huber an analyst with Huber Research Partners With its roots in traditional publishing Meredith has been facing a fierce competitive online race against internet giants such as Alphabet Inc8217s GOOGLO Google and Facebook Inc FBO for consumer eyeballs and advertising dollars Reporting by Laharee Chatterjee and Supantha Mukherjee in Bengaluru Editing by Shounak Dasgupta and Sriraj Kalluvila Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters The US Federal Reserve raised interest rates on Wednesday and forecast at least two more hikes for 2018 highlighting its growing confidence that tax cuts and government spending will boost the economy and inflation and spur more aggressive future tightening In its first policy meeting under new Fed chief Jerome Powell the US central bank indicated that inflation should finally move higher after years below its 2 percent target and that the economy had recently gained momentum The Fed also raised the estimated longerterm 8220neutral8221 rate the level at which monetary policy neither boosts nor slows the economy a touch in a sign the current gradual rate hike cycle could go on longer than previously thought 8220The economic outlook has strengthened in recent months8221 the Fed said in a statement at the end of a twoday meeting in which it lifted its benchmark overnight lending rate by a quarter of a percentage point to a range of 150 percent to 175 percent Powell who took over from former Fed chief Janet Yellen in early February said the central bank was staying on a path of gradual rate increases but needed to be on guard against inflation 8220We are trying to take the middle ground here8221 Powell said in a press conference after the end of the policy meeting adding that there were no signs the economy was on the cusp of accelerating inflation The rate hike was widely expected All 104 economists polled by Reuters from March 513 said the Fed would increase borrowing costs this week US stocks rose after the policy statement before paring gains to close lower US Treasury yields fell and then recovered The dollar DXY recorded its steepest oneday loss in nearly two months against a basket of currencies 8220The guidance in terms of the future rate hikes is a touch more hawkish than originally expected 2019 looks like we8217re going to get a faster pace of rate hikes8221 said Matt Miskin market strategist at John Hancock Investments 8220This a new Fed chairman starting with a bit of a hawkish tone as he takes leadership8221 Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell speaks at a news conference following the Federal Open Market Committee meetings in Washington US March 21 2018 REUTERSAaron P Bernstein CONFIDENCE IN THE ECONOMY The rate hike was the latest step away from years of stimulating the world8217s largest economy in the wake of the 20072009 financial crisis and recession The Fed tightened policy three times last year The combination of 18 trillion in expected fiscal stimulus from the Trump administration and recent hints of price and wage pressures had prompted some Fed officials to speculate more Americans could be drawn into an already tight labor market Some even worried inflation could rise well above the Fed8217s target if the economy got too hot Slideshow 6 Images Policymakers were largely split on Wednesday as to whether a total of three or four rate hikes would be needed this year They predicted rates would rise three times next year and two times in 2020 a further indication of their view that the economy is on solid footing 8220The Fed seems to be gaining confidence8221 said Brian Coulton an economist at Fitch Rating in London Fed policymakers projected US economic growth of 27 percent in 2018 an increase from the 25 percent forecast in December and also marked up growth for next year The Fed8217s preferred measure of inflation was expected to end 2018 at 19 percent unchanged from the previous forecast but it is seen rising a bit above the target next year The US unemployment rate by the end of 2018 is expected to edge down to 38 percent indicating the Fed sees more room for the labor market to run Fed officials predicted the longerrun rate would settle at 45 percent slightly lower than the forecast from December Related Coverage Powell sets record for shortest quarterly news conference by Fed chair As Trump stimulus fades Fed sees tight monetary policy on the horizon FOMC statement from March 2021 meeting US joblessness stood at 41 percent last month While recent home sales and retail spending data have been on the weak side the overall economic picture has brightened after growth accelerated to 23 percent last year Before the meeting analysts were split over whether the Fed which is wary of an early misstep under its new leadership would raise policy tightening expectations until more price pressures are clearly evident There are also looming outside risks to the economy such as a possible global trade war 8220This is a new risk that had been probably a lowprofile risk but which has become a more prominent risk to the outlook8221 Powell said adding however that the trade tensions had not affected the Fed8217s expectations for the economy Reporting by Jonathan Spicer and Jason Lange in Washington Additional reporting by Daniel Bases in New York and Ann Saphir in San Francisco Editing by Paul Simao Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>Jan 23(Reuters) - Shenzhen Fine Made Electronics Group Co Ltd</p> <p>* Sees 2017 net profit to increase by 40 percent to 50 percent, or to be 53.8 million yuan to 57.7 million yuan</p> <p>* Says 2016 net profit was 38.5 million yuan</p> <p>* Says that increased income of main business and gross margin as main reasons for the forecast</p> <p>Source text in Chinese: <a href="https://goo.gl/e2JR55" type="external">goo.gl/e2JR55</a></p> <p>Further company coverage: (Beijing Headline News)</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BEIJING/SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has pledged to denuclearize and meet U.S. officials, China said on Wednesday after an historic meeting with President Xi Jinping, who promised China would uphold its friendship with its isolated neighbor.</p> North Korean leader Kim Jong Un shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping, in this still image taken from video released on March 28, 2018. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visited China from Sunday to Wednesday on an unofficial visit, China's state news agency Xinhua reported on Wednesday. CCTV via Reuters TV <p>After two days of speculation, China and North Korea both confirmed that Kim had visited Beijing and met Xi during what China&#8217;s Foreign Ministry called an unofficial visit to China from Sunday to Wednesday.</p> <p>The China visit was Kim&#8217;s first known trip outside North Korea since he assumed power in 2011 and is believed by analysts to serve as preparation for upcoming summits with South Korea and the United States.</p> <p>North Korea&#8217;s KCNA news agency made no mention of Kim&#8217;s pledge to denuclearize, or his anticipated meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump that is planned for some time in May.</p> <p>Beijing has traditionally been the closest ally of secretive North Korea, but ties have been frayed by North Korea&#8217;s pursuit of nuclear weapons and China&#8217;s backing of tough U.N. sanctions in response.</p> <p>China&#8217;s Foreign Ministry cited Kim in a lengthy statement as telling Xi that the situation on the Korean peninsula is starting to improve because North Korea has taken the initiative to ease tensions and put forward proposals for peace talks.</p> <p>&#8220;It is our consistent stand to be committed to denuclearization on the peninsula, in accordance with the will of late President Kim Il Sung and late General Secretary Kim Jong Il,&#8221; Kim Jong Un said, according to the statement.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-northkorea-missiles-china-usa/china-briefs-trump-on-kim-jong-uns-visit-white-house-idUSKBN1H404V" type="external">China briefs Trump on Kim Jong Un's visit: White House</a> <a href="/article/us-northkorea-missiles-china-southkorea/chinese-official-to-brief-south-korea-officials-on-north-korea-china-summit-blue-house-idUSKBN1H407B" type="external">Chinese official to brief South Korea officials on North Korea-China summit: Blue House</a> <p>North Korea is willing to talk with the United States and hold a summit between the two countries, he said.</p> <p>&#8220;The issue of denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula can be resolved, if South Korea and the United States respond to our efforts with goodwill, create an atmosphere of peace and stability while taking progressive and synchronous measures for the realization of peace,&#8221; Kim said.</p> <p>Kim Jong Un&#8217;s predecessors, grandfather Kim Il Sung and father Kim Jong Il, both publicly promised not to pursue nuclear weapons but secretly continued to develop the programs, culminating in the North&#8217;s first nuclear test in 2006 under Kim Jong Il.</p> <p>The North had said in past failed talks aimed at dismantling its nuclear program that it could consider giving up its arsenal if the United States removed its troops from South Korea and withdrew its so-called nuclear umbrella of deterrence from South Korea and Japan.</p> <p>Many analysts and former negotiators believe this still constitutes North Korea&#8217;s stance on denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and remain deeply skeptical Kim is willing to give up the nuclear weapons his family has been developing for decades.</p> TRUMP BRIEFED <p>Though billed as an unofficial trip, Kim&#8217;s appearance in Beijing contained almost all the trappings of a state visit, complete with an honor guard and banquet at Beijing&#8217;s Great Hall of the People.</p> North Korean leader Kim Jong Un meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping (unseen), in this still image taken from video released on March 28, 2018. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visited China from Sunday to Wednesday on an unofficial visit, China's state news agency Xinhua reported on Wednesday. CCTV via Reuters TV <p>Kim and Xi also met at the Diaoyutai State Guest House, where Kim Il Sung planted a tree in 1959 that still stands.</p> <p>State television showed pictures of the two men chatting amiably and Kim&#8217;s wife, Ri Sol Ju, getting an equally warm welcome from Xi&#8217;s wife, Peng Liyuan.</p> <p>China briefed Trump on Kim&#8217;s visit and the communication included a personal message from Xi to Trump, the White House said in a statement.</p> <p>&#8220;The United States remains in close contact with our allies South Korea and Japan. We see this development as further evidence that our campaign of maximum pressure is creating the appropriate atmosphere for dialogue with North Korea,&#8221; the statement said.</p> Slideshow (10 Images) <p>A top Chinese diplomat, Politburo member Yang Jiechi, will brief officials in Seoul on Thursday, including President Moon Jae-in, on Xi&#8217;s meeting with Kim, according to the presidential office in Seoul.</p> <p>Kim told a banquet hosted by Xi the visit was intended to &#8220;maintain our great friendship and continue and develop our bilateral ties at a time of rapid developments on the Korean peninsula&#8221;, according to KCNA.</p> <p>Xi had accepted an invitation &#8220;with pleasure&#8221; from Kim to visit North Korea, KCNA said.</p> <p>However, China&#8217;s statement made no mention of Xi accepting an invitation, saying only that Xi pledged to keep frequent contacts with Kim through the exchange of visits and sending special envoys and letters to each other.</p> <p>China had largely sat on the sidelines as Pyongyang improved its relations with Seoul, prompting worry in Beijing that it was no longer a central player in the North Korean issue, reinforced by Trump&#8217;s subsequent announcement of his proposed meeting with Kim in May.</p> Related Video <p>&#8220;China is North Korea&#8217;s lifeline, so the notion, from a Chinese perspective, that Kim Jong Un couldn&#8217;t have these other two meetings before meeting with Xi Jinping, I think the Chinese just thought that is not going to happen,&#8221; said Paul Haenle, director of the Carnegie&#8211;Tsinghua Center in Beijing and the former White House representative to North Korea denuclearization talks from 2007-2009.</p> <p>Speculation about a possible visit by Kim to Beijing was rife earlier this week after a train similar to the one used by Kim&#8217;s father was seen in the Chinese capital, along with heavy security and a large motorcade.</p> <p>Improving ties between North Korea and China would be a positive sign before planned summits involving the two Koreas and the United States, a senior South Korean official said on Tuesday.</p> <p>Kim Jong Il met then-president Jiang Zemin in China in 2000 before a summit between the two Koreas in June that year. That visit was seen at the time as reaffirmation of close ties with Beijing.</p> <p>The secrecy around the visit was not unusual. The later visits of Kim Jong Il to China were only announced by both countries once he had left the country.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Christine Kim and Soyoung Kim in SEOUL, David Stanway and John Ruwitch in SHANGHAI and Ayesha Rascoe in WASHINGTON, Writing by Lincoln Feast; Editing by Paul Tait</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - A little-known former prosecutor with a doctorate in medieval history will play a&amp;#160;central role on U.S. President Donald Trump&#8217;s legal team, as many top-tier lawyers shy away from representing him in a probe into Russia&#8217;s meddling in the 2016 election.</p> U.S. President Donald Trump waves as he walks on South Lawn of the White House in Washington, U.S., before his departure for the weekend in Palm Beach, Florida, March 23, 2018. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas <p>Andrew Ekonomou, 69, is one of a handful of lawyers assisting Jay Sekulow, the main attorney representing Trump in Special Counsel Robert Mueller&#8217;s investigation.</p> <p>Sekulow told Reuters on Tuesday that after the departure of Washington attorney John Dowd from Trump&#8217;s personal legal team last week, Ekonomou will assume a more prominent role.</p> <p>Ekonomou said he has been working with Sekulow on the Mueller probe since June.</p> <p>The elevation comes at a crucial time in the Mueller probe, as Trump&#8217;s team is negotiating the terms under which the president himself may be interviewed. Sekulow is now the last man standing of a trio of personal lawyers hired last spring to assist Trump on the probe. Combative New York lawyer Marc Kasowitz exited the team last summer.</p> <p>Sekulow said Ekonomou, who works under contract as an assistant district attorney in Brunswick, Georgia, was a &#8220;brilliant strategist&#8221; who has handled complex investigations for decades. Ekonomou assisted Sekulow in a famous case involving the religious group Jews for Jesus before the Supreme Court in the 1980s.</p> <p>While Ekonomou has also worked on criminal matters, he has not handled cases as high-profile and complex as the Mueller probe.</p> <p>In an interview, Ekonomou&amp;#160;told Reuters that he &#8220;prosecutes a lot of murders for the D.A.&#8221;</p> <p>When asked about his biggest cases of late, Ekonomou said, &#8220;That&#8217;s basically it. Nothing earthshaking.&#8221;</p> <p>Ekonomou said he is up to the task of defending Trump, saying he has practiced law for more than four decades.</p> <p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve been tested plenty of times,&#8221; Ekonomou said. &#8220;Just because you&#8217;re not a Beltway lawyer doesn&#8217;t mean you don&#8217;t know what you&#8217;re doing.&#8221;</p> <p>Mueller is investigating Russian attempts to influence the 2016 U.S. election, and possible collusion by Trump aides. Russia has denied U.S. intelligence agencies&#8217; conclusion that it meddled in the election, and Trump has said there was no collusion between his campaign and Moscow officials.</p> <p>Trump has tried to tap top-tier lawyers to represent him but been repeatedly rebuffed, according to people familiar with the matter. For example, on Monday, Dan Webb, a former U.S. attorney in Illinois, said Trump had reached out to him and a Washington colleague, but business conflicts prevented them from representing the president.</p> <p>Savannah Law School professor Andrew Wright, former associate counsel in the Obama White House, said it is unusual for a president to turn to lawyers like Ekonomou who are untested on the national scene and not part of the elite white-collar bar.</p> <p>&#8220;He&#8217;s well past the A-team grab space,&#8221; Wright said.</p> <p>Ekonomou said that since he began working with Sekulow, he has attended meetings with Mueller&#8217;s team. He said he brings more criminal experience to the table than Sekulow.</p> <p>Ekonomou is a member of The Lambros Firm LLC, a boutique firm in Atlanta, which mostly handles civil and criminal racketeering cases for D.A.s around the state.</p> <p>In the late 1970s and early &#8216;80s, Ekonomou spent several years in the U.S. Attorney&#8217;s office in Atlanta, where he was chief of the office&#8217;s criminal division and briefly served as acting U.S. attorney in 1982.</p> <p>Since the Jews for Jesus case in the &#8216;80s with Sekulow, Ekonomou has done some work for the American Center for Law and Justice, a non-profit which advocates for religious and constitutional freedoms and is known for supporting Christian causes. Sekulow is the center&#8217;s chief counsel.</p> <p>Following what he called a &#8220;mid-life crisis,&#8221; Ekonomou said he went back to school and got his doctorate in medieval history at Emory University in 2000. Ekonomou said he is the author of a book on Byzantine Rome and the Greek popes.</p> <p>Drew Ashby, a trial lawyer who worked for Ekonomou between 2007 and 2010, said Ekonomou has a commanding presence that would likely serve him well when dealing with Trump.</p> <p>&#8220;He is a force of nature,&#8221; Ashby said. &#8220;Andy has the kind of presence and the kind of mind that I would think would make Donald Trump listen.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Karen Freifeld; Additional reporting by Jan Wolfe and Nathan Layne; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Leslie Adler</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - A fatal crash and vehicle fire of a Tesla Inc Model X near Mountain View, California, last week has prompted a federal field investigation, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said on Tuesday, sparking a big selloff in Tesla stock.</p> FILE PHOTO - The logo of Tesla is seen in Taipei, Taiwan on August 11, 2017. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu/File Photo <p>Tesla tumbled 8.2 percent, or $25 a share, to close at $279.18, the lowest close in almost a year, after news of the investigation.</p> <p>Late on Tuesday, Moody&#8217;s Investors Service downgraded Tesla&#8217;s credit rating to B3 from B2. Moody&#8217;s said the ratings &#8220;reflect the significant shortfall in the production rate of the company&#8217;s Model 3 electric vehicle.&#8221; It also &#8220;faces liquidity pressures due to its large negative free cash flow and the pending maturities of convertible bonds.&#8221;</p> <p>Tesla shares fell another 2.6 percent in after-hours trading.</p> <p>Tesla has $230 million in convertible bonds maturing in November 2018 and $920 million in March 2019.</p> <p>Moody&#8217;s said its negative outlook for Tesla &#8220;reflects the likelihood that Tesla will have to undertake a large, near-term capital raise in order to refund maturing obligations and avoid a liquidity shortfall.&#8221;</p> <p>Moody&#8217;s said Tesla is targeting weekly production of 2,500 Model 3 vehicles by the end of March, and 5,000 per week by the end of June, down from the company&#8217;s year-earlier production expectations of 5,000 per week by the end of 2017 and 10,000 by the end of 2018. Tesla plans to provide an update on Model 3 production next week.</p> <p>Shares of chipmaker Nvidia Corp, which supplies Uber Technologies Inc [UBER.UL], Tesla, Volkswagen AG ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=VOWG_p.DE" type="external">VOWG_p.DE</a>) and other automakers, closed down 7.8 percent after it disclosed it suspended self-driving tests across the globe.</p> QUESTIONS ABOUT ACCIDENT <p>In last week&#8217;s accident, it was unclear if Tesla&#8217;s automated control system was driving the car. The accident involved two other cars, the NTSB and police said. Tesla vehicles have a system called Autopilot that handles some driving tasks. The 38-year-old Tesla driver died at a nearby hospital shortly after the crash.</p> <p>Late Tuesday, Tesla said in a blog post it does &#8220;not yet know what happened in the moments leading up to the crash,&#8221; but added data shows that Tesla owners have driven the same stretch of highway with Autopilot engaged &#8220;roughly 85,000 times... and there has never been an accident that we know of.&#8221;</p> <p>The company said it is working with authorities to recover the logs from the computer inside the vehicle to try to gain a better understanding of what happened. The company statement did not address if the crashed vehicle was in Autopilot mode.</p> <p>&#8220;We have been deeply saddened by this accident, and we have offered our full cooperation to the authorities as we work to establish the facts of the incident,&#8221; Tesla said in a statement earlier.</p> <p>Government scrutiny of the Palo Alto, California company is mounting. This is the second NTSB field investigation into a Tesla crash since January.</p> <p>The California Highway Patrol said the electric-powered Tesla Model X crashed into a freeway divider on Friday and then was hit by a Mazda before colliding with an Audi.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=VOWG_p.DE" type="external">Volkswagen AG</a> 158.06 VOWG_p.DE Xetra +3.32 (+2.15%) VOWG_p.DE <p>The Tesla&#8217;s lithium batteries caught fire, and emergency officials consulted company engineers before determining how to extinguish the battery fire and move the vehicle safely. NTSB said the issues being examined include the post-crash fire and removing the vehicle from the scene.</p> <p>The Tesla blog post said Tesla battery packs are designed to ensure that a battery spreads slowly in the rare circumstance it catches fire.</p> <p>In January, the NTSB and U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration sent investigators to California to investigate the crash of a fire truck and a Tesla that apparently was traveling in semi-autonomous mode. The agencies have not disclosed any findings.</p> <p>The NTSB can make safety recommendations but only NHTSA can order automakers to recall unsafe vehicles or fine automakers if they fail to remedy safety defects in a timely fashion. Before the agency can demand a recall, it must open a formal investigation, a step it has not yet taken.</p> <p>Tesla&#8217;s Autopilot allows drivers under certain conditions to take their hands off the wheel for extended periods. Still, Tesla requires users to agree to keep their hands on the wheel &#8220;at all times&#8221; before they can use Autopilot.</p> <p>The NTSB faulted Tesla in a prior fatal Autopilot crash.</p> <p>In September, NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt said operational limitations in the Tesla Model S played a major role in a May 2016 crash in Florida that killed a driver using Autopilot. That crash raised questions about the safety of systems that can perform driving tasks for long stretches but cannot completely replace human drivers.</p> <p>Tesla in September 2016 unveiled improvements to Autopilot, adding new limits on hands-off driving.</p> <p>Reporting by David Shepardson; editing by Lisa Shumaker, David Gregorio and Cynthia Osterman</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>SYDNEY (Reuters) - Russia&#8217;s Ambassador to Australia said on Wednesday the world will enter into a &#8220;Cold War situation&#8221; should the West continue its bias against Moscow in response to the nerve agent attack against a former Soviet spy in Britain.</p> Ambassador of the Russian Federation Grigory Logvinov speaks during a press conference at the Russian Embassy in Canberra, Australia, March 28, 2018. AAP/Lukas Coch/via REUTERS <p>&#8220;The West must understand that the anti-Russian campaign has no future,&#8221; Russian Ambassador Grigory Logvinov told reporters in Canberra. &#8220;If it continues, we will be deeply in a Cold War situation.&#8221;</p> <p>Russia denies any part in the March 4 nerve agent attack on former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in England.</p> Ambassador of the Russian Federation Grigory Logvinov speaks during a press conference at the Russian Embassy in Canberra, Australia, March 28, 2018. AAP/Lukas Coch/via REUTERS <p>The United States and governments across Europe are expelling Russian diplomats en masse in response.</p> <p>Australia said on Tuesday it would expel two Russian diplomats, prompting Logvinov&#8217;s impromptu address to the media on Wednesday morning.</p> <p>Logvinov rejected claims that Moscow was behind the attack and said Russia has yet to decide on its response to the diplomatic action by British allies.</p> <p>&#8220;I said we have no evidence. The British stubbornly denied giving any evidence. They have denied following the provisions and protocol of the Convention on Prohibition of Chemical Weapons,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>Reporting by Colin Packham in SYDNEY; Editing by Michael Perry</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

BRIEF-Shenzhen Fine Made Electronics Group sees 2017 net profit up 40 pct to 50 pct China says North Korea pledges denuclearization during friendly visit Exclusive: Spurned by top lawyers, Trump's defense elevates Washington outsider U.S. opens probe into fatal Tesla crash, fire in California Russian envoy warns world risks 'Cold War' if anti-Moscow bias continues

https://reuters.com/article/brief-shenzhen-fine-made-electronics-gro/brief-shenzhen-fine-made-electronics-group-sees-2017-net-profit-up-40-pct-to-50-pct-idUSL4N1PI1YV

2018-01-23

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Jan 23Reuters Shenzhen Fine Made Electronics Group Co Ltd Sees 2017 net profit to increase by 40 percent to 50 percent or to be 538 million yuan to 577 million yuan Says 2016 net profit was 385 million yuan Says that increased income of main business and gross margin as main reasons for the forecast Source text in Chinese google2JR55 Further company coverage Beijing Headline News Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BEIJINGSEOUL Reuters North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has pledged to denuclearize and meet US officials China said on Wednesday after an historic meeting with President Xi Jinping who promised China would uphold its friendship with its isolated neighbor North Korean leader Kim Jong Un shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping in this still image taken from video released on March 28 2018 North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visited China from Sunday to Wednesday on an unofficial visit Chinas state news agency Xinhua reported on Wednesday CCTV via Reuters TV After two days of speculation China and North Korea both confirmed that Kim had visited Beijing and met Xi during what China8217s Foreign Ministry called an unofficial visit to China from Sunday to Wednesday The China visit was Kim8217s first known trip outside North Korea since he assumed power in 2011 and is believed by analysts to serve as preparation for upcoming summits with South Korea and the United States North Korea8217s KCNA news agency made no mention of Kim8217s pledge to denuclearize or his anticipated meeting with US President Donald Trump that is planned for some time in May Beijing has traditionally been the closest ally of secretive North Korea but ties have been frayed by North Korea8217s pursuit of nuclear weapons and China8217s backing of tough UN sanctions in response China8217s Foreign Ministry cited Kim in a lengthy statement as telling Xi that the situation on the Korean peninsula is starting to improve because North Korea has taken the initiative to ease tensions and put forward proposals for peace talks 8220It is our consistent stand to be committed to denuclearization on the peninsula in accordance with the will of late President Kim Il Sung and late General Secretary Kim Jong Il8221 Kim Jong Un said according to the statement Related Coverage China briefs Trump on Kim Jong Uns visit White House Chinese official to brief South Korea officials on North KoreaChina summit Blue House North Korea is willing to talk with the United States and hold a summit between the two countries he said 8220The issue of denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula can be resolved if South Korea and the United States respond to our efforts with goodwill create an atmosphere of peace and stability while taking progressive and synchronous measures for the realization of peace8221 Kim said Kim Jong Un8217s predecessors grandfather Kim Il Sung and father Kim Jong Il both publicly promised not to pursue nuclear weapons but secretly continued to develop the programs culminating in the North8217s first nuclear test in 2006 under Kim Jong Il The North had said in past failed talks aimed at dismantling its nuclear program that it could consider giving up its arsenal if the United States removed its troops from South Korea and withdrew its socalled nuclear umbrella of deterrence from South Korea and Japan Many analysts and former negotiators believe this still constitutes North Korea8217s stance on denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and remain deeply skeptical Kim is willing to give up the nuclear weapons his family has been developing for decades TRUMP BRIEFED Though billed as an unofficial trip Kim8217s appearance in Beijing contained almost all the trappings of a state visit complete with an honor guard and banquet at Beijing8217s Great Hall of the People North Korean leader Kim Jong Un meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping unseen in this still image taken from video released on March 28 2018 North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visited China from Sunday to Wednesday on an unofficial visit Chinas state news agency Xinhua reported on Wednesday CCTV via Reuters TV Kim and Xi also met at the Diaoyutai State Guest House where Kim Il Sung planted a tree in 1959 that still stands State television showed pictures of the two men chatting amiably and Kim8217s wife Ri Sol Ju getting an equally warm welcome from Xi8217s wife Peng Liyuan China briefed Trump on Kim8217s visit and the communication included a personal message from Xi to Trump the White House said in a statement 8220The United States remains in close contact with our allies South Korea and Japan We see this development as further evidence that our campaign of maximum pressure is creating the appropriate atmosphere for dialogue with North Korea8221 the statement said Slideshow 10 Images A top Chinese diplomat Politburo member Yang Jiechi will brief officials in Seoul on Thursday including President Moon Jaein on Xi8217s meeting with Kim according to the presidential office in Seoul Kim told a banquet hosted by Xi the visit was intended to 8220maintain our great friendship and continue and develop our bilateral ties at a time of rapid developments on the Korean peninsula8221 according to KCNA Xi had accepted an invitation 8220with pleasure8221 from Kim to visit North Korea KCNA said However China8217s statement made no mention of Xi accepting an invitation saying only that Xi pledged to keep frequent contacts with Kim through the exchange of visits and sending special envoys and letters to each other China had largely sat on the sidelines as Pyongyang improved its relations with Seoul prompting worry in Beijing that it was no longer a central player in the North Korean issue reinforced by Trump8217s subsequent announcement of his proposed meeting with Kim in May Related Video 8220China is North Korea8217s lifeline so the notion from a Chinese perspective that Kim Jong Un couldn8217t have these other two meetings before meeting with Xi Jinping I think the Chinese just thought that is not going to happen8221 said Paul Haenle director of the Carnegie8211Tsinghua Center in Beijing and the former White House representative to North Korea denuclearization talks from 20072009 Speculation about a possible visit by Kim to Beijing was rife earlier this week after a train similar to the one used by Kim8217s father was seen in the Chinese capital along with heavy security and a large motorcade Improving ties between North Korea and China would be a positive sign before planned summits involving the two Koreas and the United States a senior South Korean official said on Tuesday Kim Jong Il met thenpresident Jiang Zemin in China in 2000 before a summit between the two Koreas in June that year That visit was seen at the time as reaffirmation of close ties with Beijing The secrecy around the visit was not unusual The later visits of Kim Jong Il to China were only announced by both countries once he had left the country Additional reporting by Christine Kim and Soyoung Kim in SEOUL David Stanway and John Ruwitch in SHANGHAI and Ayesha Rascoe in WASHINGTON Writing by Lincoln Feast Editing by Paul Tait Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters A littleknown former prosecutor with a doctorate in medieval history will play aamp160central role on US President Donald Trump8217s legal team as many toptier lawyers shy away from representing him in a probe into Russia8217s meddling in the 2016 election US President Donald Trump waves as he walks on South Lawn of the White House in Washington US before his departure for the weekend in Palm Beach Florida March 23 2018 REUTERSYuri Gripas Andrew Ekonomou 69 is one of a handful of lawyers assisting Jay Sekulow the main attorney representing Trump in Special Counsel Robert Mueller8217s investigation Sekulow told Reuters on Tuesday that after the departure of Washington attorney John Dowd from Trump8217s personal legal team last week Ekonomou will assume a more prominent role Ekonomou said he has been working with Sekulow on the Mueller probe since June The elevation comes at a crucial time in the Mueller probe as Trump8217s team is negotiating the terms under which the president himself may be interviewed Sekulow is now the last man standing of a trio of personal lawyers hired last spring to assist Trump on the probe Combative New York lawyer Marc Kasowitz exited the team last summer Sekulow said Ekonomou who works under contract as an assistant district attorney in Brunswick Georgia was a 8220brilliant strategist8221 who has handled complex investigations for decades Ekonomou assisted Sekulow in a famous case involving the religious group Jews for Jesus before the Supreme Court in the 1980s While Ekonomou has also worked on criminal matters he has not handled cases as highprofile and complex as the Mueller probe In an interview Ekonomouamp160told Reuters that he 8220prosecutes a lot of murders for the DA8221 When asked about his biggest cases of late Ekonomou said 8220That8217s basically it Nothing earthshaking8221 Ekonomou said he is up to the task of defending Trump saying he has practiced law for more than four decades 8220I8217ve been tested plenty of times8221 Ekonomou said 8220Just because you8217re not a Beltway lawyer doesn8217t mean you don8217t know what you8217re doing8221 Mueller is investigating Russian attempts to influence the 2016 US election and possible collusion by Trump aides Russia has denied US intelligence agencies8217 conclusion that it meddled in the election and Trump has said there was no collusion between his campaign and Moscow officials Trump has tried to tap toptier lawyers to represent him but been repeatedly rebuffed according to people familiar with the matter For example on Monday Dan Webb a former US attorney in Illinois said Trump had reached out to him and a Washington colleague but business conflicts prevented them from representing the president Savannah Law School professor Andrew Wright former associate counsel in the Obama White House said it is unusual for a president to turn to lawyers like Ekonomou who are untested on the national scene and not part of the elite whitecollar bar 8220He8217s well past the Ateam grab space8221 Wright said Ekonomou said that since he began working with Sekulow he has attended meetings with Mueller8217s team He said he brings more criminal experience to the table than Sekulow Ekonomou is a member of The Lambros Firm LLC a boutique firm in Atlanta which mostly handles civil and criminal racketeering cases for DAs around the state In the late 1970s and early 821680s Ekonomou spent several years in the US Attorney8217s office in Atlanta where he was chief of the office8217s criminal division and briefly served as acting US attorney in 1982 Since the Jews for Jesus case in the 821680s with Sekulow Ekonomou has done some work for the American Center for Law and Justice a nonprofit which advocates for religious and constitutional freedoms and is known for supporting Christian causes Sekulow is the center8217s chief counsel Following what he called a 8220midlife crisis8221 Ekonomou said he went back to school and got his doctorate in medieval history at Emory University in 2000 Ekonomou said he is the author of a book on Byzantine Rome and the Greek popes Drew Ashby a trial lawyer who worked for Ekonomou between 2007 and 2010 said Ekonomou has a commanding presence that would likely serve him well when dealing with Trump 8220He is a force of nature8221 Ashby said 8220Andy has the kind of presence and the kind of mind that I would think would make Donald Trump listen8221 Reporting by Karen Freifeld Additional reporting by Jan Wolfe and Nathan Layne Editing by Noeleen Walder and Leslie Adler Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters A fatal crash and vehicle fire of a Tesla Inc Model X near Mountain View California last week has prompted a federal field investigation the US National Transportation Safety Board said on Tuesday sparking a big selloff in Tesla stock FILE PHOTO The logo of Tesla is seen in Taipei Taiwan on August 11 2017 REUTERSTyrone SiuFile Photo Tesla tumbled 82 percent or 25 a share to close at 27918 the lowest close in almost a year after news of the investigation Late on Tuesday Moody8217s Investors Service downgraded Tesla8217s credit rating to B3 from B2 Moody8217s said the ratings 8220reflect the significant shortfall in the production rate of the company8217s Model 3 electric vehicle8221 It also 8220faces liquidity pressures due to its large negative free cash flow and the pending maturities of convertible bonds8221 Tesla shares fell another 26 percent in afterhours trading Tesla has 230 million in convertible bonds maturing in November 2018 and 920 million in March 2019 Moody8217s said its negative outlook for Tesla 8220reflects the likelihood that Tesla will have to undertake a large nearterm capital raise in order to refund maturing obligations and avoid a liquidity shortfall8221 Moody8217s said Tesla is targeting weekly production of 2500 Model 3 vehicles by the end of March and 5000 per week by the end of June down from the company8217s yearearlier production expectations of 5000 per week by the end of 2017 and 10000 by the end of 2018 Tesla plans to provide an update on Model 3 production next week Shares of chipmaker Nvidia Corp which supplies Uber Technologies Inc UBERUL Tesla Volkswagen AG VOWG_pDE and other automakers closed down 78 percent after it disclosed it suspended selfdriving tests across the globe QUESTIONS ABOUT ACCIDENT In last week8217s accident it was unclear if Tesla8217s automated control system was driving the car The accident involved two other cars the NTSB and police said Tesla vehicles have a system called Autopilot that handles some driving tasks The 38yearold Tesla driver died at a nearby hospital shortly after the crash Late Tuesday Tesla said in a blog post it does 8220not yet know what happened in the moments leading up to the crash8221 but added data shows that Tesla owners have driven the same stretch of highway with Autopilot engaged 8220roughly 85000 times and there has never been an accident that we know of8221 The company said it is working with authorities to recover the logs from the computer inside the vehicle to try to gain a better understanding of what happened The company statement did not address if the crashed vehicle was in Autopilot mode 8220We have been deeply saddened by this accident and we have offered our full cooperation to the authorities as we work to establish the facts of the incident8221 Tesla said in a statement earlier Government scrutiny of the Palo Alto California company is mounting This is the second NTSB field investigation into a Tesla crash since January The California Highway Patrol said the electricpowered Tesla Model X crashed into a freeway divider on Friday and then was hit by a Mazda before colliding with an Audi Volkswagen AG 15806 VOWG_pDE Xetra 332 215 VOWG_pDE The Tesla8217s lithium batteries caught fire and emergency officials consulted company engineers before determining how to extinguish the battery fire and move the vehicle safely NTSB said the issues being examined include the postcrash fire and removing the vehicle from the scene The Tesla blog post said Tesla battery packs are designed to ensure that a battery spreads slowly in the rare circumstance it catches fire In January the NTSB and US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration sent investigators to California to investigate the crash of a fire truck and a Tesla that apparently was traveling in semiautonomous mode The agencies have not disclosed any findings The NTSB can make safety recommendations but only NHTSA can order automakers to recall unsafe vehicles or fine automakers if they fail to remedy safety defects in a timely fashion Before the agency can demand a recall it must open a formal investigation a step it has not yet taken Tesla8217s Autopilot allows drivers under certain conditions to take their hands off the wheel for extended periods Still Tesla requires users to agree to keep their hands on the wheel 8220at all times8221 before they can use Autopilot The NTSB faulted Tesla in a prior fatal Autopilot crash In September NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt said operational limitations in the Tesla Model S played a major role in a May 2016 crash in Florida that killed a driver using Autopilot That crash raised questions about the safety of systems that can perform driving tasks for long stretches but cannot completely replace human drivers Tesla in September 2016 unveiled improvements to Autopilot adding new limits on handsoff driving Reporting by David Shepardson editing by Lisa Shumaker David Gregorio and Cynthia Osterman Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles SYDNEY Reuters Russia8217s Ambassador to Australia said on Wednesday the world will enter into a 8220Cold War situation8221 should the West continue its bias against Moscow in response to the nerve agent attack against a former Soviet spy in Britain Ambassador of the Russian Federation Grigory Logvinov speaks during a press conference at the Russian Embassy in Canberra Australia March 28 2018 AAPLukas Cochvia REUTERS 8220The West must understand that the antiRussian campaign has no future8221 Russian Ambassador Grigory Logvinov told reporters in Canberra 8220If it continues we will be deeply in a Cold War situation8221 Russia denies any part in the March 4 nerve agent attack on former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in England Ambassador of the Russian Federation Grigory Logvinov speaks during a press conference at the Russian Embassy in Canberra Australia March 28 2018 AAPLukas Cochvia REUTERS The United States and governments across Europe are expelling Russian diplomats en masse in response Australia said on Tuesday it would expel two Russian diplomats prompting Logvinov8217s impromptu address to the media on Wednesday morning Logvinov rejected claims that Moscow was behind the attack and said Russia has yet to decide on its response to the diplomatic action by British allies 8220I said we have no evidence The British stubbornly denied giving any evidence They have denied following the provisions and protocol of the Convention on Prohibition of Chemical Weapons8221 he said Reporting by Colin Packham in SYDNEY Editing by Michael Perry Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Madison Keys blew French eighth seed Caroline Garcia off the court 6-3 6-2 in a 68-minute display of power tennis to reach the quarter-finals of the Australian Open for the second time on Monday.</p> Tennis - Australian Open - Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne, Australia, January 22, 2018. Madison Keys of the U.S. celebrates winning her match against Caroline Garcia of France. REUTERS/Edgar Su <p>The 22-year-old, the sole surviving American in the women&#8217;s draw, gave up her first service game but rallied impressively to reach the last eight without giving up a set.</p> <p>The 17th seed said her victory had been built on the back of learning when to go for her shots.</p> <p>&#8220;I&#8217;m feeling really good,&#8221; Keys told reporters. &#8220;I feel like I&#8217;m playing just solid, consistent tennis. I don&#8217;t think I played unbelievable. I just played really solid and smart.</p> Tennis - Australian Open - Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne, Australia, January 22, 2018. Caroline Garcia of France in action during her match against Madison Keys of the U.S. REUTERS/Issei Kato <p>&#8220;I wasn&#8217;t going for unbelievable shots and things like that. I just was waiting for the right ball. Then trusting that I was going to make the right decision when I finally had the opportunity to go for it.&#8221;</p> <p>Keys sent down six aces and 20 winners in the opening set on Rod Laver Arena and maintained the onslaught to win the first four games of the second.</p> <p>A losing finalist at the U.S. Open last year and a semi-finalist in Melbourne in 2015, Keys wobbled a bit with the finishing line in sight.</p> <p>Garcia broke back for 4-2 but Keys was charged with confidence and rattled off the last two games, securing victory by getting down low to dig out a sublime crosscourt forehand winner.</p> <p>Keys feels the patience she displayed against Garcia will be even more important in her next match when she faces 2016 champion Angelique Kerber, the mobile German who she has beaten just once in seven meetings.</p> <p>&#8220;She&#8217;s always tough to play,&#8221; Keys said. &#8220;For me, it&#8217;s having to play aggressive but also consistently aggressive, because I know she&#8217;s going to make three more balls than other girls may be able to get to.</p> Slideshow (5 Images) <p>&#8220;So it&#8217;s not feeling rushed and that I have to go for something crazy big on the first one and just really work the point.&#8221;</p> <p>Happy to back in the mix at a grand slam again, Keys said the humiliating 6-3 6-0 loss to compatriot Sloane Stephens in the Flushing Meadows final had taken some time to get over.</p> <p>&#8220;Pretty much the week to 10 days after was really tough,&#8221; she said. &#8220;I mean, my sleep schedule was totally messed up. I was just really tired from all the late, emotional matches that I had.</p> <p>&#8220;And then to have such a great two weeks and then have it end the way that it did, it was really devastating for me, so it definitely took some time to get over.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Nick Mulvenney in Sydney; Editing by John O'Brien</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BEIJING (Reuters) - China has increased tariffs by up to 25 percent on 128 U.S. products, from frozen pork and wine to certain fruits and nuts, escalating a spat between the world&#8217;s biggest economies in response to U.S. duties on imports of aluminum and steel.</p> FILE PHOTO: Several-week-old pigs stand in a pen inside a barn at Paustian Enterprises in Walcott, Iowa, November 19, 2014. REUTERS/Daniel Acker/File Photo <p>The tariffs, to take effect on Monday, were announced late on Sunday by China&#8217;s finance ministry and matched a list of potential tariffs on up to $3 billion in U.S. goods published by China on March 23.</p> <p>Soon after the announcement, an editorial in the widely read Chinese tabloid Global Times warned that if the U.S. had thought China would not retaliate or would only take symbolic counter-measures, it can now &#8220;say goodbye to that delusion.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;Even though China and the U.S. have not publicly said they are in a trade war, the sparks of such a war have already started to fly,&#8221; the editorial said.</p> <p>China&#8217;s Ministry of Commerce said it was suspending its obligations to the World Trade Organization (WTO) to reduce tariffs on 120 U.S. goods, including fruit and ethanol. The tariffs on those products will be raised by an extra 15 percent.</p> <p>Eight other products, including pork and scrap aluminum, will now be subject to additional tariffs of 25 percent, it said, with the measures effective from April 2.</p> FILE PHOTO: A butcher cuts a piece of pork at a market in Beijing, China, March 25, 2016. REUTERS/Jason Lee/File Photo <p>&#8220;China&#8217;s suspension of its tariff concessions is a legitimate action adopted under WTO rules to safeguard China&#8217;s interests,&#8221; the Chinese finance ministry said.</p> <p>China is moving swiftly with retaliatory action amid escalating trade tensions between Beijing and Washington, which have rocked global financial markets in the past week as investors feared a full-blown trade spat between the two countries will be damaging for world growth.</p> <p>U.S. President Donald Trump is separately preparing to impose tariffs of more than $50 billion on Chinese goods intended to punish Beijing over U.S. accusations that China systematically misappropriated American intellectual property - allegations Beijing denies.</p> <p>China has repeatedly promised to open its economy further, but many foreign companies continue to complain of unfair treatment. China warned the United States on Thursday not to open a Pandora&#8217;s Box and spark a flurry of protectionist practices across the globe.</p> <p>&#8220;There are some people in the West who think that China looks tough for the sake of a domestic audience, and would easily make concessions in the end,&#8221; the Global Times editorial said.</p> <p>&#8220;But they are wrong.&#8221;</p> <p>The Global Times is run by the ruling Communist Party&#8217;s official People&#8217;s Daily, although its stance does not necessarily reflect Chinese government policy.</p> <p>Reaction to China&#8217;s measures varied on Chinese social media, with some saying Chinese customers would be the one ultimately paying for the trade war.</p> FILE PHOTO: A labourer works on coils of steel wire at a steel wholesale market in Beijing, China, January 17, 2012. REUTERS/Soo Hoo Zheyang/File Photo <p>&#8220;Why not directly target soybean and planes? The tariffs that China announced today don&#8217;t sound a lot to me,&#8221; said a user on Weibo, a Twitter-like microblog popular in China.</p> <p>Aircraft and soybeans were China&#8217;s biggest U.S. imports by value last year.</p> <p>In a statement published on Monday morning, the Chinese commerce ministry said the United States had &#8220;seriously violated&#8221; the principles of non-discrimination enshrined in World Trade Organization rules, and had also damaged China&#8217;s interests.</p> <p>&#8220;China&#8217;s suspension of some of its obligations to the United States is its legitimate right as a member of the World Trade Organization,&#8221; it said, adding that differences between the world&#8217;s two largest economies should be resolved through dialogue and negotiation.</p> <p>Weibo prominently featured the list of U.S. goods that China is targeting among the day&#8217;s &#8220;hot&#8221; trending topics.</p> <p>&#8220;I will never buy fruit from the U.S.,&#8221; a Weibo user wrote.</p> <p>Reporting by Ben Blanchard and Tony Munroe; Additional reporting by David Stanway in SHANGHAI and Stella Qiu and Lusha Zhang in BEIJING; Additional Writing by Ryan Woo; Editing by Eric Meijer and Shri Navaratnam</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China&#8217;s Tiangong-1 space station re-entered the earth&#8217;s atmosphere and burnt up over the South Pacific on Monday, the Chinese space authority said.</p> <p>The &#8220;vast majority&#8221; of the craft burnt up on re-entry, at around 8:15 a.m. (0015 GMT), the authority said in a brief statement on its website, without saying exactly where any pieces might have landed.</p> <p>Brad Tucker, an astrophysicist at Australian National University, said the remnants of Tiangong-1 appeared to have landed about 100 km (62 miles) northwest of Tahiti.</p> <p>&#8220;Small bits definitely will have made it to the surface,&#8221; he told Reuters, adding that while about 90 percent would have burnt up in the atmosphere and just 10 percent made it to the ground, that fraction still amounted to 700 kg (1,543 lb) to 800 kg (1,764 lb).</p> <p>&#8220;Most likely the debris is in the ocean, and even if people stumbled over it, it would just look like rubbish in the ocean and be spread over a huge area of thousands of square kilometers.&#8221;</p> <p>China said on Friday it was unlikely any large pieces would reach the ground.</p> <p>The United States Air Force 18th Space Control Squadron, which tracks and detects all artificial objects in Earth&#8217;s orbit, said it had also tracked the Tiangong-1 in its re-entry over the South Pacific.</p> <p>It said in a statement it had confirmed re-entry in coordination with counterparts in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea and Britain.</p> <p>The 10.4-metre-long (34.1-foot) Tiangong-1, or &#8220;Heavenly Palace 1&#8221;, was launched in 2011 to carry out docking and orbit experiments as part of China&#8217;s ambitious space program, which aims to place a permanent station in orbit by 2023.Decommissioning was originally planned for 2013 but the mission was repeatedly extended.</p> <p>Asked about the space station, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a regular briefing he had no other information and reiterated that China had been reporting the situation to the U.N. space agency in an open and transparent way.</p> <p>&#8220;According to what I understand, at present there has not been found any damage on the ground,&#8221; he said, without elaborating.</p> <p>China had earlier said re-entry would happen in late 2017, but that process was delayed, leading some experts to suggest the space laboratory was out of control.</p> <p>Worldwide media hype about the re-entry reflected overseas &#8220;envy&#8221; of China&#8217;s space industry, the Chinese tabloid Global Times said on Monday.</p> FILE PHOTO: A model of the Tiangong-1 space lab module (L), the Shenzhou-9 manned spacecraft (R) and three Chinese astronauts is displayed during a news conference at Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, in Gansu province, China June 15, 2012. REUTERS/Jason Lee/File Photo <p>&#8220;It&#8217;s normal for spacecraft to re-enter the atmosphere, yet Tiangong-1 received so much attention, partly because some Western countries are trying to hype and sling mud at China&#8217;s fast-growing aerospace industry,&#8221; it said.</p> <p>Reporting by David Stanway and Wang Jing; Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in BEIJING and Alison Bevege in SYDNEY; Editing by Paul Tait and Clarence Fernandez</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON/IXTEPEC, Mexico (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Sunday that there will be no deal to legalize the status of young adult immigrants called Dreamers and he said the U.S.-Mexico border is becoming more dangerous.</p> <p>After tweeting a &#8220;Happy Easter&#8221; message on Twitter, he said: &#8220;Border Patrol Agents are not allowed to properly do their job at the Border because of ridiculous liberal (Democrat) laws like Catch &amp;amp; Release. Getting more dangerous.</p> <p>&#8220;&#8216;Caravans&#8217; coming. Republicans must go to Nuclear Option to pass tough laws NOW. NO MORE DACA DEAL!&#8221; he wrote, adding a threat to kill the North American Free Trade Agreement which is being renegotiated with Mexico and Canada.</p> <p>DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, is a program created in 2012 under Democratic former President Barack Obama that Trump sought to rescind last autumn.</p> <p>Designed for people brought to the United States as children by parents who were undocumented immigrants, the program shielded them from deportation and gave them work permits.</p> <p>Trump had said he was open to a deal with congressional Democrats who want to protect DACA in exchange for funding to build a U.S.-Mexico border wall, a campaign trail promise.</p> <p>He insisted during his 2016 White House run that Mexico would pay for the wall, something the Mexican government has repeatedly rejected.</p> <p>Mexico&#8217;s presidential front-runner, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, launched his campaign close to the border on Sunday demanding respect for Mexicans and signaling he may take a harder line toward Trump if he wins the July 1 election.</p> <p>&#8220;Mexico and its people will not be the pi&#241;ata of any foreign government,&#8221; Lopez Obrador said in a speech in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, which borders El Paso, Texas. &#8220;It&#8217;s not with walls or use of force that you resolve social problems.&#8221;</p> <p>Whether Trump will stick to his guns on DACA is unclear. Trump last month threatened to veto a spending bill because it did not address the fate of Dreamers and did not fully fund his border wall but he ultimately signed the bill.</p> <p>In the months after Trump took office, apprehensions of illegal crossers along the U.S.- Mexico border dropped from more than 42,400 arrests in January 2017 to a low of around 15,700 in April, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data. Since then, the number of arrests has risen and in the first months of 2018 was above Obama administration levels.</p> <p>&#8220;Mexico has got to help us at the border,&#8221; the president, who is spending Easter at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, told reporters on his way into an Easter church service. &#8220;A lot of people are coming in because they want to take advantage of DACA. They had a great chance. The Democrats blew it.&#8221;</p> MIGRANT CARAVAN <p>Trump&#8217;s DACA tweets came after a report on the Fox New Channel&#8217;s Fox &amp;amp; Friends program, one of his favorites, that a &#8220;caravan&#8221; of mostly Honduran migrants was crossing Mexico and headed to the United States, &#8220;either illegally or by asking for asylum.&#8221;</p> <p>More than 1,000 would-be migrants have passed through Mexico&#8217;s southern states of Chiapas and Oaxaca in recent days in a so-called &#8220;refugee caravan&#8221; organized by U.S.-based immigrant advocacy group Pueblo Sin Fronteras.</p> <p>In the town of Ixtepec, more than 1,500 men, women and children from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala waited in a sweltering warehouse on Saturday, mattresses rolled and bags packed, as local authorities and immigration officials from Mexico&#8217;s federal government organized 15 buses to take them to their next stop on the long journey north.</p> <p>By traveling together, the immigrants hope to protect themselves from the crime and extortion that makes the route through Mexico dangerous. They say some but not all of them will seek asylum if they reach the United States.</p> <p>Gina Garibo, a member of Pueblo Sin Fronteras traveling with the migrants, said the group would hold a meeting to discuss Trump&#8217;s statements on Sunday and stressed that the caravan&#8217;s aim was to protect vulnerable people.</p> <p>&#8220;The main people here are fleeing criminal violence, political violence, in their country and this allows us to save lives,&#8221; she said in response to Trump&#8217;s comments.</p> <p>A guest on Sunday&#8217;s Fox &amp;amp; Friends show, Brandon Judd, head of the National Border Patrol Council union, said illegal immigrants benefit from the &#8220;catch and release&#8221; program that Trump referenced in his tweet. Under it, they can be freed while awaiting court hearings if detained in the United States.</p> <p>If recent border crossers do not claim asylum, they can usually be deported quickly. But if they say they fear targeted violence or persecution in their home countries, they can begin the long process of petitioning for asylum in immigration court.</p> <p>Trump said on Twitter on Sunday that Mexico is doing &#8220;very little, if not NOTHING,&#8221; to stop the flow of people across the southern border. &#8220;They must stop the big drug and people flows, or I will stop their cash cow, NAFTA. NEED WALL!&#8221;</p> U.S. President Donald Trump arrives at Palm Beach International Airport, Florida, U.S. for the Easter weekend at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach March 29, 2018. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas <p>Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray said the United States and Mexico work together on migration every day.</p> <p>&#8220;An inaccurate news report should not serve to question this strong cooperation. Upholding human dignity and rights is not at odds with the rule of law. Happy Easter,&#8221; he said in a tweet.</p> <p>Mexico deported some 80,000 people in 2017, down from about 160,000 in 2016, official statistics show. The vast majority were from Central American nations. The drop reflects fewer Central Americans crossing the country last year.</p> <p>Reporting by Valerie Volcovici in Washington and Delphine Schrank in Ixtepec, Mexico; Additional reporting by by Steve Holland in West Palm Beach, Mica Rosenberg in New York, David Lawder in Washington and Lizbeth Diaz in Ciudad Juarez; Editing by Steve Orlofsky and Daniel Wallis</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd said on Monday it would buy the remaining shares of Ele.me, a major platform in China&#8217;s food delivery market, as it competes with Tencent Holdings Ltd services for offline consumers.</p> Drivers of the food delivery service Ele.me prepare to start their morning shift after an internal security check in Beijing, China, September 21, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas Peter <p>Alibaba and affiliate Ant Small &amp;amp; Micro Financial Services Group Co Ltd currently own approximately 43 percent of Ele.me, and the latest deal will value the startup a $9.5 billion, said Alibaba in a statement.</p> <p>Ele.me, which roughly translates as &#8220;Hungry?&#8221;, is part of a fast-growing and competitive e-commerce market in China driven by consumers eager to use smartphones to make purchases from groceries to cinema tickets.</p> <p>In August Ele.me bought major rival Baidu deliveries from Baidu Inc. For Alibaba, the latest acquisition enlarges the e-commerce firm&#8217;s food delivery empire, which also includes delivery platform Koubei, as it competes with Meituan Dianping, backed by Tencent Holdings Ltd.</p> FILE PHOTO: A sign of Alibaba Group is seen during the fourth World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province, China, December 3, 2017. REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo <p>Alibaba and Meituan are both investing heavily in offline services, including deliveries, mobile payments and unstaffed stores, to tap a wider demographic as China&#8217;s online commerce market shows signs of slowing.</p> <p>Ele.me will continue to operate under its own brand following the acquisition, said Alibaba, but will combine some functionalities with Koubei.</p> <p>As part of the deal Alibaba will install Alibaba Vice President Wang Lei as chief executive at Ele.me, while the current chief executive and founder of Ele.me will become chairman and serve as a special advisor to Alibaba on new retail strategies.</p> <p>Reporting by Cate Cadell in BEIJING and Ismail Shakil in BENGALURU; Editing by Sunil Nair</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Tennis: American Keys storms into last eight at Melbourne Park China hammers U.S. goods with tariffs as 'sparks' of trade war fly China says space station burns up over South Pacific Trump says DACA deal for young immigrants is off Alibaba to buy remaining shares in food delivery app Ele.me

https://reuters.com/article/us-tennis-ausopen-keys/tennis-american-keys-storms-into-last-eight-at-melbourne-park-idUSKBN1FB04Z

2018-01-22

2least

MELBOURNE Reuters Madison Keys blew French eighth seed Caroline Garcia off the court 63 62 in a 68minute display of power tennis to reach the quarterfinals of the Australian Open for the second time on Monday Tennis Australian Open Rod Laver Arena Melbourne Australia January 22 2018 Madison Keys of the US celebrates winning her match against Caroline Garcia of France REUTERSEdgar Su The 22yearold the sole surviving American in the women8217s draw gave up her first service game but rallied impressively to reach the last eight without giving up a set The 17th seed said her victory had been built on the back of learning when to go for her shots 8220I8217m feeling really good8221 Keys told reporters 8220I feel like I8217m playing just solid consistent tennis I don8217t think I played unbelievable I just played really solid and smart Tennis Australian Open Rod Laver Arena Melbourne Australia January 22 2018 Caroline Garcia of France in action during her match against Madison Keys of the US REUTERSIssei Kato 8220I wasn8217t going for unbelievable shots and things like that I just was waiting for the right ball Then trusting that I was going to make the right decision when I finally had the opportunity to go for it8221 Keys sent down six aces and 20 winners in the opening set on Rod Laver Arena and maintained the onslaught to win the first four games of the second A losing finalist at the US Open last year and a semifinalist in Melbourne in 2015 Keys wobbled a bit with the finishing line in sight Garcia broke back for 42 but Keys was charged with confidence and rattled off the last two games securing victory by getting down low to dig out a sublime crosscourt forehand winner Keys feels the patience she displayed against Garcia will be even more important in her next match when she faces 2016 champion Angelique Kerber the mobile German who she has beaten just once in seven meetings 8220She8217s always tough to play8221 Keys said 8220For me it8217s having to play aggressive but also consistently aggressive because I know she8217s going to make three more balls than other girls may be able to get to Slideshow 5 Images 8220So it8217s not feeling rushed and that I have to go for something crazy big on the first one and just really work the point8221 Happy to back in the mix at a grand slam again Keys said the humiliating 63 60 loss to compatriot Sloane Stephens in the Flushing Meadows final had taken some time to get over 8220Pretty much the week to 10 days after was really tough8221 she said 8220I mean my sleep schedule was totally messed up I was just really tired from all the late emotional matches that I had 8220And then to have such a great two weeks and then have it end the way that it did it was really devastating for me so it definitely took some time to get over8221 Reporting by Nick Mulvenney in Sydney Editing by John OBrien Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BEIJING Reuters China has increased tariffs by up to 25 percent on 128 US products from frozen pork and wine to certain fruits and nuts escalating a spat between the world8217s biggest economies in response to US duties on imports of aluminum and steel FILE PHOTO Severalweekold pigs stand in a pen inside a barn at Paustian Enterprises in Walcott Iowa November 19 2014 REUTERSDaniel AckerFile Photo The tariffs to take effect on Monday were announced late on Sunday by China8217s finance ministry and matched a list of potential tariffs on up to 3 billion in US goods published by China on March 23 Soon after the announcement an editorial in the widely read Chinese tabloid Global Times warned that if the US had thought China would not retaliate or would only take symbolic countermeasures it can now 8220say goodbye to that delusion8221 8220Even though China and the US have not publicly said they are in a trade war the sparks of such a war have already started to fly8221 the editorial said China8217s Ministry of Commerce said it was suspending its obligations to the World Trade Organization WTO to reduce tariffs on 120 US goods including fruit and ethanol The tariffs on those products will be raised by an extra 15 percent Eight other products including pork and scrap aluminum will now be subject to additional tariffs of 25 percent it said with the measures effective from April 2 FILE PHOTO A butcher cuts a piece of pork at a market in Beijing China March 25 2016 REUTERSJason LeeFile Photo 8220China8217s suspension of its tariff concessions is a legitimate action adopted under WTO rules to safeguard China8217s interests8221 the Chinese finance ministry said China is moving swiftly with retaliatory action amid escalating trade tensions between Beijing and Washington which have rocked global financial markets in the past week as investors feared a fullblown trade spat between the two countries will be damaging for world growth US President Donald Trump is separately preparing to impose tariffs of more than 50 billion on Chinese goods intended to punish Beijing over US accusations that China systematically misappropriated American intellectual property allegations Beijing denies China has repeatedly promised to open its economy further but many foreign companies continue to complain of unfair treatment China warned the United States on Thursday not to open a Pandora8217s Box and spark a flurry of protectionist practices across the globe 8220There are some people in the West who think that China looks tough for the sake of a domestic audience and would easily make concessions in the end8221 the Global Times editorial said 8220But they are wrong8221 The Global Times is run by the ruling Communist Party8217s official People8217s Daily although its stance does not necessarily reflect Chinese government policy Reaction to China8217s measures varied on Chinese social media with some saying Chinese customers would be the one ultimately paying for the trade war FILE PHOTO A labourer works on coils of steel wire at a steel wholesale market in Beijing China January 17 2012 REUTERSSoo Hoo ZheyangFile Photo 8220Why not directly target soybean and planes The tariffs that China announced today don8217t sound a lot to me8221 said a user on Weibo a Twitterlike microblog popular in China Aircraft and soybeans were China8217s biggest US imports by value last year In a statement published on Monday morning the Chinese commerce ministry said the United States had 8220seriously violated8221 the principles of nondiscrimination enshrined in World Trade Organization rules and had also damaged China8217s interests 8220China8217s suspension of some of its obligations to the United States is its legitimate right as a member of the World Trade Organization8221 it said adding that differences between the world8217s two largest economies should be resolved through dialogue and negotiation Weibo prominently featured the list of US goods that China is targeting among the day8217s 8220hot8221 trending topics 8220I will never buy fruit from the US8221 a Weibo user wrote Reporting by Ben Blanchard and Tony Munroe Additional reporting by David Stanway in SHANGHAI and Stella Qiu and Lusha Zhang in BEIJING Additional Writing by Ryan Woo Editing by Eric Meijer and Shri Navaratnam Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles SHANGHAI Reuters China8217s Tiangong1 space station reentered the earth8217s atmosphere and burnt up over the South Pacific on Monday the Chinese space authority said The 8220vast majority8221 of the craft burnt up on reentry at around 815 am 0015 GMT the authority said in a brief statement on its website without saying exactly where any pieces might have landed Brad Tucker an astrophysicist at Australian National University said the remnants of Tiangong1 appeared to have landed about 100 km 62 miles northwest of Tahiti 8220Small bits definitely will have made it to the surface8221 he told Reuters adding that while about 90 percent would have burnt up in the atmosphere and just 10 percent made it to the ground that fraction still amounted to 700 kg 1543 lb to 800 kg 1764 lb 8220Most likely the debris is in the ocean and even if people stumbled over it it would just look like rubbish in the ocean and be spread over a huge area of thousands of square kilometers8221 China said on Friday it was unlikely any large pieces would reach the ground The United States Air Force 18th Space Control Squadron which tracks and detects all artificial objects in Earth8217s orbit said it had also tracked the Tiangong1 in its reentry over the South Pacific It said in a statement it had confirmed reentry in coordination with counterparts in Australia Canada France Germany Italy Japan South Korea and Britain The 104metrelong 341foot Tiangong1 or 8220Heavenly Palace 18221 was launched in 2011 to carry out docking and orbit experiments as part of China8217s ambitious space program which aims to place a permanent station in orbit by 2023Decommissioning was originally planned for 2013 but the mission was repeatedly extended Asked about the space station Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a regular briefing he had no other information and reiterated that China had been reporting the situation to the UN space agency in an open and transparent way 8220According to what I understand at present there has not been found any damage on the ground8221 he said without elaborating China had earlier said reentry would happen in late 2017 but that process was delayed leading some experts to suggest the space laboratory was out of control Worldwide media hype about the reentry reflected overseas 8220envy8221 of China8217s space industry the Chinese tabloid Global Times said on Monday FILE PHOTO A model of the Tiangong1 space lab module L the Shenzhou9 manned spacecraft R and three Chinese astronauts is displayed during a news conference at Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Gansu province China June 15 2012 REUTERSJason LeeFile Photo 8220It8217s normal for spacecraft to reenter the atmosphere yet Tiangong1 received so much attention partly because some Western countries are trying to hype and sling mud at China8217s fastgrowing aerospace industry8221 it said Reporting by David Stanway and Wang Jing Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in BEIJING and Alison Bevege in SYDNEY Editing by Paul Tait and Clarence Fernandez Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTONIXTEPEC Mexico Reuters President Donald Trump said on Sunday that there will be no deal to legalize the status of young adult immigrants called Dreamers and he said the USMexico border is becoming more dangerous After tweeting a 8220Happy Easter8221 message on Twitter he said 8220Border Patrol Agents are not allowed to properly do their job at the Border because of ridiculous liberal Democrat laws like Catch ampamp Release Getting more dangerous 82208216Caravans8217 coming Republicans must go to Nuclear Option to pass tough laws NOW NO MORE DACA DEAL8221 he wrote adding a threat to kill the North American Free Trade Agreement which is being renegotiated with Mexico and Canada DACA or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals is a program created in 2012 under Democratic former President Barack Obama that Trump sought to rescind last autumn Designed for people brought to the United States as children by parents who were undocumented immigrants the program shielded them from deportation and gave them work permits Trump had said he was open to a deal with congressional Democrats who want to protect DACA in exchange for funding to build a USMexico border wall a campaign trail promise He insisted during his 2016 White House run that Mexico would pay for the wall something the Mexican government has repeatedly rejected Mexico8217s presidential frontrunner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador launched his campaign close to the border on Sunday demanding respect for Mexicans and signaling he may take a harder line toward Trump if he wins the July 1 election 8220Mexico and its people will not be the pi241ata of any foreign government8221 Lopez Obrador said in a speech in Ciudad Juarez Mexico which borders El Paso Texas 8220It8217s not with walls or use of force that you resolve social problems8221 Whether Trump will stick to his guns on DACA is unclear Trump last month threatened to veto a spending bill because it did not address the fate of Dreamers and did not fully fund his border wall but he ultimately signed the bill In the months after Trump took office apprehensions of illegal crossers along the US Mexico border dropped from more than 42400 arrests in January 2017 to a low of around 15700 in April according to US Customs and Border Protection data Since then the number of arrests has risen and in the first months of 2018 was above Obama administration levels 8220Mexico has got to help us at the border8221 the president who is spending Easter at his MaraLago resort in Florida told reporters on his way into an Easter church service 8220A lot of people are coming in because they want to take advantage of DACA They had a great chance The Democrats blew it8221 MIGRANT CARAVAN Trump8217s DACA tweets came after a report on the Fox New Channel8217s Fox ampamp Friends program one of his favorites that a 8220caravan8221 of mostly Honduran migrants was crossing Mexico and headed to the United States 8220either illegally or by asking for asylum8221 More than 1000 wouldbe migrants have passed through Mexico8217s southern states of Chiapas and Oaxaca in recent days in a socalled 8220refugee caravan8221 organized by USbased immigrant advocacy group Pueblo Sin Fronteras In the town of Ixtepec more than 1500 men women and children from Honduras El Salvador and Guatemala waited in a sweltering warehouse on Saturday mattresses rolled and bags packed as local authorities and immigration officials from Mexico8217s federal government organized 15 buses to take them to their next stop on the long journey north By traveling together the immigrants hope to protect themselves from the crime and extortion that makes the route through Mexico dangerous They say some but not all of them will seek asylum if they reach the United States Gina Garibo a member of Pueblo Sin Fronteras traveling with the migrants said the group would hold a meeting to discuss Trump8217s statements on Sunday and stressed that the caravan8217s aim was to protect vulnerable people 8220The main people here are fleeing criminal violence political violence in their country and this allows us to save lives8221 she said in response to Trump8217s comments A guest on Sunday8217s Fox ampamp Friends show Brandon Judd head of the National Border Patrol Council union said illegal immigrants benefit from the 8220catch and release8221 program that Trump referenced in his tweet Under it they can be freed while awaiting court hearings if detained in the United States If recent border crossers do not claim asylum they can usually be deported quickly But if they say they fear targeted violence or persecution in their home countries they can begin the long process of petitioning for asylum in immigration court Trump said on Twitter on Sunday that Mexico is doing 8220very little if not NOTHING8221 to stop the flow of people across the southern border 8220They must stop the big drug and people flows or I will stop their cash cow NAFTA NEED WALL8221 US President Donald Trump arrives at Palm Beach International Airport Florida US for the Easter weekend at MaraLago in Palm Beach March 29 2018 REUTERSYuri Gripas Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray said the United States and Mexico work together on migration every day 8220An inaccurate news report should not serve to question this strong cooperation Upholding human dignity and rights is not at odds with the rule of law Happy Easter8221 he said in a tweet Mexico deported some 80000 people in 2017 down from about 160000 in 2016 official statistics show The vast majority were from Central American nations The drop reflects fewer Central Americans crossing the country last year Reporting by Valerie Volcovici in Washington and Delphine Schrank in Ixtepec Mexico Additional reporting by by Steve Holland in West Palm Beach Mica Rosenberg in New York David Lawder in Washington and Lizbeth Diaz in Ciudad Juarez Editing by Steve Orlofsky and Daniel Wallis Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd said on Monday it would buy the remaining shares of Eleme a major platform in China8217s food delivery market as it competes with Tencent Holdings Ltd services for offline consumers Drivers of the food delivery service Eleme prepare to start their morning shift after an internal security check in Beijing China September 21 2017 REUTERSThomas Peter Alibaba and affiliate Ant Small ampamp Micro Financial Services Group Co Ltd currently own approximately 43 percent of Eleme and the latest deal will value the startup a 95 billion said Alibaba in a statement Eleme which roughly translates as 8220Hungry8221 is part of a fastgrowing and competitive ecommerce market in China driven by consumers eager to use smartphones to make purchases from groceries to cinema tickets In August Eleme bought major rival Baidu deliveries from Baidu Inc For Alibaba the latest acquisition enlarges the ecommerce firm8217s food delivery empire which also includes delivery platform Koubei as it competes with Meituan Dianping backed by Tencent Holdings Ltd FILE PHOTO A sign of Alibaba Group is seen during the fourth World Internet Conference in Wuzhen Zhejiang province China December 3 2017 REUTERSAly SongFile Photo Alibaba and Meituan are both investing heavily in offline services including deliveries mobile payments and unstaffed stores to tap a wider demographic as China8217s online commerce market shows signs of slowing Eleme will continue to operate under its own brand following the acquisition said Alibaba but will combine some functionalities with Koubei As part of the deal Alibaba will install Alibaba Vice President Wang Lei as chief executive at Eleme while the current chief executive and founder of Eleme will become chairman and serve as a special advisor to Alibaba on new retail strategies Reporting by Cate Cadell in BEIJING and Ismail Shakil in BENGALURU Editing by Sunil Nair Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p><a href="" type="internal">Click here to read Part One of Investing with Madoff.</a></p> <p>Over the years since 1995, Madoff, as often said in the media these days, made steady annual returns &#8212; on which one paid ordinary income taxes, not capital gains taxes. The rates of return were unspectacular, especially when compared with the returns made by many hedge funds and, during many years, by mutual funds. But on an annual basis Madoff didn&#8217;t lose money, which was a major plus. The idea that he made money every month, however, is misleading. There certainly were some months when he lost money, and there were months when he made very little if anything, say a quarter or a half a percent. There were also months when he made, say, a percent and a half or two percent, or sometimes even a bit more. The monthly variations made the whole deal look Kosher, at least to an amateur, as did the variations in annual returns. On the all important after- tax basis, the annual returns were generally between seven and ten percent. They therefore were probably not much more than, and often were certainly much less than, the annual returns obtained by investors who bought stocks or mutual funds in order to make capital gains. For capital gains are taxed at much lower rates than the more-than-one third rate applicable to ordinary income, plus principal invested in stocks and mutual funds appreciates tax free &#8212; so one gets appreciation upon appreciation, as well as on original, tax free appreciation of principal &#8212; until the investment is cashed in, in layman&#8217;s language. (One also can&#8217;t help remembering that hedge fund managers who were making hundreds of millions or billions per year &#8212; one recently made $1.7 billion in a single year &#8212; paid a tax rate of only 15% on their earnings.)</p> <p>Also, every month every investor received a lengthy statement of transactions from Madoff. While I personally lacked the training to fully understand them due to their complexity, accountants did understand them. To the accountants, who of course had the required financial training, they made sense. The idea that someone could be making up complex statements of this nature &#8212; and so many of them yet, if the thousands of clients he is recently said to have had is accurate &#8212; boggles the mind even today and didn&#8217;t even enter the mind then. I personally never heard a whisper of the remotest suspicion of such invention, and can only say it must have taken a corps of aiders and abettors. The news reports say that something like 20 people worked in Madoff&#8217;s &#8220;private&#8221; office on a separate floor, the 17th, to which no one else in the firm was allowed access apparently. Many of these people must have been involved in making up the false statements and therefore must be coconspirators even though Madoff supposedly claimed to be doing it himself. (Were his brothers, his two sons, and his niece, all of whom were major figures in his firm, also denied access to the private offices? If they were, didn&#8217;t they consider it odd that they, his nuclear family members, with whom he worked closely in the business for years, and to whom he apparently was very close on the personal level, were denied access to the offices? Didn&#8217;t it raise their suspicions, even if one assumes, as I frankly don&#8217;t, that they were innocent of any knowledge of what he was doing?)</p> <p>So it went for many years. If one wanted to occasionally withdraw money to meet unusual or other expenses, one always dealt with DiPascali (or his assistant) and the check would arrive promptly. If one wanted to invest more money, one again dealt with DiPascali. This was the way it was until December 11, 2008, when Madoff was arrested. Then a lot of information began coming out that must have been deeply unknown to most investors, including me. The information included the shocking fact that the whistle had been blown on Madoff at least as far back as 1999 or 2000, when an investment professional named Harry Markopolos, who had operated with derivatives, had sometimes used the split-strike conversion strategy, and was mathematically expert, had informed the SEC, both orally and in a memo, of reasons why Madoff&#8217;s business could not possibly be on the up and up. Markopolos kept at this until, most recently, 2008, one gathers. As one can see from the long-confidential but now public 2005 version of his memorandum, with the arresting title (no pun intended) &#8220;The World&#8217;s Biggest Hedge Fund Is A Fraud,&#8221; Markopolos gave reason after reason why Madoff&#8217;s operation could not possibly be on the up and up. (The 2005 version of the memo will soon be made available at Velvelonnationalaffairs.com.) Many of Markopolos&#8217; reasons were completely comprehensible even to a layman, let alone to financial and regulatory experts. But, as so often during Markopolos&#8217; eight or nine years of trying to get the SEC to act, it did not stop Madoff in 1999 or early 2000, from 2001-2004, in 2005, in 2006 or 2007, in early 2008, or at anytime until December 11th.</p> <p>Equally amazing was that an article blowing the whistle on Madoff had been written in 2001 for a hedge fund-industry publication called MAR/Hedge (RIP) by a reporter named Michael Ocrant. This journal was something read by those connected with the financial industry, doubtlessly including at least some regulators, but obviously is not something read by the general public. (I personally, like 99.999 percent of the American population I would bet, did not even know it existed.) The article gave many of the most pertinent, comprehensible reasons given by Markopolos, but the readers of MAR/Hedge(RIP) apparently did nothing. Certainly the SEC did nothing.</p> <p>Also in 2001, a shorter article appeared on Madoff by reporter Erin Arvedlund. The article, which focused on secrecy by Madoff, and ignored some of the signs that even a layman would understand, appeared in Barron&#8217;s. That article was mixed in nature, with much that was favorable to Madoff, and even advised readers how to invest in Madoff if they wished to. In any event, though Barron&#8217;s must be read by a larger audience than MAR/Hedge (RIP), this article received no general play from the media (and I personally never heard of it until after December 11th, just as I and most others had never heard of Markopolos or Ocrant). And again the SEC did nothing to stop Madoff. (The Ocrant and Arvedlund articles will also be made available shortly at Velvelonnationalaffairs.com.)</p> <p>After December 11th, however, the media began covering Madoff&#8217;s scheme, including the red flags called to the attention of the SEC by Markopolos, several of which were also mentioned by Ocrant and a few of which were mentioned by Arvedlund. I shall focus now on the red flags that would clearly have been of crucial importance even to a layman, had he known of them.</p> <p>A foremost red flag was that Madoff apparently was not even making the trades of securities shown on the monthly statements. When already suspicious financial experts checked trades shown on Madoff&#8217;s statements against actual trades all over the country on the given day(s) &#8212; which experts knew could be done and knew how to do &#8212; they could find no record of Madoff&#8217;s supposed trades. The trades shown on the monthly statements were fictitious, a fact which still seems unbelievable a month after the scandal broke. Experts who checked this got out of Madoff. Wouldn&#8217;t you get out if you learned that trades shown on your monthly statement were (amazingly enough) fictitious, had not been made, were purely inventions? The expert SEC apparently checked out none of this, however, so the average investor was again left completely in the dark.</p> <p>Another red flag discussed by Markopolos was that the options market was not nearly big enough to support the number of puts and calls necessary for the volume of trading in stocks that Madoff claimed to be doing. Madoff had apparently denied this, when asked about it in the past, by claiming he was buying options on the over the counter markets, where they are not totaled. But experts (like Markopolos) said Madoff&#8217;s explanation could not be true because the whole options market, on the exchanges, over the counter, or wherever, was not big enough to support Madoff&#8217;s trading in securities. By a huge multiple, there simply weren&#8217;t enough people who were willing to put enough money at risk in puts and calls to support Madoff&#8217;s trades in stocks. This meant that Madoff could not be providing the downside protection, via puts, that was key to the deal, and should have been checked out immediately by the SEC. The SEC apparently did not check it out, however, and the average investor was once again left in the dark.</p> <p>There was also the growth in the amount of money Madoff was managing. Lots of us were under the impression, fostered in the 1990s, that Madoff was investing for family and friends. We knew nothing of huge feeder funds, of recruitment of investors all over the United States, Europe and South America, or of the fact that he apparently was running 6 to 7 billion dollars by around the year 2000 and tens of billions apparently by 2008. This was all news to me after the scandal struck.</p> <p>Had people known it, what would they have done? Would they have considered it a mark of how good he was and stayed invested? Would they have gotten worried, and maybe even gotten out, because this was so different from what they previously had always thought the situation was? &#8212; Some believe (like I often do) that when things get too big, disaster often, even usually, occurs. Well, it&#8217;s impossible to know now what people would have done had they learned the truth about the amount of money Madoff was running and what he was doing to get it. But one thing I do know: the SEC never saw fit to find out and to tell investors the truth.</p> <p>There also was Madoff&#8217;s secrecy. Hedge funds who invested with him, for example, were not allowed to mention his name in their marketing materials. Yet as Markopolos said, if you ran the world&#8217;s most successful investment operation, wouldn&#8217;t you want that fact bruited far and wide in order to increase your business? The reason for Madoff&#8217;s secrecy says Markopolos, was so that the SEC wouldn&#8217;t learn what he was doing. And to further maintain secrecy, when huge investors were thinking of putting in money, but wanted to examine Madoff&#8217;s books in order to do due diligence, which they of course could afford, Madoff would not allow the examination, claiming a desire not to have proprietary strategies disclosed to any one else. (Well, it looks now like he had good reason for nondisclosure, but it wasn&#8217;t to keep proprietary strategies secret.)</p> <p>There is also the question of leverage (which was not discussed by Markopolos). I have now read a couple of times that Madoff was using leverage of three to one, which means that for every four dollars invested, three came from loans. The use of leverage is very dangerous because, if the market goes down, with three to one leverage your equity (which is one-fourth the investment) is wiped out if the market drops 25 percent. That Madoff was using leverage was news to me, and I&#8217;m not sure the articles which said he was doing so were correct. If they were correct, I suppose that the puts (if one assumes he was buying puts) would guard against a 25 percent loss by confining a loss to a point far less than that. Nonetheless, the use of leverage was very dangerous, and leverage certainly was not the deal people like me signed up for.</p> <p>This brings up a related point. Madoff said he was hedging by buying puts. Yet, Markopolos says, he did not sell his arrangement as a hedge fund, and one never thought of him as a hedge fund. For hedge funds, it is constantly said in the media, use extensive leverage since this creates the opportunity for huge gains. At leverage of 3 to 1, for example, if the price of the share doubles from, say, 100 to 200, the equity share is now 125, or five times the initial 25 percent invested to buy at 100. (I have recently read that some funds were using leverage of up to 40 to 1, which is frankly not believable because, at 40 to 1, a 2.5 percent loss in the price of a share wipes out one&#8217;s equity.) Also, hedge funds invest in fancy, complex, incomprehensible derivatives, which always seemed to some of us (I think Warren Buffet for one) a disaster waiting to happen. Since one didn&#8217;t know Madoff was using leverage if he in fact was, nor that he could conceivably be involved with fancy derivatives, one simply didn&#8217;t think of him as a (potentially dangerous) hedge fund even though he was hedging against losses by (supposedly) buying puts.</p> <p>Then there were other things, many again mentioned by Markopolos, which were red flags but again the average investor knew nothing of them. There was the now infamous fact that his auditor was a tiny three person shop &#8211; &#8211; and apparently only one of the three was an active accountant. A major Wall Street firm that is not audited by one of what was the big 8, and is now the big 4, or some similar large firm? How could this not have been a major warning sign to the SEC? And where did this small shop come from anyway? How did it get it involved with Madoff &#8212; Markopolos claims the accountant was Madoff&#8217;s brother-in law, and another person at least has claimed the accounting firm was originally Madoff&#8217;s father-in law&#8217;s and Bienes and Avellino had once worked for it). And, if it got involved when Madoff started, how did it remain his accountant when he grew into a major firm? A very red flag about which thousands of people were completely unaware. The SEC, however, should have been all over this one like a blanket. I wonder: can the SEC point to any other major Wall Street firm with a rinky dink shop as auditor?</p> <p>There was also the fact that Madoff&#8217;s own firm handled his trades and the back office administration and kept custody of the securities. I gather this is the way most hedge funds work, but it is not the preferred method in the financial industry. The preferred method is to have independent firms do these things, in order to make sure that the claimed securities and money exist. That Madoff&#8217;s arrangement lacked this safeguard should have been yet another red flag for the SEC.</p> <p>Also peculiar in the extreme is the asserted fact that Madoff&#8217;s family, as was everyone but those who worked on the 17th floor, apparently was barred from the floor where the chicanery went on. If this was true, didn&#8217;t his family think it was peculiar that they, who were close to their father, brother, uncle, were barred? And if they weren&#8217;t barred, and ever went down there, didn&#8217;t they ever see anything or ask anybody about what was going on?</p> <p>Curiously, Madoff would sometimes claim that his trades were handled in Europe by counterparties (whatever that means), but would tell other people he was making big money on commissions obtained because his firm was handling the trades. If the counterparties were other than his UK office, didn&#8217;t his family members ever notice the discrepancy, and didn&#8217;t they ever wonder why they were being denied the vast financial benefits that would have occurred if his New York office was handling the trades? Yet they never inquired about any of this?</p> <p>Given the close relationships involved, it is extremely difficult to believe that none of his family members ever had the slightest inkling that something untoward was happening. And his family, of course, also had close professional and personal relationships with the SEC. His niece, an official of the business, even married an SEC official who had worked on the agency&#8217;s minimalistic investigations of Madoff. The family&#8217;s relationships with the SEC are, I gather, to be one subject of an investigation being conducted by the SEC&#8217;s inspector general.</p> <p>There were, of course, people on Wall Street who suspected, as did Markopolos, that the Madoff deal was not on the up and up. Suspicions were so strong that their companies refused to do any business with Madoff. I believe Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan were two of them. In his 2005 memo to the SEC, Markopolos gave the SEC the names of four highly placed Wall Street executives it should speak with &#8212; one being at Goldman and a second at Citigroup &#8212; because these executives were convinced, based on their expertise in and experience with derivatives, that Madoff&#8217;s returns could not be for real.</p> <p>There were large institutions, and major-league-rich investors, including Arab investors, which hired due diligence firms to investigate whether the institutions or investors should invest with Madoff, and the due diligence firms, after looking into the situation, cautioned against investing with him because of red flags like some of those mentioned by Markopolos. There were fund managers, whom Markopolos talked with, who had money in Madoff but did not themselves believe that Madoff could make money month in and month out, and thought that he was subsidizing losses in bad months. Translation: they didn&#8217;t believe him, but left their funds&#8217; money with him anyway because he was doing well by them overall. So all these experts and big league money managers thought Madoff was fraudulent but never spoke with the SEC, and thousands of people who invested with Madoff knew nothing of their views.*</p> <p>TO BE CONTINUED.</p> <p>Lawrence Velvel, dean of the Massachusetts School of Law, is the author of <a href="" type="internal">Thine Alabaster Cities Gleam</a> and <a href="" type="internal">An Enemy of the People.</a> He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:Velvel@VelvelOnNationalAffairs.com" type="external">Velvel@VelvelOnNationalAffairs.com</a></p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p>

Investing with Madoff

https://counterpunch.org/2009/01/21/investing-with-madoff/

2009-01-21

4left

Click here to read Part One of Investing with Madoff Over the years since 1995 Madoff as often said in the media these days made steady annual returns 8212 on which one paid ordinary income taxes not capital gains taxes The rates of return were unspectacular especially when compared with the returns made by many hedge funds and during many years by mutual funds But on an annual basis Madoff didn8217t lose money which was a major plus The idea that he made money every month however is misleading There certainly were some months when he lost money and there were months when he made very little if anything say a quarter or a half a percent There were also months when he made say a percent and a half or two percent or sometimes even a bit more The monthly variations made the whole deal look Kosher at least to an amateur as did the variations in annual returns On the all important after tax basis the annual returns were generally between seven and ten percent They therefore were probably not much more than and often were certainly much less than the annual returns obtained by investors who bought stocks or mutual funds in order to make capital gains For capital gains are taxed at much lower rates than the morethanone third rate applicable to ordinary income plus principal invested in stocks and mutual funds appreciates tax free 8212 so one gets appreciation upon appreciation as well as on original tax free appreciation of principal 8212 until the investment is cashed in in layman8217s language One also can8217t help remembering that hedge fund managers who were making hundreds of millions or billions per year 8212 one recently made 17 billion in a single year 8212 paid a tax rate of only 15 on their earnings Also every month every investor received a lengthy statement of transactions from Madoff While I personally lacked the training to fully understand them due to their complexity accountants did understand them To the accountants who of course had the required financial training they made sense The idea that someone could be making up complex statements of this nature 8212 and so many of them yet if the thousands of clients he is recently said to have had is accurate 8212 boggles the mind even today and didn8217t even enter the mind then I personally never heard a whisper of the remotest suspicion of such invention and can only say it must have taken a corps of aiders and abettors The news reports say that something like 20 people worked in Madoff8217s 8220private8221 office on a separate floor the 17th to which no one else in the firm was allowed access apparently Many of these people must have been involved in making up the false statements and therefore must be coconspirators even though Madoff supposedly claimed to be doing it himself Were his brothers his two sons and his niece all of whom were major figures in his firm also denied access to the private offices If they were didn8217t they consider it odd that they his nuclear family members with whom he worked closely in the business for years and to whom he apparently was very close on the personal level were denied access to the offices Didn8217t it raise their suspicions even if one assumes as I frankly don8217t that they were innocent of any knowledge of what he was doing So it went for many years If one wanted to occasionally withdraw money to meet unusual or other expenses one always dealt with DiPascali or his assistant and the check would arrive promptly If one wanted to invest more money one again dealt with DiPascali This was the way it was until December 11 2008 when Madoff was arrested Then a lot of information began coming out that must have been deeply unknown to most investors including me The information included the shocking fact that the whistle had been blown on Madoff at least as far back as 1999 or 2000 when an investment professional named Harry Markopolos who had operated with derivatives had sometimes used the splitstrike conversion strategy and was mathematically expert had informed the SEC both orally and in a memo of reasons why Madoff8217s business could not possibly be on the up and up Markopolos kept at this until most recently 2008 one gathers As one can see from the longconfidential but now public 2005 version of his memorandum with the arresting title no pun intended 8220The World8217s Biggest Hedge Fund Is A Fraud8221 Markopolos gave reason after reason why Madoff8217s operation could not possibly be on the up and up The 2005 version of the memo will soon be made available at Velvelonnationalaffairscom Many of Markopolos8217 reasons were completely comprehensible even to a layman let alone to financial and regulatory experts But as so often during Markopolos8217 eight or nine years of trying to get the SEC to act it did not stop Madoff in 1999 or early 2000 from 20012004 in 2005 in 2006 or 2007 in early 2008 or at anytime until December 11th Equally amazing was that an article blowing the whistle on Madoff had been written in 2001 for a hedge fundindustry publication called MARHedge RIP by a reporter named Michael Ocrant This journal was something read by those connected with the financial industry doubtlessly including at least some regulators but obviously is not something read by the general public I personally like 99999 percent of the American population I would bet did not even know it existed The article gave many of the most pertinent comprehensible reasons given by Markopolos but the readers of MARHedgeRIP apparently did nothing Certainly the SEC did nothing Also in 2001 a shorter article appeared on Madoff by reporter Erin Arvedlund The article which focused on secrecy by Madoff and ignored some of the signs that even a layman would understand appeared in Barron8217s That article was mixed in nature with much that was favorable to Madoff and even advised readers how to invest in Madoff if they wished to In any event though Barron8217s must be read by a larger audience than MARHedge RIP this article received no general play from the media and I personally never heard of it until after December 11th just as I and most others had never heard of Markopolos or Ocrant And again the SEC did nothing to stop Madoff The Ocrant and Arvedlund articles will also be made available shortly at Velvelonnationalaffairscom After December 11th however the media began covering Madoff8217s scheme including the red flags called to the attention of the SEC by Markopolos several of which were also mentioned by Ocrant and a few of which were mentioned by Arvedlund I shall focus now on the red flags that would clearly have been of crucial importance even to a layman had he known of them A foremost red flag was that Madoff apparently was not even making the trades of securities shown on the monthly statements When already suspicious financial experts checked trades shown on Madoff8217s statements against actual trades all over the country on the given days 8212 which experts knew could be done and knew how to do 8212 they could find no record of Madoff8217s supposed trades The trades shown on the monthly statements were fictitious a fact which still seems unbelievable a month after the scandal broke Experts who checked this got out of Madoff Wouldn8217t you get out if you learned that trades shown on your monthly statement were amazingly enough fictitious had not been made were purely inventions The expert SEC apparently checked out none of this however so the average investor was again left completely in the dark Another red flag discussed by Markopolos was that the options market was not nearly big enough to support the number of puts and calls necessary for the volume of trading in stocks that Madoff claimed to be doing Madoff had apparently denied this when asked about it in the past by claiming he was buying options on the over the counter markets where they are not totaled But experts like Markopolos said Madoff8217s explanation could not be true because the whole options market on the exchanges over the counter or wherever was not big enough to support Madoff8217s trading in securities By a huge multiple there simply weren8217t enough people who were willing to put enough money at risk in puts and calls to support Madoff8217s trades in stocks This meant that Madoff could not be providing the downside protection via puts that was key to the deal and should have been checked out immediately by the SEC The SEC apparently did not check it out however and the average investor was once again left in the dark There was also the growth in the amount of money Madoff was managing Lots of us were under the impression fostered in the 1990s that Madoff was investing for family and friends We knew nothing of huge feeder funds of recruitment of investors all over the United States Europe and South America or of the fact that he apparently was running 6 to 7 billion dollars by around the year 2000 and tens of billions apparently by 2008 This was all news to me after the scandal struck Had people known it what would they have done Would they have considered it a mark of how good he was and stayed invested Would they have gotten worried and maybe even gotten out because this was so different from what they previously had always thought the situation was 8212 Some believe like I often do that when things get too big disaster often even usually occurs Well it8217s impossible to know now what people would have done had they learned the truth about the amount of money Madoff was running and what he was doing to get it But one thing I do know the SEC never saw fit to find out and to tell investors the truth There also was Madoff8217s secrecy Hedge funds who invested with him for example were not allowed to mention his name in their marketing materials Yet as Markopolos said if you ran the world8217s most successful investment operation wouldn8217t you want that fact bruited far and wide in order to increase your business The reason for Madoff8217s secrecy says Markopolos was so that the SEC wouldn8217t learn what he was doing And to further maintain secrecy when huge investors were thinking of putting in money but wanted to examine Madoff8217s books in order to do due diligence which they of course could afford Madoff would not allow the examination claiming a desire not to have proprietary strategies disclosed to any one else Well it looks now like he had good reason for nondisclosure but it wasn8217t to keep proprietary strategies secret There is also the question of leverage which was not discussed by Markopolos I have now read a couple of times that Madoff was using leverage of three to one which means that for every four dollars invested three came from loans The use of leverage is very dangerous because if the market goes down with three to one leverage your equity which is onefourth the investment is wiped out if the market drops 25 percent That Madoff was using leverage was news to me and I8217m not sure the articles which said he was doing so were correct If they were correct I suppose that the puts if one assumes he was buying puts would guard against a 25 percent loss by confining a loss to a point far less than that Nonetheless the use of leverage was very dangerous and leverage certainly was not the deal people like me signed up for This brings up a related point Madoff said he was hedging by buying puts Yet Markopolos says he did not sell his arrangement as a hedge fund and one never thought of him as a hedge fund For hedge funds it is constantly said in the media use extensive leverage since this creates the opportunity for huge gains At leverage of 3 to 1 for example if the price of the share doubles from say 100 to 200 the equity share is now 125 or five times the initial 25 percent invested to buy at 100 I have recently read that some funds were using leverage of up to 40 to 1 which is frankly not believable because at 40 to 1 a 25 percent loss in the price of a share wipes out one8217s equity Also hedge funds invest in fancy complex incomprehensible derivatives which always seemed to some of us I think Warren Buffet for one a disaster waiting to happen Since one didn8217t know Madoff was using leverage if he in fact was nor that he could conceivably be involved with fancy derivatives one simply didn8217t think of him as a potentially dangerous hedge fund even though he was hedging against losses by supposedly buying puts Then there were other things many again mentioned by Markopolos which were red flags but again the average investor knew nothing of them There was the now infamous fact that his auditor was a tiny three person shop 8211 8211 and apparently only one of the three was an active accountant A major Wall Street firm that is not audited by one of what was the big 8 and is now the big 4 or some similar large firm How could this not have been a major warning sign to the SEC And where did this small shop come from anyway How did it get it involved with Madoff 8212 Markopolos claims the accountant was Madoff8217s brotherin law and another person at least has claimed the accounting firm was originally Madoff8217s fatherin law8217s and Bienes and Avellino had once worked for it And if it got involved when Madoff started how did it remain his accountant when he grew into a major firm A very red flag about which thousands of people were completely unaware The SEC however should have been all over this one like a blanket I wonder can the SEC point to any other major Wall Street firm with a rinky dink shop as auditor There was also the fact that Madoff8217s own firm handled his trades and the back office administration and kept custody of the securities I gather this is the way most hedge funds work but it is not the preferred method in the financial industry The preferred method is to have independent firms do these things in order to make sure that the claimed securities and money exist That Madoff8217s arrangement lacked this safeguard should have been yet another red flag for the SEC Also peculiar in the extreme is the asserted fact that Madoff8217s family as was everyone but those who worked on the 17th floor apparently was barred from the floor where the chicanery went on If this was true didn8217t his family think it was peculiar that they who were close to their father brother uncle were barred And if they weren8217t barred and ever went down there didn8217t they ever see anything or ask anybody about what was going on Curiously Madoff would sometimes claim that his trades were handled in Europe by counterparties whatever that means but would tell other people he was making big money on commissions obtained because his firm was handling the trades If the counterparties were other than his UK office didn8217t his family members ever notice the discrepancy and didn8217t they ever wonder why they were being denied the vast financial benefits that would have occurred if his New York office was handling the trades Yet they never inquired about any of this Given the close relationships involved it is extremely difficult to believe that none of his family members ever had the slightest inkling that something untoward was happening And his family of course also had close professional and personal relationships with the SEC His niece an official of the business even married an SEC official who had worked on the agency8217s minimalistic investigations of Madoff The family8217s relationships with the SEC are I gather to be one subject of an investigation being conducted by the SEC8217s inspector general There were of course people on Wall Street who suspected as did Markopolos that the Madoff deal was not on the up and up Suspicions were so strong that their companies refused to do any business with Madoff I believe Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan were two of them In his 2005 memo to the SEC Markopolos gave the SEC the names of four highly placed Wall Street executives it should speak with 8212 one being at Goldman and a second at Citigroup 8212 because these executives were convinced based on their expertise in and experience with derivatives that Madoff8217s returns could not be for real There were large institutions and majorleaguerich investors including Arab investors which hired due diligence firms to investigate whether the institutions or investors should invest with Madoff and the due diligence firms after looking into the situation cautioned against investing with him because of red flags like some of those mentioned by Markopolos There were fund managers whom Markopolos talked with who had money in Madoff but did not themselves believe that Madoff could make money month in and month out and thought that he was subsidizing losses in bad months Translation they didn8217t believe him but left their funds8217 money with him anyway because he was doing well by them overall So all these experts and big league money managers thought Madoff was fraudulent but never spoke with the SEC and thousands of people who invested with Madoff knew nothing of their views TO BE CONTINUED Lawrence Velvel dean of the Massachusetts School of Law is the author of Thine Alabaster Cities Gleam and An Enemy of the People He can be reached at VelvelVelvelOnNationalAffairscom amp160 amp160 amp160

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<p>Two recent offhand comments, both widely publicized, have seriously undermined whatever progress might have been made in exposing the fact that the Iraq war was initiated at least in large part to guarantee Israel&#8217;s safety and regional dominance in the Middle East.</p> <p>In late August, Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as Colin Powell&#8217;s chief of staff when he was secretary of state, told Gareth Porter of Inter Press Service that, when Israel first got wind of U.S. planning for a war against Iraq, a wide range of Israelis, including political and intelligence officials, began warning against such a war. &#8220;Israelis were telling us Iraq is not the enemy &#8212; Iran is the enemy,&#8221; Wilkerson said. Israeli warnings against an attack on Iraq were &#8220;pervasive&#8221; in Israeli communications with the administration during early 2002, according to Wilkerson.</p> <p>This story garnered a fair amount of publicity and in at least one instance was used by a radio talk show host to shut off discussion of the John Mearsheimer-Stephen Walt book on the influence of the Israel lobby, <a href="" type="internal">The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy</a>. Just a few days after the Wilkerson story came out and also only days after release of the Mearsheimer-Walt book, a caller to the Thom Hartmann radio program commended the book, urged Hartmann and his guest at the time, Senator Bernie Sanders, to read it, and asked Sanders to address the issue of Israel&#8217;s and the lobby&#8217;s support for the Iraq war. Hartmann shut the caller off with a comment that &#8220;we don&#8217;t hype books on this program&#8221; (after having just allowed another caller to hype another book). Sanders then proceeded to denounce &#8220;conspiracy theories&#8221; such as the notion that Israel had anything to do with the war, and Hartmann finished off with a remark that, &#8220;besides,&#8221; a report just came out &#8211;obviously meaning the Wilkerson story &#8212; that demonstrates there was no Israeli link to the war.</p> <p>In fact, the Wilkerson report does not refute the notion of an Israeli link; he addresses only Israeli-U.S. contacts in early 2002, whereas by later in 2002 and 2003 the evidence is overwhelming that Israel and particularly the Israel lobby were pushing hard for the war. But this is the way myths are born: Hartmann and Sanders were able to use perhaps 90 seconds on a nationally broadcast radio program to tout an incomplete report reinforcing their own misconceptions and to dismiss a thoroughly researched book disproving those misconceptions. Never again, mostly likely, will they or any of the choir they were broadcasting to, who do not want to have to deal with Israel anyway, even think about the issue.</p> <p>The Wilkerson assertions were followed in mid-September by the highly publicized single-sentence statement by former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan in his just-released memoir, <a href="" type="internal">The Age of Turbulence,</a> that &#8220;it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.&#8221; When the media pounced on this statement, which stands virtually alone and unelaborated in a 500-page book, Greenspan gave several interviews supposedly intended to clarify his statement. To AP he said &#8212; in an obvious sop to the administration and the right, which clearly do not want to own up to such a crass motivation for the war as oil &#8212; that he had not intended to imply that oil was &#8220;the administration&#8217;s motive. I&#8217;m just saying that if somebody asked me, &#8216;Are we fortunate in taking out Saddam?&#8217; I would say it was essential&#8221; for economic reasons. He had come to fear, he explained, that &#8220;Saddam, looking over his 30-year history, very clearly was giving evidence of moving towards controlling the Straits [sic] of Hormuz, where there are 17, 18, 19 million barrels a day&#8221; passing through. The war was not an oil grab, Greenspan said, but &#8220;taking Saddam out was essential&#8221; because it assured the continued smooth operation of the oil market.</p> <p>A week later, on Amy Goodman&#8217;s &#8220;Democracy Now!,&#8221; Greenspan, repeating that he had been watching Saddam Hussein for 30 years, said that he had feared that Saddam would acquire a nuclear weapon, that this would give him control over the Strait of Hormuz, and that he therefore had to be removed. Greenspan said he believed the &#8220;size of the threat&#8221; that Saddam posed &#8220;was scary&#8221; because &#8220;he could have essentially also shut down a significant part of economic activity throughout the world.&#8221;</p> <p>The logic here is really quite strange and indicates at least that whatever economic genius Greenspan possesses does not extend to military strategizing or political analysis. One wonders, for instance, how exactly Saddam could have controlled the Strait of Hormuz with a nuclear or any other type of weapon when Iraq does not border this key waterway at the opening of the Persian Gulf and has no navy of any significance. One also wonders why Saddam&#8217;s future possession of a nuclear weapon was more worrisome than the likelihood that Iran, which does have a navy and does geographically control the strait, might close it. Greenspan&#8217;s statements further raise the question of why, given his claimed knowledge of Saddam&#8217;s &#8220;30-year history&#8221; and given the interest of earlier administrations in Iraq&#8217;s nuclear ambitions, he began to feel Saddam&#8217;s removal was &#8220;essential&#8221; only when the Bush administration began planning for war. And none of what Greenspan said explained why Iraq would have shut down its economy by blocking its own oil exports.</p> <p>Greenspan&#8217;s fumbling explanations seem at a minimum to be in the nature of meandering remarks by a man concentrated on economics with little political acumen, who went along with the war because of its presumed benefits in safeguarding oil markets but with no concern about the broader consequences of the war and little or no interest in its political motivations or its geostrategic implications beyond what he saw as its global economic goal.</p> <p>It remains open to question whether Greenspan in addition intended to divert attention from the clear evidence that Israel and its U.S. supporters, both among Jewish American organizations and among neocon policymakers inside the administration, pushed hard for the war, among other reasons to guarantee Israel&#8217;s security in the Middle East and its regional domination. But whatever his intent, this has been the effect of his concentration on oil. It reinforces the assumptions of those, primarily on the left, who have always contended that the war was &#8220;all about oil,&#8221; and only about oil. The left&#8217;s refusal to acknowledge that a desire to secure Israel in the region had anything to do with the Bush neocons&#8217; war planning is difficult to fathom, since many on the left are notable critics of Israeli policy. But, again, whatever their intent in quashing discussion of the Israeli link, the effect has been to contribute to silencing domestic debate on a critical U.S. policy issue.</p> <p>Neither is it clear in Wilkerson&#8217;s case whether he intended, by discussing Israeli representations against going after Iraq, to divert attention from Israel&#8217;s actual interest in Iraq. But once again, diverting and silencing discussion has been the effect of his brief remarks.</p> <p>Without closer examination, both Greenspan&#8217;s and Wilkerson&#8217;s statements seem to let Israel and its U.S. lobbyists off the hook, something that in differing ways serves the interests of Israel and the lobby, of the right in the U.S., and of the left. Israel&#8217;s U.S. supporters &#8212; fearful that Jews will be blamed for leading the U.S. into the debacle that Iraq has become and fearful of reviving old anti-Semitic canards about Jews exerting undue power &#8212; roundly deny any Israeli connection to the war. Israel itself, although not as fearful as its American acolytes of anti-Semitism, has remained silent, obviously not affirming a role in instigating the war and letting its supporters do the denying. The U.S. political right does not, of course, want to acknowledge that the relationship with Israel has grown so close that the U.S. would actually go to war at the behest of or for the benefit of Israel. Nor does it want to own up to any of the other actual motivations for the war &#8212; neither, as previously noted, to a motivation like oil nor to a baldly imperial motivation promising (and already providing) great profits for the joint U.S.-Israeli military-industrial complex.</p> <p>The left, on the other hand, very much wants to believe that oil, and perhaps secondarily the imperial drive, constituted the only motivations, and that Israel played no role at all. The left is as skittish as anyone, and perhaps more so than anyone else, about being seen to criticize Israel except occasionally regarding the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. It is much more comfortable for the left to believe that the U.S. is evil and Israel is at worst a hapless tool of Washington. The thought that the tail might wag the dog is rarely taken seriously.</p> <p>So the weight of public discourse since before the Iraq war was launched has been that any Israeli role in inspiring or pushing for it is at best a silly invention and at worst a vile anti-Jewish lie, and both the Wilkerson and the Greenspan statements play into this impression. Until these statements, the knowledge of an Israeli connection had begun to gain some greater currency thanks to a few valiant souls who have dared raise the subject, including people like Chris Hedges, Scott Ritter and, most recently, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt. In July, Hedges wrote a hard-hitting article for Truthdig, subsequently widely circulated, saying that the war &#8220;was strongly shaped by the notion that what is good for Israel is good for the United States,&#8221; and Israel and its neocon supporters wanted Iraq neutralized. Hedges also acknowledged a &#8220;desire for American control of oil&#8221; as a major driver of the war, along with &#8220;the belief that Washington could build puppet states in the region.&#8221;</p> <p>Scott Ritter, who served as a weapons inspector in Iraq during the 1990s, paints a somewhat more complex picture in his 2006 book Targeting Iran. He makes it clear, supporting Wilkerson&#8217;s statement, that over the years of weapons inspections, Israel had come to regard Iraq as a diminishing threat (unlike Greenspan, apparently), whereas Iran was increasingly viewed as a new looming danger. By August 2002, according to Ritter, when the Israelis passed intelligence about the threat from Iran to the Bush administration, &#8220;there was barely a reaction in Washington&#8221; because &#8220;all eyes were on Baghdad, not Tehran.&#8221; But Israel&#8217;s Ariel Sharon was, in Ritter&#8217;s words, &#8220;quick to catch on,&#8221; and in those last several months of 2002 &#8212; the critical months of war planning, coming well after the early 2002 period that Wilkerson was discussing &#8212; Israel jumped on the Iraq war bandwagon, publicly and privately, and began to press for and justify a U.S. invasion. Sharon assigned a senior Israeli military intelligence official to give the U.S. Israeli intelligence assessments on Iraqi WMD activity, according to Ritter, and at the same time, with an eye to later broadening the conflict to Iran and beyond, Israeli intelligence &#8220;pressed home to [the U.S.] the notion that the upcoming U.S. invasion of Iraq must serve as a springboard for a larger transformation within the Middle East, one that swept away not only Saddam Hussein, but also anti-Israeli elements in Syria, Palestine, and, of course, Iran.&#8221;</p> <p>This dovetails precisely with the neocon agenda, which was ultimately the operative ingredient in determining whether there would be war or not. This agenda was laid out publicly in the mid-1990s in the now infamous &#8220;Clean Break&#8221; paper, written in Israel for then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by a group of Israelis and Americans, three of whom later entered the Bush administration and began planning for the attack on Iraq. The principal elements of the paper involved overturning the Palestinian-Israeli peace process to save Israel from having to make any territorial concessions and then sparking massive changes, through force if necessary, in Iraq, Syria, and Iran, leading to an era of peace in which Israel and the U.S. jointly dominated a transformed and intimidated Middle East.</p> <p>In their book on the lobby, Mearsheimer and Walt provide overwhelming evidence for an Israeli link to the war that completely undermines the public myths revived by Wilkerson&#8217;s and Greenspan&#8217;s statements, and they build a convincing case against the notion that the war was &#8220;all about oil.&#8221; They are the first who have done the extensive research necessary to bring the mountain of evidence together.</p> <p>The two authors devote more than 30 pages and a remarkable 175 footnotes to constructing an irrefutable case for an Israeli role in helping plan, and a large lobby role in pressing for, the war. Although they do not claim that the effort to guarantee Israeli security was the sole reason for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, they demonstrate clearly &#8212; citing public and privates statements by Israeli military and political officials, informed commentary in both Israel and the U.S., and analysis by foreign policy experts &#8212; that &#8220;Israeli leaders, neoconservatives, and the Bush administration all saw war with Iraq as the first step in an ambitious campaign to remake the Middle East&#8221; in order to &#8220;make it a more friendly environment for America and Israel.&#8221; Israel and the lobby &#8220;played crucial roles in making that war happen.&#8221; Without the lobby and particularly the core of neocon policymakers inside government and neocon commentators and think-tank analysts on the sidelines, Mearsheimer and Walt conclude bluntly, &#8220;the war would almost certainly not have occurred&#8221; and &#8220;America would probably not be in Iraq today.&#8221;</p> <p>On the question of oil as a principal driver in the war, the authors demonstrate that in fact, although the oil industry was clearly happy to obtain lucrative concessions in post-Saddam Iraq, the argument that the industry pushed for the war in order to enhance profits is counter-intuitive. The disadvantages to the industry of turmoil in the region are evident. Energy companies, they make clear, do not like wars in oil-rich areas. Nor do they like such other recent &#8220;staples of U.S. Middle East policy&#8221; as sanctions and regime change, because each of these actions &#8220;threatens access to oil and gas reserves and thus [the oil companies&#8217;] ability to make money.&#8221; Mearsheimer and Walt point out that Vice President Cheney opposed sanctions on Iran while he was president of Halliburton in the mid-1990s and complained about the &#8220;sanctions happy&#8221; policies of the U.S. Instability is rarely in the interests of the oil companies. In the end, the authors conclude, the &#8220;wealthy Arab governments and the oil lobby exert much less influence on U.S. foreign policy than the Israel lobby does, because oil interests have less need to skew foreign policy in the directions they favor and they do not have the same leverage.&#8221;</p> <p>It is fair to ask why it matters whether the U.S. went to war solely for oil, or solely for Israel, or out of an imperial drive &#8212; or, as is much more likely the case, for some combination of these motivations. It matters, most fundamentally, because, if there is ever to be a course correction and a return to some kind of policy sanity that will prevent similar future disasters, it is necessary to understand how this disaster arose in the first place. All of these motivations, together and separately, are unacceptable reasons for launching an unprovoked aggression against another sovereign nation, for killing up to a million of its innocent citizens, and for fostering chaos throughout the region. Global sanity and global security demand that the U.S. not invade other countries to obtain control over their natural resources or gain huge corporate profits through oil concessions. Global sanity and security also demand that the U.S. cease trying to expand its imperial reach. And, perhaps most important, it is absolutely vital that the U.S. not so subordinate what should be its true interests to those of another nation that it can be led into wars anywhere, but particularly in the most sensitive area of the world, at the behest or for the benefit of Israel. If going to war to secure huge profits for oil companies is obscene, how much more obscene is going to war for the benefit of a foreign power because we are no longer able to distinguish our interests from theirs?</p> <p>It has become almost trite to quote George Washington&#8217;s farewell speech urging moderation in foreign attachments, but his injunctions 200 years ago have an eerie applicability to the U.S. relationship with Israel today. Warning against &#8220;a passionate attachment of one nation for another,&#8221; Washington observed that this creates &#8220;a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification.&#8221;</p> <p>The U.S. alliance with Israel has unquestionably led to a gross distortion of U.S. policy in exactly the way in which Washington predicted, creating the illusion of a common interest where none exists and injecting Israel&#8217;s enmities into the U.S. with little or no justification. If the U.S. cannot distinguish its own interests from those of Israel and Israel&#8217;s lobby, then it simply cannot act, as it should, purely in its own interest. Those who minimize the role of the Israel lobby in influencing U.S. policy choices, and who refuse or fail to recognize the part Israel and the lobby have played in leading the U.S. into disastrous foreign adventures, pose an incalculable danger to the U.S., for a failure to recognize the reason for a misguided policy will inevitably doom us to repeat it.</p> <p>Kathleen Christison is a former CIA political analyst and has worked on Middle East issues for 30 years. She is the author of <a href="" type="internal">Perceptions of Palestine</a> and <a href="" type="internal">The Wound of Dispossession</a>. She can be reached at <a href="mailto:kathy.bill.christison@comcast.net" type="external">kathy.bill.christison@comcast.net</a>.</p> <p>Bill Christison was a senior official of the CIA. He served as a National Intelligence officer and as director of the CIA&#8217;s Office of Regional and Political Analysis.</p> <p>They can be reached at <a href="mailto:kathy.bill.christison@comcast.net" type="external">kathy.bill.christison@comcast.net</a>.</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p>

The Teflon Alliance with Israel

https://counterpunch.org/2007/09/28/the-teflon-alliance-with-israel/

2007-09-28

4left

Two recent offhand comments both widely publicized have seriously undermined whatever progress might have been made in exposing the fact that the Iraq war was initiated at least in large part to guarantee Israel8217s safety and regional dominance in the Middle East In late August Lawrence Wilkerson who served as Colin Powell8217s chief of staff when he was secretary of state told Gareth Porter of Inter Press Service that when Israel first got wind of US planning for a war against Iraq a wide range of Israelis including political and intelligence officials began warning against such a war 8220Israelis were telling us Iraq is not the enemy 8212 Iran is the enemy8221 Wilkerson said Israeli warnings against an attack on Iraq were 8220pervasive8221 in Israeli communications with the administration during early 2002 according to Wilkerson This story garnered a fair amount of publicity and in at least one instance was used by a radio talk show host to shut off discussion of the John MearsheimerStephen Walt book on the influence of the Israel lobby The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy Just a few days after the Wilkerson story came out and also only days after release of the MearsheimerWalt book a caller to the Thom Hartmann radio program commended the book urged Hartmann and his guest at the time Senator Bernie Sanders to read it and asked Sanders to address the issue of Israel8217s and the lobby8217s support for the Iraq war Hartmann shut the caller off with a comment that 8220we don8217t hype books on this program8221 after having just allowed another caller to hype another book Sanders then proceeded to denounce 8220conspiracy theories8221 such as the notion that Israel had anything to do with the war and Hartmann finished off with a remark that 8220besides8221 a report just came out 8211obviously meaning the Wilkerson story 8212 that demonstrates there was no Israeli link to the war In fact the Wilkerson report does not refute the notion of an Israeli link he addresses only IsraeliUS contacts in early 2002 whereas by later in 2002 and 2003 the evidence is overwhelming that Israel and particularly the Israel lobby were pushing hard for the war But this is the way myths are born Hartmann and Sanders were able to use perhaps 90 seconds on a nationally broadcast radio program to tout an incomplete report reinforcing their own misconceptions and to dismiss a thoroughly researched book disproving those misconceptions Never again mostly likely will they or any of the choir they were broadcasting to who do not want to have to deal with Israel anyway even think about the issue The Wilkerson assertions were followed in midSeptember by the highly publicized singlesentence statement by former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan in his justreleased memoir The Age of Turbulence that 8220it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows the Iraq war is largely about oil8221 When the media pounced on this statement which stands virtually alone and unelaborated in a 500page book Greenspan gave several interviews supposedly intended to clarify his statement To AP he said 8212 in an obvious sop to the administration and the right which clearly do not want to own up to such a crass motivation for the war as oil 8212 that he had not intended to imply that oil was 8220the administration8217s motive I8217m just saying that if somebody asked me 8216Are we fortunate in taking out Saddam8217 I would say it was essential8221 for economic reasons He had come to fear he explained that 8220Saddam looking over his 30year history very clearly was giving evidence of moving towards controlling the Straits sic of Hormuz where there are 17 18 19 million barrels a day8221 passing through The war was not an oil grab Greenspan said but 8220taking Saddam out was essential8221 because it assured the continued smooth operation of the oil market A week later on Amy Goodman8217s 8220Democracy Now8221 Greenspan repeating that he had been watching Saddam Hussein for 30 years said that he had feared that Saddam would acquire a nuclear weapon that this would give him control over the Strait of Hormuz and that he therefore had to be removed Greenspan said he believed the 8220size of the threat8221 that Saddam posed 8220was scary8221 because 8220he could have essentially also shut down a significant part of economic activity throughout the world8221 The logic here is really quite strange and indicates at least that whatever economic genius Greenspan possesses does not extend to military strategizing or political analysis One wonders for instance how exactly Saddam could have controlled the Strait of Hormuz with a nuclear or any other type of weapon when Iraq does not border this key waterway at the opening of the Persian Gulf and has no navy of any significance One also wonders why Saddam8217s future possession of a nuclear weapon was more worrisome than the likelihood that Iran which does have a navy and does geographically control the strait might close it Greenspan8217s statements further raise the question of why given his claimed knowledge of Saddam8217s 822030year history8221 and given the interest of earlier administrations in Iraq8217s nuclear ambitions he began to feel Saddam8217s removal was 8220essential8221 only when the Bush administration began planning for war And none of what Greenspan said explained why Iraq would have shut down its economy by blocking its own oil exports Greenspan8217s fumbling explanations seem at a minimum to be in the nature of meandering remarks by a man concentrated on economics with little political acumen who went along with the war because of its presumed benefits in safeguarding oil markets but with no concern about the broader consequences of the war and little or no interest in its political motivations or its geostrategic implications beyond what he saw as its global economic goal It remains open to question whether Greenspan in addition intended to divert attention from the clear evidence that Israel and its US supporters both among Jewish American organizations and among neocon policymakers inside the administration pushed hard for the war among other reasons to guarantee Israel8217s security in the Middle East and its regional domination But whatever his intent this has been the effect of his concentration on oil It reinforces the assumptions of those primarily on the left who have always contended that the war was 8220all about oil8221 and only about oil The left8217s refusal to acknowledge that a desire to secure Israel in the region had anything to do with the Bush neocons8217 war planning is difficult to fathom since many on the left are notable critics of Israeli policy But again whatever their intent in quashing discussion of the Israeli link the effect has been to contribute to silencing domestic debate on a critical US policy issue Neither is it clear in Wilkerson8217s case whether he intended by discussing Israeli representations against going after Iraq to divert attention from Israel8217s actual interest in Iraq But once again diverting and silencing discussion has been the effect of his brief remarks Without closer examination both Greenspan8217s and Wilkerson8217s statements seem to let Israel and its US lobbyists off the hook something that in differing ways serves the interests of Israel and the lobby of the right in the US and of the left Israel8217s US supporters 8212 fearful that Jews will be blamed for leading the US into the debacle that Iraq has become and fearful of reviving old antiSemitic canards about Jews exerting undue power 8212 roundly deny any Israeli connection to the war Israel itself although not as fearful as its American acolytes of antiSemitism has remained silent obviously not affirming a role in instigating the war and letting its supporters do the denying The US political right does not of course want to acknowledge that the relationship with Israel has grown so close that the US would actually go to war at the behest of or for the benefit of Israel Nor does it want to own up to any of the other actual motivations for the war 8212 neither as previously noted to a motivation like oil nor to a baldly imperial motivation promising and already providing great profits for the joint USIsraeli militaryindustrial complex The left on the other hand very much wants to believe that oil and perhaps secondarily the imperial drive constituted the only motivations and that Israel played no role at all The left is as skittish as anyone and perhaps more so than anyone else about being seen to criticize Israel except occasionally regarding the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories It is much more comfortable for the left to believe that the US is evil and Israel is at worst a hapless tool of Washington The thought that the tail might wag the dog is rarely taken seriously So the weight of public discourse since before the Iraq war was launched has been that any Israeli role in inspiring or pushing for it is at best a silly invention and at worst a vile antiJewish lie and both the Wilkerson and the Greenspan statements play into this impression Until these statements the knowledge of an Israeli connection had begun to gain some greater currency thanks to a few valiant souls who have dared raise the subject including people like Chris Hedges Scott Ritter and most recently John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt In July Hedges wrote a hardhitting article for Truthdig subsequently widely circulated saying that the war 8220was strongly shaped by the notion that what is good for Israel is good for the United States8221 and Israel and its neocon supporters wanted Iraq neutralized Hedges also acknowledged a 8220desire for American control of oil8221 as a major driver of the war along with 8220the belief that Washington could build puppet states in the region8221 Scott Ritter who served as a weapons inspector in Iraq during the 1990s paints a somewhat more complex picture in his 2006 book Targeting Iran He makes it clear supporting Wilkerson8217s statement that over the years of weapons inspections Israel had come to regard Iraq as a diminishing threat unlike Greenspan apparently whereas Iran was increasingly viewed as a new looming danger By August 2002 according to Ritter when the Israelis passed intelligence about the threat from Iran to the Bush administration 8220there was barely a reaction in Washington8221 because 8220all eyes were on Baghdad not Tehran8221 But Israel8217s Ariel Sharon was in Ritter8217s words 8220quick to catch on8221 and in those last several months of 2002 8212 the critical months of war planning coming well after the early 2002 period that Wilkerson was discussing 8212 Israel jumped on the Iraq war bandwagon publicly and privately and began to press for and justify a US invasion Sharon assigned a senior Israeli military intelligence official to give the US Israeli intelligence assessments on Iraqi WMD activity according to Ritter and at the same time with an eye to later broadening the conflict to Iran and beyond Israeli intelligence 8220pressed home to the US the notion that the upcoming US invasion of Iraq must serve as a springboard for a larger transformation within the Middle East one that swept away not only Saddam Hussein but also antiIsraeli elements in Syria Palestine and of course Iran8221 This dovetails precisely with the neocon agenda which was ultimately the operative ingredient in determining whether there would be war or not This agenda was laid out publicly in the mid1990s in the now infamous 8220Clean Break8221 paper written in Israel for thenPrime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by a group of Israelis and Americans three of whom later entered the Bush administration and began planning for the attack on Iraq The principal elements of the paper involved overturning the PalestinianIsraeli peace process to save Israel from having to make any territorial concessions and then sparking massive changes through force if necessary in Iraq Syria and Iran leading to an era of peace in which Israel and the US jointly dominated a transformed and intimidated Middle East In their book on the lobby Mearsheimer and Walt provide overwhelming evidence for an Israeli link to the war that completely undermines the public myths revived by Wilkerson8217s and Greenspan8217s statements and they build a convincing case against the notion that the war was 8220all about oil8221 They are the first who have done the extensive research necessary to bring the mountain of evidence together The two authors devote more than 30 pages and a remarkable 175 footnotes to constructing an irrefutable case for an Israeli role in helping plan and a large lobby role in pressing for the war Although they do not claim that the effort to guarantee Israeli security was the sole reason for the US invasion of Iraq they demonstrate clearly 8212 citing public and privates statements by Israeli military and political officials informed commentary in both Israel and the US and analysis by foreign policy experts 8212 that 8220Israeli leaders neoconservatives and the Bush administration all saw war with Iraq as the first step in an ambitious campaign to remake the Middle East8221 in order to 8220make it a more friendly environment for America and Israel8221 Israel and the lobby 8220played crucial roles in making that war happen8221 Without the lobby and particularly the core of neocon policymakers inside government and neocon commentators and thinktank analysts on the sidelines Mearsheimer and Walt conclude bluntly 8220the war would almost certainly not have occurred8221 and 8220America would probably not be in Iraq today8221 On the question of oil as a principal driver in the war the authors demonstrate that in fact although the oil industry was clearly happy to obtain lucrative concessions in postSaddam Iraq the argument that the industry pushed for the war in order to enhance profits is counterintuitive The disadvantages to the industry of turmoil in the region are evident Energy companies they make clear do not like wars in oilrich areas Nor do they like such other recent 8220staples of US Middle East policy8221 as sanctions and regime change because each of these actions 8220threatens access to oil and gas reserves and thus the oil companies8217 ability to make money8221 Mearsheimer and Walt point out that Vice President Cheney opposed sanctions on Iran while he was president of Halliburton in the mid1990s and complained about the 8220sanctions happy8221 policies of the US Instability is rarely in the interests of the oil companies In the end the authors conclude the 8220wealthy Arab governments and the oil lobby exert much less influence on US foreign policy than the Israel lobby does because oil interests have less need to skew foreign policy in the directions they favor and they do not have the same leverage8221 It is fair to ask why it matters whether the US went to war solely for oil or solely for Israel or out of an imperial drive 8212 or as is much more likely the case for some combination of these motivations It matters most fundamentally because if there is ever to be a course correction and a return to some kind of policy sanity that will prevent similar future disasters it is necessary to understand how this disaster arose in the first place All of these motivations together and separately are unacceptable reasons for launching an unprovoked aggression against another sovereign nation for killing up to a million of its innocent citizens and for fostering chaos throughout the region Global sanity and global security demand that the US not invade other countries to obtain control over their natural resources or gain huge corporate profits through oil concessions Global sanity and security also demand that the US cease trying to expand its imperial reach And perhaps most important it is absolutely vital that the US not so subordinate what should be its true interests to those of another nation that it can be led into wars anywhere but particularly in the most sensitive area of the world at the behest or for the benefit of Israel If going to war to secure huge profits for oil companies is obscene how much more obscene is going to war for the benefit of a foreign power because we are no longer able to distinguish our interests from theirs It has become almost trite to quote George Washington8217s farewell speech urging moderation in foreign attachments but his injunctions 200 years ago have an eerie applicability to the US relationship with Israel today Warning against 8220a passionate attachment of one nation for another8221 Washington observed that this creates 8220a variety of evils Sympathy for the favorite nation facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists and infusing into one the enmities of the other betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification8221 The US alliance with Israel has unquestionably led to a gross distortion of US policy in exactly the way in which Washington predicted creating the illusion of a common interest where none exists and injecting Israel8217s enmities into the US with little or no justification If the US cannot distinguish its own interests from those of Israel and Israel8217s lobby then it simply cannot act as it should purely in its own interest Those who minimize the role of the Israel lobby in influencing US policy choices and who refuse or fail to recognize the part Israel and the lobby have played in leading the US into disastrous foreign adventures pose an incalculable danger to the US for a failure to recognize the reason for a misguided policy will inevitably doom us to repeat it Kathleen Christison is a former CIA political analyst and has worked on Middle East issues for 30 years She is the author of Perceptions of Palestine and The Wound of Dispossession She can be reached at kathybillchristisoncomcastnet Bill Christison was a senior official of the CIA He served as a National Intelligence officer and as director of the CIA8217s Office of Regional and Political Analysis They can be reached at kathybillchristisoncomcastnet amp160

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<p>KABUL, Jan 24 (Reuters) - Afghan airline Kam Air is struggling to resume operations after nine staff members were killed in a Taliban attack on a Kabul hotel at the weekend, a company director said on Wednesday.</p> <p>The bodies of seven Ukrainian employees of the airline, among at least 20 people killed in Saturday&#8217;s raid on Kabul&#8217;s Hotel Intercontinental, were sent home on Wednesday. The other two Kam Air staffers killed were from Venezuela.</p> <p>Most of the other foreign staff have left the country, crippling operations.</p> <p>&#8220;We used to have 37 flights a day on average. We now have about seven,&#8221; Ramin Youresh, business development director for the Kam group of companies, told Reuters.</p> <p>&#8220;Most domestic flights are cancelled because we don&#8217;t have the crew and we don&#8217;t have the airplanes.&#8221;</p> <p>Kam Air, one of three main Afghan airlines, provides links between major cities in a country where travel by road is often dangerous and unreliable. It also flies some international routes in the region.</p> <p>It was the second time in less than a year that a major private company in Afghanistan had suffered a devastating loss. More than 30 employees of mobile phone company Roshan Telecommunications were killed in a truck bomb attack near the German embassy in Kabul in May last year.</p> <p>Kam Air had 62 expatriate staff, both pilots and cabin crew, who used the Intercontinental as their Kabul base. About 40 of them were in the hotel at the time of the attack.</p> <p>&#8220;Most of them have left, they&#8217;re in a bad way, they&#8217;re in shock. They need three or four weeks to recover, then decide if they are willing to come back,&#8221; Youresh said.</p> <p>&#8220;We expect most won&#8217;t come back.&#8221;</p> NEED HELP <p>Of the airlines&#8217; foreign staff members, up to 40 were from Ukraine while the airline also leased six planes from two Ukrainian companies.</p> <p>But two of the Ukrainian aircraft had left the country after orders from home to suspend operations, Youresh said.</p> <p>&#8220;Four are still here but the question is if we get a green light for them to operate,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>The attack on the Intercontinental Hotel caused some of the heaviest casualties among foreigners in Afghanistan for years. As well as the Ukrainians and Venezuelans from Kam Air, an unknown number of Americans and one German citizen have been confirmed killed.</p> <p>Many details about the attack remain unclear, but according to one report, at least 13 foreigners were among the dead.</p> <p>The government has pledged a full investigation and President Ashraf Ghani received an initial report on Tuesday but no change in security measures has been announced.</p> <p>Youresh said the airline needed help from the government as it struggled to bring back the staff it needs to resume its operations.</p> <p>&#8220;We will do our best, of course, but we expect the government to support us, cooperate in terms of security and safety,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>In particular, Kam Air was hoping for government permission to build a compound inside the heavily protected Kabul airport grounds, which would include living quarters for foreign staff.</p> <p>&#8220;It&#8217;s difficult for us to get foreign crews. They would feel much safer there,&#8221; Youresh said.</p> <p>Many foreign technicians and contractors in Kabul live in heavily protected compounds, several of them close to the airport, but their living conditions are relatively spartan.</p> <p>On Wednesday, Afghan Kam Air staff saw off the bodies of their seven Ukrainian colleagues at a ceremony at Kabul airport. (Addtional reporting by James Mackenzie; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>KABUL (Reuters) - A suicide bomber blew himself up near a shrine in Kabul on Wednesday, killing at least 32 people and wounding dozens, as the Afghan capital celebrated the Nawruz holiday marking the start of the Persian new year.</p> <p>The explosion underlined the threat to the city from militant attacks, despite government promises to tighten security in the wake of an attack in central Kabul that killed around 100 people in January.</p> <p>Militant group Islamic State, which has claimed several previous attacks on Shi&#8217;ite targets, claimed responsibility, saying the attack specifically targeted Shi&#8217;ites celebrating Nawruz, its Amaq news agency said.</p> <p>The Taliban, which often fights Islamic State&#8217;s local affiliate in Afghanistan, issued a statement denying any connection to the blast.</p> <p>Kabul had been on alert for attacks over the Nawruz holiday but the bomber was still able to detonate his explosives as people were leaving the Kart-e Sakhi shrine, in a heavily Shi&#8217;ite area in the west of the city.</p> <p>&#8220;People were heading home joyously after the end of the ceremony when the suicide bomber detonated his explosives among them,&#8221; said Kabul police chief Daud Amin. &#8220;Many of our countrymen were martyred.&#8221;</p> <p>Interior Ministry spokesman Najib Danesh said the bomber had apparently intended to reach the shrine, which was attacked during a Shi&#8217;ite festival in October 2016, but had been prevented from getting closer by police checkpoints.</p> An Afghan man inspects the site of a suicide attack in Kabul, Afghanistan March 21, 2018. REUTERS/Omar Sobhani <p>&#8220;We had our security in place in and around the shrine,&#8221; he said. &#8220;All the casualties were young people who were either passing by on the road or gathering to enjoy Nawruz.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;UN-ISLAMIC&#8221; FESTIVAL</p> Slideshow (11 Images) <p>Nawruz, an ancient Persian festival to mark the start of spring, is widely celebrated in many parts of Afghanistan but has also faced opposition from some fundamentalist Muslims, who say it is un-Islamic.</p> <p>Waheed Majroh, a spokesman for the ministry of public health, said 32 people were confirmed dead with more than 50 wounded being treated in hospitals in the city. Women and children were among the casualties, he said.</p> <p>Wednesday&#8217;s attack was the latest in a series to have struck Kabul this year, including one earlier this month that targeted the mainly Shi&#8217;ite Hazara minority.</p> <p>The seemingly endless attacks have undermined support for the government of President Ashraf Ghani, who offered last month to hold peace talks with Taliban insurgents fighting to drive out international forces and reimpose their version of strict Islamic law.</p> <p>The Taliban have so far shown little sign of accepting the offer of talks with the Western-backed government, which they consider an illegitimate, foreign-imposed regime, although they have offered to talk to the United States.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Mohammad Aziz and Omar Fahmy in CAIRO; Writing by James Mackenzie; Editing by Nick Macfie and Gareth Jones</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>PARIS (Reuters) - Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was questioned on Tuesday by police investigating whether late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi helped finance his 2007 election campaign.</p> <p>An official in the French judiciary said Sarkozy, 63, was held in custody in Nanterre, west of Paris.</p> <p>It is the second major judicial investigation to fall on Sarkozy, who served as president from 2007-2012. He already faces trial on separate charges of illicit spending overruns during his failed re-election campaign in 2012.</p> <p>A lawyer for Sarkozy could not immediately be reached for comment. The former president has dismissed the Libya allegations as &#8220;grotesque&#8221; and a &#8220;crude manipulation&#8221;.</p> <p>France&#8217;s center-right party, The Republicans, backed its former leader. &#8220;Members and supporters of The Republicans are once again left feeling that not all lawmakers or former lawmakers are treated equally, depending on their political affiliation,&#8221; the party said in a statement.</p> <p>France opened an inquiry into the Libya case in 2013, after reports by French website Mediapart based on claims by a Franco-Lebanese businessman, Ziad Takieddine, who said he had transferred 5 million euros ($6 million) from Gaddafi&#8217;s former intelligence chief Abdullah Senussi to Sarkozy&#8217;s campaign chief.</p> <p>Months after he took office in 2007, Sarkozy became the first Western leader in decades to host a visit by Gaddafi, who pitched his trademark Bedouin-style tent next to the Elysee Palace. Several business deals were signed.</p> <p>However, Sarkozy was later one of the chief advocates of a NATO-led military campaign that resulted in Gaddafi&#8217;s overthrow and killing at the hands of rebel forces in 2011.</p> FILE PHOTO: Nicolas Sarkozy, former head of the Les Republicains political party, attends a Les Republicains (LR) public meeting in Les Sables d'Olonne, France, October 1, 2016. REUTERS/Stephane Mahe/File Photo CAMPAIGN FINANCES <p>Investigators in France can hold people for questioning for up to 48 hours before either releasing them or sending them before magistrates who decide whether they have grounds for turning a preliminary inquiry into a full investigation.</p> <p>The latter can, but does not always, lead to a trial.</p> <p>The Libya-funding inquiry appeared to have gone quiet until January, when French businessman Alexandre Djouhri, suspected by investigators of funneling money from Gaddafi to finance Sarkozy&#8217;s campaign, was arrested in Britain on a warrant issued by France.</p> Slideshow (7 Images) <p>A lawyer for Djouhri last month accused French authorities of politicizing the case and manipulating it against his client. French authorities had no comment.</p> <p>Sarkozy&#8217;s predecessor, Jacques Chirac, was convicted in 2011, after his retirement, of misusing public funds to keep political allies in phantom jobs. That made the now ailing Chirac the first French head of state convicted since Nazi collaborator Marshal Philippe Petain in 1945.</p> <p>Sarkozy has been dogged for years by political scandals, but none has led to a conviction.</p> <p>The Libya inquiry has largely focused on the evidence provided by Takieddine, who is himself under investigation in a separate affair of arms sales to Pakistan in the 1990s.</p> <p>Takieddine said in 2016 that he personally handed over three suitcases filled with cash from Gaddafi to Sarkozy and a senior aide to help finance Sarkozy&#8217;s campaign.</p> <p>Sarkozy&#8217;s lawyer at the time, Thierry Herzog, dismissed Takieddine&#8217;s claims and produced a copy of a witness statement to police by Takieddine in 2012 in which the businessman said he had last seen Sarkozy in November 2003.</p> <p>Reporting by Paris bureau; Writing by Brian Love; Editing by Luke Baker, Richard Lough and Peter Graff</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel for the first time admitted that it bombed a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007 and said on Wednesday the strike should be a warning to Iran that it would not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons.</p> A still frame taken from video material released on March 21, 2018 shows a combination image of what the Israeli military describes is before and after an Israeli air strike on a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor site near Deir al-Zor on Sept 6, 2007. IDF/Handout via Reuters TV <p>The Israeli military released previously classified cockpit footage, photographs and intelligence documents about its Sept. 6, 2007, air strike on the Al-Kubar facility near Deir al-Zor in eastern Syria.</p> <p>It said the reactor was being built with help from North Korea and the facility had been months away from activation. Reuters has been unable to immediately verify the Israeli material.</p> <p>Israel&#8217;s decision to go public comes after repeated calls in recent months by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the United States and international community to take tougher action on Iran, Syria&#8217;s ally.</p> <p>Israel&#8217;s intelligence minister, Israel Katz, said on Twitter: &#8220;The (2007) operation and its success made clear that Israel will never allow nuclear weaponry to be in the hands of those who threaten its existence - Syria then, and Iran today.&#8221;</p> <p>The Israeli military described in detail events leading up to the night of Sept 5-6, 2007, in which, it said, eight warplanes, F-16s and F-15s, carried out the mission after taking off from the Ramon and Hatzerim air bases and flying to Deir al-Zor region, 450 km northwest of Damascus. Eighteen tonnes of munitions were dropped on the site, it said.</p> <p>In his 2010 memoir &#8220;Decision Points,&#8221; former U.S. President George W. Bush disclosed that he discussed intelligence about the Syrian facility with then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert before it was destroyed but did not give him the green light for the raid.</p> <p>James Jeffrey, Bush&#8217;s deputy national security adviser, said on Wednesday the former U.S. president had been &#8220;absolutely supportive&#8221; of Israel.</p> <p>&#8220;(He) made it clear that we were very happy that events had eliminated this threat and that if there were any threats to Israel that would emerge from this situation, the United States would stand with Israel, period,&#8221; Jeffrey told Israel&#8217;s Army Radio.</p> <p>In 2008 the United States presented what it described as intelligence showing that North Korea had helped Syria with &#8220;covert nuclear activities.&#8221; At the time Syria dismissed the accusations as part of a campaign to discredit the Damascus government.</p> <p>&#8220;The Syrian government regrets the campaign of lies and falsification by the U.S. administration against Syria, including allegations of nuclear activity,&#8221; said a government statement issued on the Syrian state news agency.</p> <p>Iran, which says its nuclear program has only peaceful aims, signed a 2015 deal under which it accepted curbs on its nuclear program in return for sanctions relief. U.S. President Donald Trump and Netanyahu have both been critical of the deal.</p> FILE PHOTO- This undated image released by the U.S. Government shows a building after it was bombed in Syria. U.S. Government/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo &#8220;TOP SECRET&#8221; <p>The Israeli military declassified internal &#8220;top secret&#8221; intelligence reports, in Hebrew, some of them partly redacted.</p> <p>One, dated March 30, 2007, said: &#8220;Syria has set up, within its territory, a nuclear reactor for the production of plutonium, through North Korea, which according to an (initial) worst-case assessment is liable to be activated in approximately another year. To our assessment [REDACTED] secretive and orderly [REDACTED] for achieving a nuclear weapon.&#8221;</p> <p>Israeli intelligence predicted that the suspected reactor &#8220;would turn operational by the end of 2007&#8221;.</p> Slideshow (16 Images) <p>The mission to destroy the facility started at 10.30 p.m. on Sept. 5 and ended with the return of the warplanes at 2.30 a.m. the next day, the Israeli military said.</p> <p>The event was first made public by Syria, which, as reported by Reuters at the time, said in the early hours of Sept. 6 that Syrian air defenses had repelled an incursion by Israeli warplanes.</p> <p>Syria, a signatory of the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), has always denied that the site was a reactor or that Damascus engaged in nuclear cooperation with North Korea.</p> <p>The Israeli military&#8217;s announcement on Wednesday noted that the area in question, around Deir al-Zor, was captured by Islamic State after the Syrian civil war erupted in 2011.</p> <p>Had there been an active reactor there, the Israeli military said, it would have had &#8220;severe strategic implications on the entire Middle East as well as Israel and Syria&#8221;.</p> <p>The Israeli release contains a black-and-white aerial photograph captioned &#8220;before the attack&#8221; and showing a box-like structure amid desert dunes with smaller outlying buildings.</p> <p>A series of black-and-white videos, taken above the target, shows the structure in cross-hairs. A male voice is heard counting down three seconds, a cloud of black smoke rises from the structure as it explodes. Other footage appears to show the aftermath - a smoldering hole in the ground.</p> <p>Wednesday&#8217;s release came ahead of the publication of a memoir by Olmert containing passages about the 2007 strike.</p> <p>Writing by Dan Williams and Stephen Farrell; Editing by Janet Lawrence</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>EDINBURGH (Reuters) - A legal attempt by anti-Brexit campaigners to establish that Britain could unilaterally reverse Brexit was given a boost on Tuesday by Scotland&#8217;s top court, which said it wants to examine the case in greater depth.</p> Anti-Brexit demonstrators wave EU and Union flags outside the Houses of Parliament in London, Britain, January 30, 2018. REUTERS/Toby Melville - RC1A41866470 <p>The group behind the legal challenge, who include pro-EU Scottish lawmakers, want to show that Britain could stay in the European Union after all &#8212; if, for example, the final terms of Brexit negotiated by the government were rejected by parliament.</p> <p>The campaigners are ultimately seeking a formal opinion by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) asserting that Britain could reverse its decision to invoke Article 50 of the EU&#8217;s Lisbon Treaty, the formal step that kickstarted the Brexit process.</p> <p>They argue that once the terms of Brexit have been negotiated, Britain&#8217;s sovereign parliament may well decide not to go ahead with it, so lawmakers need to know in advance if that is legally possible.</p> <p>As things stand, there is no suggestion of a change of course over Brexit, which British voters backed by 52 to 48 percent in a June 2016 referendum. The ruling Conservative Party and main opposition Labour Party are both committed to Britain leaving the European Union.</p> <p>The legal case, headed by anti-Brexit campaigning lawyer Jolyon Maugham, had been rejected by a lower Scottish court.</p> <p>The British government argued that the question of whether Britain could unilaterally stop Brexit was irrelevant because the will of the voters was clear and the government was not going to back out of Brexit.</p> <p>On Tuesday, the Court of Session, Scotland&#8217;s highest court, overturned an earlier ruling, saying the case raised important issues and there should be a full hearing so all the arguments could be debated.</p> <p>&#8220;The issue of whether it is legally possible to revoke the notice of withdrawal is, as already stated, one of great importance,&#8221; the Court of Session said, referring to the Article 50 process which started in March 2017.</p> <p>&#8220;On one view, authoritative guidance on whether it is legally possible to do so may have the capacity to influence (lawmakers) in deciding what steps to take in advance of, and at the time of, a debate and vote on the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill.&#8221;</p> <p>Once a full hearing has taken place in Edinburgh, a decision will be made on whether to refer it to the ECJ, the court said, although it may ultimately decide that it should not.</p> <p>If the Scottish court decided not to refer to the ECJ, the petitioners can take their appeal to Britain&#8217;s Supreme Court.</p> <p>They argue that while there is no doubt that Britain could stop Brexit with the permission of the other 27 members, it should seek to establish a legal right to do so unilaterally whether the rest of the bloc likes it or not.</p> <p>Reporting by Elisabeth O'Leary; Editing by Estelle Shirbon</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Afghan airline struggles after foreign staff killed in hotel raid Suicide bomber kills more than 30 near shrine in Afghan capital Former French president Sarkozy held over Gaddafi cash inquiry Israel admits bombing suspected Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007, warns Iran Court rules in favour of case on Britain's ability to reverse Brexit

https://reuters.com/article/afghanistan-attacks-airline/afghan-airline-struggles-after-foreign-staff-killed-in-hotel-raid-idUSL4N1PJ3CB

2018-01-24

2least

KABUL Jan 24 Reuters Afghan airline Kam Air is struggling to resume operations after nine staff members were killed in a Taliban attack on a Kabul hotel at the weekend a company director said on Wednesday The bodies of seven Ukrainian employees of the airline among at least 20 people killed in Saturday8217s raid on Kabul8217s Hotel Intercontinental were sent home on Wednesday The other two Kam Air staffers killed were from Venezuela Most of the other foreign staff have left the country crippling operations 8220We used to have 37 flights a day on average We now have about seven8221 Ramin Youresh business development director for the Kam group of companies told Reuters 8220Most domestic flights are cancelled because we don8217t have the crew and we don8217t have the airplanes8221 Kam Air one of three main Afghan airlines provides links between major cities in a country where travel by road is often dangerous and unreliable It also flies some international routes in the region It was the second time in less than a year that a major private company in Afghanistan had suffered a devastating loss More than 30 employees of mobile phone company Roshan Telecommunications were killed in a truck bomb attack near the German embassy in Kabul in May last year Kam Air had 62 expatriate staff both pilots and cabin crew who used the Intercontinental as their Kabul base About 40 of them were in the hotel at the time of the attack 8220Most of them have left they8217re in a bad way they8217re in shock They need three or four weeks to recover then decide if they are willing to come back8221 Youresh said 8220We expect most won8217t come back8221 NEED HELP Of the airlines8217 foreign staff members up to 40 were from Ukraine while the airline also leased six planes from two Ukrainian companies But two of the Ukrainian aircraft had left the country after orders from home to suspend operations Youresh said 8220Four are still here but the question is if we get a green light for them to operate8221 he said The attack on the Intercontinental Hotel caused some of the heaviest casualties among foreigners in Afghanistan for years As well as the Ukrainians and Venezuelans from Kam Air an unknown number of Americans and one German citizen have been confirmed killed Many details about the attack remain unclear but according to one report at least 13 foreigners were among the dead The government has pledged a full investigation and President Ashraf Ghani received an initial report on Tuesday but no change in security measures has been announced Youresh said the airline needed help from the government as it struggled to bring back the staff it needs to resume its operations 8220We will do our best of course but we expect the government to support us cooperate in terms of security and safety8221 he said In particular Kam Air was hoping for government permission to build a compound inside the heavily protected Kabul airport grounds which would include living quarters for foreign staff 8220It8217s difficult for us to get foreign crews They would feel much safer there8221 Youresh said Many foreign technicians and contractors in Kabul live in heavily protected compounds several of them close to the airport but their living conditions are relatively spartan On Wednesday Afghan Kam Air staff saw off the bodies of their seven Ukrainian colleagues at a ceremony at Kabul airport Addtional reporting by James Mackenzie Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles KABUL Reuters A suicide bomber blew himself up near a shrine in Kabul on Wednesday killing at least 32 people and wounding dozens as the Afghan capital celebrated the Nawruz holiday marking the start of the Persian new year The explosion underlined the threat to the city from militant attacks despite government promises to tighten security in the wake of an attack in central Kabul that killed around 100 people in January Militant group Islamic State which has claimed several previous attacks on Shi8217ite targets claimed responsibility saying the attack specifically targeted Shi8217ites celebrating Nawruz its Amaq news agency said The Taliban which often fights Islamic State8217s local affiliate in Afghanistan issued a statement denying any connection to the blast Kabul had been on alert for attacks over the Nawruz holiday but the bomber was still able to detonate his explosives as people were leaving the Karte Sakhi shrine in a heavily Shi8217ite area in the west of the city 8220People were heading home joyously after the end of the ceremony when the suicide bomber detonated his explosives among them8221 said Kabul police chief Daud Amin 8220Many of our countrymen were martyred8221 Interior Ministry spokesman Najib Danesh said the bomber had apparently intended to reach the shrine which was attacked during a Shi8217ite festival in October 2016 but had been prevented from getting closer by police checkpoints An Afghan man inspects the site of a suicide attack in Kabul Afghanistan March 21 2018 REUTERSOmar Sobhani 8220We had our security in place in and around the shrine8221 he said 8220All the casualties were young people who were either passing by on the road or gathering to enjoy Nawruz8221 8220UNISLAMIC8221 FESTIVAL Slideshow 11 Images Nawruz an ancient Persian festival to mark the start of spring is widely celebrated in many parts of Afghanistan but has also faced opposition from some fundamentalist Muslims who say it is unIslamic Waheed Majroh a spokesman for the ministry of public health said 32 people were confirmed dead with more than 50 wounded being treated in hospitals in the city Women and children were among the casualties he said Wednesday8217s attack was the latest in a series to have struck Kabul this year including one earlier this month that targeted the mainly Shi8217ite Hazara minority The seemingly endless attacks have undermined support for the government of President Ashraf Ghani who offered last month to hold peace talks with Taliban insurgents fighting to drive out international forces and reimpose their version of strict Islamic law The Taliban have so far shown little sign of accepting the offer of talks with the Westernbacked government which they consider an illegitimate foreignimposed regime although they have offered to talk to the United States Additional reporting by Mohammad Aziz and Omar Fahmy in CAIRO Writing by James Mackenzie Editing by Nick Macfie and Gareth Jones Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles PARIS Reuters Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was questioned on Tuesday by police investigating whether late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi helped finance his 2007 election campaign An official in the French judiciary said Sarkozy 63 was held in custody in Nanterre west of Paris It is the second major judicial investigation to fall on Sarkozy who served as president from 20072012 He already faces trial on separate charges of illicit spending overruns during his failed reelection campaign in 2012 A lawyer for Sarkozy could not immediately be reached for comment The former president has dismissed the Libya allegations as 8220grotesque8221 and a 8220crude manipulation8221 France8217s centerright party The Republicans backed its former leader 8220Members and supporters of The Republicans are once again left feeling that not all lawmakers or former lawmakers are treated equally depending on their political affiliation8221 the party said in a statement France opened an inquiry into the Libya case in 2013 after reports by French website Mediapart based on claims by a FrancoLebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine who said he had transferred 5 million euros 6 million from Gaddafi8217s former intelligence chief Abdullah Senussi to Sarkozy8217s campaign chief Months after he took office in 2007 Sarkozy became the first Western leader in decades to host a visit by Gaddafi who pitched his trademark Bedouinstyle tent next to the Elysee Palace Several business deals were signed However Sarkozy was later one of the chief advocates of a NATOled military campaign that resulted in Gaddafi8217s overthrow and killing at the hands of rebel forces in 2011 FILE PHOTO Nicolas Sarkozy former head of the Les Republicains political party attends a Les Republicains LR public meeting in Les Sables dOlonne France October 1 2016 REUTERSStephane MaheFile Photo CAMPAIGN FINANCES Investigators in France can hold people for questioning for up to 48 hours before either releasing them or sending them before magistrates who decide whether they have grounds for turning a preliminary inquiry into a full investigation The latter can but does not always lead to a trial The Libyafunding inquiry appeared to have gone quiet until January when French businessman Alexandre Djouhri suspected by investigators of funneling money from Gaddafi to finance Sarkozy8217s campaign was arrested in Britain on a warrant issued by France Slideshow 7 Images A lawyer for Djouhri last month accused French authorities of politicizing the case and manipulating it against his client French authorities had no comment Sarkozy8217s predecessor Jacques Chirac was convicted in 2011 after his retirement of misusing public funds to keep political allies in phantom jobs That made the now ailing Chirac the first French head of state convicted since Nazi collaborator Marshal Philippe Petain in 1945 Sarkozy has been dogged for years by political scandals but none has led to a conviction The Libya inquiry has largely focused on the evidence provided by Takieddine who is himself under investigation in a separate affair of arms sales to Pakistan in the 1990s Takieddine said in 2016 that he personally handed over three suitcases filled with cash from Gaddafi to Sarkozy and a senior aide to help finance Sarkozy8217s campaign Sarkozy8217s lawyer at the time Thierry Herzog dismissed Takieddine8217s claims and produced a copy of a witness statement to police by Takieddine in 2012 in which the businessman said he had last seen Sarkozy in November 2003 Reporting by Paris bureau Writing by Brian Love Editing by Luke Baker Richard Lough and Peter Graff Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles JERUSALEM Reuters Israel for the first time admitted that it bombed a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007 and said on Wednesday the strike should be a warning to Iran that it would not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons A still frame taken from video material released on March 21 2018 shows a combination image of what the Israeli military describes is before and after an Israeli air strike on a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor site near Deir alZor on Sept 6 2007 IDFHandout via Reuters TV The Israeli military released previously classified cockpit footage photographs and intelligence documents about its Sept 6 2007 air strike on the AlKubar facility near Deir alZor in eastern Syria It said the reactor was being built with help from North Korea and the facility had been months away from activation Reuters has been unable to immediately verify the Israeli material Israel8217s decision to go public comes after repeated calls in recent months by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the United States and international community to take tougher action on Iran Syria8217s ally Israel8217s intelligence minister Israel Katz said on Twitter 8220The 2007 operation and its success made clear that Israel will never allow nuclear weaponry to be in the hands of those who threaten its existence Syria then and Iran today8221 The Israeli military described in detail events leading up to the night of Sept 56 2007 in which it said eight warplanes F16s and F15s carried out the mission after taking off from the Ramon and Hatzerim air bases and flying to Deir alZor region 450 km northwest of Damascus Eighteen tonnes of munitions were dropped on the site it said In his 2010 memoir 8220Decision Points8221 former US President George W Bush disclosed that he discussed intelligence about the Syrian facility with then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert before it was destroyed but did not give him the green light for the raid James Jeffrey Bush8217s deputy national security adviser said on Wednesday the former US president had been 8220absolutely supportive8221 of Israel 8220He made it clear that we were very happy that events had eliminated this threat and that if there were any threats to Israel that would emerge from this situation the United States would stand with Israel period8221 Jeffrey told Israel8217s Army Radio In 2008 the United States presented what it described as intelligence showing that North Korea had helped Syria with 8220covert nuclear activities8221 At the time Syria dismissed the accusations as part of a campaign to discredit the Damascus government 8220The Syrian government regrets the campaign of lies and falsification by the US administration against Syria including allegations of nuclear activity8221 said a government statement issued on the Syrian state news agency Iran which says its nuclear program has only peaceful aims signed a 2015 deal under which it accepted curbs on its nuclear program in return for sanctions relief US President Donald Trump and Netanyahu have both been critical of the deal FILE PHOTO This undated image released by the US Government shows a building after it was bombed in Syria US GovernmentHandout via REUTERSFile Photo 8220TOP SECRET8221 The Israeli military declassified internal 8220top secret8221 intelligence reports in Hebrew some of them partly redacted One dated March 30 2007 said 8220Syria has set up within its territory a nuclear reactor for the production of plutonium through North Korea which according to an initial worstcase assessment is liable to be activated in approximately another year To our assessment REDACTED secretive and orderly REDACTED for achieving a nuclear weapon8221 Israeli intelligence predicted that the suspected reactor 8220would turn operational by the end of 20078221 Slideshow 16 Images The mission to destroy the facility started at 1030 pm on Sept 5 and ended with the return of the warplanes at 230 am the next day the Israeli military said The event was first made public by Syria which as reported by Reuters at the time said in the early hours of Sept 6 that Syrian air defenses had repelled an incursion by Israeli warplanes Syria a signatory of the 1970 nuclear NonProliferation Treaty NPT has always denied that the site was a reactor or that Damascus engaged in nuclear cooperation with North Korea The Israeli military8217s announcement on Wednesday noted that the area in question around Deir alZor was captured by Islamic State after the Syrian civil war erupted in 2011 Had there been an active reactor there the Israeli military said it would have had 8220severe strategic implications on the entire Middle East as well as Israel and Syria8221 The Israeli release contains a blackandwhite aerial photograph captioned 8220before the attack8221 and showing a boxlike structure amid desert dunes with smaller outlying buildings A series of blackandwhite videos taken above the target shows the structure in crosshairs A male voice is heard counting down three seconds a cloud of black smoke rises from the structure as it explodes Other footage appears to show the aftermath a smoldering hole in the ground Wednesday8217s release came ahead of the publication of a memoir by Olmert containing passages about the 2007 strike Writing by Dan Williams and Stephen Farrell Editing by Janet Lawrence Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles EDINBURGH Reuters A legal attempt by antiBrexit campaigners to establish that Britain could unilaterally reverse Brexit was given a boost on Tuesday by Scotland8217s top court which said it wants to examine the case in greater depth AntiBrexit demonstrators wave EU and Union flags outside the Houses of Parliament in London Britain January 30 2018 REUTERSToby Melville RC1A41866470 The group behind the legal challenge who include proEU Scottish lawmakers want to show that Britain could stay in the European Union after all 8212 if for example the final terms of Brexit negotiated by the government were rejected by parliament The campaigners are ultimately seeking a formal opinion by the European Court of Justice ECJ asserting that Britain could reverse its decision to invoke Article 50 of the EU8217s Lisbon Treaty the formal step that kickstarted the Brexit process They argue that once the terms of Brexit have been negotiated Britain8217s sovereign parliament may well decide not to go ahead with it so lawmakers need to know in advance if that is legally possible As things stand there is no suggestion of a change of course over Brexit which British voters backed by 52 to 48 percent in a June 2016 referendum The ruling Conservative Party and main opposition Labour Party are both committed to Britain leaving the European Union The legal case headed by antiBrexit campaigning lawyer Jolyon Maugham had been rejected by a lower Scottish court The British government argued that the question of whether Britain could unilaterally stop Brexit was irrelevant because the will of the voters was clear and the government was not going to back out of Brexit On Tuesday the Court of Session Scotland8217s highest court overturned an earlier ruling saying the case raised important issues and there should be a full hearing so all the arguments could be debated 8220The issue of whether it is legally possible to revoke the notice of withdrawal is as already stated one of great importance8221 the Court of Session said referring to the Article 50 process which started in March 2017 8220On one view authoritative guidance on whether it is legally possible to do so may have the capacity to influence lawmakers in deciding what steps to take in advance of and at the time of a debate and vote on the European Union Withdrawal Bill8221 Once a full hearing has taken place in Edinburgh a decision will be made on whether to refer it to the ECJ the court said although it may ultimately decide that it should not If the Scottish court decided not to refer to the ECJ the petitioners can take their appeal to Britain8217s Supreme Court They argue that while there is no doubt that Britain could stop Brexit with the permission of the other 27 members it should seek to establish a legal right to do so unilaterally whether the rest of the bloc likes it or not Reporting by Elisabeth OLeary Editing by Estelle Shirbon Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>DUBLIN (Reuters) - Four of the world&#8217;s largest airlines - U.S. heavyweights Delta, American and United as well as Dubai-based Emirates - said on Monday they had no plans to start hedging their fuel bills despite recent rises in oil prices.</p> <p>Speaking on the same panel at the Airline Economics conference in Dublin, executives from the four carriers said in response to a query that they had no plans to alter their separate strategies of not hedging their fuel exposure.</p> <p>The global Brent benchmark briefly climbed above $70 per barrel earlier this month for the first time in three years.</p> <p>&#8220;We have not hedged since the merger and our philosophy has not changed. We are the largest purchaser of jet fuel and we think we would be bidding against ourselves. The market is quite thin beyond 12 months,&#8221; Amelia Anderson, managing director and assistant treasurer at American Airlines, said.</p> <p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t envision our fuel hedging practice to change in the short term,&#8221; she added.</p> <p>American Airlines and US Airways merged in 2013.</p> <p>Michael Nissyrios, vice-president of financing at Emirates, said the carrier had no plans to order narrowbody jets, contradicting recent media reports.</p> <p>Sister airline flydubai ordered 175 Boeing narrrowbody jets in November and the two Dubai airlines have announced plans to cooperate more closely.</p> <p>Ted North, managing director of corporate finance at United Airlines, told the conference United was looking at acquiring some second-hand, &#8220;mid-life&#8221; aircraft.</p> <p>Such a move would be unusual for the airline which tends to buy new aircraft and operate them throughout their useful lives, financing them through debt.</p> <p>Any mid-life - or roughly 15-year-old - jets could be acquired via leasing deals, though no decision has been taken. United does not typically take aircraft on operating leases.</p> <p>Reporting by Tim Hepher; Editing by Conor Humphries</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - Three firms that bought crude oil last year from U.S. emergency stockpiles raised concerns about dangerous levels of a poisonous chemical in the cargoes, according to internal Energy Department emails and shipping documents reviewed by Reuters.</p> <p>Problems with crude quality would make the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) less useful in an emergency because refiners would need to spend time and money removing contamination before producing fuel. The reserve is the world&#8217;s largest government stockpile, currently holding 665 million barrels.</p> <p>Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) occurs naturally in crude and natural gas, but oil producers typically decontaminate such products before delivery to buyers. High levels of H2S can corrode refinery parts and pipelines - and can be lethal to humans in gas form.</p> <p>Authorities in all major consuming countries keep oil in reserve to ensure that they do not run out of crude to refine into fuels if a natural disaster or war disrupts global supplies. The U.S. government established its reserve in 1975 following the Arab oil embargo.</p> <p>The U.S. Department of Energy oversees the reserve and periodically sells some of its oil at times when there are no emergencies, as it did with the sales that sparked contamination concerns.</p> <p>Department Spokeswoman Shaylyn Hynes declined to comment about the contamination complaints uncovered by Reuters.</p> <p>The three firms that raised concerns about high H2S levels were Royal Dutch Shell Co ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=RDSa.L" type="external">RDSa.L</a>), Australian bank Macquarie Group and PetroChina International America, the U.S. trading arm of state-owned energy firm PetroChina Co Ltd [601857.SS], according to the shipping documents, emails provided by the Energy Department in response to a public records request, and a department official who declined to be identified.</p> <p>The department took responsibility for cleaning the shipment to PetroChina with an additive after it determined in May of last year that levels of H2S were too high, according to the department official. The department disputes tests showing levels were too high in the other two cargoes, the official said.</p> <p>All three firms bought cargoes of SPR oil stored in an underground salt cavern in Bryan Mound, Texas last year. The oil was pumped from Bryan Mound through pipelines to the nearest oil terminal at Freeport, Texas before being loaded onto ships, according to records reviewed by Reuters and the department official.</p> <p>The Freeport facility is owned by Houston-based Enterprise Products Partners LP ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=EPD.N" type="external">EPD.N</a>). Enterprise knew about higher levels of H2S in a small number of cargoes traded between private firms that passed through its terminal, Enterprise Senior Vice President Brent Secrest told Reuters in an interview.</p> <p>&#8220;Of the hundreds of cargoes we&#8217;ve loaded across Freeport and other Enterprise terminals, we&#8217;ve only had a handful of customers give us feedback regarding high levels of H2S,&#8221; he said.</p> UNPLEASANT SURPRISE <p>In March, Shell complained to the Energy Department after finding high levels of H2S in a cargo the company bought as part of a 6.2 million-barrel purchase from the U.S. government in January, according to emails provided by the department in response to the Reuters public records request.</p> <p>The firm was &#8220;unpleasantly surprised&#8221; to find the high levels, Shell oil trader Steve Sellers wrote to the department, adding that the issue caused concern at Shell about the quality of SPR crude for future purchases.</p> <p>Shell declined to comment on its complaint to the government.</p> <p>The oil firm&#8217;s emails said an initial test sample detected H2S gas at levels of less than five parts per million (ppm). But a later test by Shell - after it shipped the crude by boat to another U.S. location - showed H2S levels of 600 parts per million, according to Shell&#8217;s emails to the department.</p> <p>Exposure to vapors containing 500-700 ppm of H2S could cause a person to collapse in five minutes and die within an hour, according to the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration.</p> SAFETY CONCERNS <p>In November, Australian bank Macquarie Group bought the third shipment from the SPR and sold it to PetroChina, according to the shipping documents reviewed by Reuters.</p> Slideshow (3 Images) <p>The cargo was loaded at Freeport onto a ship called the Stena Sunrise, the documents show.</p> <p>A testing company named Inspectorate tested a sample from the SPR cargo purchased by Macquarie, according to the documents, and found H2S levels of up to 9,000 ppm.</p> <p>Inspectorate declined to comment and referred questions to the Energy Department. Macquarie declined to comment.</p> <p>After the Inspectorate testing, the terminal operator refused to allow workers to perform additional tests out of concern about violating safety regulations, according to the shipping documents.</p> <p>It is unclear if PetroChina or Macquarie decontaminated the cargo. PetroChina shipped the oil to China, where it arrived on Jan. 18, according to Thomson Reuters shipping data.</p> RARE INCIDENTS <p>Reuters was not able to determine how often high levels of H2S are detected across the industry, but industry experts and chemical petroleum engineers said such incidents are rare.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=RDSa.L" type="external">Royal Dutch Shell PLC</a> 2233.5 RDSa.L London Stock Exchange +2.00 (+0.09%) RDSa.L EPD.N <p>Some crude grades can have H2S levels as high as 1000 ppm when produced, said Ramanan Krishnamoorti, chief energy officer and a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of Houston. But producers remove most of that before transporting crude to customers.</p> <p>Contamination could result from blending different crude grades, for example when one grade of crude is stored in a tank that previously contained a different grade, Krishnamoorti said.</p> <p>&#8220;There has to be some concentrated source of it,&#8221; Krishnamoorti said. &#8220;It&#8217;s just very odd.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Catherine Ngai; Editing by David Gaffen, Simon Webb and Brian Thevenot</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - Starbucks Corp ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=SBUX.O" type="external">SBUX.O</a>) and other coffee sellers must put a cancer warning on coffee sold in California, a Los Angeles judge has ruled, possibly exposing the companies to millions of dollars in fines.</p> FILE PHOTO - A woman holds a Frappuccino at a Starbucks store inside the Tom Bradley terminal at LAX airport in Los Angeles, California, United States, October 27, 2015. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson <p>A little-known not-for-profit group sued some 90 coffee retailers, including Starbucks, on grounds they were violating a California law requiring companies to warn consumers of chemicals in their products that could cause cancer.</p> <p>One of those chemicals is acrylamide, a byproduct of roasting coffee beans that is present in high levels in brewed coffee.</p> <p>Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle said in a decision dated Wednesday that Starbucks and other companies had failed to show there was no significant risk from a carcinogen produced in the coffee roasting process, court documents showed.</p> <p>Starbucks and other defendants have until April 10 to file objections to the decision.</p> <p>Starbucks declined to comment, referring reporters to a statement by the National Coffee Association (NCA) that said the industry was considering an appeal and further legal actions.</p> <p>&#8220;Cancer warning labels on coffee would be misleading. The U.S. government&#8217;s own Dietary Guidelines state that coffee can be part of a healthy lifestyle,&#8221; the NCA statement said.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=SBUX.O" type="external">Starbucks Corp</a> 57.89 SBUX.O Nasdaq -0.01 (-0.02%) SBUX.O DNKN.O MCD.N <p>In his decision, Berle said: &#8220;Defendants failed to satisfy their burden of proving by a preponderance of evidence that consumption of coffee confers a benefit to human health.&#8221;</p> <p>Officials from Dunkin&#8217; Donuts ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=DNKN.O" type="external">DNKN.O</a>), McDonald&#8217;s Corp ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=MCD.N" type="external">MCD.N</a>), Peet&#8217;s and other big coffee sellers did not immediately respond to requests for comment.</p> <p>The lawsuit was filed in 2010 by the Council for Education and Research on Toxics (CERT). It calls for fines as large as $2,500 per person for every exposure to the chemical since 2002 at the defendants&#8217; shops in California. Any civil penalties, which will be decided in a third phase of the trial, could be huge in California, which has a population of nearly 40 million.</p> <p>CERT&#8217;s lawyer Raphael Metzger did not immediately respond to a request for comment.</p> <p>Starbucks lost the first phase of the trial in which it failed to show the level of acrylamide in coffee was below that which would pose a significant risk of cancer. In the second phase of the trial, defendants failed to prove there was an acceptable &#8220;alternative&#8221; risk level for the carcinogen, court documents showed.</p> <p>Several defendants in the case settled before Wednesday&#8217;s decision, agreeing to post signage about the cancer-linked chemical and pay millions in fines, according to published reports.</p> <p>Reporting by Nate Raymond; Additional reporting by Lisa Baertlein; Writing by Andrew Hay; Editing by Richard Chang and Leslie Adler</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. power company FirstEnergy Corp ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FE.N" type="external">FE.N</a>) urged the federal government on Thursday to evoke little-used emergency powers to help it keep several struggling nuclear and coal-fired power plants open, a move critics blasted as an attempt at a corporate bailout.</p> FILE PHOTO - The Davis-Beese nuclear power station is seen near Oak Harbor, Ohio February 11, 2010. REUTERS/Aaron Josefczyk <p>On Wednesday, Ohio-based FirstEnergy said it would shut several nuclear plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania in the next three years without some kind of state or federal relief.</p> <p>FirstEnergy&#8217;s FirstEnergy Solutions unit called on U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry to use the emergency powers to order PJM Interconnection, the regional power grid operator, to negotiate a contract that would compensate owners of coal and nuclear plants for the benefits such as reliability and jobs those units provide.</p> <p>PJM, in response, rejected the need for an emergency order. &#8220;Nothing we have seen suggests there is any kind of emergency from these units retiring,&#8221; said Vincent Duane, senior vice president at PJM, calling the problem &#8220;fundamentally a corporate issue.&#8221;</p> <p>A spokesman for FirstEnergy Solutions declined to comment on Thursday about speculation the unit was headed for bankruptcy, but he directed attention to a filing the company made with the Energy Department earlier in the day. The filing included a comment made by FirstEnergy Corp&#8217;s chief executive, Charles Jones, in February that he would be &#8220;shocked&#8221; if FirstEnergy Solutions did not file for some type of bankruptcy protection by the end of March.</p> <p>Coal and nuclear power plant operators have struggled in recent years as low natural gas prices as a result of the shale boom have spurred utilities to retire dirtier coal plants. Last year, Perry proposed a plan that would subsidize coal and nuclear for providing what is known as base-load generation, which refers to units that run around the clock.</p> <p>U.S. regulators rejected that proposal in January and said they would conduct a study on grid resilience. Many grid operators, including PJM, have said they already factor in reliability of their systems and the fuel resources available to generate electricity.</p> <p>Murray Energy Corp, which supplies coal to FirstEnergy and has been lobbying elected officials to keep coal and nuclear plants operating, said it fully supports the request for emergency relief.</p> <p>&#8220;As a result of FERC&#8217;s failure, critical power plants will close, thousands of American jobs will be lost, and the reliability, resiliency, and security of our electric power grids will be forever compromised,&#8221; Murray Energy said in a statement, referring to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission&#8217;s rejection of Perry&#8217;s resiliency proposal.</p> <p>FirstEnergy said in November 2016 that it would exit the competitive generation business overseen by FirstEnergy Solutions as natural gas has taken up a greater part of the power load.</p> <p>On Wednesday, FirstEnergy Solutions said it told PJM it would retire all of its nuclear reactors in Ohio and Pennsylvania, totaling 4,048 megawatts (MW), in 2020 and 2021.</p> <p>One megawatt is enough power for 1,000 U.S. homes.</p> <p>FirstEnergy said it wants an emergency order because the power grid&#8217;s reliability is threatened, due to the &#8220;premature retirement of plants that have many years of useful life but cannot operate profitably under current market conditions.&#8221;</p> <p>PJM said, however, that FirstEnergy&#8217;s assets &#8220;have been financially stressed for some time.&#8221;</p> <p>The Energy Department said it received FirstEnergy&#8217;s request and will go through its standard review process. It did not comment further. PJM said such a request, if granted, would effectively circumvent FERC, putting it in &#8220;uncharted waters.&#8221;</p> <p>Shares in FirstEnergy closed down 1.1 percent to $34.01 on Thursday.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FE.N" type="external">FirstEnergy Corp</a> 34.01 FE.N New York Stock Exchange -0.38 (-1.10%) FE.N <p>The use of emergency orders related to power generation has been minimal, having been evoked only eight times since December 2000, according to the Energy Department, usually in response to natural disasters or blackouts.</p> <p>Groups that rarely agree on anything condemned FirstEnergy&#8217;s request.</p> <p>The American Petroleum Institute (API), a trade group for the oil and natural gas industry, said, &#8220;FirstEnergy&#8217;s claim that the electric grid would be in immediate danger with these power plant retirements is simply untrue.</p> <p>&#8220;PJM is responsible for the reliability of the grid and if there is an emergency, PJM already has the tools to respond,&#8221; API said in a statement</p> <p>The environmental group the Sierra Club said it would sue if Perry issues any order to bail out FirstEnergy.</p> <p>&#8220;Ratepayers and regulators have already rejected multiple attempts by (FirstEnergy) to bail out these coal and nuclear plants that can no longer compete in the marketplace,&#8221; Mary Anne Hitt, director of the Sierra Club&#8217;s Beyond Coal campaign, said in a statement.</p> <p>Other companies have sought assistance from federal, state and regional officials to keep their coal and nuclear plants in service, and some states, including New York and Illinois, have offered subsidies to nuclear plants.</p> <p>These companies argue that the diversification of fuel sources is necessary to keep the power grid operating in the most optimal way. More coal plants are expected to be decommissioned in coming years, and natural gas recently surpassed coal as the biggest source of power generation in the United States.</p> <p>Most states are also putting rules in place to boost generation through renewable sources.</p> <p>Reporting by Scott DiSavino in New York and Valerie Volcovici in Washington; editing by David Gaffen, Tom Brown and Leslie Adler</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>LONDON (Reuters) - A committee of British lawmakers published written evidence on Thursday provided by a whistleblower who says information about 50 million Facebook users ended up in the hands of political consultancy Cambridge Analytica.</p> Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie at a news conference in central London. REUTERS/Toby Melville <p>Cambridge Analytica said the documents did not support whistleblower Christopher Wylie&#8217;s testimony to the committee this week.</p> <p>Wylie, who formerly worked for Cambridge Analytica (CA), alleges the data was used to help to build profiles on American voters and raise support for Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.</p> <p>He also alleges that CA was linked to Canadian firm AggregateIQ (AIQ), which he says was involved in the development of the software used to target voters. AggregateIQ, he says, received payment from a pro-Brexit campaign group before the 2016 referendum when Britain voted to quit the European Union.</p> <p>This was co-ordinated with the lead &#8220;Vote Leave&#8221; group in a breach of British electoral funding rules, Wylie alleged. Vote Leave denies any wrongdoing.</p> <p>Wylie appeared before the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee of the British parliament on Tuesday. The committee said Wylie provided it with documents including a services agreement between AIQ and SCL Elections, an affiliate of Cambridge Analytica, dated September 2014.</p> <p>Reuters was unable to independently verify the authenticity of the documents made public by the committee.</p> Window cleaners work outside the offices of Cambridge Analytica in central London, Britain, March 24, 2018. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls <p>&#8220;None of these documents support the false allegations made in Tuesday&#8217;s hearing,&#8221; Cambridge Analytica said in a statement, adding that Wylie had left the company in July 2014 and would have no direct knowledge of its work or practices since then.</p> <p>&#8220;It is wrong to suggest that Cambridge Analytica&#8217;s earlier relationship with Aggregate IQ implies that we were involved with their work for Vote Leave. Cambridge Analytica did no work in any capacity in the 2016 EU referendum.&#8221;</p> <p>AIQ did not respond to a Reuters request for comment after Tuesday&#8217;s committee hearing, but in an earlier statement said it had never entered into a contract with Cambridge Analytica and had never been part of the firm.</p> <p>The parliamentary committee&#8217;s chairman has said it was &#8220;astonishing&#8221; that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg decided not to answer lawmakers&#8217; questions, given the claims that Wylie had made about how data was used.</p> <p>Reporting by Alistair Smout; editing by Andrew Roche and David Stamp</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Major carriers say no plans to hedge fuel despite rising prices Exclusive: Firms complain of contaminated crude from U.S. reserve Starbucks coffee in California must have cancer warning, judge says FirstEnergy seeks emergency lifeline for U.S. nuclear, coal plants UK lawmakers publish evidence from Cambridge Analytica whistleblower

https://reuters.com/article/us-aviation-finance-airlines/major-carriers-say-no-plans-to-hedge-fuel-despite-rising-prices-idUSKBN1FB29H

2018-01-22

2least

DUBLIN Reuters Four of the world8217s largest airlines US heavyweights Delta American and United as well as Dubaibased Emirates said on Monday they had no plans to start hedging their fuel bills despite recent rises in oil prices Speaking on the same panel at the Airline Economics conference in Dublin executives from the four carriers said in response to a query that they had no plans to alter their separate strategies of not hedging their fuel exposure The global Brent benchmark briefly climbed above 70 per barrel earlier this month for the first time in three years 8220We have not hedged since the merger and our philosophy has not changed We are the largest purchaser of jet fuel and we think we would be bidding against ourselves The market is quite thin beyond 12 months8221 Amelia Anderson managing director and assistant treasurer at American Airlines said 8220I don8217t envision our fuel hedging practice to change in the short term8221 she added American Airlines and US Airways merged in 2013 Michael Nissyrios vicepresident of financing at Emirates said the carrier had no plans to order narrowbody jets contradicting recent media reports Sister airline flydubai ordered 175 Boeing narrrowbody jets in November and the two Dubai airlines have announced plans to cooperate more closely Ted North managing director of corporate finance at United Airlines told the conference United was looking at acquiring some secondhand 8220midlife8221 aircraft Such a move would be unusual for the airline which tends to buy new aircraft and operate them throughout their useful lives financing them through debt Any midlife or roughly 15yearold jets could be acquired via leasing deals though no decision has been taken United does not typically take aircraft on operating leases Reporting by Tim Hepher Editing by Conor Humphries Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORK Reuters Three firms that bought crude oil last year from US emergency stockpiles raised concerns about dangerous levels of a poisonous chemical in the cargoes according to internal Energy Department emails and shipping documents reviewed by Reuters Problems with crude quality would make the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve SPR less useful in an emergency because refiners would need to spend time and money removing contamination before producing fuel The reserve is the world8217s largest government stockpile currently holding 665 million barrels Hydrogen sulfide H2S occurs naturally in crude and natural gas but oil producers typically decontaminate such products before delivery to buyers High levels of H2S can corrode refinery parts and pipelines and can be lethal to humans in gas form Authorities in all major consuming countries keep oil in reserve to ensure that they do not run out of crude to refine into fuels if a natural disaster or war disrupts global supplies The US government established its reserve in 1975 following the Arab oil embargo The US Department of Energy oversees the reserve and periodically sells some of its oil at times when there are no emergencies as it did with the sales that sparked contamination concerns Department Spokeswoman Shaylyn Hynes declined to comment about the contamination complaints uncovered by Reuters The three firms that raised concerns about high H2S levels were Royal Dutch Shell Co RDSaL Australian bank Macquarie Group and PetroChina International America the US trading arm of stateowned energy firm PetroChina Co Ltd 601857SS according to the shipping documents emails provided by the Energy Department in response to a public records request and a department official who declined to be identified The department took responsibility for cleaning the shipment to PetroChina with an additive after it determined in May of last year that levels of H2S were too high according to the department official The department disputes tests showing levels were too high in the other two cargoes the official said All three firms bought cargoes of SPR oil stored in an underground salt cavern in Bryan Mound Texas last year The oil was pumped from Bryan Mound through pipelines to the nearest oil terminal at Freeport Texas before being loaded onto ships according to records reviewed by Reuters and the department official The Freeport facility is owned by Houstonbased Enterprise Products Partners LP EPDN Enterprise knew about higher levels of H2S in a small number of cargoes traded between private firms that passed through its terminal Enterprise Senior Vice President Brent Secrest told Reuters in an interview 8220Of the hundreds of cargoes we8217ve loaded across Freeport and other Enterprise terminals we8217ve only had a handful of customers give us feedback regarding high levels of H2S8221 he said UNPLEASANT SURPRISE In March Shell complained to the Energy Department after finding high levels of H2S in a cargo the company bought as part of a 62 millionbarrel purchase from the US government in January according to emails provided by the department in response to the Reuters public records request The firm was 8220unpleasantly surprised8221 to find the high levels Shell oil trader Steve Sellers wrote to the department adding that the issue caused concern at Shell about the quality of SPR crude for future purchases Shell declined to comment on its complaint to the government The oil firm8217s emails said an initial test sample detected H2S gas at levels of less than five parts per million ppm But a later test by Shell after it shipped the crude by boat to another US location showed H2S levels of 600 parts per million according to Shell8217s emails to the department Exposure to vapors containing 500700 ppm of H2S could cause a person to collapse in five minutes and die within an hour according to the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration SAFETY CONCERNS In November Australian bank Macquarie Group bought the third shipment from the SPR and sold it to PetroChina according to the shipping documents reviewed by Reuters Slideshow 3 Images The cargo was loaded at Freeport onto a ship called the Stena Sunrise the documents show A testing company named Inspectorate tested a sample from the SPR cargo purchased by Macquarie according to the documents and found H2S levels of up to 9000 ppm Inspectorate declined to comment and referred questions to the Energy Department Macquarie declined to comment After the Inspectorate testing the terminal operator refused to allow workers to perform additional tests out of concern about violating safety regulations according to the shipping documents It is unclear if PetroChina or Macquarie decontaminated the cargo PetroChina shipped the oil to China where it arrived on Jan 18 according to Thomson Reuters shipping data RARE INCIDENTS Reuters was not able to determine how often high levels of H2S are detected across the industry but industry experts and chemical petroleum engineers said such incidents are rare Royal Dutch Shell PLC 22335 RDSaL London Stock Exchange 200 009 RDSaL EPDN Some crude grades can have H2S levels as high as 1000 ppm when produced said Ramanan Krishnamoorti chief energy officer and a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of Houston But producers remove most of that before transporting crude to customers Contamination could result from blending different crude grades for example when one grade of crude is stored in a tank that previously contained a different grade Krishnamoorti said 8220There has to be some concentrated source of it8221 Krishnamoorti said 8220It8217s just very odd8221 Reporting by Catherine Ngai Editing by David Gaffen Simon Webb and Brian Thevenot Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters Starbucks Corp SBUXO and other coffee sellers must put a cancer warning on coffee sold in California a Los Angeles judge has ruled possibly exposing the companies to millions of dollars in fines FILE PHOTO A woman holds a Frappuccino at a Starbucks store inside the Tom Bradley terminal at LAX airport in Los Angeles California United States October 27 2015 REUTERSLucy Nicholson A littleknown notforprofit group sued some 90 coffee retailers including Starbucks on grounds they were violating a California law requiring companies to warn consumers of chemicals in their products that could cause cancer One of those chemicals is acrylamide a byproduct of roasting coffee beans that is present in high levels in brewed coffee Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle said in a decision dated Wednesday that Starbucks and other companies had failed to show there was no significant risk from a carcinogen produced in the coffee roasting process court documents showed Starbucks and other defendants have until April 10 to file objections to the decision Starbucks declined to comment referring reporters to a statement by the National Coffee Association NCA that said the industry was considering an appeal and further legal actions 8220Cancer warning labels on coffee would be misleading The US government8217s own Dietary Guidelines state that coffee can be part of a healthy lifestyle8221 the NCA statement said Starbucks Corp 5789 SBUXO Nasdaq 001 002 SBUXO DNKNO MCDN In his decision Berle said 8220Defendants failed to satisfy their burden of proving by a preponderance of evidence that consumption of coffee confers a benefit to human health8221 Officials from Dunkin8217 Donuts DNKNO McDonald8217s Corp MCDN Peet8217s and other big coffee sellers did not immediately respond to requests for comment The lawsuit was filed in 2010 by the Council for Education and Research on Toxics CERT It calls for fines as large as 2500 per person for every exposure to the chemical since 2002 at the defendants8217 shops in California Any civil penalties which will be decided in a third phase of the trial could be huge in California which has a population of nearly 40 million CERT8217s lawyer Raphael Metzger did not immediately respond to a request for comment Starbucks lost the first phase of the trial in which it failed to show the level of acrylamide in coffee was below that which would pose a significant risk of cancer In the second phase of the trial defendants failed to prove there was an acceptable 8220alternative8221 risk level for the carcinogen court documents showed Several defendants in the case settled before Wednesday8217s decision agreeing to post signage about the cancerlinked chemical and pay millions in fines according to published reports Reporting by Nate Raymond Additional reporting by Lisa Baertlein Writing by Andrew Hay Editing by Richard Chang and Leslie Adler Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORKWASHINGTON Reuters US power company FirstEnergy Corp FEN urged the federal government on Thursday to evoke littleused emergency powers to help it keep several struggling nuclear and coalfired power plants open a move critics blasted as an attempt at a corporate bailout FILE PHOTO The DavisBeese nuclear power station is seen near Oak Harbor Ohio February 11 2010 REUTERSAaron Josefczyk On Wednesday Ohiobased FirstEnergy said it would shut several nuclear plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania in the next three years without some kind of state or federal relief FirstEnergy8217s FirstEnergy Solutions unit called on US Energy Secretary Rick Perry to use the emergency powers to order PJM Interconnection the regional power grid operator to negotiate a contract that would compensate owners of coal and nuclear plants for the benefits such as reliability and jobs those units provide PJM in response rejected the need for an emergency order 8220Nothing we have seen suggests there is any kind of emergency from these units retiring8221 said Vincent Duane senior vice president at PJM calling the problem 8220fundamentally a corporate issue8221 A spokesman for FirstEnergy Solutions declined to comment on Thursday about speculation the unit was headed for bankruptcy but he directed attention to a filing the company made with the Energy Department earlier in the day The filing included a comment made by FirstEnergy Corp8217s chief executive Charles Jones in February that he would be 8220shocked8221 if FirstEnergy Solutions did not file for some type of bankruptcy protection by the end of March Coal and nuclear power plant operators have struggled in recent years as low natural gas prices as a result of the shale boom have spurred utilities to retire dirtier coal plants Last year Perry proposed a plan that would subsidize coal and nuclear for providing what is known as baseload generation which refers to units that run around the clock US regulators rejected that proposal in January and said they would conduct a study on grid resilience Many grid operators including PJM have said they already factor in reliability of their systems and the fuel resources available to generate electricity Murray Energy Corp which supplies coal to FirstEnergy and has been lobbying elected officials to keep coal and nuclear plants operating said it fully supports the request for emergency relief 8220As a result of FERC8217s failure critical power plants will close thousands of American jobs will be lost and the reliability resiliency and security of our electric power grids will be forever compromised8221 Murray Energy said in a statement referring to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission8217s rejection of Perry8217s resiliency proposal FirstEnergy said in November 2016 that it would exit the competitive generation business overseen by FirstEnergy Solutions as natural gas has taken up a greater part of the power load On Wednesday FirstEnergy Solutions said it told PJM it would retire all of its nuclear reactors in Ohio and Pennsylvania totaling 4048 megawatts MW in 2020 and 2021 One megawatt is enough power for 1000 US homes FirstEnergy said it wants an emergency order because the power grid8217s reliability is threatened due to the 8220premature retirement of plants that have many years of useful life but cannot operate profitably under current market conditions8221 PJM said however that FirstEnergy8217s assets 8220have been financially stressed for some time8221 The Energy Department said it received FirstEnergy8217s request and will go through its standard review process It did not comment further PJM said such a request if granted would effectively circumvent FERC putting it in 8220uncharted waters8221 Shares in FirstEnergy closed down 11 percent to 3401 on Thursday FirstEnergy Corp 3401 FEN New York Stock Exchange 038 110 FEN The use of emergency orders related to power generation has been minimal having been evoked only eight times since December 2000 according to the Energy Department usually in response to natural disasters or blackouts Groups that rarely agree on anything condemned FirstEnergy8217s request The American Petroleum Institute API a trade group for the oil and natural gas industry said 8220FirstEnergy8217s claim that the electric grid would be in immediate danger with these power plant retirements is simply untrue 8220PJM is responsible for the reliability of the grid and if there is an emergency PJM already has the tools to respond8221 API said in a statement The environmental group the Sierra Club said it would sue if Perry issues any order to bail out FirstEnergy 8220Ratepayers and regulators have already rejected multiple attempts by FirstEnergy to bail out these coal and nuclear plants that can no longer compete in the marketplace8221 Mary Anne Hitt director of the Sierra Club8217s Beyond Coal campaign said in a statement Other companies have sought assistance from federal state and regional officials to keep their coal and nuclear plants in service and some states including New York and Illinois have offered subsidies to nuclear plants These companies argue that the diversification of fuel sources is necessary to keep the power grid operating in the most optimal way More coal plants are expected to be decommissioned in coming years and natural gas recently surpassed coal as the biggest source of power generation in the United States Most states are also putting rules in place to boost generation through renewable sources Reporting by Scott DiSavino in New York and Valerie Volcovici in Washington editing by David Gaffen Tom Brown and Leslie Adler Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles LONDON Reuters A committee of British lawmakers published written evidence on Thursday provided by a whistleblower who says information about 50 million Facebook users ended up in the hands of political consultancy Cambridge Analytica Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie at a news conference in central London REUTERSToby Melville Cambridge Analytica said the documents did not support whistleblower Christopher Wylie8217s testimony to the committee this week Wylie who formerly worked for Cambridge Analytica CA alleges the data was used to help to build profiles on American voters and raise support for Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential election He also alleges that CA was linked to Canadian firm AggregateIQ AIQ which he says was involved in the development of the software used to target voters AggregateIQ he says received payment from a proBrexit campaign group before the 2016 referendum when Britain voted to quit the European Union This was coordinated with the lead 8220Vote Leave8221 group in a breach of British electoral funding rules Wylie alleged Vote Leave denies any wrongdoing Wylie appeared before the Digital Culture Media and Sport Committee of the British parliament on Tuesday The committee said Wylie provided it with documents including a services agreement between AIQ and SCL Elections an affiliate of Cambridge Analytica dated September 2014 Reuters was unable to independently verify the authenticity of the documents made public by the committee Window cleaners work outside the offices of Cambridge Analytica in central London Britain March 24 2018 REUTERSPeter Nicholls 8220None of these documents support the false allegations made in Tuesday8217s hearing8221 Cambridge Analytica said in a statement adding that Wylie had left the company in July 2014 and would have no direct knowledge of its work or practices since then 8220It is wrong to suggest that Cambridge Analytica8217s earlier relationship with Aggregate IQ implies that we were involved with their work for Vote Leave Cambridge Analytica did no work in any capacity in the 2016 EU referendum8221 AIQ did not respond to a Reuters request for comment after Tuesday8217s committee hearing but in an earlier statement said it had never entered into a contract with Cambridge Analytica and had never been part of the firm The parliamentary committee8217s chairman has said it was 8220astonishing8221 that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg decided not to answer lawmakers8217 questions given the claims that Wylie had made about how data was used Reporting by Alistair Smout editing by Andrew Roche and David Stamp Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>This <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175116" type="external">story</a> first appeared at the <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/" type="external">TomDispatch</a> website.</p> <p>The big Afghanistan debate in Washington is not over whether more troops are needed, but just who they should be: Americans or Afghans &#8212; Us or Them. Having just spent time in Afghanistan seeing how things stand, I wouldn&#8217;t bet on Them.</p> <p>Frankly, I wouldn&#8217;t bet on Us either. In eight years, American troops have worn out their welcome. Their very presence now incites opposition, but that&#8217;s another story. It&#8217;s Them &#8212; the Afghans &#8212; I want to talk about.</p> <p>Afghans are Afghans. They have their own history, their own culture, their own habitual ways of thinking and behaving, all complicated by a modern experience of decades of war, displacement, abject poverty, and incessant meddling by foreign governments near and far &#8212; of which the United States has been the most powerful and persistent. Afghans do not think or act like Americans. Yet Americans in power refuse to grasp that inconvenient point.</p> <p>In the heat of this summer, I went out to the training fields near Kabul where Afghan army recruits are put through their paces, and it was quickly evident just what&#8217;s getting lost in translation. Our trainers, soldiers from the Illinois National Guard, were masterful. Professional and highly skilled, they were dedicated to carrying out their mission &#8212; and doing the job well. They were also big, strong, camouflaged, combat-booted, supersized American men, their bodies swollen by flack jackets and lashed with knives, handguns, and god only knows what else. Any American could be proud of their commitment to tough duty.</p> <p>The Afghans were puny by comparison: Hundreds of little Davids to the overstuffed American Goliaths training them. Keep in mind: Afghan recruits come from a world of desperate poverty. They are almost uniformly malnourished and underweight. Many are no bigger than I am (5&#8217;4&#8243; and thin) &#8212; and some probably not much stronger. Like me, many sag under the weight of a standard-issue flack jacket.</p> <p>Their American trainers spoke of &#8220;upper body strength deficiency&#8221; and prescribed pushups because their trainees buckle under the backpacks filled with 50 pounds of equipment and ammo they are expected to carry. All this material must seem absurd to men whose fathers and brothers, wearing only the old cotton shirts and baggy pants of everyday life and carrying battered Russian Kalashnikov rifles, defeated the Red Army two decades ago. American trainers marvel that, freed from heavy equipment and uniforms, Afghan soldiers can run through the mountains all day &#8212; as the Taliban guerrillas in fact do with great effect &#8212; but the U.S. military is determined to train them for another style of war.</p> <p>Still, the new recruits turn out for training in the blistering heat in this stony desert landscape wearing, beneath their heavy uniforms, the smart red, green, and black warm-up outfits intended to encourage them to engage in off-duty exercise. American trainers recognize that recruits regularly wear all their gear at once for fear somebody will steal anything left behind in the barracks, but they take this overdressing as a sign of how much Afghans love the military. My own reading, based on my observations of Afghan life during the years I&#8217;ve spent in that country, is this: It&#8217;s a sign of how little they trust one another, or the Americans who gave them the snazzy suits. I think it also indicates the obvious: that these impoverished men in a country without work have joined the Afghan National Army for what they can get out of it (and keep or sell) &#8212; and that doesn&#8217;t include democracy or glory.</p> <p>In the current policy debate about the Afghan War in Washington, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin wants the Afghans to defend their country. Senator John McCain, the top Republican on the committee, agrees but says they need even more help from even more Americans. The common ground &#8212; the sacred territory President Obama gropes for &#8212; is that, whatever else happens, the U.S. must speed up the training of &#8220;the Afghan security forces.&#8221;</p> <p>American military planners and policymakers already proceed as if, with sufficient training, Afghans can be transformed into scale-model, wind-up American Marines. That is not going to happen. Not now. Not ever. No matter how many of our leaders concur that it must happen &#8212; and ever faster.</p> <p>&#8220;Basic Warrior Training&#8221;</p> <p>So who are these security forces? They include the Afghan National Army (ANA) and the Afghan National Police (ANP). International forces and private contractors have been training Afghan recruits for both of them since 2001. In fact, the determination of Western military planners to create a national army and police force has been so great that some seem to have suppressed for years the reports of Canadian soldiers who <a href="http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/abuse+silence+exposed/2010032/story.html" type="external">witnessed</a> members of the Afghan security forces engaging in a fairly common pastime, sodomizing young boys.</p> <p>Current training and mentoring is provided by the U.S., Great Britain, France, Canada, Romania, Poland, Mongolia, New Zealand, and Australia, as well as by the private for-profit contractors <a href="http://www.mpri.com/esite/index.php/content/about/mpri_international_group/" type="external">MPRI</a>, <a href="http://www.kbr.com/default.aspx" type="external">KBR</a> (formerly a division of Halliburton), <a href="http://www.pulau.com/" type="external">Pulau</a>, Paravant, and <a href="http://www.roncoconsulting.com/" type="external">RONCO</a>.</p> <p>Almost eight years and counting since the &#8220;mentoring&#8221; process began, officers at the <a href="http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=dba_1188209682" type="external">Kabul Military Training Center report</a> that the army now numbers between 88,000 and 92,000 soldiers, depending on who you talk to; and the basic training course financed and led by Americans, called &#8220;Basic Warrior Training,&#8221; is turning out 28,800 new soldiers every year, according to a Kabul Military Training Center &#8220;fact sheet.&#8221; The current projected &#8220;end strength&#8221; for the ANA, to be reached in December 2011, is 134,000 men; but Afghan officers told me they&#8217;re planning for a force of 200,000, while the <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23113" type="external">Western press</a> often cites 240,000 as the final figure.</p> <p>The number <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&amp;amp;sid=aOsI6x5z.3b0" type="external">400,000</a> is often mentioned as the supposed end-strength quota for the combined security forces &#8212; <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/16/world/asia/16mullen.html" type="external">an army of 240,000 soldiers</a> and a police force with 160,000 men. Yet Afghan National Police officials also speak of a far more inflated figure, 250,000, and they claim that <a href="http://www.fpri.org/enotes/200906.legon.afghannationalpolice.html" type="external">149,000 men</a> have already been trained. Police training has always proven problematic, however, in part because, from the start, the European allies fundamentally disagreed with the Bush administration about what the role of the Afghan police should be. Germany initiated the training of what it saw as an unarmed force that would direct traffic, deter crime, and keep civic order for the benefit of the civilian population. The U.S. took over in 2003, handed the task off to a private for-profit military contractor, <a href="http://www.dyn-intl.com/search.aspx?search=Afghanistan&amp;amp;Search.x=0&amp;amp;Search.y=0" type="external">DynCorp</a>, and proceeded to produce a heavily armed, undisciplined, and thoroughly venal paramilitary force despised by Kabulis and feared by Afghan civilians in the countryside.</p> <p>Contradicting that widespread public view, an Afghan commanding officer of the ANP assured me that today the police are trained as police, not as a paramilitary auxiliary of the ANA. &#8220;But policing is different in Afghanistan,&#8221; he said, because the police operate in active war zones.</p> <p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0312426593/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external" />Washington sends mixed messages on this subject. It farms out responsibility for the ANP to a private contractor that hires as mentors retired American law enforcement officers &#8212; a Kentucky state trooper, a Texas county lawman, a North Carolina cop, and so on. Yet Washington policymakers continue to couple the police with the army as &#8220;the Afghan security forces&#8221; &#8212; the most basic police rank is &#8220;soldier&#8221; &#8212; in a merger that must influence what DynCorp puts in its training syllabus. At the Afghan National Police training camp outside Kabul, I watched a squad of trainees learn (reluctantly) how to respond to a full-scale ambush. Though they were armed only with red rubber Kalashnikovs, the exercise looked to me much like the military maneuvers I&#8217;d witnessed at the army training camp.</p> <p>Like army training, police training, too, was accelerated months ago to insure &#8220;security&#8221; during the run-up to the presidential election. With that goal in mind, DynCorp mentors shrunk the basic police training course from eight weeks to three, after which the police were dispatched to villages all across the country, including areas controlled by the Taliban. After the election, the surviving short-course police &#8220;soldiers&#8221; were to be brought back to Kabul for the rest of the basic training program. There&#8217;s no word yet on how many returned.</p> <p>You have to wonder about the wisdom of rushing out this half-baked product. How would you feel if the police in your community were turned loose, heavily armed, after three weeks of training? And how would you feel if you were given a three-week training course with a rubber gun and then dispatched, with a real one, to defend your country?</p> <p>Training security forces is not cheap. So far, the estimated cost of training and mentoring the police since 2001 is <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200909u/afghanistan-police" type="external">at least $10 billion</a>. Any reliable figure on the cost of training and mentoring the Afghan army since 2001 is as invisible as the army itself. But the U.S. currently <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23113" type="external">spends</a> some $4 billion a month on military operations in Afghanistan.</p> <p>The Invisible Men</p> <p>What is there to show for all this remarkably expensive training? Although in Washington they may <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204731804574384981877588144.html?mod=googlenews_wsj" type="external">talk about the 90,000 soldiers</a> in the Afghan National Army, no one has reported actually seeing such an army anywhere in Afghanistan. When 4,000 U.S. Marines were sent into Helmand Province in July to take on the Taliban in what is considered one of its strongholds, accompanying them were only about 600 Afghan security forces, some of whom were police. Why, you might ask, didn&#8217;t the ANA, 90,000 strong after eight years of training and mentoring, handle Helmand on its own? No explanation has been offered. American and NATO officers often complain that Afghan army units are simply not ready to &#8220;operate independently,&#8221; but no one ever speaks to the simple question: Where are they?</p> <p>My educated guess is that such an army simply does not exist. It may well be true that Afghan men have gone through some version of &#8220;Basic Warrior Training&#8221; 90,000 times or more. When I was teaching in Afghanistan from 2002 to 2006, I knew men who repeatedly went through ANA training to get the promised Kalashnikov and the pay. Then they went home for a while and often returned some weeks later to enlist again under a different name.</p> <p>In a country where 40% of men are unemployed, joining the ANA for 10 weeks is the best game in town. It relieves the poverty of many families every time the man of the family goes back to basic training, but it&#8217;s a needlessly complicated way to unintentionally deliver such minimal humanitarian aid. Some of these circulating soldiers are aging former mujahidin &#8212; the Islamist fundamentalists the U.S. once paid to fight the Soviets &#8212; and many are undoubtedly Taliban.</p> <p>American trainers have taken careful note of the fact that, when ANA soldiers were given leave after basic training to return home with their pay, they generally didn&#8217;t come back. To foil paycheck scams and decrease soaring rates of desertion, they recently devised a money-transfer system that allows the soldiers to send pay home without ever leaving their base. That sounds like a good idea, but like many expensive American solutions to Afghan problems, it misses the point. It&#8217;s not just the money the soldier wants to transfer home, it&#8217;s himself as well.</p> <p>Earlier this year, the U.S. training program became slightly more compelling with the introduction of a U.S.-made weapon, the M-16 rifle, which was phased in over four months as a replacement for the venerable Kalashnikov. Even U.S. trainers admit that, in Afghanistan, the Kalashnikov is actually the superior weapon. Light and accurate, it requires no cleaning even in the dust of the high desert, and every man and boy already knows it well. The strange and sensitive M-16, on the other hand, may be more accurate at slightly greater distances, but only if a soldier can keep it clean, while managing to adjust and readjust its notoriously sensitive sights. The struggling soldiers of the ANA may not ace that test, but now that the U.S. military has generously passed on its old M-16s to Afghans, it can buy new ones at taxpayer expense, a prospect certain to gladden the heart of any arms manufacturer. (Incidentally, thanks must go to the Illinois National Guard for risking their lives to make possible such handsome corporate profits.)</p> <p>As for the police, U.S.-funded training offers a similar revolving door. In Afghanistan, however, it is far more dangerous to be a policeman than a soldier. While soldiers on patrol can slip away, policemen stuck at their posts are killed almost every day. Assigned in small numbers to staff small-town police stations or highway checkpoints, they are sitting ducks for Taliban fighters. As representatives of the now thoroughly discredited government of President Hamid Karzai, the hapless police make handy symbolic targets. British commanders in Helmand province <a href="http://www.fpri.org/enotes/200906.legon.afghannationalpolice.html" type="external">estimated</a> that 60% of Afghan police are on drugs &#8212; and little wonder why.</p> <p>In the Pashtun provinces of southern Afghanistan, where the Taliban is strong, recruiting men for the Afghan National Police is a &#8220;problem,&#8221; as an ANP commander told me. Consequently, non-Pashtun police trainees of Hazara, Tajik, Uzbek, or other ethnic backgrounds are dispatched to maintain order in Pashtun territory. They might as well paint targets on their foreheads. The police who accompanied the U.S. Marines into Helmand Province reportedly refused to leave their heavily armed mentors to take up suicidal posts in provincial villages. Some police and army soldiers, when asked by reporters, claimed to be &#8220;visiting&#8221; Helmand province only for <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/world/asia/23marines.html" type="external">&#8220;vacation.&#8221;</a></p> <p>Training Day</p> <p>In many districts, the police recently supplemented their low pay and demonstrated allegiance to local warlords by stuffing ballot boxes for President Karzai in the presidential election. Consider that but one more indication &#8212; like the defection of those great Islamist fundamentalist mujahidin allies the U.S. sponsored in the anti-Soviet jihad of the 1980s who are now fighting with the Taliban &#8212; that no amount of American training, mentoring, or cash will determine who or what Afghans will fight for, if indeed they fight at all.</p> <p>Afghans are world famous fighters, in part because they have a knack for gravitating to the winning side, and they&#8217;re ready to change sides with alacrity until they get it right. Recognizing that Afghans back a winner, U.S. military strategists are now banking on a counterinsurgency strategy that seeks to &#8220;clear, hold, and build&#8221; &#8212; that is, to stick around long enough to win the Afghans over. But it&#8217;s way too late for that to work. These days, U.S. troops sticking around look ever more like a foreign occupying army and, to the Taliban, like targets.</p> <p>Recently Karen DeYoung <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/01/AR2009090103908_pf.html" type="external">noted</a> in the Washington Post that the Taliban now regularly use very sophisticated military techniques &#8212; &#8220;as if the insurgents had attended something akin to the U.S. Army&#8217;s Ranger school, which teaches soldiers how to fight in small groups in austere environments.&#8221; Of course, some of them have attended training sessions which teach them to fight in &#8220;austere environments,&#8221; probably time and time again. If you were a Talib, wouldn&#8217;t you scout the training being offered to Afghans on the other side? And wouldn&#8217;t you do it more than once if you could get well paid every time?</p> <p>Such training is bound to come in handy &#8212; as it may have for the Talib policeman who, just last week, <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/12/MNA219MAH3.DTL" type="external">bumped off</a> eight other comrades at his police post in Kunduz Province in northern Afghanistan and turned it over to the Taliban. On the other hand, such training can be deadly to American trainers. Take the case of the American trainer who was <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/6183475/50-Taliban-killed-after-ambush-on-US-troops.html" type="external">shot and wounded</a> that same week by one of his trainees. Reportedly, a dispute arose because the trainer was drinking water &#8220;in front of locals,&#8221; while the trainees were fasting for the Muslim holy month of Ramazan.</p> <p>There is, by the way, plenty of evidence that Taliban fighters get along just fine, fighting fiercely and well without the training lavished on the ANA and the ANP. Why is it that Afghan Taliban fighters seem so bold and effective, while the Afghan National Police are so dismally corrupt and the Afghan National Army a washout?</p> <p>When I visited bases and training grounds in July, I heard some American trainers describe their Afghan trainees in the same racist terms once applied to African slaves in the U.S.: lazy, irresponsible, stupid, childish, and so on. That&#8217;s how Afghan resistance, avoidance, and sabotage look to American eyes. The Taliban fight for something they believe &#8212; that their country should be freed from foreign occupation. &#8220;Our&#8221; Afghans try to get by.</p> <p>Yet one amazing thing happens to ANA trainees who stick it out for the whole 10 weeks of basic training. Their slight bodies begin to fill out a little. They gain more energy and better spirits &#8212; all because for the first time in their lives they have enough nutritious food to eat.</p> <p>Better nutrition notwithstanding &#8212; Senator Levin, Senator McCain &#8212; &#8220;our&#8221; Afghans are never going to fight for an American cause, with or without American troops, the way we imagine they should. They&#8217;re never going to fight with the energy of the Taliban for a national government that we installed against Afghan wishes, then more recently set up to steal another election, and now seem about to ratify in office, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8236450.stm" type="external">despite incontrovertible evidence</a> of flagrant fraud. Why should they? Even if the U.S. could win their minds, their hearts are not in it.</p> <p>One small warning: Don&#8217;t take the insecurity of the Afghan security forces as an argument for sending yet more American troops to Afghanistan. Aggressive Americans (now numbering 68,000) are likely to be even less successful than reluctant Afghan forces. Afghans want peace, but the kharaji (foreign) troops (100,000, if you include U.S. allies in NATO) bring death and destruction wherever they go. Think instead about what you might have won &#8212; and could still win &#8212; had you spent all those military billions on food. Or maybe agriculture. Or health care. Or a civilian job corps. Is it too late for that now?</p>

Meet the Afghan Army

https://motherjones.com/politics/2009/09/meet-afghan-army/

2009-09-21

4left

This story first appeared at the TomDispatch website The big Afghanistan debate in Washington is not over whether more troops are needed but just who they should be Americans or Afghans 8212 Us or Them Having just spent time in Afghanistan seeing how things stand I wouldn8217t bet on Them Frankly I wouldn8217t bet on Us either In eight years American troops have worn out their welcome Their very presence now incites opposition but that8217s another story It8217s Them 8212 the Afghans 8212 I want to talk about Afghans are Afghans They have their own history their own culture their own habitual ways of thinking and behaving all complicated by a modern experience of decades of war displacement abject poverty and incessant meddling by foreign governments near and far 8212 of which the United States has been the most powerful and persistent Afghans do not think or act like Americans Yet Americans in power refuse to grasp that inconvenient point In the heat of this summer I went out to the training fields near Kabul where Afghan army recruits are put through their paces and it was quickly evident just what8217s getting lost in translation Our trainers soldiers from the Illinois National Guard were masterful Professional and highly skilled they were dedicated to carrying out their mission 8212 and doing the job well They were also big strong camouflaged combatbooted supersized American men their bodies swollen by flack jackets and lashed with knives handguns and god only knows what else Any American could be proud of their commitment to tough duty The Afghans were puny by comparison Hundreds of little Davids to the overstuffed American Goliaths training them Keep in mind Afghan recruits come from a world of desperate poverty They are almost uniformly malnourished and underweight Many are no bigger than I am 5821748243 and thin 8212 and some probably not much stronger Like me many sag under the weight of a standardissue flack jacket Their American trainers spoke of 8220upper body strength deficiency8221 and prescribed pushups because their trainees buckle under the backpacks filled with 50 pounds of equipment and ammo they are expected to carry All this material must seem absurd to men whose fathers and brothers wearing only the old cotton shirts and baggy pants of everyday life and carrying battered Russian Kalashnikov rifles defeated the Red Army two decades ago American trainers marvel that freed from heavy equipment and uniforms Afghan soldiers can run through the mountains all day 8212 as the Taliban guerrillas in fact do with great effect 8212 but the US military is determined to train them for another style of war Still the new recruits turn out for training in the blistering heat in this stony desert landscape wearing beneath their heavy uniforms the smart red green and black warmup outfits intended to encourage them to engage in offduty exercise American trainers recognize that recruits regularly wear all their gear at once for fear somebody will steal anything left behind in the barracks but they take this overdressing as a sign of how much Afghans love the military My own reading based on my observations of Afghan life during the years I8217ve spent in that country is this It8217s a sign of how little they trust one another or the Americans who gave them the snazzy suits I think it also indicates the obvious that these impoverished men in a country without work have joined the Afghan National Army for what they can get out of it and keep or sell 8212 and that doesn8217t include democracy or glory In the current policy debate about the Afghan War in Washington Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin wants the Afghans to defend their country Senator John McCain the top Republican on the committee agrees but says they need even more help from even more Americans The common ground 8212 the sacred territory President Obama gropes for 8212 is that whatever else happens the US must speed up the training of 8220the Afghan security forces8221 American military planners and policymakers already proceed as if with sufficient training Afghans can be transformed into scalemodel windup American Marines That is not going to happen Not now Not ever No matter how many of our leaders concur that it must happen 8212 and ever faster 8220Basic Warrior Training8221 So who are these security forces They include the Afghan National Army ANA and the Afghan National Police ANP International forces and private contractors have been training Afghan recruits for both of them since 2001 In fact the determination of Western military planners to create a national army and police force has been so great that some seem to have suppressed for years the reports of Canadian soldiers who witnessed members of the Afghan security forces engaging in a fairly common pastime sodomizing young boys Current training and mentoring is provided by the US Great Britain France Canada Romania Poland Mongolia New Zealand and Australia as well as by the private forprofit contractors MPRI KBR formerly a division of Halliburton Pulau Paravant and RONCO Almost eight years and counting since the 8220mentoring8221 process began officers at the Kabul Military Training Center report that the army now numbers between 88000 and 92000 soldiers depending on who you talk to and the basic training course financed and led by Americans called 8220Basic Warrior Training8221 is turning out 28800 new soldiers every year according to a Kabul Military Training Center 8220fact sheet8221 The current projected 8220end strength8221 for the ANA to be reached in December 2011 is 134000 men but Afghan officers told me they8217re planning for a force of 200000 while the Western press often cites 240000 as the final figure The number 400000 is often mentioned as the supposed endstrength quota for the combined security forces 8212 an army of 240000 soldiers and a police force with 160000 men Yet Afghan National Police officials also speak of a far more inflated figure 250000 and they claim that 149000 men have already been trained Police training has always proven problematic however in part because from the start the European allies fundamentally disagreed with the Bush administration about what the role of the Afghan police should be Germany initiated the training of what it saw as an unarmed force that would direct traffic deter crime and keep civic order for the benefit of the civilian population The US took over in 2003 handed the task off to a private forprofit military contractor DynCorp and proceeded to produce a heavily armed undisciplined and thoroughly venal paramilitary force despised by Kabulis and feared by Afghan civilians in the countryside Contradicting that widespread public view an Afghan commanding officer of the ANP assured me that today the police are trained as police not as a paramilitary auxiliary of the ANA 8220But policing is different in Afghanistan8221 he said because the police operate in active war zones Washington sends mixed messages on this subject It farms out responsibility for the ANP to a private contractor that hires as mentors retired American law enforcement officers 8212 a Kentucky state trooper a Texas county lawman a North Carolina cop and so on Yet Washington policymakers continue to couple the police with the army as 8220the Afghan security forces8221 8212 the most basic police rank is 8220soldier8221 8212 in a merger that must influence what DynCorp puts in its training syllabus At the Afghan National Police training camp outside Kabul I watched a squad of trainees learn reluctantly how to respond to a fullscale ambush Though they were armed only with red rubber Kalashnikovs the exercise looked to me much like the military maneuvers I8217d witnessed at the army training camp Like army training police training too was accelerated months ago to insure 8220security8221 during the runup to the presidential election With that goal in mind DynCorp mentors shrunk the basic police training course from eight weeks to three after which the police were dispatched to villages all across the country including areas controlled by the Taliban After the election the surviving shortcourse police 8220soldiers8221 were to be brought back to Kabul for the rest of the basic training program There8217s no word yet on how many returned You have to wonder about the wisdom of rushing out this halfbaked product How would you feel if the police in your community were turned loose heavily armed after three weeks of training And how would you feel if you were given a threeweek training course with a rubber gun and then dispatched with a real one to defend your country Training security forces is not cheap So far the estimated cost of training and mentoring the police since 2001 is at least 10 billion Any reliable figure on the cost of training and mentoring the Afghan army since 2001 is as invisible as the army itself But the US currently spends some 4 billion a month on military operations in Afghanistan The Invisible Men What is there to show for all this remarkably expensive training Although in Washington they may talk about the 90000 soldiers in the Afghan National Army no one has reported actually seeing such an army anywhere in Afghanistan When 4000 US Marines were sent into Helmand Province in July to take on the Taliban in what is considered one of its strongholds accompanying them were only about 600 Afghan security forces some of whom were police Why you might ask didn8217t the ANA 90000 strong after eight years of training and mentoring handle Helmand on its own No explanation has been offered American and NATO officers often complain that Afghan army units are simply not ready to 8220operate independently8221 but no one ever speaks to the simple question Where are they My educated guess is that such an army simply does not exist It may well be true that Afghan men have gone through some version of 8220Basic Warrior Training8221 90000 times or more When I was teaching in Afghanistan from 2002 to 2006 I knew men who repeatedly went through ANA training to get the promised Kalashnikov and the pay Then they went home for a while and often returned some weeks later to enlist again under a different name In a country where 40 of men are unemployed joining the ANA for 10 weeks is the best game in town It relieves the poverty of many families every time the man of the family goes back to basic training but it8217s a needlessly complicated way to unintentionally deliver such minimal humanitarian aid Some of these circulating soldiers are aging former mujahidin 8212 the Islamist fundamentalists the US once paid to fight the Soviets 8212 and many are undoubtedly Taliban American trainers have taken careful note of the fact that when ANA soldiers were given leave after basic training to return home with their pay they generally didn8217t come back To foil paycheck scams and decrease soaring rates of desertion they recently devised a moneytransfer system that allows the soldiers to send pay home without ever leaving their base That sounds like a good idea but like many expensive American solutions to Afghan problems it misses the point It8217s not just the money the soldier wants to transfer home it8217s himself as well Earlier this year the US training program became slightly more compelling with the introduction of a USmade weapon the M16 rifle which was phased in over four months as a replacement for the venerable Kalashnikov Even US trainers admit that in Afghanistan the Kalashnikov is actually the superior weapon Light and accurate it requires no cleaning even in the dust of the high desert and every man and boy already knows it well The strange and sensitive M16 on the other hand may be more accurate at slightly greater distances but only if a soldier can keep it clean while managing to adjust and readjust its notoriously sensitive sights The struggling soldiers of the ANA may not ace that test but now that the US military has generously passed on its old M16s to Afghans it can buy new ones at taxpayer expense a prospect certain to gladden the heart of any arms manufacturer Incidentally thanks must go to the Illinois National Guard for risking their lives to make possible such handsome corporate profits As for the police USfunded training offers a similar revolving door In Afghanistan however it is far more dangerous to be a policeman than a soldier While soldiers on patrol can slip away policemen stuck at their posts are killed almost every day Assigned in small numbers to staff smalltown police stations or highway checkpoints they are sitting ducks for Taliban fighters As representatives of the now thoroughly discredited government of President Hamid Karzai the hapless police make handy symbolic targets British commanders in Helmand province estimated that 60 of Afghan police are on drugs 8212 and little wonder why In the Pashtun provinces of southern Afghanistan where the Taliban is strong recruiting men for the Afghan National Police is a 8220problem8221 as an ANP commander told me Consequently nonPashtun police trainees of Hazara Tajik Uzbek or other ethnic backgrounds are dispatched to maintain order in Pashtun territory They might as well paint targets on their foreheads The police who accompanied the US Marines into Helmand Province reportedly refused to leave their heavily armed mentors to take up suicidal posts in provincial villages Some police and army soldiers when asked by reporters claimed to be 8220visiting8221 Helmand province only for 8220vacation8221 Training Day In many districts the police recently supplemented their low pay and demonstrated allegiance to local warlords by stuffing ballot boxes for President Karzai in the presidential election Consider that but one more indication 8212 like the defection of those great Islamist fundamentalist mujahidin allies the US sponsored in the antiSoviet jihad of the 1980s who are now fighting with the Taliban 8212 that no amount of American training mentoring or cash will determine who or what Afghans will fight for if indeed they fight at all Afghans are world famous fighters in part because they have a knack for gravitating to the winning side and they8217re ready to change sides with alacrity until they get it right Recognizing that Afghans back a winner US military strategists are now banking on a counterinsurgency strategy that seeks to 8220clear hold and build8221 8212 that is to stick around long enough to win the Afghans over But it8217s way too late for that to work These days US troops sticking around look ever more like a foreign occupying army and to the Taliban like targets Recently Karen DeYoung noted in the Washington Post that the Taliban now regularly use very sophisticated military techniques 8212 8220as if the insurgents had attended something akin to the US Army8217s Ranger school which teaches soldiers how to fight in small groups in austere environments8221 Of course some of them have attended training sessions which teach them to fight in 8220austere environments8221 probably time and time again If you were a Talib wouldn8217t you scout the training being offered to Afghans on the other side And wouldn8217t you do it more than once if you could get well paid every time Such training is bound to come in handy 8212 as it may have for the Talib policeman who just last week bumped off eight other comrades at his police post in Kunduz Province in northern Afghanistan and turned it over to the Taliban On the other hand such training can be deadly to American trainers Take the case of the American trainer who was shot and wounded that same week by one of his trainees Reportedly a dispute arose because the trainer was drinking water 8220in front of locals8221 while the trainees were fasting for the Muslim holy month of Ramazan There is by the way plenty of evidence that Taliban fighters get along just fine fighting fiercely and well without the training lavished on the ANA and the ANP Why is it that Afghan Taliban fighters seem so bold and effective while the Afghan National Police are so dismally corrupt and the Afghan National Army a washout When I visited bases and training grounds in July I heard some American trainers describe their Afghan trainees in the same racist terms once applied to African slaves in the US lazy irresponsible stupid childish and so on That8217s how Afghan resistance avoidance and sabotage look to American eyes The Taliban fight for something they believe 8212 that their country should be freed from foreign occupation 8220Our8221 Afghans try to get by Yet one amazing thing happens to ANA trainees who stick it out for the whole 10 weeks of basic training Their slight bodies begin to fill out a little They gain more energy and better spirits 8212 all because for the first time in their lives they have enough nutritious food to eat Better nutrition notwithstanding 8212 Senator Levin Senator McCain 8212 8220our8221 Afghans are never going to fight for an American cause with or without American troops the way we imagine they should They8217re never going to fight with the energy of the Taliban for a national government that we installed against Afghan wishes then more recently set up to steal another election and now seem about to ratify in office despite incontrovertible evidence of flagrant fraud Why should they Even if the US could win their minds their hearts are not in it One small warning Don8217t take the insecurity of the Afghan security forces as an argument for sending yet more American troops to Afghanistan Aggressive Americans now numbering 68000 are likely to be even less successful than reluctant Afghan forces Afghans want peace but the kharaji foreign troops 100000 if you include US allies in NATO bring death and destruction wherever they go Think instead about what you might have won 8212 and could still win 8212 had you spent all those military billions on food Or maybe agriculture Or health care Or a civilian job corps Is it too late for that now

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<p>DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni sent a message to U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday that leaders can defend their countries&#8217; interests but must respect existing international agreements.</p> <p>Asked at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, about Trump&#8217;s imminent visit, Gentiloni said:</p> Slideshow (2 Images) <p>&#8220;It is totally legitimate, understandable, the desire for political leaders to defend their own citizens, their own companies, their own economy ... I respect that, but obviously there is a limit.&#8221;</p> <p>He added, &#8220;You can defend and protect your citizens, your workers, your companies, but we live in a framework given by trade agreements, free trade, trade rules, multilateral decisions, and we have to keep this system functioning,&#8221; Gentiloni said.</p> <p>Trump will have a full day of meetings in Davos on Thursday and then deliver a keynote address to the forum on Friday before returning to the United States later that day.</p> <p>Reporting by Isla Binnie</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Despite signs that Democrats are in a strong position, U.S. President Donald Trump vowed on Tuesday to beat expectations and keep the House of Representatives in Republican control in the mid-term elections in November.</p> <p>Trump, who won an improbable victory in 2016 as an outsider, spoke at a National Republican Congressional Committee dinner in Washington that raised a record $32 million for Republican House candidates.</p> <p>&#8220;We&#8217;re going to defy predictions once again. We will keep the House majority,&#8221; said Trump.</p> <p>Whether the party can make good on Trump&#8217;s prediction is far from clear as Republicans face headwinds holding onto control the House. Democrats, riding a wave of angst about Trump&#8217;s presidency, hold an enthusiasm edge in public opinion polls.</p> <p>The party that wins control of the White House typically loses seats in the first congressional mid-term election after a new president takes power.</p> <p>A Democratic win in a special election last week for a House seat was seen as a referendum on Trump&#8217;s performance and an ominous sign for the November elections. Trump had won the congressional district by almost 20 percentage points in 2016.</p> U.S. President Donald Trump delivers remarks at the National Republican Congressional Committee's annual March dinner at the National Building Museum in Washington, U.S., March 20, 2018. REUTERS/Leah Millis <p>A loss of one or both houses of Congress would spell trouble for Trump&#8217;s &#8220;America First&#8221; agenda by forcing him into greater compromises with Democrats.</p> <p>Trump said Republicans can beat the odds by embracing his policies. He said they should promote the tax cuts that he helped steer through Congress in December and embrace his tough immigration message.</p> Slideshow (3 Images) <p>&#8220;A vote for Democrats is truly a vote for open borders, people pouring into our country,&#8221; said Trump, who wants to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and crack down on cities with lenient immigration policies like Los Angeles and San Francisco.</p> <p>He vowed to campaign &#8220;all across this country to elect Republicans&#8221; and urged party voters to guard against complacency.</p> <p>&#8220;I can understand it. It&#8217;s natural human trait. But we cannot be complacent,&#8221; Trump said. &#8220;We can&#8217;t. We have so much to gain and this country has so much to lose.&#8221;</p> <p>The Democrats &#8220;are going so far to the left-hand side of the equation, I don&#8217;t know whether or not it&#8217;s going to even be possible for them to do well, but for some reason they&#8217;ll probably do okay. We can&#8217;t let that happen. They have gone so far left, we have to go a little bit further right.&#8221; &amp;#160;&amp;#160;</p> <p>Additional reporting by Eric Beech and Eric Walsh; Editing by Leslie Adler</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>TEMPE, Ariz./SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - An Uber self-driving car hit and killed a woman crossing the street in Arizona, police said on Monday, marking the first fatality involving an autonomous vehicle and a potential blow to the technology expected to transform transportation.</p> <p>The ride services company said it was suspending North American tests of its self-driving vehicles, which are currently going on in Arizona, Pittsburgh and Toronto.</p> <p>So-called robot cars, when fully developed by companies including Uber, Alphabet Inc and General Motors Co, are expected to drastically cut down on motor vehicle fatalities and create billion-dollar businesses. But Monday&#8217;s accident underscored the possible challenges ahead for the promising technology as the cars confront real-world situations involving real people.</p> <p>U.S. lawmakers have been debating legislation that would speed introduction of self-driving cars.</p> <p>&#8220;This tragic accident underscores why we need to be exceptionally cautious when testing and deploying autonomous vehicle technologies on public roads,&#8221; said Democratic Senator Edward Markey, a member of the transportation committee, in a statement.</p> <p>Elaine Herzberg, 49, was walking her bicycle outside the crosswalk on a four-lane road in the Phoenix suburb of Tempe about 10 p.m. MST Sunday (0400 GMT Monday) when she was struck by the Uber vehicle traveling at about 40 miles per hour (65 km per hour), police said. The Volvo XC90 SUV was in autonomous mode with an operator behind the wheel.</p> <p>Herzberg later died from her injuries in a hospital, police said.</p> <p>&#8220;The pedestrian was outside of the crosswalk. As soon as she walked into the lane of traffic she was struck,&#8221; Tempe Police Sergeant Ronald Elcock told reporters at a news conference. He said he did not yet know how close Herzberg was to the vehicle when she stepped into the lane.</p> <p>Elcock said he believed Herzberg may have been homeless.</p> <p>The San Francisco Chronicle late Monday reported that Tempe Police Chief Sylvia Moir said that from viewing videos taken from the vehicle &#8220;it&#8217;s very clear it would have been difficult to avoid this collision in any kind of mode (autonomous or human-driven) based on how she came from the shadows right into the roadway." ( <a href="http://bit.ly/2IADRUF" type="external">bit.ly/2IADRUF</a>)</p> <p>Moir told the Chronicle, &#8220;I suspect preliminarily it appears that the Uber would likely not be at fault in this accident,&#8221; but she did not rule out that charges could be filed against the operator in the Uber vehicle, the paper reported.</p> <p>The &#8220;Tempe Police Department does not determine fault in vehicular collisions,&#8221; the department said in a statement late Monday, in reply to questions from Reuters about the chief&#8217;s comments. &#8220;Ultimately the investigation will be submitted to the Maricopa County Attorney&#8217;s Office for review and any potential charges.&#8221;</p> <p>Tempe authorities and federal officials are still investigating the incident. Canada&#8217;s transportation ministry in Ontario, where Uber conducts testing, also said it was reviewing the accident.</p> Burned out flares lie at the location where a woman pedestrian was struck and killed by an Uber self-driving sport utility vehicle in Tempe, Arizona, U.S., March 19, 2018. REUTERS/Rick Scuteri <p>Volvo, the Swedish car brand owned by China&#8217;s Geely, said the software controlling the car in the crash was not its own.</p> <p>Video footage will aid the ongoing investigation, and the case would be submitted to the district attorney, Elcock said.</p> <p>&#8220;Our investigators have that information, and they will be using that in their investigation as well as the Maricopa County Attorney&#8217;s Office as part of their investigation,&#8221; said Elcock. &#8220;They are going to attempt to try to find who was possibly at fault and how we can better be safe, whether it&#8217;s pedestrians or whether it&#8217;s the vehicle itself.&#8221;</p> WILD WEST <p>Uber and Waymo on Friday urged Congress to pass sweeping legislation to speed the introduction of self-driving cars into the United States. Some congressional Democrats have blocked the legislation over safety concerns, and Monday&#8217;s fatality could hamper passage of the bill, congressional aides said Monday.</p> Slideshow (6 Images) <p>Safety advocates called for a national moratorium on all robot car testing on public roads.</p> <p>&#8220;Arizona has been the wild west of robot car testing with virtually no regulations in place,&#8221; said Consumer Watchdog, a non-profit consumer advocacy group, in a statement. &#8220;That&#8217;s why Uber and Waymo test there. When there&#8217;s no sheriff in town, people get killed.&#8221;</p> <p>Arizona has opened its arms to companies testing self-driving vehicles as a means to economic growth and jobs. Republican Governor Doug Ducey reached out to Uber in 2016 after California regulators cracked down on the company over its failure to obtain testing permits.</p> <p>Self-driving cars being tested routinely get into fender-benders with other vehicles. Last week, a self-driving Uber crashed with another vehicle in Pittsburgh, local news reported. There were no injuries.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-autos-selfdriving-uber-regulation/self-driving-car-industry-faces-critical-test-after-first-death-idUSKBN1GV2X5" type="external">Self-driving car industry faces critical test after first death</a> <p>A year ago, Uber temporarily grounded its self-driving cars for a few days following a crash with another car in Tempe. The company has been the subject of a number of complaints about its autonomous vehicles, but the company has said the cars were being driven by a human driver at the time of the incidents.</p> ESSENTIAL TO UBER&#8217;S SUCCESS <p>Uber has said its ability to build autonomous cars is essential to its success in the rapidly changing transportation industry. The company envisions a network of autonomous cars that would be summoned through the Uber app that would supplement - and eventually replace - human-driven cars.</p> <p>Uber has logged 2 million self-driving miles (3.2 million km) through December. The company has more than 100 autonomous cars testing on the roads of the greater Phoenix area, the company&#8217;s prime testing ground due to the state&#8217;s loose regulations and hospitable weather. Rain, snow and ice are particularly challenging for autonomous cars. The company also tests in Pittsburgh and Toronto.</p> <p>Concerns over the safety of autonomous vehicles flared after a July 2016 fatality involving a Tesla Inc automobile with a partially autonomous system that required human supervision. Safety regulators later determined Tesla was not at fault.</p> <p>Reporting by Sydney Maki and Alexandria Sage; Additional reporting by Dave Shepardson in Washington, Tina Bellon in New York, Heather Somerville in San Francisco, David Schwartz and Andres Guerra Luz in Phoenix, and Allison Lampert in Montreal; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Lisa Shumaker</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>GREAT MILLS, Md. (Reuters) - A 17-year-old boy opened fire at a Maryland high school on Tuesday in an attack that left two fellow students wounded, then died after a gunfight with a police officer posted there, amid a renewed national debate over gun violence in schools.</p> <p>The shooting in St. Mary&#8217;s County, about 70 miles (113 km)south of Washington, came five weeks after a high school massacre in Florida and just days before a planned student-led march in the U.S. capital for tougher gun laws.</p> <p>The latest bloodshed erupted shortly before 8 a.m. at Great Mills High School and lasted less than a minute, county Sheriff Timothy Cameron said, but the precise sequence of events was still being sorted out hours later.</p> <p>A 16-year-old girl was in intensive care with life-threatening wounds, Cameron told a news conference. A 14-year-old boy also struck by gunfire was listed in good condition at a hospital.</p> <p>The gunman was identified as Austin Wyatt Rollins, and Cameron said there was &#8220;an indication&#8221; the teenager had a prior relationship with the female student, although that was still under investigation.</p> <p>The sheriff initially told reporters Rollins shot both victims with a handgun, but then said in response to questions that investigators were still uncertain who fired the shot that hit the 14-year-old.</p> <p>Cameron also said it was not clear whether Rollins died after being shot by sheriff&#8217;s Deputy 1st Class Blaine Gaskill, who was assigned as the Great Mills school resource officer, or from self-inflicted gunfire.</p> <p>The latest in a long string of deadly shootings at U.S. schools and colleges occurred little more than a month after 14 students and three faculty members were fatally shot on Feb. 14 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The accused gunman, a 19-year-old former student expelled from the school for disciplinary reasons last year, was arrested and charged with 17 counts of murder.</p> <p>That massacre sparked a student movement against gun violence, including a national school walkout last week that included some Great Mills students. A march in Washington by gun control activists is set for Saturday.</p> <p>&#8220;We recently had a protest about school violence last week, and now this has happened,&#8221; said Kameron Norwood, 16, as he and other students waited for relatives to pick them up from a nearby high school.</p> <p>Cameron said Rollins pulled out a Glock semiautomatic pistol in a hallway of the school and opened fire.</p> Frank Lanham (2nd R), a teacher at Great Mills High School leaves Leonardtown High School in Leonardtown, Maryland, U.S., March 20, 2018. Great Mills students and parents reunited at Lenoardtown after the shooting at their school. REUTERS/Sait Serkan Gurbuz <p>The attack ended after Gaskill ran inside and confronted Rollins, with each firing a single shot almost simultaneously.</p> <p>The officer was not harmed, Cameron said. Rollins was confirmed dead nearly three hours later at a hospital.</p> <p>Rollins&#8217; Facebook page showed he was a fan of the Dallas Cowboys football team and NASCAR auto racing, and he appeared several times on the school&#8217;s honor and merit rolls for good grades that were published in a local newspaper.</p> Slideshow (12 Images) &#8216;WE NEED MORE THAN PRAYERS&#8217; <p>If authorities confirm Gaskill fired the fatal shot, it may be the only known instance in which a school resource officer, or SRO, typically a law enforcement member assigned to a school, killed a student gunman during a shooting.</p> <p>In 2001, an officer shot and wounded an 18-year-old student who wounded two teachers and three other students with a shotgun at Granite Hills High School in El Cajon, California, according to the National Association of School Resource Officers.</p> <p>An armed school resource officer had been on the Stoneman Douglas campus, and was criticized for failing to stop that gunman, who had an AR-15 assault-style rifle. The officer, who later resigned, said he had not been sure whether the gunfire was coming from inside or outside the school.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-maryland-shooting-students/maryland-lockdown-pulls-florida-students-into-twitter-storm-be-strong-idUSKBN1GW2OY" type="external">Maryland lockdown pulls Florida students into Twitter storm: 'Be strong'</a> <p>President Donald Trump and the National Rifle Association have proposed arming some teachers, while gun safety advocates have demanded a ban on semiautomatic rifles, among other restrictions.</p> <p>Maryland&#8217;s two Democratic U.S. senators, Chris Van Hollen and Ben Cardin, called on Congress on Tuesday to pass gun safety legislation, where such measures have stalled for years.</p> <p>The state&#8217;s Republican governor, Larry Hogan, said his thoughts and prayers were with the victims, but added: &#8220;We need more than prayers.&#8221;</p> <p>After the Parkland shooting, Hogan proposed spending $125 million to enhance school security, including panic buttons and metal detectors, and vowed to provide an additional $50 million to hire school resource officers and counselors.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Jonathan Allen, Gina Cherelus, Elizabeth Dilts and Sheila Dang in New York; Writing by Joseph Ax; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Peter Cooney</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - A former Playboy model who said she had an affair with President Donald Trump filed suit in California on Tuesday seeking release from a legal agreement requiring her to stay silent, becoming the second woman this month to contest arrangements not to disclose alleged extramarital relationships with Trump.</p> Playboy Playmate of the Year Karen McDougal poses at the Playboy Mansion in Beverly Hills in 1998. REUTERS/Files <p>Karen McDougal filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court against American Media Inc, publisher of the National Enquirer, which paid her $150,000 in 2016 to keep quiet.</p> <p>McDougal&#8217;s lawsuit came on the same day that a New York state judge ruled Trump must face a defamation suit by California restaurateur Summer Zervos, who accused him of sexually harassing her after she appeared on his former reality TV show &#8220;The Apprentice.&#8221;</p> <p>New Yorker magazine last month reported on McDougal&#8217;s alleged affair and a move by American Media to pay her for rights to her story, which it never published. American Media head David Pecker has described Trump as a &#8220;personal friend.&#8221;</p> <p>In the lawsuit, McDougal claimed she and Trump engaged in a 10-month extramarital &#8220;romantic relationship&#8221; in 2006 and 2007, a time period that overlaps with his alleged affair with adult film actress Stormy Daniels. Trump&#8217;s wife Melania Trump gave birth to the president&#8217;s youngest son Barron in 2006.</p> <p>McDougal said her lawyer at the time, Keith Davidson, secretly negotiated with Michael Cohen, Trump&#8217;s personal lawyer, on the AMI deal. Cohen has acknowledged arranging to pay Daniels for her silence during the 2016 presidential campaign.</p> FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks with the news media before boarding Marine One helicopter to depart for travel to California via Joint Base Andrews from the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, U.S., March 13, 2018. REUTERS/Leah Millis/File Photo <p>McDougal is asking the court to declare the agreement null and void, saying she was tricked into signing it, that it was intended to illegally influence the 2016 election and because it violates public policy against using threats of legal action to get someone to stay silent on issues of public concern.</p> <p>She also called the agreement an illegal corporate donation from AMI to the Trump campaign that violated federal election law.</p> <p>AMI said in a statement the company has a valid contract with McDougal and looks forward to reaching an amicable resolution with her. It said she has been free to respond to press inquiries about her relationship with Trump since 2016 and that the suggestion that AMI silenced her is without merit.</p> <p>&#8220;AMI lied to me, made empty promises, and repeatedly intimidated and manipulated me. I just want the opportunity to set the record straight and move on with my life, free from this company, its executives, and its lawyers,&#8221; McDougal, who was Playboy magazine&#8217;s 1998 Playmate of the Year, said in a statement.</p> <p>Davidson declined to comment, citing attorney-client privilege. Cohen did not immediately respond to a request for comment.</p> <p>Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, sued the president on March 6, stating Trump never signed an agreement for her to keep her quiet about an &#8220;intimate&#8221; relationship between them. Daniels received $130,000 under that agreement.</p> <p>Reporting by Nathan Layne and Karen Freifeld in New York; Editing by Will Dunham</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Italy PM says 'there's a limit' to leaders defending countries' interests Despite warning signs, Trump says Republicans can keep House Self-driving Uber car kills Arizona woman crossing street Two wounded in Maryland school shooting, student gunman dies Former Playboy model sues to break silence on alleged Trump affair

https://reuters.com/article/us-davos-meeting-gentiloni/italy-pm-says-theres-a-limit-to-leaders-defending-countries-interests-idUSKBN1FD1UP

2018-01-24

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DAVOS Switzerland Reuters Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni sent a message to US President Donald Trump on Wednesday that leaders can defend their countries8217 interests but must respect existing international agreements Asked at the World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland about Trump8217s imminent visit Gentiloni said Slideshow 2 Images 8220It is totally legitimate understandable the desire for political leaders to defend their own citizens their own companies their own economy I respect that but obviously there is a limit8221 He added 8220You can defend and protect your citizens your workers your companies but we live in a framework given by trade agreements free trade trade rules multilateral decisions and we have to keep this system functioning8221 Gentiloni said Trump will have a full day of meetings in Davos on Thursday and then deliver a keynote address to the forum on Friday before returning to the United States later that day Reporting by Isla Binnie Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters Despite signs that Democrats are in a strong position US President Donald Trump vowed on Tuesday to beat expectations and keep the House of Representatives in Republican control in the midterm elections in November Trump who won an improbable victory in 2016 as an outsider spoke at a National Republican Congressional Committee dinner in Washington that raised a record 32 million for Republican House candidates 8220We8217re going to defy predictions once again We will keep the House majority8221 said Trump Whether the party can make good on Trump8217s prediction is far from clear as Republicans face headwinds holding onto control the House Democrats riding a wave of angst about Trump8217s presidency hold an enthusiasm edge in public opinion polls The party that wins control of the White House typically loses seats in the first congressional midterm election after a new president takes power A Democratic win in a special election last week for a House seat was seen as a referendum on Trump8217s performance and an ominous sign for the November elections Trump had won the congressional district by almost 20 percentage points in 2016 US President Donald Trump delivers remarks at the National Republican Congressional Committees annual March dinner at the National Building Museum in Washington US March 20 2018 REUTERSLeah Millis A loss of one or both houses of Congress would spell trouble for Trump8217s 8220America First8221 agenda by forcing him into greater compromises with Democrats Trump said Republicans can beat the odds by embracing his policies He said they should promote the tax cuts that he helped steer through Congress in December and embrace his tough immigration message Slideshow 3 Images 8220A vote for Democrats is truly a vote for open borders people pouring into our country8221 said Trump who wants to build a wall along the USMexico border and crack down on cities with lenient immigration policies like Los Angeles and San Francisco He vowed to campaign 8220all across this country to elect Republicans8221 and urged party voters to guard against complacency 8220I can understand it It8217s natural human trait But we cannot be complacent8221 Trump said 8220We can8217t We have so much to gain and this country has so much to lose8221 The Democrats 8220are going so far to the lefthand side of the equation I don8217t know whether or not it8217s going to even be possible for them to do well but for some reason they8217ll probably do okay We can8217t let that happen They have gone so far left we have to go a little bit further right8221 amp160amp160 Additional reporting by Eric Beech and Eric Walsh Editing by Leslie Adler Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles TEMPE ArizSAN FRANCISCO Reuters An Uber selfdriving car hit and killed a woman crossing the street in Arizona police said on Monday marking the first fatality involving an autonomous vehicle and a potential blow to the technology expected to transform transportation The ride services company said it was suspending North American tests of its selfdriving vehicles which are currently going on in Arizona Pittsburgh and Toronto Socalled robot cars when fully developed by companies including Uber Alphabet Inc and General Motors Co are expected to drastically cut down on motor vehicle fatalities and create billiondollar businesses But Monday8217s accident underscored the possible challenges ahead for the promising technology as the cars confront realworld situations involving real people US lawmakers have been debating legislation that would speed introduction of selfdriving cars 8220This tragic accident underscores why we need to be exceptionally cautious when testing and deploying autonomous vehicle technologies on public roads8221 said Democratic Senator Edward Markey a member of the transportation committee in a statement Elaine Herzberg 49 was walking her bicycle outside the crosswalk on a fourlane road in the Phoenix suburb of Tempe about 10 pm MST Sunday 0400 GMT Monday when she was struck by the Uber vehicle traveling at about 40 miles per hour 65 km per hour police said The Volvo XC90 SUV was in autonomous mode with an operator behind the wheel Herzberg later died from her injuries in a hospital police said 8220The pedestrian was outside of the crosswalk As soon as she walked into the lane of traffic she was struck8221 Tempe Police Sergeant Ronald Elcock told reporters at a news conference He said he did not yet know how close Herzberg was to the vehicle when she stepped into the lane Elcock said he believed Herzberg may have been homeless The San Francisco Chronicle late Monday reported that Tempe Police Chief Sylvia Moir said that from viewing videos taken from the vehicle 8220it8217s very clear it would have been difficult to avoid this collision in any kind of mode autonomous or humandriven based on how she came from the shadows right into the roadway bitly2IADRUF Moir told the Chronicle 8220I suspect preliminarily it appears that the Uber would likely not be at fault in this accident8221 but she did not rule out that charges could be filed against the operator in the Uber vehicle the paper reported The 8220Tempe Police Department does not determine fault in vehicular collisions8221 the department said in a statement late Monday in reply to questions from Reuters about the chief8217s comments 8220Ultimately the investigation will be submitted to the Maricopa County Attorney8217s Office for review and any potential charges8221 Tempe authorities and federal officials are still investigating the incident Canada8217s transportation ministry in Ontario where Uber conducts testing also said it was reviewing the accident Burned out flares lie at the location where a woman pedestrian was struck and killed by an Uber selfdriving sport utility vehicle in Tempe Arizona US March 19 2018 REUTERSRick Scuteri Volvo the Swedish car brand owned by China8217s Geely said the software controlling the car in the crash was not its own Video footage will aid the ongoing investigation and the case would be submitted to the district attorney Elcock said 8220Our investigators have that information and they will be using that in their investigation as well as the Maricopa County Attorney8217s Office as part of their investigation8221 said Elcock 8220They are going to attempt to try to find who was possibly at fault and how we can better be safe whether it8217s pedestrians or whether it8217s the vehicle itself8221 WILD WEST Uber and Waymo on Friday urged Congress to pass sweeping legislation to speed the introduction of selfdriving cars into the United States Some congressional Democrats have blocked the legislation over safety concerns and Monday8217s fatality could hamper passage of the bill congressional aides said Monday Slideshow 6 Images Safety advocates called for a national moratorium on all robot car testing on public roads 8220Arizona has been the wild west of robot car testing with virtually no regulations in place8221 said Consumer Watchdog a nonprofit consumer advocacy group in a statement 8220That8217s why Uber and Waymo test there When there8217s no sheriff in town people get killed8221 Arizona has opened its arms to companies testing selfdriving vehicles as a means to economic growth and jobs Republican Governor Doug Ducey reached out to Uber in 2016 after California regulators cracked down on the company over its failure to obtain testing permits Selfdriving cars being tested routinely get into fenderbenders with other vehicles Last week a selfdriving Uber crashed with another vehicle in Pittsburgh local news reported There were no injuries Related Coverage Selfdriving car industry faces critical test after first death A year ago Uber temporarily grounded its selfdriving cars for a few days following a crash with another car in Tempe The company has been the subject of a number of complaints about its autonomous vehicles but the company has said the cars were being driven by a human driver at the time of the incidents ESSENTIAL TO UBER8217S SUCCESS Uber has said its ability to build autonomous cars is essential to its success in the rapidly changing transportation industry The company envisions a network of autonomous cars that would be summoned through the Uber app that would supplement and eventually replace humandriven cars Uber has logged 2 million selfdriving miles 32 million km through December The company has more than 100 autonomous cars testing on the roads of the greater Phoenix area the company8217s prime testing ground due to the state8217s loose regulations and hospitable weather Rain snow and ice are particularly challenging for autonomous cars The company also tests in Pittsburgh and Toronto Concerns over the safety of autonomous vehicles flared after a July 2016 fatality involving a Tesla Inc automobile with a partially autonomous system that required human supervision Safety regulators later determined Tesla was not at fault Reporting by Sydney Maki and Alexandria Sage Additional reporting by Dave Shepardson in Washington Tina Bellon in New York Heather Somerville in San Francisco David Schwartz and Andres Guerra Luz in Phoenix and Allison Lampert in Montreal Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Lisa Shumaker Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles GREAT MILLS Md Reuters A 17yearold boy opened fire at a Maryland high school on Tuesday in an attack that left two fellow students wounded then died after a gunfight with a police officer posted there amid a renewed national debate over gun violence in schools The shooting in St Mary8217s County about 70 miles 113 kmsouth of Washington came five weeks after a high school massacre in Florida and just days before a planned studentled march in the US capital for tougher gun laws The latest bloodshed erupted shortly before 8 am at Great Mills High School and lasted less than a minute county Sheriff Timothy Cameron said but the precise sequence of events was still being sorted out hours later A 16yearold girl was in intensive care with lifethreatening wounds Cameron told a news conference A 14yearold boy also struck by gunfire was listed in good condition at a hospital The gunman was identified as Austin Wyatt Rollins and Cameron said there was 8220an indication8221 the teenager had a prior relationship with the female student although that was still under investigation The sheriff initially told reporters Rollins shot both victims with a handgun but then said in response to questions that investigators were still uncertain who fired the shot that hit the 14yearold Cameron also said it was not clear whether Rollins died after being shot by sheriff8217s Deputy 1st Class Blaine Gaskill who was assigned as the Great Mills school resource officer or from selfinflicted gunfire The latest in a long string of deadly shootings at US schools and colleges occurred little more than a month after 14 students and three faculty members were fatally shot on Feb 14 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida The accused gunman a 19yearold former student expelled from the school for disciplinary reasons last year was arrested and charged with 17 counts of murder That massacre sparked a student movement against gun violence including a national school walkout last week that included some Great Mills students A march in Washington by gun control activists is set for Saturday 8220We recently had a protest about school violence last week and now this has happened8221 said Kameron Norwood 16 as he and other students waited for relatives to pick them up from a nearby high school Cameron said Rollins pulled out a Glock semiautomatic pistol in a hallway of the school and opened fire Frank Lanham 2nd R a teacher at Great Mills High School leaves Leonardtown High School in Leonardtown Maryland US March 20 2018 Great Mills students and parents reunited at Lenoardtown after the shooting at their school REUTERSSait Serkan Gurbuz The attack ended after Gaskill ran inside and confronted Rollins with each firing a single shot almost simultaneously The officer was not harmed Cameron said Rollins was confirmed dead nearly three hours later at a hospital Rollins8217 Facebook page showed he was a fan of the Dallas Cowboys football team and NASCAR auto racing and he appeared several times on the school8217s honor and merit rolls for good grades that were published in a local newspaper Slideshow 12 Images 8216WE NEED MORE THAN PRAYERS8217 If authorities confirm Gaskill fired the fatal shot it may be the only known instance in which a school resource officer or SRO typically a law enforcement member assigned to a school killed a student gunman during a shooting In 2001 an officer shot and wounded an 18yearold student who wounded two teachers and three other students with a shotgun at Granite Hills High School in El Cajon California according to the National Association of School Resource Officers An armed school resource officer had been on the Stoneman Douglas campus and was criticized for failing to stop that gunman who had an AR15 assaultstyle rifle The officer who later resigned said he had not been sure whether the gunfire was coming from inside or outside the school Related Coverage Maryland lockdown pulls Florida students into Twitter storm Be strong President Donald Trump and the National Rifle Association have proposed arming some teachers while gun safety advocates have demanded a ban on semiautomatic rifles among other restrictions Maryland8217s two Democratic US senators Chris Van Hollen and Ben Cardin called on Congress on Tuesday to pass gun safety legislation where such measures have stalled for years The state8217s Republican governor Larry Hogan said his thoughts and prayers were with the victims but added 8220We need more than prayers8221 After the Parkland shooting Hogan proposed spending 125 million to enhance school security including panic buttons and metal detectors and vowed to provide an additional 50 million to hire school resource officers and counselors Additional reporting by Jonathan Allen Gina Cherelus Elizabeth Dilts and Sheila Dang in New York Writing by Joseph Ax Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Peter Cooney Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORK Reuters A former Playboy model who said she had an affair with President Donald Trump filed suit in California on Tuesday seeking release from a legal agreement requiring her to stay silent becoming the second woman this month to contest arrangements not to disclose alleged extramarital relationships with Trump Playboy Playmate of the Year Karen McDougal poses at the Playboy Mansion in Beverly Hills in 1998 REUTERSFiles Karen McDougal filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court against American Media Inc publisher of the National Enquirer which paid her 150000 in 2016 to keep quiet McDougal8217s lawsuit came on the same day that a New York state judge ruled Trump must face a defamation suit by California restaurateur Summer Zervos who accused him of sexually harassing her after she appeared on his former reality TV show 8220The Apprentice8221 New Yorker magazine last month reported on McDougal8217s alleged affair and a move by American Media to pay her for rights to her story which it never published American Media head David Pecker has described Trump as a 8220personal friend8221 In the lawsuit McDougal claimed she and Trump engaged in a 10month extramarital 8220romantic relationship8221 in 2006 and 2007 a time period that overlaps with his alleged affair with adult film actress Stormy Daniels Trump8217s wife Melania Trump gave birth to the president8217s youngest son Barron in 2006 McDougal said her lawyer at the time Keith Davidson secretly negotiated with Michael Cohen Trump8217s personal lawyer on the AMI deal Cohen has acknowledged arranging to pay Daniels for her silence during the 2016 presidential campaign FILE PHOTO US President Donald Trump speaks with the news media before boarding Marine One helicopter to depart for travel to California via Joint Base Andrews from the South Lawn of the White House in Washington US March 13 2018 REUTERSLeah MillisFile Photo McDougal is asking the court to declare the agreement null and void saying she was tricked into signing it that it was intended to illegally influence the 2016 election and because it violates public policy against using threats of legal action to get someone to stay silent on issues of public concern She also called the agreement an illegal corporate donation from AMI to the Trump campaign that violated federal election law AMI said in a statement the company has a valid contract with McDougal and looks forward to reaching an amicable resolution with her It said she has been free to respond to press inquiries about her relationship with Trump since 2016 and that the suggestion that AMI silenced her is without merit 8220AMI lied to me made empty promises and repeatedly intimidated and manipulated me I just want the opportunity to set the record straight and move on with my life free from this company its executives and its lawyers8221 McDougal who was Playboy magazine8217s 1998 Playmate of the Year said in a statement Davidson declined to comment citing attorneyclient privilege Cohen did not immediately respond to a request for comment Daniels whose real name is Stephanie Clifford sued the president on March 6 stating Trump never signed an agreement for her to keep her quiet about an 8220intimate8221 relationship between them Daniels received 130000 under that agreement Reporting by Nathan Layne and Karen Freifeld in New York Editing by Will Dunham Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>Arianna Gibson&#8217;s preschool teacher lost it at the funeral when she saw the little girl&#8217;s unbearably small casket. The principal at Arianna&#8217;s school, Libby Elementary, couldn&#8217;t stand to see her buried. &#8220;Who puts babies in the ground?&#8221; Kurt Jones asks.</p> <p>Jones and his school team struggled to cope with the death of the 6-year-old, who was killed when someone began shooting into the living room at her grandmother&#8217;s Englewood home in August 2011. But as much as the Libby staff struggled, they were adults with support systems and stability in their lives. They immediately began to worry about Arianna&#8217;s two brothers, 9 and 11, also students at Libby. The boys were sleeping in the room where Arianna was shot.</p> <p>Given the tragedy, the Libby staff worried that the two boys&#8217; home was consumed with stress and drama.&amp;#160; At the peace vigil in response to Arianna&#8217;s murder, one faction of the family walked in front, another in the back. The brothers didn&#8217;t need to be around that tension day and night, Jones says.</p> <p>Arianna was killed the day before school started, so her brothers missed the critical first days of school&#8212;the days that would set the tone for the rest of the year. Jones sent a counselor and Arianna&#8217;s preschool teacher to the grandmother&#8217;s house, where the family was staying, with a stack of bus cards in hand so the children could be brought to school. &#8220;The boys needed to be here,&#8221; Jones says.</p> <p>Once the boys were back, everyone made an effort to be available for them. Sometimes, one of the boys would stop by counselor Ingrid Smith&#8217;s office, just looking for a little nurturing. &#8220;They needed a lot of extra hugs,&#8221; Smith says.</p> <p>A growing body of research points to the lingering effects of trauma on children. When no one helps them to cope with the emotional aftermath, children can become angry, irritable and aggressive in response to the stress of violence, according to the National Child Traumatic Stress Network. Traumatized children often lose the ability to concentrate, become withdrawn or act out.</p> <p>When children are exposed to a lot of trauma, they are highly sensitive, says Michael Wilson, a clinical supervisor at Uhlich Children&#8217;s Advantage Network (UCAN), a social welfare agency in Chicago. They can be hyper-sensitive or numb. &#8220;The trauma debilitates you,&#8221; Wilson says.</p> <p>Exposure to gun violence is only one type of trauma children are confronted with in tough communities. Counselors say children experience a range of upsetting events, from mothers who die to fathers who go off to prison. One counselor tells the story of two children who witnessed a car crash that killed their friend. The students can&#8217;t stop thinking about the cries of the mother, as her dead child was being pulled from the car.</p> <p>&#8220;They think about it when they wake up and when they go to sleep,&#8221; says Jorge Santaella, a counselor for Brighton Park Neighborhood Council who works at Shields Elementary School in Pilsen.</p> <p>In Chicago schools located in poor, crime-ridden neighborhoods, the problem is especially acute. Results from the Chicago Youth Development Study showed 80 percent of inner-city teen boys reported exposure to violence. Of children exposed to violence, more than 40 percent show symptoms of post-traumatic stress, according to the National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.</p> <p>Meanwhile, a survey last year by the nonprofit group Communities in Schools of Chicago found that mental health services ranked as a top need among 105 principals whose schools are part of the non-profit&#8217;s network.</p> <p>*&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160; *&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160; *</p> <p>CEO Jean-Claude Brizard&#8217;s administration believes that, at least to some degree, exposure to violence and other traumatic events causes children to come to school ready to fight and unable to focus on classwork. Peace circles and peer juries may calm the waters on the surface, but increasingly, those who work in schools are coming to the realization that some children need more support.</p> <p>As part of what the district calls a &#8220;holistic approach&#8221; to safety and security, CPS has embarked on a massive training of social workers and school-based counselors in how to conduct group therapy for children who have experienced trauma. The therapy program is called Cognitive Behavioral Intervention for Trauma in Schools, known as CBITS (pronounced &#8220;see-bits&#8221;). The approach was developed by the RAND Corp. for children in Los Angeles who were exposed to violence and was found to be effective with children who lived through Hurricane Katrina.</p> <p>Through CBITS, students learn how to tune into their feelings and realize that their reactions are normal.</p> <p>Eventually, CPS officials want to see trauma therapy used widely, believing it will help curb behavior problems, reduce suspensions and expulsions and ultimately, raise achievement.</p> <p>But money for bringing trauma therapy to schools is in short supply. CPS has no plan to add extra personnel in schools to lead the groups. Instead, principals&#8212;who will have more discretion over their budget this year&#8212;are being told to consider spending some of the money on additional counselors or social workers.</p> <p>If this year is predictive of what is to come, without dedicated staff and a clear directive, the district&#8217;s effort is likely to be scattershot.&amp;#160; Only about 13 percent of the 205 social workers, psychologists and school-based counselors who were trained in CBITS have gotten groups going, according to CPS.</p> <p>&#8220;We try to help them with whatever obstacles they encounter,&#8221; says Jennifer Loudon, the director of Youth Development and Positive Behavior Supports.</p> <p>Still, Barbara Shaw, executive director of the Illinois Violence Prevention Authority, applauds CPS leadership for recognizing the role of trauma in the lives of children. Just doing that makes the district a leader, she says.</p> <p>Counselors working at community-based agencies say they are relieved to see some principals taking the issue of trauma seriously. &#8220;It is like there&#8217;s been an alarm set off,&#8221; says Denise Gray-Bunkley, UCAN&#8217;s director of Clinical and Counseling Services.</p> <p>But in addition to the lack of clinical staff in schools, other barriers remain. Students in poor communities are highly mobile, making it tough to do ongoing counseling.&amp;#160; Some school staff and families are reluctant to embrace group therapy. Counselors say that even when they are gung-ho, families won&#8217;t sign consent forms and teachers don&#8217;t want students pulled from class.</p> <p>Some parents feel that suggesting therapy is equivalent to suggesting something is wrong with their child, Gray-Bunkley says.</p> <p>Libby Elementary illustrates how these barriers play out in real life. The social worker is at the school only two days a week and, like other CPS social workers, fills most of her time working with students who have special needs. The guidance counselor works mainly on test administration and special education case management. Libby has no trauma group.</p> <p>Jones says the school tries to help students by being nurturing and talking with them to resolve anger and conflict. Jones says he can empathize with his students&#8212;when he was growing up, his teenaged brother was killed.&amp;#160;</p> <p>After Arianna Gibson&#8217;s murder, the school was briefly a haven for Arianna&#8217;s brothers. But two months after Arianna&#8217;s death, the family moved and the two boys transferred.</p> <p>Even if Libby had an active CBITS group, the move would have scuttled a chance for the boys to participate.</p> <p>Students are not supposed to take part in the trauma group therapy until at least three months after an event, because experts in CBITS say that children need some time to process a tragedy before participating in group therapy.</p> <p>&#8220;We begged them to stay,&#8221; Jones says, closing his eyes. &#8220;We don&#8217;t know where they are. Their new school won&#8217;t know what they&#8217;ve been through.&#8221;</p> <p>*&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160; *&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160; *</p> <p>Like so many schools in rough Chicago communities, a web of violence seems to surround Morrill Elementary. In early April, violence came to the school&#8217;s door, almost literally: A 7- year-old was wounded by random gunfire on the porch of the house across the street from the old brick school.</p> <p>Principal Michael Beyer says he went to the house the next day and another child was outside playing, just steps away from a dried blood stain.</p> <p>The shooting victim was supposed to return to school two weeks later, but the girl was afraid to go outside, so the counselor arranged to have someone cross the street with the child and bring her into the building.</p> <p>Still, the school found it hard to figure out exactly how else to respond to the incident. The girl had just transferred into the school two weeks before, and few students even knew her.</p> <p>When asked if they wanted to talk about the incident with a counselor, no students took the opportunity. At a community meeting, parents and residents said only that they wanted more security around the school. Beyer says he renewed his request for more cameras, but high schools have first priority. Meanwhile, the anti-violence group CeaseFire convinced Beyer to open up the gym in the evening for teenagers.</p> <p>Beyer, who came to the school last August, has sought out ways to give students an outlet to talk about what is happening in their lives. He brought in the Mansfield Institute for Social Justice and Transformation, an organization that is part of Roosevelt University, to run peace circles so students could talk about and resolve conflict. The Mansfield Institute brought in student counselors from Roosevelt to run small groups for students, and also stationed a VISTA volunteer at the school to coordinate services.</p> <p>Beyer&#8217;s social worker also took advantage of an Illinois Violence Prevention Authority program that pays for a school-based counselor two days a week. (The program is offered in a handful of schools in 18 Chicago neighborhoods.)</p> <p>But getting children the right therapeutic help is not easy.</p> <p>One day in mid-April, in a small room, the eyes of four adults are bearing down on Nathan, a chubby 3rd-grader with pointy ears who inexplicably began thrashing his friend in the bathroom. Usually, peace circles involve more than one student, but Nathan&#8217;s teacher sent him alone. (Note: For privacy reasons, Nathan&#8217;s real name is not being used.)</p> <p>All peace circles open up with an ice-breaker. At Morrill, students choose an object from a basket. Nathan picks a sponge shaped as the letter &#8220;N&#8221;. He is supposed say why he picked the object, but refuses at first, shrugging his shoulders. Eventually, he explains that he picked the sponge because his name starts with that letter.</p> <p>Those in the group then take turns talking about what upsets them. Nancy Michaels, associate director of the Mansfield Institute, says she gets upset when people judge her.</p> <p>Nathan stares at the floor, then the wall, then the ceiling. When he gets a turn, he says, &#8220;I get upset when people talk about my mom. I get upset especially because she&#8217;s dead. That is why I get angry.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;I would get upset too,&#8221; says Michaels, sharing that her mother died also. &#8220;It would be a challenge to figure out the best way to react.&#8221;</p> <p>But peace circles are only designed to give students a better way to deal with conflict, not dig too deep into traumatic events. Greg Fuller, a Roosevelt student, tells Nathan that he should not respond by hitting. &#8220;If you can&#8217;t ignore it, then you have to figure out something else to do,&#8221; Fuller says.</p> <p>Nathan says he knows he should tell the teacher, and try to walk it off when he feels anger rising inside of him. He seems relieved when Michaels says she is going to take him back to class, pull the classmate he hit into the hallway and have Nathan apologize. If the conflict isn&#8217;t resolved, Nathan says he is sure to be beaten up after school by the classmate&#8217;s older brother.</p> <p>Afterward, Michaels says Nathan seemed to be saying what everyone wanted to hear. &#8220;He has heard it before,&#8221; Michaels says.</p> <p>Fuller, who volunteers in the classroom, notes that Nathan is being raised by his father, who doesn&#8217;t seem to be able or willing to deal with the boy&#8217;s emotional issues.</p> <p>*&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160; *&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160; *</p> <p>Annie Kawalski, a Morrill social worker, knows Nathan well. She says she has explained to his father the adverse effects of Nathan&#8217;s behavior on his learning, and suggested that he consult a mental health professional. But the father has not followed through.</p> <p>Kawalski and Morill&#8217;s school-based counselor were trained in CBITS, which would likely help Nathan. But Kawalski hasn&#8217;t been able to get a trauma group up and running. Like other CPS social workers, she must spend the bulk of her time working with special education students, and Kawalski says she doesn&#8217;t always know which of the other students are dealing with tough emotional issues.&amp;#160;</p> <p>The students Kawalski suspects might benefit from therapy are different age ranges. &#8220;You can&#8217;t put a 3rd -grader in the same group with an 8th -grader,&#8221; she says.</p> <p>Though some special education students could be part of group therapy, many counselors and social workers have found that it is difficult to conduct sessions that meet the needs of both special education and general education students.</p> <p>At the same time, Kawalski says working with students who aren&#8217;t in special education is not at the top of her priority list. She rolls her eyes at the thought of CPS officials now pushing that approach.&amp;#160;</p> <p>Michael Kelly, an assistant professor of social work at Loyola University, says the way CPS manages social workers&#8212;unlike districts elsewhere, in Illinois and other states&#8212;makes it difficult to launch mental health programs. CPS hires and assigns social workers centrally, and has them report to an administrator in citywide specialized services rather than to the school&#8217;s principal.</p> <p>&#8220;Anecdotally, we have seen this to be problematic and to affect the school community in multiple ways,&#8221; Kelly says. &#8220;They are sent willy-nilly to schools&#8230;. It affects their ability to do anything else.&#8221;</p> <p>*&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160; *&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160; *</p> <p>With limited budgets, many principals look to outside agencies for mental health partnerships. Some of those partnerships have been done through formal agreements, but often a principal or a social worker will bring in an organization to do some work without any contract or formal understanding, Kelly says.</p> <p>In 2010, Kelly authored a study on partnerships between Illinois schools and outside mental health agencies. &#8220;People are out there just trying to get things done,&#8221; he says.</p> <p>CPS now wants to bring some order to these relationships. For one, the administration wants the community-based organizations that send social workers to schools to use CBITS, Anger Coping or Think First. Anger Coping and Think First are group therapy programs for students who are having trouble controlling their anger and can be used for elementary and high school students. Loudon says the programs have been shown to be effective.</p> <p>CPS recently issued a request for proposals to identify vendors who are trained in these programs and create a preferred vendor list for principals.</p> <p>This year, the state&#8217;s Neighborhood Recovery Initiative is using its school-based counselors to implement CBITS in schools. Announced by Governor Pat Quinn in January of 2010, the $50 million initiative targets the most violence-plagued communities and provides money for job training, programs for parents and young people, and school-based counseling.</p> <p>Organizations in the 18 targeted Chicago communities got lists of schools in their area and were left to reach out to them and find out which principals wanted to work with them.</p> <p>Some organizations with long-established ties to schools knew exactly where to go. Brighton Park Neighborhood Council Executive Director Patrick Brosnan says that parents asked for mental health services. Previously, BPNC pieced together grant funding for counselors for four schools. The Neighborhood Recovery Initiative will let BPNC offer a bit more support.</p> <p>&#8220;Brighton Park is a violent community,&#8221; Brosnan says. &#8220;Children hear gunshots every night. They are living with that.&#8221;</p> <p>At BPNC&#8217;s four schools, the teachers know that they can send a student who is acting up to the counselor, rather than to a disciplinarian. &#8220;Our counselor can look and see if there is something else going on,&#8221; he says. &#8220;Usually there is.&#8221;</p> <p>But in neighborhoods where community groups and schools didn&#8217;t have the same ties, charter schools in many cases were the first to open their doors.</p> <p>The principal and staff at three Perspectives schools on the Calumet campus and Chicago International Charter School&#8217;s Ellison campus welcomed the school-based counselors from UCAN and got groups going at the beginning of the school year. Meanwhile, two district-run elementary schools, Morgan and Ogelsby, couldn&#8217;t get groups started until January because of bureaucratic issues.</p> <p>Other organizations report the same problem. Some principals at district-run schools said they already had programs. Other principals didn&#8217;t want to spend time or energy on the concept. CBITS requires two trained adults to co-facilitate groups, so if the community organization could only provide one, sometimes schools couldn&#8217;t or wouldn&#8217;t commit the second.</p> <p>In a few cases, principals were hostile to the idea and viewed group therapy as just one more drain on already-limited time that could be spent teaching reading or math.</p> <p>Yet the clinicians who have gotten CBITS groups up and running say they see students change as they go through it.</p> <p>Tracey Evans is a school-based counselor who was placed in Bronzeville Charter School by Passages. She says two boys in her CBITS group were at a playground where a friend was shot dead.</p> <p>&#8220;If the bullet would have flown in another direction, they could have been hit,&#8221; she says. The boys are in 8th grade and often aren&#8217;t open to talking. They told Evans that until they went to CBITS, they had never talked about the incident or how vulnerable it made them feel.&amp;#160;</p> <p>Now, the two of them come to her to talk when they are feeling overwhelmed or sad.</p> <p>Jorge Santaella started his first CBITS group at Shields in May. At the first session, most of the students shared their experiences and what was bothering them. But Santaella says one little girl couldn&#8217;t bring herself to reveal what had happened to her. After the others spoke, she simply admitted that things are not good at home.</p> <p>Still, the step was encouraging, Santaella says. &#8220;It was a start.&#8221;</p> <p>Tell us what you think. Leave a comment below, or email <a href="mailto:karp@catalyst-chicago.org" type="external">karp@catalyst-chicago.org</a>.</p>

Tragedy’s aftermath

http://chicagoreporter.com/tragedys-aftermath/

2012-06-18

3left-center

Arianna Gibson8217s preschool teacher lost it at the funeral when she saw the little girl8217s unbearably small casket The principal at Arianna8217s school Libby Elementary couldn8217t stand to see her buried 8220Who puts babies in the ground8221 Kurt Jones asks Jones and his school team struggled to cope with the death of the 6yearold who was killed when someone began shooting into the living room at her grandmother8217s Englewood home in August 2011 But as much as the Libby staff struggled they were adults with support systems and stability in their lives They immediately began to worry about Arianna8217s two brothers 9 and 11 also students at Libby The boys were sleeping in the room where Arianna was shot Given the tragedy the Libby staff worried that the two boys8217 home was consumed with stress and dramaamp160 At the peace vigil in response to Arianna8217s murder one faction of the family walked in front another in the back The brothers didn8217t need to be around that tension day and night Jones says Arianna was killed the day before school started so her brothers missed the critical first days of school8212the days that would set the tone for the rest of the year Jones sent a counselor and Arianna8217s preschool teacher to the grandmother8217s house where the family was staying with a stack of bus cards in hand so the children could be brought to school 8220The boys needed to be here8221 Jones says Once the boys were back everyone made an effort to be available for them Sometimes one of the boys would stop by counselor Ingrid Smith8217s office just looking for a little nurturing 8220They needed a lot of extra hugs8221 Smith says A growing body of research points to the lingering effects of trauma on children When no one helps them to cope with the emotional aftermath children can become angry irritable and aggressive in response to the stress of violence according to the National Child Traumatic Stress Network Traumatized children often lose the ability to concentrate become withdrawn or act out When children are exposed to a lot of trauma they are highly sensitive says Michael Wilson a clinical supervisor at Uhlich Children8217s Advantage Network UCAN a social welfare agency in Chicago They can be hypersensitive or numb 8220The trauma debilitates you8221 Wilson says Exposure to gun violence is only one type of trauma children are confronted with in tough communities Counselors say children experience a range of upsetting events from mothers who die to fathers who go off to prison One counselor tells the story of two children who witnessed a car crash that killed their friend The students can8217t stop thinking about the cries of the mother as her dead child was being pulled from the car 8220They think about it when they wake up and when they go to sleep8221 says Jorge Santaella a counselor for Brighton Park Neighborhood Council who works at Shields Elementary School in Pilsen In Chicago schools located in poor crimeridden neighborhoods the problem is especially acute Results from the Chicago Youth Development Study showed 80 percent of innercity teen boys reported exposure to violence Of children exposed to violence more than 40 percent show symptoms of posttraumatic stress according to the National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Meanwhile a survey last year by the nonprofit group Communities in Schools of Chicago found that mental health services ranked as a top need among 105 principals whose schools are part of the nonprofit8217s network amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160 amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160 CEO JeanClaude Brizard8217s administration believes that at least to some degree exposure to violence and other traumatic events causes children to come to school ready to fight and unable to focus on classwork Peace circles and peer juries may calm the waters on the surface but increasingly those who work in schools are coming to the realization that some children need more support As part of what the district calls a 8220holistic approach8221 to safety and security CPS has embarked on a massive training of social workers and schoolbased counselors in how to conduct group therapy for children who have experienced trauma The therapy program is called Cognitive Behavioral Intervention for Trauma in Schools known as CBITS pronounced 8220seebits8221 The approach was developed by the RAND Corp for children in Los Angeles who were exposed to violence and was found to be effective with children who lived through Hurricane Katrina Through CBITS students learn how to tune into their feelings and realize that their reactions are normal Eventually CPS officials want to see trauma therapy used widely believing it will help curb behavior problems reduce suspensions and expulsions and ultimately raise achievement But money for bringing trauma therapy to schools is in short supply CPS has no plan to add extra personnel in schools to lead the groups Instead principals8212who will have more discretion over their budget this year8212are being told to consider spending some of the money on additional counselors or social workers If this year is predictive of what is to come without dedicated staff and a clear directive the district8217s effort is likely to be scattershotamp160 Only about 13 percent of the 205 social workers psychologists and schoolbased counselors who were trained in CBITS have gotten groups going according to CPS 8220We try to help them with whatever obstacles they encounter8221 says Jennifer Loudon the director of Youth Development and Positive Behavior Supports Still Barbara Shaw executive director of the Illinois Violence Prevention Authority applauds CPS leadership for recognizing the role of trauma in the lives of children Just doing that makes the district a leader she says Counselors working at communitybased agencies say they are relieved to see some principals taking the issue of trauma seriously 8220It is like there8217s been an alarm set off8221 says Denise GrayBunkley UCAN8217s director of Clinical and Counseling Services But in addition to the lack of clinical staff in schools other barriers remain Students in poor communities are highly mobile making it tough to do ongoing counselingamp160 Some school staff and families are reluctant to embrace group therapy Counselors say that even when they are gungho families won8217t sign consent forms and teachers don8217t want students pulled from class Some parents feel that suggesting therapy is equivalent to suggesting something is wrong with their child GrayBunkley says Libby Elementary illustrates how these barriers play out in real life The social worker is at the school only two days a week and like other CPS social workers fills most of her time working with students who have special needs The guidance counselor works mainly on test administration and special education case management Libby has no trauma group Jones says the school tries to help students by being nurturing and talking with them to resolve anger and conflict Jones says he can empathize with his students8212when he was growing up his teenaged brother was killedamp160 After Arianna Gibson8217s murder the school was briefly a haven for Arianna8217s brothers But two months after Arianna8217s death the family moved and the two boys transferred Even if Libby had an active CBITS group the move would have scuttled a chance for the boys to participate Students are not supposed to take part in the trauma group therapy until at least three months after an event because experts in CBITS say that children need some time to process a tragedy before participating in group therapy 8220We begged them to stay8221 Jones says closing his eyes 8220We don8217t know where they are Their new school won8217t know what they8217ve been through8221 amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160 amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160 Like so many schools in rough Chicago communities a web of violence seems to surround Morrill Elementary In early April violence came to the school8217s door almost literally A 7 yearold was wounded by random gunfire on the porch of the house across the street from the old brick school Principal Michael Beyer says he went to the house the next day and another child was outside playing just steps away from a dried blood stain The shooting victim was supposed to return to school two weeks later but the girl was afraid to go outside so the counselor arranged to have someone cross the street with the child and bring her into the building Still the school found it hard to figure out exactly how else to respond to the incident The girl had just transferred into the school two weeks before and few students even knew her When asked if they wanted to talk about the incident with a counselor no students took the opportunity At a community meeting parents and residents said only that they wanted more security around the school Beyer says he renewed his request for more cameras but high schools have first priority Meanwhile the antiviolence group CeaseFire convinced Beyer to open up the gym in the evening for teenagers Beyer who came to the school last August has sought out ways to give students an outlet to talk about what is happening in their lives He brought in the Mansfield Institute for Social Justice and Transformation an organization that is part of Roosevelt University to run peace circles so students could talk about and resolve conflict The Mansfield Institute brought in student counselors from Roosevelt to run small groups for students and also stationed a VISTA volunteer at the school to coordinate services Beyer8217s social worker also took advantage of an Illinois Violence Prevention Authority program that pays for a schoolbased counselor two days a week The program is offered in a handful of schools in 18 Chicago neighborhoods But getting children the right therapeutic help is not easy One day in midApril in a small room the eyes of four adults are bearing down on Nathan a chubby 3rdgrader with pointy ears who inexplicably began thrashing his friend in the bathroom Usually peace circles involve more than one student but Nathan8217s teacher sent him alone Note For privacy reasons Nathan8217s real name is not being used All peace circles open up with an icebreaker At Morrill students choose an object from a basket Nathan picks a sponge shaped as the letter 8220N8221 He is supposed say why he picked the object but refuses at first shrugging his shoulders Eventually he explains that he picked the sponge because his name starts with that letter Those in the group then take turns talking about what upsets them Nancy Michaels associate director of the Mansfield Institute says she gets upset when people judge her Nathan stares at the floor then the wall then the ceiling When he gets a turn he says 8220I get upset when people talk about my mom I get upset especially because she8217s dead That is why I get angry8221 8220I would get upset too8221 says Michaels sharing that her mother died also 8220It would be a challenge to figure out the best way to react8221 But peace circles are only designed to give students a better way to deal with conflict not dig too deep into traumatic events Greg Fuller a Roosevelt student tells Nathan that he should not respond by hitting 8220If you can8217t ignore it then you have to figure out something else to do8221 Fuller says Nathan says he knows he should tell the teacher and try to walk it off when he feels anger rising inside of him He seems relieved when Michaels says she is going to take him back to class pull the classmate he hit into the hallway and have Nathan apologize If the conflict isn8217t resolved Nathan says he is sure to be beaten up after school by the classmate8217s older brother Afterward Michaels says Nathan seemed to be saying what everyone wanted to hear 8220He has heard it before8221 Michaels says Fuller who volunteers in the classroom notes that Nathan is being raised by his father who doesn8217t seem to be able or willing to deal with the boy8217s emotional issues amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160 amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160 Annie Kawalski a Morrill social worker knows Nathan well She says she has explained to his father the adverse effects of Nathan8217s behavior on his learning and suggested that he consult a mental health professional But the father has not followed through Kawalski and Morill8217s schoolbased counselor were trained in CBITS which would likely help Nathan But Kawalski hasn8217t been able to get a trauma group up and running Like other CPS social workers she must spend the bulk of her time working with special education students and Kawalski says she doesn8217t always know which of the other students are dealing with tough emotional issuesamp160 The students Kawalski suspects might benefit from therapy are different age ranges 8220You can8217t put a 3rd grader in the same group with an 8th grader8221 she says Though some special education students could be part of group therapy many counselors and social workers have found that it is difficult to conduct sessions that meet the needs of both special education and general education students At the same time Kawalski says working with students who aren8217t in special education is not at the top of her priority list She rolls her eyes at the thought of CPS officials now pushing that approachamp160 Michael Kelly an assistant professor of social work at Loyola University says the way CPS manages social workers8212unlike districts elsewhere in Illinois and other states8212makes it difficult to launch mental health programs CPS hires and assigns social workers centrally and has them report to an administrator in citywide specialized services rather than to the school8217s principal 8220Anecdotally we have seen this to be problematic and to affect the school community in multiple ways8221 Kelly says 8220They are sent willynilly to schools8230 It affects their ability to do anything else8221 amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160 amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160amp160 With limited budgets many principals look to outside agencies for mental health partnerships Some of those partnerships have been done through formal agreements but often a principal or a social worker will bring in an organization to do some work without any contract or formal understanding Kelly says In 2010 Kelly authored a study on partnerships between Illinois schools and outside mental health agencies 8220People are out there just trying to get things done8221 he says CPS now wants to bring some order to these relationships For one the administration wants the communitybased organizations that send social workers to schools to use CBITS Anger Coping or Think First Anger Coping and Think First are group therapy programs for students who are having trouble controlling their anger and can be used for elementary and high school students Loudon says the programs have been shown to be effective CPS recently issued a request for proposals to identify vendors who are trained in these programs and create a preferred vendor list for principals This year the state8217s Neighborhood Recovery Initiative is using its schoolbased counselors to implement CBITS in schools Announced by Governor Pat Quinn in January of 2010 the 50 million initiative targets the most violenceplagued communities and provides money for job training programs for parents and young people and schoolbased counseling Organizations in the 18 targeted Chicago communities got lists of schools in their area and were left to reach out to them and find out which principals wanted to work with them Some organizations with longestablished ties to schools knew exactly where to go Brighton Park Neighborhood Council Executive Director Patrick Brosnan says that parents asked for mental health services Previously BPNC pieced together grant funding for counselors for four schools The Neighborhood Recovery Initiative will let BPNC offer a bit more support 8220Brighton Park is a violent community8221 Brosnan says 8220Children hear gunshots every night They are living with that8221 At BPNC8217s four schools the teachers know that they can send a student who is acting up to the counselor rather than to a disciplinarian 8220Our counselor can look and see if there is something else going on8221 he says 8220Usually there is8221 But in neighborhoods where community groups and schools didn8217t have the same ties charter schools in many cases were the first to open their doors The principal and staff at three Perspectives schools on the Calumet campus and Chicago International Charter School8217s Ellison campus welcomed the schoolbased counselors from UCAN and got groups going at the beginning of the school year Meanwhile two districtrun elementary schools Morgan and Ogelsby couldn8217t get groups started until January because of bureaucratic issues Other organizations report the same problem Some principals at districtrun schools said they already had programs Other principals didn8217t want to spend time or energy on the concept CBITS requires two trained adults to cofacilitate groups so if the community organization could only provide one sometimes schools couldn8217t or wouldn8217t commit the second In a few cases principals were hostile to the idea and viewed group therapy as just one more drain on alreadylimited time that could be spent teaching reading or math Yet the clinicians who have gotten CBITS groups up and running say they see students change as they go through it Tracey Evans is a schoolbased counselor who was placed in Bronzeville Charter School by Passages She says two boys in her CBITS group were at a playground where a friend was shot dead 8220If the bullet would have flown in another direction they could have been hit8221 she says The boys are in 8th grade and often aren8217t open to talking They told Evans that until they went to CBITS they had never talked about the incident or how vulnerable it made them feelamp160 Now the two of them come to her to talk when they are feeling overwhelmed or sad Jorge Santaella started his first CBITS group at Shields in May At the first session most of the students shared their experiences and what was bothering them But Santaella says one little girl couldn8217t bring herself to reveal what had happened to her After the others spoke she simply admitted that things are not good at home Still the step was encouraging Santaella says 8220It was a start8221 Tell us what you think Leave a comment below or email karpcatalystchicagoorg

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At/ADP BPNC8217s/PROPN four/NUM schools/NOUN the/DET teachers/NOUN know/VERB that/SCONJ they/PRON can/AUX send/VERB a/DET student/NOUN who/PRON is/AUX acting/VERB up/ADP to/ADP the/DET counselor/NOUN rather/ADV than/ADP to/ADP a/DET disciplinarian/ADJ 8220Our/NUM counselor/NOUN can/AUX look/VERB and/CCONJ see/VERB if/SCONJ there/PRON is/VERB something/PRON else/ADV going/VERB on8221/ADV he/PRON says/VERB 8220Usually/ADV there/ADV is8221/VERB But/CCONJ in/ADP neighborhoods/NOUN where/SCONJ community/NOUN groups/NOUN and/CCONJ schools/NOUN didn8217/PROPN t/PROPN have/VERB the/DET same/ADJ ties/NOUN charter/NOUN schools/NOUN in/ADP many/ADJ cases/NOUN were/AUX the/DET first/ADJ to/PART open/VERB their/PRON doors/NOUN The/DET principal/NOUN and/CCONJ staff/NOUN at/ADP three/NUM Perspectives/PROPN schools/NOUN on/ADP the/DET Calumet/PROPN campus/NOUN and/CCONJ Chicago/PROPN International/PROPN Charter/PROPN School8217s/PROPN Ellison/PROPN campus/NOUN welcomed/VERB the/DET schoolbased/VERB 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the/DET second/NOUN In/ADP a/DET few/ADJ cases/NOUN principals/NOUN were/AUX hostile/ADJ to/ADP the/DET idea/NOUN and/CCONJ viewed/VERB group/NOUN therapy/NOUN as/ADP just/ADV one/NUM more/ADJ drain/NOUN on/ADP alreadylimited/ADJ time/NOUN that/PRON could/AUX be/AUX spent/VERB teaching/VERB reading/NOUN or/CCONJ math/NOUN Yet/CCONJ the/DET clinicians/NOUN who/PRON have/AUX gotten/VERB CBITS/ADJ groups/NOUN up/ADP and/CCONJ running/VERB say/VERB they/PRON see/VERB students/NOUN change/VERB as/SCONJ they/PRON go/VERB through/ADP it/PRON Tracey/PROPN Evans/PROPN is/AUX a/DET schoolbased/VERB counselor/NOUN who/PRON was/AUX placed/VERB in/ADP Bronzeville/PROPN Charter/PROPN School/PROPN by/ADP Passages/PROPN She/PRON says/VERB two/NUM boys/NOUN in/ADP her/PRON CBITS/ADJ group/NOUN were/AUX at/ADP a/DET playground/NOUN where/SCONJ a/DET friend/NOUN was/AUX shot/VERB dead/ADJ 8220If/NUM the/DET bullet/NOUN would/AUX have/AUX flown/VERB in/ADP another/DET direction/NOUN they/PRON could/AUX have/AUX been/AUX hit8221/VERB she/PRON says/VERB The/DET boys/NOUN are/AUX in/ADP 8th/ADJ grade/NOUN and/CCONJ often/ADV aren8217/NOUN t/NOUN open/ADJ to/ADP talking/VERB They/PRON told/VERB Evans/PROPN that/SCONJ until/SCONJ they/PRON went/VERB to/ADP CBITS/PROPN they/PRON had/AUX never/ADV talked/VERB about/ADP the/DET incident/NOUN or/CCONJ how/SCONJ vulnerable/ADJ it/PRON made/VERB them/PRON feelamp160/PUNCT Now/ADV the/DET two/NUM of/ADP them/PRON come/VERB to/ADP her/PRON to/PART talk/VERB when/SCONJ they/PRON are/AUX feeling/VERB overwhelmed/ADJ or/CCONJ sad/ADJ Jorge/PROPN Santaella/PROPN started/VERB his/PRON first/ADJ CBITS/PROPN group/NOUN at/ADP Shields/PROPN in/ADP May/PROPN At/ADP the/DET first/ADJ session/NOUN most/ADJ of/ADP the/DET students/NOUN shared/VERB their/PRON experiences/NOUN and/CCONJ what/PRON was/AUX bothering/VERB them/PRON But/CCONJ Santaella/PROPN says/VERB one/NUM little/ADJ girl/NOUN couldn8217/NOUN t/NOUN bring/VERB herself/PRON to/PART reveal/VERB 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<p>Oakland.</p> <p>In 1968, Amory Bradford penned a volume entitled Oakland&#8217;s Not For Burning, documenting the tinderbox that the city had become, and the lamenting the inevitability with which it would explode. But the assertion contained in the book&#8217;s title was hardly credible, <a href="" type="internal">coming as it</a> was from a Yale-educated former Wall Street lawyer and New York Times general manager whose only business in Oakland came via the U.S. Commerce Department. Some forty years later, in the early hours of this year of ostensible hope, the reality of the persistence of racism in Oakland became devastatingly clear, sparking a powerful response the likes of which this city hasn&#8217;t seen in years. But luckily, the condescending voices of moderation, like that of Bradford a generation prior, seem have little traction with those who have seen enough police murder.</p> <p>A New Year&#8217;s Execution</p> <p>After responding to reports of &#8220;a fight&#8221; on a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) train, BART police detained the train at the Fruitvale station, forcibly removing several young men from the train as dozens of bystanders watched. Several of the men, all young and mostly black, were lined up, seated, along the platform. Some were cuffed, Oscar Grant was not. As he was attempting to defuse the situation, BART police decided to detain him, placing him face-down on the platform, with one officer kneeling near his neck, and another straddling his legs. For some still unexplained reason, one officer, now identified as Johannes Mehserle stood up, pulled his gun, and fired a shot directly into Oscar Grant&#8217;s back.</p> <p>The bullet went through Grant&#8217;s back, ricocheting off the platform and puncturing his lung. There are gasps from the bystanders and shock on the face of the other officers, who clearly didn&#8217;t expect the shot to be fired. Grant, who was begging not to be Tasered at the time of the shot, clearly didn&#8217;t expect it either. But this surprise notwithstanding, the decision was then made to cuff the young man as he lay dying. As an added precaution, BART police then sought immediately to confiscate all videophones held by the train passengers, in an effort to cover up the murder. Luckily for everyone but the BART P.D. and Mehserle, several videos managed to make it into the public domain, where they went viral and were viewed on Youtube hundreds of thousands of times in the following days. In a rare show of journalistic integrity, local Fox affiliate KTVU <a href="" type="internal">aired one of the videos in its entirety</a>.</p> <p>The standard protocol&#8212;deny, distort, cover-up&#8212;had clearly been disrupted, and BART spokesman Linton Johnson even went so far as to criticize the leaking of the video, <a href="" type="internal">arguing that</a> rather than clarifying events, public access to the video would &#8220;taint&#8221; the investigation. BART was on a back foot, and popular anger was on the offensive.</p> <p>A Corporate Police Force</p> <p>BART Police are a notoriously problematic organization, existing in a gray area between public and private, funded by taxpayers but operating under a corporate structure which lacks all accountability and oversight. <a href="http://www.sfbg.com/entry.php?entry_id=7813&amp;amp;catid=4&amp;amp;volume_id=398&amp;amp;issue_id=413&amp;amp;volume_num=43&amp;amp;issue_num=15" type="external">According to the San Francisco Bay Guardian</a>:</p> <p>The structure of the BART police force is a recipe for disaster. BART&#8217;s general manager (who is not an elected official and has no expertise in law enforcement) hires the BART police chief&#8230; There is no police commission, no police review board, not even a committee of the elected BART board designated to handle complaints against and issues with the BART police&#8230; There is, in other words, no civilian oversight.</p> <p>And this &#8220;disaster&#8221; has been more than merely hypothetical: in 1992, a BART cop shot unarmed Jerrold Hall in the back of the head with a shotgun as he walked away, after firing a warning shot. In 2001, BART police shot a mentally ill man who was unarmed and naked. And <a href="http://www.sfbg.com/entry.php?entry_id=7814&amp;amp;catid=4&amp;amp;volume_id=398&amp;amp;issue_id=413&amp;amp;volume_num=43&amp;amp;issue_num=15" type="external">according to Tim Redmond, writing in the same paper</a>, &#8220;BART made a monumental effort to cover [the Hall slaying] up,&#8221; and in the end, &#8220;Nothing happened&#8230; BART called the shooting justified.&#8221; As of yesterday, BART hadn&#8217;t yet interviewed the officer, Johannes Mehserle, who insisted on invoking Fifth Amendment rights not to speak. And just when they claim to have compelled him to do so, he abruptly resigned, thereby ending any internal affairs investigation that may have taken place. There still remains, according to BART, a criminal investigation, but if the past is any indicator, this won&#8217;t get far.</p> <p>But let&#8217;s not fool ourselves. Even publicly-run organizations like the Oakland Police Department, which has all the ties in the world to elected power, operates with an informal shoot-to-kill policy for black teenagers. This was as clear in the <a href="" type="internal">2007 murder of Gary King</a> as it is with Oscar Grant today. And since the district attorney responsible for bringing charges against the police works closely with these same police on a daily basis and in a shared enterprise of delivering convictions, we should not be surprised that not a single police murder in recent years has even seen disciplinary action. &#8220;No one <a href="" type="internal">we talked with</a>,&#8221; writes the Chronicle, &#8220;from the district attorney&#8217;s office to lawyers who work either side of police shootings &#8211; could remember a case in the last 20 years in which an on-duty officer had been charged in a fatal shooting in Alameda County.&#8221;</p> <p>Does It Matter What Really Happened?</p> <p>We have all seen the video, and rumors are swirling about how to interpret its contents. The officer clearly fires a fatal shot into Oscar Grant&#8217;s back while the latter is face-down on the floor. A flurry of &#8220;experts&#8221; have intervened to give their analysis. While such expert testimony usually functions to justify the police, even among these experts some are shocked and disgusted by what they see. One expert, after concluding that the gun had accidentally gone off, watched video from another angle, after which he <a href="" type="internal">changed his conclusion</a>: &#8220;Looking at it, I hate to say this, it looks like an execution to me.&#8221;</p> <p>Others are insisting that Mehserle meant to pull out his (less fatal) Taser, but this theory has since been discredited. Firstly, a Sig-Sauer handgun weighs three times what a Taser weighs, and the shape is completely distinct, and another expert noticed in the tape that the officer had previously withdrawn his Taser, located for safety reasons on the other side of his belt. In other words, he knew he was going for the gun. Hence the claim of accidental discharge, but this too raises a serious question of plausibility: when Mehserle drew his gun, Grant couldn&#8217;t see it, and so there could be no claim that it was meant to threaten the victim into passivity. In the end, if Mehserle is ever forced to give a statement, he will likely turn to the tried-and-true excuse that he &#8220;suspected&#8221; Grant had a gun in his pants.</p> <p>But none of this matters, all the debate of the officer&#8217;s &#8220;intention&#8221; only serves to reinforce the fact that, while white cops are allowed to have intention, this is a quantity denied to their victims. This fact of racist double-standards is not lost on those who, realizing that there will be no &#8220;justice&#8221; in this case, have taken to the streets to demonstrate their rage at the unprovoked execution.</p> <p>&#8220;I&#8217;m Feeling Pretty Violent Right About Now&#8221;</p> <p>While friends and family were gathered for Grant&#8217;s funeral, a number of organizations called a demonstration where he was killed, at Fruitvale BART station. Circulating by internet and Facebook, the call reached many thousands, and in the end some 500-600 protestors and mourners came together to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7J4ccdP3Bs8" type="external">make speeches and lament this murder</a>. At a makeshift memorial behind the BART station, candles are burning, and <a href="" type="internal">hand-written messages appear</a>: &#8220;Oscar, we watched you grow up from a lil&#8217; boy down the street into a man,&#8221; and &#8220;O., RIP, peaceful journey, God only pick da best.&#8221;</p> <p>As an indication of the contrasting sentiments that divided the crowd, where someone had scribbled &#8220;Fuck the police,&#8221; another had covered the expletive with another message: &#8220;Forgive.&#8221; But forgiveness wasn&#8217;t on the minds of many. Several of the more radical protestors climbed onto the BART turnstiles, displaying a red, black, and green flag. One shouted:</p> <p>I&#8217;ve got the mentality of my parents who were Black Panthers, I&#8217;m tired of talking, I&#8217;m thinking like L.A. in 1992. Y&#8217;all can have your megaphone speeches, I been through that, I&#8217;m black, I don&#8217;t need more speeches.&amp;#160; Let&#8217;s take a stand today, because tomorrow ain&#8217;t promised!</p> <p>While some on the mic attempted to soothe the crowd, insisting that burning up the city was &#8220;too easy&#8221; and &#8220;useless,&#8221; the message didn&#8217;t seem to resonate much with the crowd. And why should it? We were standing in the middle of &#8220;Fruitvale Village,&#8221; a corporate paradise in the middle of a historically Latino district, which clearly doesn&#8217;t belong to the local residents. It was clear where the momentum was going, as the biggest cheers went up for the more radical voices who seized the mic: &#8220;I&#8217;m feelin pretty violent right now,&#8221; one insisted, &#8220;I&#8217;m on some Malcolm X shit: by any means necessary. If I don&#8217;t see some action, I&#8217;ma cause a ruckus myself.&#8221;</p> <p>Oakland Burning</p> <p>While some remained to hear additional speakers, including hyphy hip-hopper Mistah FAB and the recently-founded Coalition Against Police Executions (CAPE), several hundred <a href="" type="internal">set out on a militant and rapidly-moving march</a> north on International Boulevard. The police response was initially hands-off, despite the tenor of the chants: &#8220;No Justice, No Peace: Fuck the Police,&#8221; and &#8220;La Migra, La Policia: La Misma Porqueria.&#8221; If those in the passing cars and stuck in traffic were of any indication, the local population knew exactly what was going on, why we were protesting, and were largely sympathetic.</p> <p>As the march wound around Lake Merritt, it turned sharply to the left, a shortcut to BART headquarters. This seems to have thrown off the police, who were clearly unprepared for what came next. A single police car, parked sideways at 8th and Madison to prevent access to the BART headquarters, became the target of the crowd&#8217;s increasing fury. Sensing the tone of the crowd, a cop reached in and grabbed her helmet before scurrying away. Within moments, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DzqfE-LDzM" type="external">the police car was destroyed and nearly flipped over</a>, and a nearby dumpster was burning.</p> <p>A few seconds later, the air was thick with teargas. Evidently, seeing their own property destroyed was too much for the police to stomach. (Note: there is no truth to <a href="" type="internal">the CNN report</a> that tear gas was deployed to protect a surrounded officer). I get a noseful of teargas, and a protestor near me is shot in the stomach with a rubber bullet, and needs to be helped off, as the crowd quickly sprints north toward downtown. Passing through Chinatown, dumpsters full of fresh produce are emptied into the street to slow the march of a line of riot police. When the crowd reaches Broadway, there is momentary confusion, with some continuing straight to Old Oakland, some pushing left toward Jack London Square, and others urging a move rightward toward the city center.</p> <p>The police took advantage of this momentary indecision, with a full line charge that send many of the furious demonstrators sprinting and left many arrested. When the crowd regrouped, it was promptly encircled at 14th and Broadway, and a standoff ensued. Either by design or by a predictable quirk of the police organization, nearly every riot cop in the street was white, some sneering defiantly. And if the crowd of demonstrators was largely multiethnic, it was clear by this point that the functional vanguard was composed largely of the young, black teenagers most acutely aware of their relationship to the police. There were chants of &#8220;We are all Oscar Grant!&#8221; and several protestors lay in the middle of the street with their hands behind their backs, mimicking the position in which Grant was executed.</p> <p>Some small fires were set, and the police moved in again, pushing the crowd down 14th toward Lake Merritt. The spearhead of the demonstrators <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5361rUgc-Fg&amp;amp;feature=related" type="external">rushed forward</a> to shouts of &#8220;We the police today!&#8221; smashing and torching vehicles, and while this was done out of anger it was far from irrational, as the press will certainly present it. Rather, it was the result of a very clear line of reasoning that goes something like this: we have to do something, and in the face of police impunity, this is all we can do. Nothing would be more irrational than a blind faith that the police will do the right thing, given all the historical evidence to the contrary. While the press is doing its best to find bystanders to decry the &#8220;vandalism&#8221; involved, it couldn&#8217;t ignore the testimony Oakland Post reporter Ken Epstein, who was writing an article on the killing when he looked out his office window to see his Honda CRV in flames: &#8220;I&#8217;m sorry my car was burned,&#8221; <a href="" type="internal">Epstein admitted</a>, &#8220;but the issue is very upsetting.&#8221;</p> <p>The crisp wintry air swirled and the lights twinkled along the surface of Lake Merritt as demonstrators demolished a local McDonalds, at which point a line had clearly been crossed: a police armored personnel carrier came tearing down the street at 45 miles per hour, firing rubber bullets and sending the crowd scattering. The scene was surreal, with padded riot cops leaping off the vehicle in an effort to win an impossible footrace with younger and fitter demonstrators.</p> <p>Dellums Steps In, Steps Out</p> <p>From the early moments of the demonstration, the position of the mayor, Ron Dellums, was at issue. Here was a mayor with a great deal of popular respect, with longstanding civil rights credentials, but who had done little to slow the pace of police killing, among the other ongoing ills plaguing postindustrial Oakland. With tear gas swirling and the APCs circling, the mayor decided to make his appearance at around 9pm, walking the few blocks from City Hall down to 14th and Jackson to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WFxAVlKQ44&amp;amp;feature=channel" type="external">address the angry crowd himself</a>. Several times he attempted to scurry away under hard questions that he could not answer, with the standard responses: we should all take it down a notch; there will be an investigation.</p> <p>I don&#8217;t remember what it was exactly that I yelled at the mayor, but it certainly got to him. As he was leaving the crowd, he turned and walked directly up to me, putting his face a mere inches from my own.</p> <p>Dellums: What I want people to do now is calm down. I&#8217;ve told the police to stand down, and I hope you all can do the same. Both sides need to be peaceful right now so we can find out exactly what happened.</p> <p>Me: But we know what happened! We&#8217;ve all seen the video: A cop pulled his gun and shot an unarmed black man in the back. And you know there are reasons that certain people have guns pulled on them and others don&#8217;t.</p> <p>Dellums: There are two processes currently underway&#8230;</p> <p>Me: The process is if I shoot someone, I&#8217;m arrested. But if a cop shoots someone, he gets put on paid administrative leave until everyone forgets about it.</p> <p>Dellums: I&#8217;m asking both sides to be peaceful&#8230;</p> <p>Me: Both sides? I haven&#8217;t killed anybody, this crowd hasn&#8217;t killed anybody. The police have killed somebody, and you&#8217;re in charge of the police! Who runs this city? When will the prisoners be released?</p> <p>Dellums: Soon&#8230;</p> <p>Dellums then returned to City Hall, surveying the damage. But as he entered, the angry crowd <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAAUje6CTzQ" type="external">booed thunderously</a>. And despite his claim that the police had been ordered to stand down, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qINg49yFPSw" type="external">clashes broke out immediately</a> on the same block, more fires broke out, and more teargas was deployed. The mayor&#8217;s intervention could do little to calm Oakland&#8217;s frazzled nerves. His claim that the people have lost faith in the police rings empty for people who never had such faith in the first place, people who have seen vicious police murder after police murder without so much as an indictment.</p> <p>The demonstrators continued to express their pent-up rage, engaging in running battles until nearly 11pm, when a mass arrest seems to have quelled the resistance for the moment. All in all, official numbers show 105 arrests (including 21 juveniles), more than 80 of which occurred after Dellums claims to have told OPD to stand down. Who knows if his promise of a speedy release means anything at all. <a href="" type="internal">Support and solidarity demonstrations</a> are scheduled this week for the prisoners&#8217; arraignments, and with another mass mobilization scheduled for next Wednesday, this is far from over.</p> <p>Intention as Privilege</p> <p>As I have said, and at the risk of controversy I will repeat: it doesn&#8217;t matter if Mehserle meant to pull the trigger. He had already assumed the role of sole arbiter over the life or death of Oscar Grant. He had already decided that Grant, by virtue of his skin color and appearance, was worth less than other citizens. And rather than acquitting the officer, all of the psychological analyses and possible explanations of the shooting that have been trotted-out in the press, and all the discussion of the irrelevant elements of Grant&#8217;s criminal history, have only proven this fundamental point.</p> <p>If a young black or Latino male pulls a gun and someone winds up dead, intention is never the issue, and first-degree murder charges are on the agenda, as well as likely murder charges for anyone of the wrong color standing nearby. If we reverse the current situation, and the gun is in Oscar Grant&#8217;s hand, then racist voices would be squealing for the death penalty regardless of intention. And yet when it&#8217;s a cop pulling the trigger, all the media and public opinion resources are deployed to justify, understand, and empathize with this unconscionable act. One side is automatically condemned; the other automatically excused.</p> <p>For now, the fires are out. But despite the soothing words of Barack Obama and Ron Dellums, there is no lack of fuel and no lack of spark in Oakland.</p> <p>GEORGE CICCARIELLO-MAHER is a Ph.D. candidate in political theory at UC Berkeley. He lives in Oakland, and can be reached at gjcm(at)berkeley.edu.</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p>

Oakland’s Not for Burning?

https://counterpunch.org/2009/01/09/oakland-s-not-for-burning/

2009-01-09

4left

Oakland In 1968 Amory Bradford penned a volume entitled Oakland8217s Not For Burning documenting the tinderbox that the city had become and the lamenting the inevitability with which it would explode But the assertion contained in the book8217s title was hardly credible coming as it was from a Yaleeducated former Wall Street lawyer and New York Times general manager whose only business in Oakland came via the US Commerce Department Some forty years later in the early hours of this year of ostensible hope the reality of the persistence of racism in Oakland became devastatingly clear sparking a powerful response the likes of which this city hasn8217t seen in years But luckily the condescending voices of moderation like that of Bradford a generation prior seem have little traction with those who have seen enough police murder A New Year8217s Execution After responding to reports of 8220a fight8221 on a Bay Area Rapid Transit BART train BART police detained the train at the Fruitvale station forcibly removing several young men from the train as dozens of bystanders watched Several of the men all young and mostly black were lined up seated along the platform Some were cuffed Oscar Grant was not As he was attempting to defuse the situation BART police decided to detain him placing him facedown on the platform with one officer kneeling near his neck and another straddling his legs For some still unexplained reason one officer now identified as Johannes Mehserle stood up pulled his gun and fired a shot directly into Oscar Grant8217s back The bullet went through Grant8217s back ricocheting off the platform and puncturing his lung There are gasps from the bystanders and shock on the face of the other officers who clearly didn8217t expect the shot to be fired Grant who was begging not to be Tasered at the time of the shot clearly didn8217t expect it either But this surprise notwithstanding the decision was then made to cuff the young man as he lay dying As an added precaution BART police then sought immediately to confiscate all videophones held by the train passengers in an effort to cover up the murder Luckily for everyone but the BART PD and Mehserle several videos managed to make it into the public domain where they went viral and were viewed on Youtube hundreds of thousands of times in the following days In a rare show of journalistic integrity local Fox affiliate KTVU aired one of the videos in its entirety The standard protocol8212deny distort coverup8212had clearly been disrupted and BART spokesman Linton Johnson even went so far as to criticize the leaking of the video arguing that rather than clarifying events public access to the video would 8220taint8221 the investigation BART was on a back foot and popular anger was on the offensive A Corporate Police Force BART Police are a notoriously problematic organization existing in a gray area between public and private funded by taxpayers but operating under a corporate structure which lacks all accountability and oversight According to the San Francisco Bay Guardian The structure of the BART police force is a recipe for disaster BART8217s general manager who is not an elected official and has no expertise in law enforcement hires the BART police chief8230 There is no police commission no police review board not even a committee of the elected BART board designated to handle complaints against and issues with the BART police8230 There is in other words no civilian oversight And this 8220disaster8221 has been more than merely hypothetical in 1992 a BART cop shot unarmed Jerrold Hall in the back of the head with a shotgun as he walked away after firing a warning shot In 2001 BART police shot a mentally ill man who was unarmed and naked And according to Tim Redmond writing in the same paper 8220BART made a monumental effort to cover the Hall slaying up8221 and in the end 8220Nothing happened8230 BART called the shooting justified8221 As of yesterday BART hadn8217t yet interviewed the officer Johannes Mehserle who insisted on invoking Fifth Amendment rights not to speak And just when they claim to have compelled him to do so he abruptly resigned thereby ending any internal affairs investigation that may have taken place There still remains according to BART a criminal investigation but if the past is any indicator this won8217t get far But let8217s not fool ourselves Even publiclyrun organizations like the Oakland Police Department which has all the ties in the world to elected power operates with an informal shoottokill policy for black teenagers This was as clear in the 2007 murder of Gary King as it is with Oscar Grant today And since the district attorney responsible for bringing charges against the police works closely with these same police on a daily basis and in a shared enterprise of delivering convictions we should not be surprised that not a single police murder in recent years has even seen disciplinary action 8220No one we talked with8221 writes the Chronicle 8220from the district attorney8217s office to lawyers who work either side of police shootings 8211 could remember a case in the last 20 years in which an onduty officer had been charged in a fatal shooting in Alameda County8221 Does It Matter What Really Happened We have all seen the video and rumors are swirling about how to interpret its contents The officer clearly fires a fatal shot into Oscar Grant8217s back while the latter is facedown on the floor A flurry of 8220experts8221 have intervened to give their analysis While such expert testimony usually functions to justify the police even among these experts some are shocked and disgusted by what they see One expert after concluding that the gun had accidentally gone off watched video from another angle after which he changed his conclusion 8220Looking at it I hate to say this it looks like an execution to me8221 Others are insisting that Mehserle meant to pull out his less fatal Taser but this theory has since been discredited Firstly a SigSauer handgun weighs three times what a Taser weighs and the shape is completely distinct and another expert noticed in the tape that the officer had previously withdrawn his Taser located for safety reasons on the other side of his belt In other words he knew he was going for the gun Hence the claim of accidental discharge but this too raises a serious question of plausibility when Mehserle drew his gun Grant couldn8217t see it and so there could be no claim that it was meant to threaten the victim into passivity In the end if Mehserle is ever forced to give a statement he will likely turn to the triedandtrue excuse that he 8220suspected8221 Grant had a gun in his pants But none of this matters all the debate of the officer8217s 8220intention8221 only serves to reinforce the fact that while white cops are allowed to have intention this is a quantity denied to their victims This fact of racist doublestandards is not lost on those who realizing that there will be no 8220justice8221 in this case have taken to the streets to demonstrate their rage at the unprovoked execution 8220I8217m Feeling Pretty Violent Right About Now8221 While friends and family were gathered for Grant8217s funeral a number of organizations called a demonstration where he was killed at Fruitvale BART station Circulating by internet and Facebook the call reached many thousands and in the end some 500600 protestors and mourners came together to make speeches and lament this murder At a makeshift memorial behind the BART station candles are burning and handwritten messages appear 8220Oscar we watched you grow up from a lil8217 boy down the street into a man8221 and 8220O RIP peaceful journey God only pick da best8221 As an indication of the contrasting sentiments that divided the crowd where someone had scribbled 8220Fuck the police8221 another had covered the expletive with another message 8220Forgive8221 But forgiveness wasn8217t on the minds of many Several of the more radical protestors climbed onto the BART turnstiles displaying a red black and green flag One shouted I8217ve got the mentality of my parents who were Black Panthers I8217m tired of talking I8217m thinking like LA in 1992 Y8217all can have your megaphone speeches I been through that I8217m black I don8217t need more speechesamp160 Let8217s take a stand today because tomorrow ain8217t promised While some on the mic attempted to soothe the crowd insisting that burning up the city was 8220too easy8221 and 8220useless8221 the message didn8217t seem to resonate much with the crowd And why should it We were standing in the middle of 8220Fruitvale Village8221 a corporate paradise in the middle of a historically Latino district which clearly doesn8217t belong to the local residents It was clear where the momentum was going as the biggest cheers went up for the more radical voices who seized the mic 8220I8217m feelin pretty violent right now8221 one insisted 8220I8217m on some Malcolm X shit by any means necessary If I don8217t see some action I8217ma cause a ruckus myself8221 Oakland Burning While some remained to hear additional speakers including hyphy hiphopper Mistah FAB and the recentlyfounded Coalition Against Police Executions CAPE several hundred set out on a militant and rapidlymoving march north on International Boulevard The police response was initially handsoff despite the tenor of the chants 8220No Justice No Peace Fuck the Police8221 and 8220La Migra La Policia La Misma Porqueria8221 If those in the passing cars and stuck in traffic were of any indication the local population knew exactly what was going on why we were protesting and were largely sympathetic As the march wound around Lake Merritt it turned sharply to the left a shortcut to BART headquarters This seems to have thrown off the police who were clearly unprepared for what came next A single police car parked sideways at 8th and Madison to prevent access to the BART headquarters became the target of the crowd8217s increasing fury Sensing the tone of the crowd a cop reached in and grabbed her helmet before scurrying away Within moments the police car was destroyed and nearly flipped over and a nearby dumpster was burning A few seconds later the air was thick with teargas Evidently seeing their own property destroyed was too much for the police to stomach Note there is no truth to the CNN report that tear gas was deployed to protect a surrounded officer I get a noseful of teargas and a protestor near me is shot in the stomach with a rubber bullet and needs to be helped off as the crowd quickly sprints north toward downtown Passing through Chinatown dumpsters full of fresh produce are emptied into the street to slow the march of a line of riot police When the crowd reaches Broadway there is momentary confusion with some continuing straight to Old Oakland some pushing left toward Jack London Square and others urging a move rightward toward the city center The police took advantage of this momentary indecision with a full line charge that send many of the furious demonstrators sprinting and left many arrested When the crowd regrouped it was promptly encircled at 14th and Broadway and a standoff ensued Either by design or by a predictable quirk of the police organization nearly every riot cop in the street was white some sneering defiantly And if the crowd of demonstrators was largely multiethnic it was clear by this point that the functional vanguard was composed largely of the young black teenagers most acutely aware of their relationship to the police There were chants of 8220We are all Oscar Grant8221 and several protestors lay in the middle of the street with their hands behind their backs mimicking the position in which Grant was executed Some small fires were set and the police moved in again pushing the crowd down 14th toward Lake Merritt The spearhead of the demonstrators rushed forward to shouts of 8220We the police today8221 smashing and torching vehicles and while this was done out of anger it was far from irrational as the press will certainly present it Rather it was the result of a very clear line of reasoning that goes something like this we have to do something and in the face of police impunity this is all we can do Nothing would be more irrational than a blind faith that the police will do the right thing given all the historical evidence to the contrary While the press is doing its best to find bystanders to decry the 8220vandalism8221 involved it couldn8217t ignore the testimony Oakland Post reporter Ken Epstein who was writing an article on the killing when he looked out his office window to see his Honda CRV in flames 8220I8217m sorry my car was burned8221 Epstein admitted 8220but the issue is very upsetting8221 The crisp wintry air swirled and the lights twinkled along the surface of Lake Merritt as demonstrators demolished a local McDonalds at which point a line had clearly been crossed a police armored personnel carrier came tearing down the street at 45 miles per hour firing rubber bullets and sending the crowd scattering The scene was surreal with padded riot cops leaping off the vehicle in an effort to win an impossible footrace with younger and fitter demonstrators Dellums Steps In Steps Out From the early moments of the demonstration the position of the mayor Ron Dellums was at issue Here was a mayor with a great deal of popular respect with longstanding civil rights credentials but who had done little to slow the pace of police killing among the other ongoing ills plaguing postindustrial Oakland With tear gas swirling and the APCs circling the mayor decided to make his appearance at around 9pm walking the few blocks from City Hall down to 14th and Jackson to address the angry crowd himself Several times he attempted to scurry away under hard questions that he could not answer with the standard responses we should all take it down a notch there will be an investigation I don8217t remember what it was exactly that I yelled at the mayor but it certainly got to him As he was leaving the crowd he turned and walked directly up to me putting his face a mere inches from my own Dellums What I want people to do now is calm down I8217ve told the police to stand down and I hope you all can do the same Both sides need to be peaceful right now so we can find out exactly what happened Me But we know what happened We8217ve all seen the video A cop pulled his gun and shot an unarmed black man in the back And you know there are reasons that certain people have guns pulled on them and others don8217t Dellums There are two processes currently underway8230 Me The process is if I shoot someone I8217m arrested But if a cop shoots someone he gets put on paid administrative leave until everyone forgets about it Dellums I8217m asking both sides to be peaceful8230 Me Both sides I haven8217t killed anybody this crowd hasn8217t killed anybody The police have killed somebody and you8217re in charge of the police Who runs this city When will the prisoners be released Dellums Soon8230 Dellums then returned to City Hall surveying the damage But as he entered the angry crowd booed thunderously And despite his claim that the police had been ordered to stand down clashes broke out immediately on the same block more fires broke out and more teargas was deployed The mayor8217s intervention could do little to calm Oakland8217s frazzled nerves His claim that the people have lost faith in the police rings empty for people who never had such faith in the first place people who have seen vicious police murder after police murder without so much as an indictment The demonstrators continued to express their pentup rage engaging in running battles until nearly 11pm when a mass arrest seems to have quelled the resistance for the moment All in all official numbers show 105 arrests including 21 juveniles more than 80 of which occurred after Dellums claims to have told OPD to stand down Who knows if his promise of a speedy release means anything at all Support and solidarity demonstrations are scheduled this week for the prisoners8217 arraignments and with another mass mobilization scheduled for next Wednesday this is far from over Intention as Privilege As I have said and at the risk of controversy I will repeat it doesn8217t matter if Mehserle meant to pull the trigger He had already assumed the role of sole arbiter over the life or death of Oscar Grant He had already decided that Grant by virtue of his skin color and appearance was worth less than other citizens And rather than acquitting the officer all of the psychological analyses and possible explanations of the shooting that have been trottedout in the press and all the discussion of the irrelevant elements of Grant8217s criminal history have only proven this fundamental point If a young black or Latino male pulls a gun and someone winds up dead intention is never the issue and firstdegree murder charges are on the agenda as well as likely murder charges for anyone of the wrong color standing nearby If we reverse the current situation and the gun is in Oscar Grant8217s hand then racist voices would be squealing for the death penalty regardless of intention And yet when it8217s a cop pulling the trigger all the media and public opinion resources are deployed to justify understand and empathize with this unconscionable act One side is automatically condemned the other automatically excused For now the fires are out But despite the soothing words of Barack Obama and Ron Dellums there is no lack of fuel and no lack of spark in Oakland GEORGE CICCARIELLOMAHER is a PhD candidate in political theory at UC Berkeley He lives in Oakland and can be reached at gjcmatberkeleyedu amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160

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<p>The glaciers were bigger then. I gained renewed appreciation for their scale two weeks ago when making the long climb by bicycle out of one of the holes they dug as they withdrew northward during the last Ice Age some 12,000 years ago.</p> <p>Among the glaciers&#8217; most triumphant excavation projects were the Finger Lakes of central New York State. Just over three miles at its widest point, Lake Cayuga is one of the longest of the group, stretching nearly forty miles from Ithaca at its southern tip to Seneca Falls at its north. &amp;#160;Ithaca is 384 feet above sea level. At its deepest, Lake Cayuga extends 435 feet below its surface. This narrow glaciated basin is filled with water&#8212;the increasingly beleaguered residue of the ice sheet that made it.&amp;#160; However impressive and beautiful the lake, it represents a mere puddle in the bottom of a giant geological trough.</p> <p>Last Thursday I cycled from Ithaca, New York northwest to Rochester on the shores of the much larger and deeper Lake Ontario. The route I followed is a hundred miles, the first twenty a relentless uphill pull to the divide between Cayuga Lake and its twin to the west&#8212;Seneca.&amp;#160; Tracing the underside of the vanished glacier, the long ascent gains 2,000 feet from lakeshore to ridge top.</p> <p>The first ten miles northwest from Ithaca city rise steadily on the Black Diamond Trail&#8212;an old railroad grade repurposed for recreation and barred to motor vehicles. After an unseasonably warm autumn the deciduous forest is still leafy, but there are intimations of winter: it&#8217;s 9am on November 9th and the temperatures are still below freezing.</p> <p>The feeling that I&#8217;m ascending through geologic time is encouraged by the sight of bison grazing an uphill meadow. Perhaps genetically reanimated heirloom wooly mammoths and bison latifrons will mill among these herds in the farm-to-table operations of the future. Every mile or so a bridge crosses above a stream cutting its way through the shale on its way down to the lake. The progression of brooks culminates eight miles from Ithaca at the mighty Taughannock, the highest waterfall east of the Rockies&#8212;higher, if less voluminous even than Niagara. These streams both intimate and sublime have been here ever since the glaciers left, they&#8217;ve clocked some 10,000 well-earned holidays each winter when frozen to a standstill. But these vacations are themselves being eroded under pressure from global Big Heat: the carbon economy extracts ever more labor from the faithful flow.</p> <p>I&#8217;m mostly an in-town cyclist. Mine is a heavy city bike, by no means the fastest thing on two wheels, but the right equipment for this ride, as I&#8217;ll find out later in ten punishingly slow and bumpy miles over the old railroad beds and rights-of-way known as the Ontario Pathways between miles 60 and 70 of the tour. I own none of the colorful and costly cyclist&#8217;s Lycra nor insulated shoes for cold days. My kit consists of a bulky, wind-catching school backpack inherited from one of my kids; a helmet shedding its plastic shell; gray sweat pants and fleece pullover; old running shoes crammed into flimsy toe-clips (by now practically medieval technology); orange day-glow safety vest whose Velcro is shot so that the thing flaps wildly when at speed; and newly acquired USB-chargeable LED lights that squandered their supposedly &#8220;sustainable&#8221; and &#8220;off-setting&#8221; benefits before I even put them into use. They were manufactured in Taichung, Taiwan.</p> <p>My first pause comes in the picturesque village of Trumansburg ten miles northwest of Ithaca for some water and a pee at the popular Gimme! coffee shop. I lock my bike next to a Prius with a Clinton-Kaine 2016 bumper sticker and slip by the queue of slackers seeking their carbon-fueled fix of caffeine. Trumansburg is 980 feet above sea level.&amp;#160; I&#8217;ve got another 1,300 to gain the divide.</p> <p>After a few miles of paved roads I&#8217;m on agricultural gravel lanes running past industrial dairies, swaths of forest, mobile homes next to abandoned Victorian houses, Amish farms and saddle makers.</p> <p>The only vehicles I encounter for an hour and some are a combine harvester and a black covered buggy driven by a young Amish woman. I call out &#8220;Gr&#252;&#223; Gott!&#8221;&amp;#160; and she lifts a hand from the reins and smiles. At gravel crossroads a German shepherd encourages upward progress by giving menacing chase.&amp;#160; Just before 11am I reach the highpoint of the ridge, some 2,300 feet above sea level. That&#8217;s 3,000 feet above the bottom of Lake Seneca, now visible below to the west. Instead of the russet landscape of fields, forests, and gray-blue lakes, I imagine the endless ice. Ahead to the north the terrain slips towards the Great Lakes.&amp;#160; There are some low hills between the Finger Lakes and Lake Ontario, but I can see now the downward tilt of the earth: I&#8217;ve got 2,000 feet of hard-earned equity to pay out over the next eighty miles to Rochester. But the loan officers have changed the terms of the agreement: a headwind gathers strength. Seeing its opportunity, my mutinous iPhone goes dark. Like Captain Bly set adrift in the South Pacific, I will have to navigate from memory.</p> <p>I pay out most of the gained altitude in a few miles on the steep descent to Seneca Lake, down through the town of Willard, home to a state prison for drug-addicted convicts. Three miles due north is the Five Points Correctional Facility also enjoying outstanding views of Seneca Lake. Incarceration&#8212;of cows and, more lucratively, humans&#8212;is vital to the flagging Upstate economy. &amp;#160;As I let gravity pull me down along Willard&#8217;s Main Street abutting the prison grounds I hear the inmates singing a bluesy call-and-response somewhere beyond the razor-wire fence and imposing nineteenth-century brick buildings.</p> <p>At the bottom of the hill the lakeside road dead-ends in another car-free path running along the edge of the disused Seneca Army Depot where munitions were once stored and disposed of. The troops are gone, but the area remains home to the world&#8217;s largest herd of white deer. Whether these animals ever did active military duty as moving targets&#8212;and inactive duty as venison in the officers&#8217; mess&#8212;has never been disclosed. But here&#8217;s betting that the fury of ordnance is etched into their genetic memory, so it&#8217;s not surprising that the PTSD-plagued beasts keep a low profile. I see neither hide nor hair of the fair-furred, four-legged creatures.</p> <p>Back on the paved road I sight Geneva set dramatically on the lakeshore like its Swiss namesake. New York&#8217;s Geneva boasts handsome brick buildings from its prosperous past, most of them now vacant and neglected.</p> <p>The afternoon warms and the wind holds steady. A wrong turn at Geneva adds ten miles to my itinerary&#8212;five miles out and five miles back.&amp;#160; Strangely I seem to battle the headwind in both directions of the detour, though more likely my morale and mental faculties are slipping.</p> <p>I push on past a huge cabbage farm next to the highest hill for miles&#8212;manmade mountain garbage. After another hour it&#8217;s time to go off-road again along another series of railroad beds flanked by veal sheds and cornfields. The trees on either side of the path shield me from the wind but also send out their bone-rattling roots beneath the carpet of crunchy leaves. These grueling ten miles take me ninety butt-bruising, spirit-sapping minutes.</p> <p>Suddenly above the maples the sunlight dazzles off the cupola of the Ontario County Courthouse crowned by a gilded statue of Justice with her scales. Down below, the view is less Apollonian: the litter-strewn railroad leads into the flanks of the city of Canandaigua on the north shore of the eponymous lake, the next one to the west of Seneca.</p> <p>After cycling up the broad boulevard with its grand mansions and even grander public buildings, I follow back roads and more footpaths that get me to the town of Victor. A desperate sugar boost of a Dunkin&#8217; Donuts pit-stop raises the energy. In the twilight I forge northward on Route 96, a busy four-lane road that feeds the suburbs of Rochester. I&#8217;ve come to the journey&#8217;s most dangerous moment: crossing the on- and off-ramps of the New York State Thruway as the 18-wheelers and harried commuters whiz by.&amp;#160; I dismount and wait for a break in the hectic traffic, sprinting with my bike from median to median.</p> <p>Thinking myself half as brave and twice as stupid for making the crossing as John Wesley Powell was for running the rapids on the Green River in 1869, I mount up again and ride on to the Eerie Canal and the car-free, former towpath alongside. Around the affluent suburb of Pittsford there are placid stretches of open space, before I pull into downtown Rochester in the darkness as sleet begins to fall after nine hours on my bike.</p> <p>***</p> <p>The nominal excuse to undertake the trip was to attend the annual meeting of the American Musicological Society (AMS) held this year in Rochester. What better way than a brisk 100-mile day&#8217;s ride across rural New York to brace one&#8217;s self for four days of scholarly papers delivered by music historians flying in and driving to Upstate New York from around the country and the world?&amp;#160; As you might have guessed from <a href="" type="internal">last week&#8217;s column</a> &amp;#160;on the carbon-consuming habits of academics and their conferences, I can&#8217;t muster much enthusiasm for such events. Over the years I&#8217;ve carpooled to a handful of AMS conventions when they&#8217;ve been within automotive striking distance in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston, and New York City. But I&#8217;ve never flown to one.</p> <p>I don&#8217;t consider this a moral position as do many of the ardent no-fly reformers described last week in this column. While my carbon-whoring done for academic purposes is far less extravagant than that of almost all of my colleagues, I&#8217;m hardly Mr. Clean. No, my main reasons for avoiding these annual gatherings of musicologists are that I hate convention hotels and, though I can throw myself into the conference rituals every few years, I can&#8217;t muster an annual gumption for glad-handing at parties, kibbitzing at the bar, talking shop over three meals a day, with coffee and/or cocktails in between. Whatever the fleeting appeal of hotel breakfast buffet and afterhours cigar bar, I&#8217;ve got neither talent nor enthusiasm for networking.</p> <p>Then there&#8217;s the purported reason for holding the conference in the first place: scholarly papers and intellectual exchanges. The quality and quantity is astounding. This year&#8217;s edition of the conference began with a paper on &#8220;Fantasia and Variations on a Celebrated Air a la Russe Vesper Hymn&#8221; from 1842 by one Augusta Brown; a copy of the piece survives in the Eastman School of Music&#8217;s Sibley Library, a few blocks from the convention center complex and contiguous hotels. The meeting ended with a paper entitled &#8220;Sonic Impossible Worlds and the Syrian Conflict.&#8221;&amp;#160; But as these were delivered there were others being given at the same time in parallel sessions. On Friday morning at 9am, for example, you had to decide between &#8220;Operatic Fantasies in Early Nineteenth-Century Psychiatry&#8221; and &#8220;Chirographic Cultures of the Sixteenth-Century Instrumentalists&#8221; and eight other presentations besides. There is an app to help with planning a course through the richness of the program and the disorienting warren of rooms where they are held. The chronological, geographical, methodological reach of the papers is mind-boggling.</p> <p>But hearing a fascinating investigation of the seventeenth-century Antwerp composer Leonora Duarte, a Portuguese Jew whose family converted to Christianity, delivered in a forlorn Louis XIV-style hotel auditorium with garish paisley carpet, no windows, greyish LED lights, while being force-fed recycled air only stokes larger queries about the point of it all&#8212;not just of musicology, but of human existence. It is hard to remain optimistic when the pursuit of human knowledge, especially in the magical realm of music, has led the pursuers of the knowledge to congregate in such a dispiriting place.&amp;#160; One might even be forgiven for thinking that these scholars don&#8217;t give a dried fig about their environment. &amp;#160;That very suspicion taints panels like that devoted to &#8220;A Dialogue on Current Directions in Ecomusicology&#8221; &amp;#160;(a <a href="" type="internal">recent volume published</a> by Rutledge) convened on the conference&#8217;s first night. The panelists had flown in from California, Texas, Germany, and other far-flung locales, the closest coming from New York City 350 miles away. &amp;#160;By my rough calculations the carbon output of the eight-person session ran to some ten metric tons, roughly equivalent to a year&#8217;s worth of the carbon emissions of 250 Ethiopians.</p> <p>I had planned to attend that session clad in hiker-biker motley and holier-than-thou carbon-free virtue. I made it to the hotel in time, but by then I needed carbs and booze not ecomusicological enlightenment.</p> <p>The promotional material that encourages the AMS membership to attend the annual meeting reflexively reverts to the language of tourism.&amp;#160; This is not surprising given that the eighteenth-century founding father of music history, Charles Burney, was himself one of the greatest musical tourists of his or any age. &amp;#160;In that spirit, the society&#8217;s August newsletter begins: &#8220;We welcome you this November to the AMS Annual Meeting in Rochester, New York. Rochester is a special place: the confluence of the Erie Canal and the Genesee River created an industrial boom in the early-to-mid nineteenth century and still provides &#8216;gorges&#8217; views today.&#8221; The invitation then extolls the city&#8217;s cultural offerings of museums and concert halls, as well as the abundance of parks.&amp;#160; This view of Rochester&#8217;s urban health is belied by the facts on the ground: vacant buildings; blocks flattened to make way for parking lots; ghost-town streets that sometimes give the impression that a neutron bomb has just been detonated. The sky-bridges that connect the hotels and convention center seem more geared to avoid contact with the African-American underclass than Rochester&#8217;s infamous cold weather. I walked the downtown on Saturday afternoon across the Genesee River over to the Kodak Building, the company name emblazoned on its steeply pitched Gothic roof. Finished in 1914, the nineteen-story tower stood as Rochester&#8217;s highest building for the next fifty years. The company had 120,000 employees in 1973; it filed for bankruptcy in 2012 and now employs just over 6,000. Little more need be said about Rochester and post-industrial America. &#8220;Our inner cities are a disaster,&#8221; Donald Trump is fond of saying. Rochester proves him all too right.</p> <p>On my way back to the conference, just a block from the convention center, three men in African- and Anglican-inflected religious garb held a sidewalk service in front of one of Rochester&#8217;s many parking garages. &#8220;What I am talking about is the disenchantment of America at the hands of the white people,&#8221; he shouted pointing across the street in my direction. I picked up my pace, not wanting to be late for a paper entitled &#8220;Listening to Voiced Fragments of Global Nuclear Ruination: Cold War Decay and the Acoustical Resonance of Nation Building.&#8221; In Rochester there is plenty of decay to go around, though the people living in places like the hideous modernist high-rise in the Andrews Terrace, a long block from the Convention Center, get more of it than others.</p> <p>Rochester&#8217;s grim urban present is glossed over by all this promotional zeal and music-historical inquisitiveness. The conference might as well be held at a NORAD bunker deep in the Rockies or a floating convention center in the middle of Lake Ontario&#8212;and it might well have to be, what with the Doomsday Clock a couple of ticks from midnight and the waters rising all around.</p> <p>For all the scholarly imagination and dedication on display in Rochester, I didn&#8217;t notice much reflection on the connection between the globalization that the business of international musicology participates in and environmental collapse, not to mention the decline of the city hosting this year&#8217;s annual conference.</p> <p>The cosmopolitan story of Burney&#8217;s heirs is written in carbon and contrails. While consciousness of these contradictions is suppressed in pursuit of professional and scholarly advance, there are increasing shadows of unease.&amp;#160; A <a href="https://cardiffunipsych.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_5vB78PSnTlXJ8iN" type="external">recent survey</a> devised by the School of Psychology at Cardiff University in Wales circulated to academics sought to understand how they viewed their jet-setting conferencing habits: did they believe in climate change, but nonetheless think their scholarly goals trumped those concerns?</p> <p>As chance would have it, one of the first people I ran into on my first full day at the Rochester conference was the Head of Cardiff&#8217;s School of Music; he also serves as International Dean for the University&#8217;s College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. A brilliant pianist, definitive scholar of the Lisztian Golden Age of nineteenth-century pianism, and a virulent foe of American political correctness, the Cardiff Dean flies around the world for concert engagements and travels frequently to Asia (that great source of students for western universities) on academic/administrative business. I forgot to ask him whether he&#8217;d filled out the Cardiff psychology department&#8217;s survey.</p> <p>After my two-wheeled arrival in Rochester it snowed lightly in the night and the temperatures plummeted below freezing. I&#8217;d gotten my ride in just ahead of the oncoming cold front. The headwind had been a harbinger of the shift in the weather, itself a reminder of more frigid times&#8212;from the Pleistocene and into the Cold War. The icy sidewalks were treacherous, though that didn&#8217;t affect the foot traffic much.&amp;#160; Whatever the season, few people are seen on the streets of Rochester&#8217;s devastated downtown.</p> <p>I spent most of the morning warming myself at a session entitled &#8220;Composing while Female&#8221; in the Convention Center&#8217;s Lilac Ballroom South, a dismal chamber that seemed all the more dank for its fanciful name. At noon all the meeting quarters emptied out, their titles evoking either European Monarchs or Captains of Industry or both: the Grand, the Strong, the Regency, the George Eastman, the Morgan. Along with three other conferees, the Cardiff Dean and I met in the Riverside Court whose terrace is some fifty feet above the Genesee River raging in its concrete channel. The racing brown water sent an angry message to the few musicologists who cared to throw a glance its way. Our group of five piled into a car and drove a few miles to the restaurant&#8212;an Ethiopian buffet.</p>

On the Road to Rochester, By Bike

https://counterpunch.org/2017/11/24/on-the-road-to-rochester-by-bike/

2017-11-24

4left

The glaciers were bigger then I gained renewed appreciation for their scale two weeks ago when making the long climb by bicycle out of one of the holes they dug as they withdrew northward during the last Ice Age some 12000 years ago Among the glaciers8217 most triumphant excavation projects were the Finger Lakes of central New York State Just over three miles at its widest point Lake Cayuga is one of the longest of the group stretching nearly forty miles from Ithaca at its southern tip to Seneca Falls at its north amp160Ithaca is 384 feet above sea level At its deepest Lake Cayuga extends 435 feet below its surface This narrow glaciated basin is filled with water8212the increasingly beleaguered residue of the ice sheet that made itamp160 However impressive and beautiful the lake it represents a mere puddle in the bottom of a giant geological trough Last Thursday I cycled from Ithaca New York northwest to Rochester on the shores of the much larger and deeper Lake Ontario The route I followed is a hundred miles the first twenty a relentless uphill pull to the divide between Cayuga Lake and its twin to the west8212Senecaamp160 Tracing the underside of the vanished glacier the long ascent gains 2000 feet from lakeshore to ridge top The first ten miles northwest from Ithaca city rise steadily on the Black Diamond Trail8212an old railroad grade repurposed for recreation and barred to motor vehicles After an unseasonably warm autumn the deciduous forest is still leafy but there are intimations of winter it8217s 9am on November 9th and the temperatures are still below freezing The feeling that I8217m ascending through geologic time is encouraged by the sight of bison grazing an uphill meadow Perhaps genetically reanimated heirloom wooly mammoths and bison latifrons will mill among these herds in the farmtotable operations of the future Every mile or so a bridge crosses above a stream cutting its way through the shale on its way down to the lake The progression of brooks culminates eight miles from Ithaca at the mighty Taughannock the highest waterfall east of the Rockies8212higher if less voluminous even than Niagara These streams both intimate and sublime have been here ever since the glaciers left they8217ve clocked some 10000 wellearned holidays each winter when frozen to a standstill But these vacations are themselves being eroded under pressure from global Big Heat the carbon economy extracts ever more labor from the faithful flow I8217m mostly an intown cyclist Mine is a heavy city bike by no means the fastest thing on two wheels but the right equipment for this ride as I8217ll find out later in ten punishingly slow and bumpy miles over the old railroad beds and rightsofway known as the Ontario Pathways between miles 60 and 70 of the tour I own none of the colorful and costly cyclist8217s Lycra nor insulated shoes for cold days My kit consists of a bulky windcatching school backpack inherited from one of my kids a helmet shedding its plastic shell gray sweat pants and fleece pullover old running shoes crammed into flimsy toeclips by now practically medieval technology orange dayglow safety vest whose Velcro is shot so that the thing flaps wildly when at speed and newly acquired USBchargeable LED lights that squandered their supposedly 8220sustainable8221 and 8220offsetting8221 benefits before I even put them into use They were manufactured in Taichung Taiwan My first pause comes in the picturesque village of Trumansburg ten miles northwest of Ithaca for some water and a pee at the popular Gimme coffee shop I lock my bike next to a Prius with a ClintonKaine 2016 bumper sticker and slip by the queue of slackers seeking their carbonfueled fix of caffeine Trumansburg is 980 feet above sea levelamp160 I8217ve got another 1300 to gain the divide After a few miles of paved roads I8217m on agricultural gravel lanes running past industrial dairies swaths of forest mobile homes next to abandoned Victorian houses Amish farms and saddle makers The only vehicles I encounter for an hour and some are a combine harvester and a black covered buggy driven by a young Amish woman I call out 8220Gr252223 Gott8221amp160 and she lifts a hand from the reins and smiles At gravel crossroads a German shepherd encourages upward progress by giving menacing chaseamp160 Just before 11am I reach the highpoint of the ridge some 2300 feet above sea level That8217s 3000 feet above the bottom of Lake Seneca now visible below to the west Instead of the russet landscape of fields forests and grayblue lakes I imagine the endless ice Ahead to the north the terrain slips towards the Great Lakesamp160 There are some low hills between the Finger Lakes and Lake Ontario but I can see now the downward tilt of the earth I8217ve got 2000 feet of hardearned equity to pay out over the next eighty miles to Rochester But the loan officers have changed the terms of the agreement a headwind gathers strength Seeing its opportunity my mutinous iPhone goes dark Like Captain Bly set adrift in the South Pacific I will have to navigate from memory I pay out most of the gained altitude in a few miles on the steep descent to Seneca Lake down through the town of Willard home to a state prison for drugaddicted convicts Three miles due north is the Five Points Correctional Facility also enjoying outstanding views of Seneca Lake Incarceration8212of cows and more lucratively humans8212is vital to the flagging Upstate economy amp160As I let gravity pull me down along Willard8217s Main Street abutting the prison grounds I hear the inmates singing a bluesy callandresponse somewhere beyond the razorwire fence and imposing nineteenthcentury brick buildings At the bottom of the hill the lakeside road deadends in another carfree path running along the edge of the disused Seneca Army Depot where munitions were once stored and disposed of The troops are gone but the area remains home to the world8217s largest herd of white deer Whether these animals ever did active military duty as moving targets8212and inactive duty as venison in the officers8217 mess8212has never been disclosed But here8217s betting that the fury of ordnance is etched into their genetic memory so it8217s not surprising that the PTSDplagued beasts keep a low profile I see neither hide nor hair of the fairfurred fourlegged creatures Back on the paved road I sight Geneva set dramatically on the lakeshore like its Swiss namesake New York8217s Geneva boasts handsome brick buildings from its prosperous past most of them now vacant and neglected The afternoon warms and the wind holds steady A wrong turn at Geneva adds ten miles to my itinerary8212five miles out and five miles backamp160 Strangely I seem to battle the headwind in both directions of the detour though more likely my morale and mental faculties are slipping I push on past a huge cabbage farm next to the highest hill for miles8212manmade mountain garbage After another hour it8217s time to go offroad again along another series of railroad beds flanked by veal sheds and cornfields The trees on either side of the path shield me from the wind but also send out their bonerattling roots beneath the carpet of crunchy leaves These grueling ten miles take me ninety buttbruising spiritsapping minutes Suddenly above the maples the sunlight dazzles off the cupola of the Ontario County Courthouse crowned by a gilded statue of Justice with her scales Down below the view is less Apollonian the litterstrewn railroad leads into the flanks of the city of Canandaigua on the north shore of the eponymous lake the next one to the west of Seneca After cycling up the broad boulevard with its grand mansions and even grander public buildings I follow back roads and more footpaths that get me to the town of Victor A desperate sugar boost of a Dunkin8217 Donuts pitstop raises the energy In the twilight I forge northward on Route 96 a busy fourlane road that feeds the suburbs of Rochester I8217ve come to the journey8217s most dangerous moment crossing the on and offramps of the New York State Thruway as the 18wheelers and harried commuters whiz byamp160 I dismount and wait for a break in the hectic traffic sprinting with my bike from median to median Thinking myself half as brave and twice as stupid for making the crossing as John Wesley Powell was for running the rapids on the Green River in 1869 I mount up again and ride on to the Eerie Canal and the carfree former towpath alongside Around the affluent suburb of Pittsford there are placid stretches of open space before I pull into downtown Rochester in the darkness as sleet begins to fall after nine hours on my bike The nominal excuse to undertake the trip was to attend the annual meeting of the American Musicological Society AMS held this year in Rochester What better way than a brisk 100mile day8217s ride across rural New York to brace one8217s self for four days of scholarly papers delivered by music historians flying in and driving to Upstate New York from around the country and the worldamp160 As you might have guessed from last week8217s column amp160on the carbonconsuming habits of academics and their conferences I can8217t muster much enthusiasm for such events Over the years I8217ve carpooled to a handful of AMS conventions when they8217ve been within automotive striking distance in Philadelphia Baltimore Boston and New York City But I8217ve never flown to one I don8217t consider this a moral position as do many of the ardent nofly reformers described last week in this column While my carbonwhoring done for academic purposes is far less extravagant than that of almost all of my colleagues I8217m hardly Mr Clean No my main reasons for avoiding these annual gatherings of musicologists are that I hate convention hotels and though I can throw myself into the conference rituals every few years I can8217t muster an annual gumption for gladhanding at parties kibbitzing at the bar talking shop over three meals a day with coffee andor cocktails in between Whatever the fleeting appeal of hotel breakfast buffet and afterhours cigar bar I8217ve got neither talent nor enthusiasm for networking Then there8217s the purported reason for holding the conference in the first place scholarly papers and intellectual exchanges The quality and quantity is astounding This year8217s edition of the conference began with a paper on 8220Fantasia and Variations on a Celebrated Air a la Russe Vesper Hymn8221 from 1842 by one Augusta Brown a copy of the piece survives in the Eastman School of Music8217s Sibley Library a few blocks from the convention center complex and contiguous hotels The meeting ended with a paper entitled 8220Sonic Impossible Worlds and the Syrian Conflict8221amp160 But as these were delivered there were others being given at the same time in parallel sessions On Friday morning at 9am for example you had to decide between 8220Operatic Fantasies in Early NineteenthCentury Psychiatry8221 and 8220Chirographic Cultures of the SixteenthCentury Instrumentalists8221 and eight other presentations besides There is an app to help with planning a course through the richness of the program and the disorienting warren of rooms where they are held The chronological geographical methodological reach of the papers is mindboggling But hearing a fascinating investigation of the seventeenthcentury Antwerp composer Leonora Duarte a Portuguese Jew whose family converted to Christianity delivered in a forlorn Louis XIVstyle hotel auditorium with garish paisley carpet no windows greyish LED lights while being forcefed recycled air only stokes larger queries about the point of it all8212not just of musicology but of human existence It is hard to remain optimistic when the pursuit of human knowledge especially in the magical realm of music has led the pursuers of the knowledge to congregate in such a dispiriting placeamp160 One might even be forgiven for thinking that these scholars don8217t give a dried fig about their environment amp160That very suspicion taints panels like that devoted to 8220A Dialogue on Current Directions in Ecomusicology8221 amp160a recent volume published by Rutledge convened on the conference8217s first night The panelists had flown in from California Texas Germany and other farflung locales the closest coming from New York City 350 miles away amp160By my rough calculations the carbon output of the eightperson session ran to some ten metric tons roughly equivalent to a year8217s worth of the carbon emissions of 250 Ethiopians I had planned to attend that session clad in hikerbiker motley and holierthanthou carbonfree virtue I made it to the hotel in time but by then I needed carbs and booze not ecomusicological enlightenment The promotional material that encourages the AMS membership to attend the annual meeting reflexively reverts to the language of tourismamp160 This is not surprising given that the eighteenthcentury founding father of music history Charles Burney was himself one of the greatest musical tourists of his or any age amp160In that spirit the society8217s August newsletter begins 8220We welcome you this November to the AMS Annual Meeting in Rochester New York Rochester is a special place the confluence of the Erie Canal and the Genesee River created an industrial boom in the earlytomid nineteenth century and still provides 8216gorges8217 views today8221 The invitation then extolls the city8217s cultural offerings of museums and concert halls as well as the abundance of parksamp160 This view of Rochester8217s urban health is belied by the facts on the ground vacant buildings blocks flattened to make way for parking lots ghosttown streets that sometimes give the impression that a neutron bomb has just been detonated The skybridges that connect the hotels and convention center seem more geared to avoid contact with the AfricanAmerican underclass than Rochester8217s infamous cold weather I walked the downtown on Saturday afternoon across the Genesee River over to the Kodak Building the company name emblazoned on its steeply pitched Gothic roof Finished in 1914 the nineteenstory tower stood as Rochester8217s highest building for the next fifty years The company had 120000 employees in 1973 it filed for bankruptcy in 2012 and now employs just over 6000 Little more need be said about Rochester and postindustrial America 8220Our inner cities are a disaster8221 Donald Trump is fond of saying Rochester proves him all too right On my way back to the conference just a block from the convention center three men in African and Anglicaninflected religious garb held a sidewalk service in front of one of Rochester8217s many parking garages 8220What I am talking about is the disenchantment of America at the hands of the white people8221 he shouted pointing across the street in my direction I picked up my pace not wanting to be late for a paper entitled 8220Listening to Voiced Fragments of Global Nuclear Ruination Cold War Decay and the Acoustical Resonance of Nation Building8221 In Rochester there is plenty of decay to go around though the people living in places like the hideous modernist highrise in the Andrews Terrace a long block from the Convention Center get more of it than others Rochester8217s grim urban present is glossed over by all this promotional zeal and musichistorical inquisitiveness The conference might as well be held at a NORAD bunker deep in the Rockies or a floating convention center in the middle of Lake Ontario8212and it might well have to be what with the Doomsday Clock a couple of ticks from midnight and the waters rising all around For all the scholarly imagination and dedication on display in Rochester I didn8217t notice much reflection on the connection between the globalization that the business of international musicology participates in and environmental collapse not to mention the decline of the city hosting this year8217s annual conference The cosmopolitan story of Burney8217s heirs is written in carbon and contrails While consciousness of these contradictions is suppressed in pursuit of professional and scholarly advance there are increasing shadows of uneaseamp160 A recent survey devised by the School of Psychology at Cardiff University in Wales circulated to academics sought to understand how they viewed their jetsetting conferencing habits did they believe in climate change but nonetheless think their scholarly goals trumped those concerns As chance would have it one of the first people I ran into on my first full day at the Rochester conference was the Head of Cardiff8217s School of Music he also serves as International Dean for the University8217s College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences A brilliant pianist definitive scholar of the Lisztian Golden Age of nineteenthcentury pianism and a virulent foe of American political correctness the Cardiff Dean flies around the world for concert engagements and travels frequently to Asia that great source of students for western universities on academicadministrative business I forgot to ask him whether he8217d filled out the Cardiff psychology department8217s survey After my twowheeled arrival in Rochester it snowed lightly in the night and the temperatures plummeted below freezing I8217d gotten my ride in just ahead of the oncoming cold front The headwind had been a harbinger of the shift in the weather itself a reminder of more frigid times8212from the Pleistocene and into the Cold War The icy sidewalks were treacherous though that didn8217t affect the foot traffic muchamp160 Whatever the season few people are seen on the streets of Rochester8217s devastated downtown I spent most of the morning warming myself at a session entitled 8220Composing while Female8221 in the Convention Center8217s Lilac Ballroom South a dismal chamber that seemed all the more dank for its fanciful name At noon all the meeting quarters emptied out their titles evoking either European Monarchs or Captains of Industry or both the Grand the Strong the Regency the George Eastman the Morgan Along with three other conferees the Cardiff Dean and I met in the Riverside Court whose terrace is some fifty feet above the Genesee River raging in its concrete channel The racing brown water sent an angry message to the few musicologists who cared to throw a glance its way Our group of five piled into a car and drove a few miles to the restaurant8212an Ethiopian buffet

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<p>Jan 17 (Reuters) - HEDEF GIRISIM SERMAYESI YATIRIM ORTAKLIGI AS:</p> <p>* FY 2017 REVENUE OF 81.1 MILLION LIRA VERSUS 35.8 MILLION LIRA YEAR AGO</p> <p>* FY 2017 NET PROFIT OF 38.0 MILLION LIRA VERSUS 1.5 MILLION YEAR AGO Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage: (Gdynia Newsroom)</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BEIRUT/DAMASCUS (Reuters) - International chemical weapons inspectors will probably not go into the Syrian town of Douma on Wednesday, a U.N. source in Syria told Reuters, marking a further delay to efforts to investigate a suspected poison gas attack there.</p> <p>A U.N. security team entered Douma on Tuesday ahead of the planned visit by inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) international watchdog.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-inspectors/weapons-inspectors-delayed-after-gunfire-in-syrias-douma-sources-idUSKBN1HP0XC" type="external">Weapons inspectors delayed after gunfire in Syria's Douma: sources</a> <p>Syria's U.N. ambassador said on Tuesday the fact-finding mission would begin its work in Douma on Wednesday if the U.N. security team deemed the situation there safe.</p> <p>The U.N. source did not say when the inspectors might visit the site, or whether a planned visit to Douma on Wednesday had been postponed. The inspectors arrived in Damascus at the weekend.</p> <p>The suspected chemical attack on April 7 killed dozens of people in Douma, medical relief organizations say. It led to the rebel group that controlled Douma agreeing to surrender control of the town to the Syrian government.</p> <p>The government and its Russian allies say the attack was fabricated as a pretext to justify military strikes that were launched on Saturday by the United States, Britain and France.</p> <p>France has said it was very likely that evidence of the poison gas attack was disappearing before the inspectors could reach the town.</p> <p>The United States accused Russia on Monday of blocking international inspectors from reaching the site of the suspected poison gas attack in Syria and said Russians or Syrians may have tampered with evidence on the ground.</p> <p>Moscow denied the charge and blamed delays on retaliatory U.S.-led missile strikes on Syria at the weekend.</p> <p>Reporting by Kinda Makieh in Damascus; Writing by Ellen Francis in Beirut, Editing by Angus MacSwan</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea said on Wednesday it is considering how to change a decades-old armistice with North Korea into a peace agreement, as U.S. officials confirmed an unprecedented top-level meeting with the North Korean leader.</p> North Korean leader Kim Jong Un meets Song Tao, the head of the China's Communist Party's International Department who led a Chinese art troupe to North Korea for the April Spring Friendship Art Festival, in this handout photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on April 15, 2018. KCNA/via REUTERS <p>U.S. Secretary of State nominee and CIA Director Mike Pompeo became the most senior U.S. official known to have met North Korean leader Kim Jong Un when he visited Pyongyang at the end of March to discuss a planned summit with U.S. President Donald Trump.</p> <p>Pompeo's visit provided the strongest sign yet about Trump's willingness to become the first serving U.S. president ever to meet a North Korean leader.</p> <p>At the same time, old rivals North Korea and South Korea are preparing for their own summit, between Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, on April 27, with a bid to formally end the 1950-53 Korean War a major factor in talks.</p> <p>"As one of the plans, we are looking at a possibility of shifting the Korean peninsula's armistice to a peace regime," a high-ranking South Korean presidential official told reporters when asked about the North-South summit.</p> <p>"But that's not a matter than can be resolved between the two Koreas alone. It requires close consultations with other concerned nations, as well as North Korea," the official said.</p> <p>South Korea and a U.S.-led U.N. force are technically still at war with North Korea after the Korean War ended with a truce, not a peace treaty. The U.S.-led United Nations Command, Chinese forces and North Korea signed the 1953 armistice, to which South Korea is not a party.</p> <p>"I do not know if any joint statement to be reached at the inter-Korean summit would include wording about ending the war, but we certainly hope to be able to include an agreement to end hostile acts between the South and North," the official said.</p> <p>Such discussions between the two Koreas, and between North Korea and the United States, would have been unthinkable at the end of last year, after months of escalating tension, and fear of war, over the North's nuclear and missile programs.</p> <p>But then Kim declared in a New Year's speech his country was "a peace-loving and responsible nuclear power" and called for lower military tension and improved ties with the South.</p> <p>He also said he was considering sending a delegation to the Winter Olympics in South Korea in February, a visit that began a succession of steps to improve ties.</p> WAR NOT OVER <p>Pompeo's visit to the North was arranged by South Korean intelligence chief Suh Hoon with his North Korean counterpart, Kim Yong Chol, and was intended to assess whether Kim was prepared to hold serious talks, a U.S. official said.</p> <p>Pompeo flew from a U.S. air force base in Osan, south of Seoul, an official with the South's defense ministry said. The South's presidential office declined to comment on the trip.</p> <p>Amid the diplomatic flurry, CNN reported that Chinese President Xi Jinping also planned to visit Pyongyang soon, after North Korean leader Kim made a surprise trip last month to China, its major sole ally.</p> <p>Speaking in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said she had no information about any Xi visit to North Korea.</p> <p>"What I can stress is that China and North Korea have a tradition of high level mutual visits," she told reporters.</p> <p>"China is willing to strengthen high-level exchanges with North Korea, deepen strategic communications, expand talks and cooperation, and to bring out the important leading role of high-level contact in China-North Korea relations."</p> <p>Trump said on Tuesday he backed efforts between North and South Korea aimed at ending the state of war.</p> <p>"People don't realize the Korean War has not ended," Trump told reporters.</p> <p>"It's going on right now. And they are discussing an end to the war. Subject to a deal, they have my blessing and they do have my blessing to discuss that."</p> <p>Trump said he believed there was a lot of goodwill in the diplomatic push with North Korea, but added it was possible the summit - first proposed in March and which the president said could take place in late May or early June - may not happen.</p> <p>If the summit did not happen, the United States and its allies would maintain pressure on North Korea through sanctions, he said.</p> <p>Nevertheless, Pompeo's conversations in North Korea had fueled Trump's belief that productive negotiations were possible, according to a U.S. senior official briefed on the trip.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Soyoung Kim and Joyce Lee in SEOUL, John Walcott and Steve Holland in WASHINGTON, and Christian Shepherd in BEIJING; Editing by Robert Birsel</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>((In this April 17 story, corrects spelling of "cowling" in fifth paragraph.)</p> <p>By Mark Makela</p> <p>PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - An engine on a Southwest Airlines flight with 149 people aboard exploded and broke apart in mid-air on Tuesday, killing one passenger and nearly sucking another out of a shattered window, according to airline and federal authorities and witness and media accounts.</p> <p>The plane, a Boeing 737-700 which was bound to Dallas from New York, made an emergency landing in Philadelphia.</p> <p>The death of 43-year-old Jennifer Riordan on Flight 1380 was the first in a U.S. commercial aviation accident since 2009, according to National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) statistics.</p> <p>NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt told an evening news conference at the Philadelphia airport that a preliminary investigation found an engine fan blade missing, having apparently broken off, and that there was metal fatigue at the point where it normally attached.</p> <p>Sumwalt said part of the engine's covering, called a cowling, was found in Bernville, Pennsylvania, about 70 miles from the Philadelphia airport.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-pennsylvania-airplane-inspection/southwest-says-aircraft-hit-by-engine-explosion-was-inspected-this-week-idUSKBN1HO3F5" type="external">Southwest says aircraft hit by engine explosion was inspected this week</a> <p>"It is very unusual so we are taking this event extremely seriously," Sumwalt said. "This should not happen and we want to find out why it happened so that preventative measures can be put in place." He said the investigation could take 12 to 15 months to complete.</p> <p>Flight 1380 took off from New York's LaGuardia Airport at around 10:27 a.m. and was diverted to Philadelphia just under an hour later, according to flight tracking website FlightAware.com.</p> <p>Southwest Chief Executive Officer Gary Kelly said the flight landed at Philadelphia International at around 11:20 a.m.</p> <p>The engine on the plane's left side threw off shrapnel when it blew apart, shattering a window and causing rapid cabin depressurization that nearly pulled a female passenger through the hole, according to witness accounts and local news media reports.</p> <p>"We have a part of the aircraft missing, so we're going to need to slow down a bit," the plane's captain, Tammy Jo Shults, told air traffic controllers in audio from the cockpit released on NBC News.</p> <p>Asked by a controller if the jet was on fire, Shults said it was not, but added, "They said there is a hole and someone went out."</p> <p>"A woman was partially, was drawn out of the plane and pulled back in by other passengers," Todd Bauer, whose daughter was on the flight, told the NBC affiliate in Philadelphia.</p> <p>Riordan was a Wells Fargo banking executive and well-known community volunteer from Albuquerque, New Mexico, according to a Wells Fargo official, who spoke on condition of anonymity as she was unsure whether all of Riordan's family had been notified of her death.</p> <p>Riordan was on the way back from a New York business trip, where she had sent a tweet on Monday showing the view from her hotel in Midtown Manhattan with the caption: "Great business stay." Her Facebook page shows she was married with two children.</p> <p>The plane, which was bound for Dallas Love Field, had been inspected as recently as Sunday, according to Southwest's Kelly, who confirmed that Tuesday's fatality was the first of its kind in the carrier's 51-year history.</p> <p>At 11:18 a.m., passenger Marty Martinez posted on Facebook a live video of himself on the plane, wearing a breathing mask, as the plane descended. More than an hour later, at 12:27 p.m., Martinez posted pictures of a blown-out window and the badly damaged engine.</p> ULTRASONIC INSPECTIONS <p>Southwest Airlines said it was accelerating its existing engine inspection program and conducting ultrasonic inspections of fan blades of the CFM56 engines on all of its the 737 jets.</p> <p>In 2017 the Federal Aviation Administration issued a proposed airworthiness directive on the engine after an uncontained engine failure on a Southwest flight in August 2016.</p> <p>"What we want to do is see if anything in that airworthiness directive that came out from an event two years ago involving another Southwest airplane landed in Pensacola, we want to see if this part might have been subjected to that airworthiness directive," Sumwalt said.</p> <p>"The entire Southwest Airlines Family is devastated and extends its deepest, heartfelt sympathy to the customers, employees, family members and loved ones affected by this tragic event," Southwest said in a statement.</p> <p>There were 144 passengers and five crew members aboard the flight.</p> <p>One passenger was taken to a hospital in critical condition and seven people were treated for minor injuries at the scene, Philadelphia Fire Department spokeswoman Kathy Matheson said. Matheson could not confirm how the passenger in critical condition sustained her injuries.</p> <p>Flight 1380 was diverted to Philadelphia for an emergency landing after crew members reported damage to an engine, the fuselage and at least one window, the Federal Aviation Administration said.</p> Emergency personnel monitor the damaged engine of Southwest Airlines Flight 1380, which diverted to the Philadelphia International Airport this morning after the airline crew reported damage to one of the aircraft's engines, on a runway in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania U.S. April 17, 2018. REUTERS/Mark Makela ?YELLING AND SCREAMING? <p>"Everybody was going crazy, and yelling and screaming," passenger Martinez told CNN.</p> <p>Martinez said objects flew out of the hole where the window had exploded, and "passengers right next to her were holding onto (the woman being pulled out). And, meanwhile, there was blood all over this man's hands. He was tending to her."</p> <p>Television images showed that most of the outer casing around the left engine of the Boeing Co 737-700 ripped away and a window near the engine on the plane's left side was missing.</p> <p>"All of a sudden, we heard this loud bang, rattling, it felt like one of the engines went out. The oxygen masks dropped," passenger Kristopher Johnson told CNN. "It just shredded the left-side engine completely. ... It was scary."</p> <p>Southwest shares fell more than 3 percent after the NTSB reported the fatality, before closing down 1.1 percent at $54.27 on the New York Stock Exchange.</p> <p>Boeing in a statement extended its condolences to the family of the woman killed, and said it is "providing assistance at the request and under the direction" of the NTSB.</p> Slideshow (5 Images) <p>The Boeing 737 is the world's most-sold aircraft and its engines - supplied by a joint-venture co-owned by General Electric and France's Safran called CFM International - are the most widely used in the aircraft industry and are reported to be among the most reliable.</p> <p>Any design issues with the long-established CFM56 engine could have repercussions for fleets worldwide. But given that thousands of the engines are already in use globally, industry experts say the focus of the investigation is more likely to fall on one-off production or maintenance issues, though it is too early to say what caused the explosion.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Tim Hepher in Paris, Andrew Hay in New Mexico, David Shepardson in Washington, Alana Wise, Anna Driver and Peter Szekeley in New York, Jeffrey Dastin in San Francisco and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Writing by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Bill Tarrant and Leslie Adler</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>SYDNEY (Reuters) - Asian shares crept ahead on Wednesday after Wall Street took heart from upbeat corporate earnings, though nagging concerns about trade barriers and the global growth outlook kept currencies and bonds subdued.</p> FILE PHOTO: A man looks at an electronic stock quotation board outside a brokerage in Tokyo, Japan February 9, 2018. REUTERS/Toru Hanai <p>Chinese markets struggled even as Beijing boosted liquidity in the banking system. Shanghai blue chips hit an eight-month low before recouping losses.</p> <p>Late Tuesday, the PBOC unexpectedly announced it would cut the cash banks must hold as reserves in a move that frees up lending for small firms but falls short of a broad monetary easing.</p> <p>Mainland Chinese shares buckled after the United States banned American companies from selling components to Chinese telecom equipment maker ZTE Corp.</p> <p>MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan bounced 0.5 percent, though that followed four straight sessions of losses.</p> <p>Japan's Nikkei climbed 1.2 percent, with investors waiting for any developments on trade as Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe meets President Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort.</p> <p>European shares are seen rising, with spread-betters expecting 0.2-0.3 percent gains in Britain's FTSE, France's Cac and Germany's Dax.</p> <p>E-Mini futures for the S&amp;amp;P 500 gained 0.1 percent after robust earnings from Netflix, Goldman Sachs and healthcare companies fuelled optimism about what is expected to be the strongest earnings season in seven years.</p> <p>Profits at the 48 S&amp;amp;P500 companies that have announced earnings so far have risen 28.7 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, said Mutsumi Kagawa, chief global strategist at Rakuten Securities in Tokyo.</p> <p>The Dow ended Tuesday up 0.88 percent, while the S&amp;amp;P 500 rose 1.06 percent and the Nasdaq 1.78 percent.</p> <p>"The three main U.S. indexes turned positive on the year, which seems to suggest to me that markets are entering risk-on mode from risk-off," Kagawa said.</p> <p>Yet there were signs of caution in the latest BofA Merrill Lynch survey of fund mangers which found investors squirreling more funds away into cash, while cutting their equity allocation to an 18-month low.</p> OPTIMISM TESTED <p>The outlook for the global economy also darkened with just a net 5 percent of fund managers expecting stronger growth in the next 12 months - the lowest since the United Kingdom voted to leave the EU in June 2016.</p> <p>While the IMF left its global growth forecasts unchanged for 2018 and 2019 on Tuesday, it judged medium-term risks were to the downside - citing financial vulnerabilities, geopolitical strains and tariffs.</p> <p>"The global narrative has quickly shifted from synchronous global growth, upgraded growth and glimmers of inflation in early 2018 to a focus on tariffs and protectionist rhetoric," said Robert Rennie, head of financial markets strategy at Westpac.</p> <p>"We ultimately believe that we will see a negotiated solution, but there is still a long way to go and further bouts of volatility and headline risk seem assured."</p> <p>Worries about the longevity of the U.S. economic expansion were one reason the Treasury curve was at its flattest in a decade and why some interest-rate curves were starting to price in rate cuts for 2020.</p> <p>The air of uncertainty was keeping currencies restrained.</p> <p>The euro was stuck at $1.2370, after topping out at $1.2413 overnight, while the dollar index was barely moved at 89.538.</p> <p>The dollar did nudge modestly higher on the yen to 107.25, helped by signs of progress in U.S. talks with North Korea.</p> <p>U.S. Secretary of State nominee and CIA Director Mike Pompeo secretly visited North Korea and met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to discuss a planned summit with President Trump.</p> <p>In commodity markets, gold was a fraction easier at $1,344.11 an ounce.</p> <p>Oil prices firmed with Brent crude futures up 32 cents to $71.90 a barrel, while U.S. crude rose 33 cents to $66.85 a barrel.</p> <p>Reporting by Wayne Cole; Additional reporting by Hideyuki Sano in Tokyo; Editing by Eric Meijer</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

BRIEF-Hedef Girisim Sermayesi Yatirim Ortakligi 2017 Net Profit Rises To 38.0 Mln Lira OPCW experts unlikely to enter Syria's Douma on Wednesday: U.N. source South Korea says discussing peace deal with North Korea ahead of summit One killed when engine explodes on Southwest flight Asian shares edge higher in step with Wall Street, China lags

https://reuters.com/article/brief-hedef-girisim-sermayesi-yatirim-or/brief-hedef-girisim-sermayesi-yatirim-ortakligi-2017-net-profit-rises-to-380-mln-lira-idUSFWN1PC16M

2018-01-17

2least

Jan 17 Reuters HEDEF GIRISIM SERMAYESI YATIRIM ORTAKLIGI AS FY 2017 REVENUE OF 811 MILLION LIRA VERSUS 358 MILLION LIRA YEAR AGO FY 2017 NET PROFIT OF 380 MILLION LIRA VERSUS 15 MILLION YEAR AGO Source text for Eikon Further company coverage Gdynia Newsroom Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BEIRUTDAMASCUS Reuters International chemical weapons inspectors will probably not go into the Syrian town of Douma on Wednesday a UN source in Syria told Reuters marking a further delay to efforts to investigate a suspected poison gas attack there A UN security team entered Douma on Tuesday ahead of the planned visit by inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons OPCW international watchdog Related Coverage Weapons inspectors delayed after gunfire in Syrias Douma sources Syrias UN ambassador said on Tuesday the factfinding mission would begin its work in Douma on Wednesday if the UN security team deemed the situation there safe The UN source did not say when the inspectors might visit the site or whether a planned visit to Douma on Wednesday had been postponed The inspectors arrived in Damascus at the weekend The suspected chemical attack on April 7 killed dozens of people in Douma medical relief organizations say It led to the rebel group that controlled Douma agreeing to surrender control of the town to the Syrian government The government and its Russian allies say the attack was fabricated as a pretext to justify military strikes that were launched on Saturday by the United States Britain and France France has said it was very likely that evidence of the poison gas attack was disappearing before the inspectors could reach the town The United States accused Russia on Monday of blocking international inspectors from reaching the site of the suspected poison gas attack in Syria and said Russians or Syrians may have tampered with evidence on the ground Moscow denied the charge and blamed delays on retaliatory USled missile strikes on Syria at the weekend Reporting by Kinda Makieh in Damascus Writing by Ellen Francis in Beirut Editing by Angus MacSwan Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles SEOUL Reuters South Korea said on Wednesday it is considering how to change a decadesold armistice with North Korea into a peace agreement as US officials confirmed an unprecedented toplevel meeting with the North Korean leader North Korean leader Kim Jong Un meets Song Tao the head of the Chinas Communist Partys International Department who led a Chinese art troupe to North Korea for the April Spring Friendship Art Festival in this handout photo released by North Koreas Korean Central News Agency KCNA on April 15 2018 KCNAvia REUTERS US Secretary of State nominee and CIA Director Mike Pompeo became the most senior US official known to have met North Korean leader Kim Jong Un when he visited Pyongyang at the end of March to discuss a planned summit with US President Donald Trump Pompeos visit provided the strongest sign yet about Trumps willingness to become the first serving US president ever to meet a North Korean leader At the same time old rivals North Korea and South Korea are preparing for their own summit between Kim and South Korean President Moon Jaein on April 27 with a bid to formally end the 195053 Korean War a major factor in talks As one of the plans we are looking at a possibility of shifting the Korean peninsulas armistice to a peace regime a highranking South Korean presidential official told reporters when asked about the NorthSouth summit But thats not a matter than can be resolved between the two Koreas alone It requires close consultations with other concerned nations as well as North Korea the official said South Korea and a USled UN force are technically still at war with North Korea after the Korean War ended with a truce not a peace treaty The USled United Nations Command Chinese forces and North Korea signed the 1953 armistice to which South Korea is not a party I do not know if any joint statement to be reached at the interKorean summit would include wording about ending the war but we certainly hope to be able to include an agreement to end hostile acts between the South and North the official said Such discussions between the two Koreas and between North Korea and the United States would have been unthinkable at the end of last year after months of escalating tension and fear of war over the Norths nuclear and missile programs But then Kim declared in a New Years speech his country was a peaceloving and responsible nuclear power and called for lower military tension and improved ties with the South He also said he was considering sending a delegation to the Winter Olympics in South Korea in February a visit that began a succession of steps to improve ties WAR NOT OVER Pompeos visit to the North was arranged by South Korean intelligence chief Suh Hoon with his North Korean counterpart Kim Yong Chol and was intended to assess whether Kim was prepared to hold serious talks a US official said Pompeo flew from a US air force base in Osan south of Seoul an official with the Souths defense ministry said The Souths presidential office declined to comment on the trip Amid the diplomatic flurry CNN reported that Chinese President Xi Jinping also planned to visit Pyongyang soon after North Korean leader Kim made a surprise trip last month to China its major sole ally Speaking in Beijing Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said she had no information about any Xi visit to North Korea What I can stress is that China and North Korea have a tradition of high level mutual visits she told reporters China is willing to strengthen highlevel exchanges with North Korea deepen strategic communications expand talks and cooperation and to bring out the important leading role of highlevel contact in ChinaNorth Korea relations Trump said on Tuesday he backed efforts between North and South Korea aimed at ending the state of war People dont realize the Korean War has not ended Trump told reporters Its going on right now And they are discussing an end to the war Subject to a deal they have my blessing and they do have my blessing to discuss that Trump said he believed there was a lot of goodwill in the diplomatic push with North Korea but added it was possible the summit first proposed in March and which the president said could take place in late May or early June may not happen If the summit did not happen the United States and its allies would maintain pressure on North Korea through sanctions he said Nevertheless Pompeos conversations in North Korea had fueled Trumps belief that productive negotiations were possible according to a US senior official briefed on the trip Additional reporting by Soyoung Kim and Joyce Lee in SEOUL John Walcott and Steve Holland in WASHINGTON and Christian Shepherd in BEIJING Editing by Robert Birsel Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles In this April 17 story corrects spelling of cowling in fifth paragraph By Mark Makela PHILADELPHIA Reuters An engine on a Southwest Airlines flight with 149 people aboard exploded and broke apart in midair on Tuesday killing one passenger and nearly sucking another out of a shattered window according to airline and federal authorities and witness and media accounts The plane a Boeing 737700 which was bound to Dallas from New York made an emergency landing in Philadelphia The death of 43yearold Jennifer Riordan on Flight 1380 was the first in a US commercial aviation accident since 2009 according to National Transportation Safety Board NTSB statistics NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt told an evening news conference at the Philadelphia airport that a preliminary investigation found an engine fan blade missing having apparently broken off and that there was metal fatigue at the point where it normally attached Sumwalt said part of the engines covering called a cowling was found in Bernville Pennsylvania about 70 miles from the Philadelphia airport Related Coverage Southwest says aircraft hit by engine explosion was inspected this week It is very unusual so we are taking this event extremely seriously Sumwalt said This should not happen and we want to find out why it happened so that preventative measures can be put in place He said the investigation could take 12 to 15 months to complete Flight 1380 took off from New Yorks LaGuardia Airport at around 1027 am and was diverted to Philadelphia just under an hour later according to flight tracking website FlightAwarecom Southwest Chief Executive Officer Gary Kelly said the flight landed at Philadelphia International at around 1120 am The engine on the planes left side threw off shrapnel when it blew apart shattering a window and causing rapid cabin depressurization that nearly pulled a female passenger through the hole according to witness accounts and local news media reports We have a part of the aircraft missing so were going to need to slow down a bit the planes captain Tammy Jo Shults told air traffic controllers in audio from the cockpit released on NBC News Asked by a controller if the jet was on fire Shults said it was not but added They said there is a hole and someone went out A woman was partially was drawn out of the plane and pulled back in by other passengers Todd Bauer whose daughter was on the flight told the NBC affiliate in Philadelphia Riordan was a Wells Fargo banking executive and wellknown community volunteer from Albuquerque New Mexico according to a Wells Fargo official who spoke on condition of anonymity as she was unsure whether all of Riordans family had been notified of her death Riordan was on the way back from a New York business trip where she had sent a tweet on Monday showing the view from her hotel in Midtown Manhattan with the caption Great business stay Her Facebook page shows she was married with two children The plane which was bound for Dallas Love Field had been inspected as recently as Sunday according to Southwests Kelly who confirmed that Tuesdays fatality was the first of its kind in the carriers 51year history At 1118 am passenger Marty Martinez posted on Facebook a live video of himself on the plane wearing a breathing mask as the plane descended More than an hour later at 1227 pm Martinez posted pictures of a blownout window and the badly damaged engine ULTRASONIC INSPECTIONS Southwest Airlines said it was accelerating its existing engine inspection program and conducting ultrasonic inspections of fan blades of the CFM56 engines on all of its the 737 jets In 2017 the Federal Aviation Administration issued a proposed airworthiness directive on the engine after an uncontained engine failure on a Southwest flight in August 2016 What we want to do is see if anything in that airworthiness directive that came out from an event two years ago involving another Southwest airplane landed in Pensacola we want to see if this part might have been subjected to that airworthiness directive Sumwalt said The entire Southwest Airlines Family is devastated and extends its deepest heartfelt sympathy to the customers employees family members and loved ones affected by this tragic event Southwest said in a statement There were 144 passengers and five crew members aboard the flight One passenger was taken to a hospital in critical condition and seven people were treated for minor injuries at the scene Philadelphia Fire Department spokeswoman Kathy Matheson said Matheson could not confirm how the passenger in critical condition sustained her injuries Flight 1380 was diverted to Philadelphia for an emergency landing after crew members reported damage to an engine the fuselage and at least one window the Federal Aviation Administration said Emergency personnel monitor the damaged engine of Southwest Airlines Flight 1380 which diverted to the Philadelphia International Airport this morning after the airline crew reported damage to one of the aircrafts engines on a runway in Philadelphia Pennsylvania US April 17 2018 REUTERSMark Makela YELLING AND SCREAMING Everybody was going crazy and yelling and screaming passenger Martinez told CNN Martinez said objects flew out of the hole where the window had exploded and passengers right next to her were holding onto the woman being pulled out And meanwhile there was blood all over this mans hands He was tending to her Television images showed that most of the outer casing around the left engine of the Boeing Co 737700 ripped away and a window near the engine on the planes left side was missing All of a sudden we heard this loud bang rattling it felt like one of the engines went out The oxygen masks dropped passenger Kristopher Johnson told CNN It just shredded the leftside engine completely It was scary Southwest shares fell more than 3 percent after the NTSB reported the fatality before closing down 11 percent at 5427 on the New York Stock Exchange Boeing in a statement extended its condolences to the family of the woman killed and said it is providing assistance at the request and under the direction of the NTSB Slideshow 5 Images The Boeing 737 is the worlds mostsold aircraft and its engines supplied by a jointventure coowned by General Electric and Frances Safran called CFM International are the most widely used in the aircraft industry and are reported to be among the most reliable Any design issues with the longestablished CFM56 engine could have repercussions for fleets worldwide But given that thousands of the engines are already in use globally industry experts say the focus of the investigation is more likely to fall on oneoff production or maintenance issues though it is too early to say what caused the explosion Additional reporting by Tim Hepher in Paris Andrew Hay in New Mexico David Shepardson in Washington Alana Wise Anna Driver and Peter Szekeley in New York Jeffrey Dastin in San Francisco and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles Writing by Dan Whitcomb Editing by Bill Tarrant and Leslie Adler Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles SYDNEY Reuters Asian shares crept ahead on Wednesday after Wall Street took heart from upbeat corporate earnings though nagging concerns about trade barriers and the global growth outlook kept currencies and bonds subdued FILE PHOTO A man looks at an electronic stock quotation board outside a brokerage in Tokyo Japan February 9 2018 REUTERSToru Hanai Chinese markets struggled even as Beijing boosted liquidity in the banking system Shanghai blue chips hit an eightmonth low before recouping losses Late Tuesday the PBOC unexpectedly announced it would cut the cash banks must hold as reserves in a move that frees up lending for small firms but falls short of a broad monetary easing Mainland Chinese shares buckled after the United States banned American companies from selling components to Chinese telecom equipment maker ZTE Corp MSCIs broadest index of AsiaPacific shares outside Japan bounced 05 percent though that followed four straight sessions of losses Japans Nikkei climbed 12 percent with investors waiting for any developments on trade as Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe meets President Donald Trump at his MaraLago resort European shares are seen rising with spreadbetters expecting 0203 percent gains in Britains FTSE Frances Cac and Germanys Dax EMini futures for the SampampP 500 gained 01 percent after robust earnings from Netflix Goldman Sachs and healthcare companies fuelled optimism about what is expected to be the strongest earnings season in seven years Profits at the 48 SampampP500 companies that have announced earnings so far have risen 287 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier said Mutsumi Kagawa chief global strategist at Rakuten Securities in Tokyo The Dow ended Tuesday up 088 percent while the SampampP 500 rose 106 percent and the Nasdaq 178 percent The three main US indexes turned positive on the year which seems to suggest to me that markets are entering riskon mode from riskoff Kagawa said Yet there were signs of caution in the latest BofA Merrill Lynch survey of fund mangers which found investors squirreling more funds away into cash while cutting their equity allocation to an 18month low OPTIMISM TESTED The outlook for the global economy also darkened with just a net 5 percent of fund managers expecting stronger growth in the next 12 months the lowest since the United Kingdom voted to leave the EU in June 2016 While the IMF left its global growth forecasts unchanged for 2018 and 2019 on Tuesday it judged mediumterm risks were to the downside citing financial vulnerabilities geopolitical strains and tariffs The global narrative has quickly shifted from synchronous global growth upgraded growth and glimmers of inflation in early 2018 to a focus on tariffs and protectionist rhetoric said Robert Rennie head of financial markets strategy at Westpac We ultimately believe that we will see a negotiated solution but there is still a long way to go and further bouts of volatility and headline risk seem assured Worries about the longevity of the US economic expansion were one reason the Treasury curve was at its flattest in a decade and why some interestrate curves were starting to price in rate cuts for 2020 The air of uncertainty was keeping currencies restrained The euro was stuck at 12370 after topping out at 12413 overnight while the dollar index was barely moved at 89538 The dollar did nudge modestly higher on the yen to 10725 helped by signs of progress in US talks with North Korea US Secretary of State nominee and CIA Director Mike Pompeo secretly visited North Korea and met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to discuss a planned summit with President Trump In commodity markets gold was a fraction easier at 134411 an ounce Oil prices firmed with Brent crude futures up 32 cents to 7190 a barrel while US crude rose 33 cents to 6685 a barrel Reporting by Wayne Cole Additional reporting by Hideyuki Sano in Tokyo Editing by Eric Meijer Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>(Refiles to show date Jan 22, not Jan 18)</p> <p>* Graphic: World FX rates in 2018 <a href="http://tmsnrt.rs/2egbfVh" type="external">tmsnrt.rs/2egbfVh</a></p> <p>* Graphic: Trade-weighted sterling since Brexit vote <a href="http://tmsnrt.rs/2hwV9Hv" type="external">tmsnrt.rs/2hwV9Hv</a></p> <p>By Jemima Kelly</p> <p>LONDON, Jan 22 (Reuters) - Sterling steadied around $1.39 on Monday, with traders cautious about pushing the pound higher after five consecutive weeks of gains against the dollar - the currency&#8217;s longest winning streak since 2014.</p> <p>Data published on Friday showed speculators increased their net-long positions on sterling - or bets that it would rise - to the highest level in 3-1/2 years in the latest week, on the view that Brexit talks had so far gone relatively well and that the economy was ticking along better than some had expected.</p> <p>Former Goldman Sachs economist and Treasury minister Jim O&#8217;Neill said on Monday morning that Britain&#8217;s economy is likely to do better in 2018 than many forecasts suggest and the benefits of global growth in the coming years will &#8220;easily dwarf&#8221; any Brexit hit.</p> <p>But some analysts say there have been few fundamental drivers behind the pound&#8217;s 3 percent climb against the dollar since the start of the year, that there remains a great deal of political uncertainty, and that sterling is due a correction lower.</p> <p>&#8220;With speculative long positioning close to multi-year extremes, we advise against chasing the currency higher. If anything, we remain of the view that the currency is trading in overbought territory,&#8221; said Credit Agricole currency strategists Manuel Oliveri.</p> <p>Sterling traded flat at $1.3907 on Monday, close to Friday&#8217;s peak of $1.3945, its highest since the results of Britain&#8217;s vote to leave the European Union in June 2016.</p> <p>Although it is still down more than 7 percent since the day of the ballot, thee pound is now trading higher against the dollar than during a dip four months before the EU referendum, when the currency briefly touched as low as $1.3836.</p> <p>Versus the euro, however, which has strengthened across the board in recent months, sterling is still trading far lower than its pre-referendum levels and is down almost 14 percent since the day of the vote.</p> <p>The pound was trading up 0.1 percent on the day at 88.08 pence per euro on Monday.</p> <p>&#8220;Euro strength has pulled the pound higher lately, pushing sterling/dollar to post-referendum highs,&#8221; wrote UBS Wealth Management strategists in a note to clients.</p> <p>&#8220;We expect this trend to continue, as the UK economy remains relatively solid. A strong U.S. dollar rebound remains unlikely, given the U.S.&#8217;s large trade and budget deficits, but rising U.S. interest rates should deliver some support to the dollar,&#8221; they added.</p> <p>French President Emmanuel Macron said on Saturday Britain would be able to have a bespoke deal with the European Union after Brexit, one of Prime Minister Theresa May&#8217;s objectives, though London&#8217;s financial centre could not enjoy the same level of access to the EU under May&#8217;s current Brexit plan. (Reporting by Jemima Kelly)</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - Starbucks Corp ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=SBUX.O" type="external">SBUX.O</a>) and other coffee sellers must put a cancer warning on coffee sold in California, a Los Angeles judge has ruled, possibly exposing the companies to millions of dollars in fines.</p> FILE PHOTO - A woman holds a Frappuccino at a Starbucks store inside the Tom Bradley terminal at LAX airport in Los Angeles, California, United States, October 27, 2015. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson <p>A little-known not-for-profit group sued some 90 coffee retailers, including Starbucks, on grounds they were violating a California law requiring companies to warn consumers of chemicals in their products that could cause cancer.</p> <p>One of those chemicals is acrylamide, a byproduct of roasting coffee beans that is present in high levels in brewed coffee.</p> <p>Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle said in a decision dated Wednesday that Starbucks and other companies had failed to show there was no significant risk from a carcinogen produced in the coffee roasting process, court documents showed.</p> <p>Starbucks and other defendants have until April 10 to file objections to the decision.</p> <p>Starbucks declined to comment, referring reporters to a statement by the National Coffee Association (NCA) that said the industry was considering an appeal and further legal actions.</p> <p>&#8220;Cancer warning labels on coffee would be misleading. The U.S. government&#8217;s own Dietary Guidelines state that coffee can be part of a healthy lifestyle,&#8221; the NCA statement said.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=SBUX.O" type="external">Starbucks Corp</a> 57.89 SBUX.O Nasdaq -0.01 (-0.02%) SBUX.O DNKN.O MCD.N <p>In his decision, Berle said: &#8220;Defendants failed to satisfy their burden of proving by a preponderance of evidence that consumption of coffee confers a benefit to human health.&#8221;</p> <p>Officials from Dunkin&#8217; Donuts ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=DNKN.O" type="external">DNKN.O</a>), McDonald&#8217;s Corp ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=MCD.N" type="external">MCD.N</a>), Peet&#8217;s and other big coffee sellers did not immediately respond to requests for comment.</p> <p>The lawsuit was filed in 2010 by the Council for Education and Research on Toxics (CERT). It calls for fines as large as $2,500 per person for every exposure to the chemical since 2002 at the defendants&#8217; shops in California. Any civil penalties, which will be decided in a third phase of the trial, could be huge in California, which has a population of nearly 40 million.</p> <p>CERT&#8217;s lawyer Raphael Metzger did not immediately respond to a request for comment.</p> <p>Starbucks lost the first phase of the trial in which it failed to show the level of acrylamide in coffee was below that which would pose a significant risk of cancer. In the second phase of the trial, defendants failed to prove there was an acceptable &#8220;alternative&#8221; risk level for the carcinogen, court documents showed.</p> <p>Several defendants in the case settled before Wednesday&#8217;s decision, agreeing to post signage about the cancer-linked chemical and pay millions in fines, according to published reports.</p> <p>Reporting by Nate Raymond; Additional reporting by Lisa Baertlein; Writing by Andrew Hay; Editing by Richard Chang and Leslie Adler</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BEIJING (Reuters) - China warned the United States on Thursday not to open Pandora&#8217;s Box and spark a flurry of protectionist practices across the globe, even as Beijing pointed to U.S. goods that it could target in a deepening Sino-U.S. trade dispute.</p> <p>China could target a broad range of U.S. businesses from agriculture to aircraft, autos, semiconductors and even services if the trade conflict escalates, the official China Daily newspaper said in an editorial on Thursday.</p> <p>President Donald Trump&#8217;s move last week to slap up to $60 billion in tariffs on some Chinese imports has since provoked a warning from Beijing that it could retaliate with duties of up to $3 billion of U.S. imports.</p> <p>China&#8217;s biggest U.S. imports are aircraft and related equipment, soybeans and autos, with the total bill about $40 billion last year.</p> <p>&#8220;The malicious practices of the United States are like opening Pandora&#8217;s Box, and there is a danger of triggering a chain reaction that will spread the virus of trade protectionism across the globe,&#8221; a commerce ministry spokesman said.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-china-economy-intellectualproperty/china-issues-guidelines-on-transfer-of-ip-rights-to-foreign-investors-idUSKBN1H514P" type="external">China issues guidelines on transfer of IP rights to foreign investors</a> <p>The official line from China continues to be stern even as Beijing says it is all for dialogue and negotiations. The feedback from U.S. and Chinese officials on the nature and extent of trade talks remains mixed, media reports show.</p> <p>The Financial Times reported only on Monday that China had offered to buy more U.S. micro-chips and move more quickly to finalize rules allowing foreign firms to take majority stakes in Chinese securities firms, citing people briefed on the negotiations.</p> <p>Chinese customs data shows the U.S. accounted for just $2.6 billion, or 1 percent, of China&#8217;s total semiconductor imports last year by value, with suppliers in South Korea, Taiwan and Japan commanding a bigger share.</p> <p>But a source in the U.S. semiconductor industry said U.S. companies have slightly more than 50 percent of China&#8217;s market for chips, though export data does not reflect that because much of the product is sent offshore for low value added processing.</p> <p>The source said the U.S. semiconductor industry had not asked the Trump administration to urge China to buy more U.S. chips and had been told by senior U.S. officials that the U.S. government had not made such a request to Beijing.</p> <p>&#8220;We don&#8217;t need China to buy more chips,&#8221; the source said, adding that U.S. industry was concerned about being targeted by Chinese non-tariff barriers.</p> <p>&#8220;It&#8217;s more about (Chinese) subsidies, IP protection, and cyber rules,&#8221; the source said, referring to concerns over Chinese retaliation.</p> <p>China has long said it would like to import more U.S. high-tech goods, including high-end chips, but has been stymied by U.S. export controls set on national security grounds.</p> <p>The Trump administration is accusing Chinese firms of stealing intellectual property and forcing U.S. firms to share commercial secrets - allegations that China denies.</p> <p>On Thursday, China&#8217;s State Council, or cabinet, said transfers of Chinese intellectual property rights to foreign investors will be reviewed if national security is determined to be at stake, or if core technological innovations are involved.</p> <p>Government approval will also be needed for intellectual property transfers involving semiconductors, software and agriculture.</p> SERVICES MAY BE TARGETED <p>China&#8217;s commerce ministry said on Thursday the U.S. approach to trade could trigger a domino effect and U.S. trade protectionism will only hurt U.S. consumers.</p> FILE PHOTO: Container boxes are seen at the Yangshan Deep Water Port, part of the Shanghai Free Trade Zone, in Shanghai, China September 24, 2016. REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo <p>While China hopes the U.S. will resolve trade conflicts with China through dialogue, it will take all possible steps to protect its interests, ministry spokesman Gao Feng told a regular briefing in Beijing.</p> <p>&#8220;Negotiations must be equal, and China will not accept any consultation under unilateral coercion,&#8221; Gao said.</p> <p>On Wednesday, Trump&#8217;s top trade envoy said he would give China a 60-day window before tariffs on Chinese goods take effect, but added that it would take years to bring the two countries&#8217; trading relationship &#8220;to a good place.&#8221;</p> <p>The tariff list is expected in the next several days.</p> <p>The China Daily on Thursday quoted Premier Li Keqiang as telling a U.S. Congressional delegation this week that China was open to dialogue but &#8220;fully prepared with countermeasures&#8221;.</p> FILE PHOTO: Containers are seen at the port in San Pedro, California, U.S., March 22, 2018. REUTERS/Bob Riha, Jr. <p>It warned that if the conflict continued to escalate &#8220;China could consider taking reciprocal measures against U.S. imports of agricultural products besides soybeans, as well as aircraft, automobiles and semiconductors.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;And should the Trump administration further obstruct Chinese investments in the U.S., even tougher measures such as restrictions on imports of U.S. services and similar investment reviews would likely be on the table,&#8221; it said.</p> <p>Separately, Hong Kong&#8217;s South China Morning Post reported on Thursday that U.S. and Chinese officials had been holding talks to shield American soybeans and other agricultural products from trade sanctions.</p> <p>China is still considering import curbs on U.S. soybeans, U.S. Soybean Export Council Asia director Paul Burke said on Thursday, following a meeting with the Ministry of Agriculture.</p> <p>Reporting by Se Young Lee and Yawen Chen in BEIJING; Additional reporting by Michael Martina, John Ruwitch, Dominique Patton and Stella Qiu; Additional writing by Ryan Woo; Editing by Shri Navaratnam and Kim Coghill</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - Three firms that bought crude oil last year from U.S. emergency stockpiles raised concerns about dangerous levels of a poisonous chemical in the cargoes, according to internal Energy Department emails and shipping documents reviewed by Reuters.</p> <p>Problems with crude quality would make the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) less useful in an emergency because refiners would need to spend time and money removing contamination before producing fuel. The reserve is the world&#8217;s largest government stockpile, currently holding 665 million barrels.</p> <p>Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) occurs naturally in crude and natural gas, but oil producers typically decontaminate such products before delivery to buyers. High levels of H2S can corrode refinery parts and pipelines - and can be lethal to humans in gas form.</p> <p>Authorities in all major consuming countries keep oil in reserve to ensure that they do not run out of crude to refine into fuels if a natural disaster or war disrupts global supplies. The U.S. government established its reserve in 1975 following the Arab oil embargo.</p> <p>The U.S. Department of Energy oversees the reserve and periodically sells some of its oil at times when there are no emergencies, as it did with the sales that sparked contamination concerns.</p> <p>Department Spokeswoman Shaylyn Hynes declined to comment about the contamination complaints uncovered by Reuters.</p> <p>The three firms that raised concerns about high H2S levels were Royal Dutch Shell Co ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=RDSa.L" type="external">RDSa.L</a>), Australian bank Macquarie Group and PetroChina International America, the U.S. trading arm of state-owned energy firm PetroChina Co Ltd [601857.SS], according to the shipping documents, emails provided by the Energy Department in response to a public records request, and a department official who declined to be identified.</p> <p>The department took responsibility for cleaning the shipment to PetroChina with an additive after it determined in May of last year that levels of H2S were too high, according to the department official. The department disputes tests showing levels were too high in the other two cargoes, the official said.</p> <p>All three firms bought cargoes of SPR oil stored in an underground salt cavern in Bryan Mound, Texas last year. The oil was pumped from Bryan Mound through pipelines to the nearest oil terminal at Freeport, Texas before being loaded onto ships, according to records reviewed by Reuters and the department official.</p> <p>The Freeport facility is owned by Houston-based Enterprise Products Partners LP ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=EPD.N" type="external">EPD.N</a>). Enterprise knew about higher levels of H2S in a small number of cargoes traded between private firms that passed through its terminal, Enterprise Senior Vice President Brent Secrest told Reuters in an interview.</p> <p>&#8220;Of the hundreds of cargoes we&#8217;ve loaded across Freeport and other Enterprise terminals, we&#8217;ve only had a handful of customers give us feedback regarding high levels of H2S,&#8221; he said.</p> UNPLEASANT SURPRISE <p>In March, Shell complained to the Energy Department after finding high levels of H2S in a cargo the company bought as part of a 6.2 million-barrel purchase from the U.S. government in January, according to emails provided by the department in response to the Reuters public records request.</p> <p>The firm was &#8220;unpleasantly surprised&#8221; to find the high levels, Shell oil trader Steve Sellers wrote to the department, adding that the issue caused concern at Shell about the quality of SPR crude for future purchases.</p> <p>Shell declined to comment on its complaint to the government.</p> <p>The oil firm&#8217;s emails said an initial test sample detected H2S gas at levels of less than five parts per million (ppm). But a later test by Shell - after it shipped the crude by boat to another U.S. location - showed H2S levels of 600 parts per million, according to Shell&#8217;s emails to the department.</p> <p>Exposure to vapors containing 500-700 ppm of H2S could cause a person to collapse in five minutes and die within an hour, according to the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration.</p> SAFETY CONCERNS <p>In November, Australian bank Macquarie Group bought the third shipment from the SPR and sold it to PetroChina, according to the shipping documents reviewed by Reuters.</p> Slideshow (3 Images) <p>The cargo was loaded at Freeport onto a ship called the Stena Sunrise, the documents show.</p> <p>A testing company named Inspectorate tested a sample from the SPR cargo purchased by Macquarie, according to the documents, and found H2S levels of up to 9,000 ppm.</p> <p>Inspectorate declined to comment and referred questions to the Energy Department. Macquarie declined to comment.</p> <p>After the Inspectorate testing, the terminal operator refused to allow workers to perform additional tests out of concern about violating safety regulations, according to the shipping documents.</p> <p>It is unclear if PetroChina or Macquarie decontaminated the cargo. PetroChina shipped the oil to China, where it arrived on Jan. 18, according to Thomson Reuters shipping data.</p> RARE INCIDENTS <p>Reuters was not able to determine how often high levels of H2S are detected across the industry, but industry experts and chemical petroleum engineers said such incidents are rare.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=RDSa.L" type="external">Royal Dutch Shell PLC</a> 2233.5 RDSa.L London Stock Exchange +2.00 (+0.09%) RDSa.L EPD.N <p>Some crude grades can have H2S levels as high as 1000 ppm when produced, said Ramanan Krishnamoorti, chief energy officer and a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of Houston. But producers remove most of that before transporting crude to customers.</p> <p>Contamination could result from blending different crude grades, for example when one grade of crude is stored in a tank that previously contained a different grade, Krishnamoorti said.</p> <p>&#8220;There has to be some concentrated source of it,&#8221; Krishnamoorti said. &#8220;It&#8217;s just very odd.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Catherine Ngai; Editing by David Gaffen, Simon Webb and Brian Thevenot</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - Online retailing behemoth Amazon.com Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AMZN.O" type="external">AMZN.O</a>) has cut ties with Washington lobbying firms Akin Gump Strauss Hauer &amp;amp; Feld LLP and Squire Patton Boggs, Bloomberg reported on Friday.</p> FILE PHOTO: An Amazon.com Inc driver stands next to an Amazon delivery truck in Los Angeles, California, U.S., May 21, 2016. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson/File Photo <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AMZN.O" type="external">Amazon.com Inc</a> 1447.34 AMZN.O Nasdaq +15.92 (+1.11%) AMZN.O ORCL.N <p>The changes took place about a week before U.S. President Donald Trump accused Amazon in a tweet on Thursday of not paying enough tax, taking advantage of the U.S. postal system and putting small retailers out of business.</p> <p>Amazon had cut ties from the lobbying firms last Friday and in their place hired Paul Brathwaite of Federal Street Strategies LLC and Josh Holly of Holly Strategies Inc, both of whom have previously worked as outside lobbyists for Airbnb Inc and Oracle Corp ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=ORCL.N" type="external">ORCL.N</a>), the report said, citing a source.</p> <p>Neither of the parties were immediately available for comment outside regular business hours.</p> <p>The e-commerce giant employs about 15 lobbyists, according to earlier disclosures submitted to the U.S. Senate, with another 15 outside lobbying firms who each assign more lobbyists to work on behalf of the company.</p> <p>The retailer spent $15.4 million in 2017 on lobbying in Washington, up from $12 million a year earlier.</p> <p>Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Sunil Nair</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

REFILE-Sterling steadies around $1.39 after best run since 2014 Starbucks coffee in California must have cancer warning, judge says China warns U.S. not to open Pandora's Box, unleash trade ills on world Exclusive: Firms complain of contaminated crude from U.S. reserve Amazon cuts ties with top Washington lobbying firms: Bloomberg

https://reuters.com/article/britain-sterling-open/refile-sterling-steadies-around-139-after-best-run-since-2014-idUSL8N1PH20W

2018-01-22

2least

Refiles to show date Jan 22 not Jan 18 Graphic World FX rates in 2018 tmsnrtrs2egbfVh Graphic Tradeweighted sterling since Brexit vote tmsnrtrs2hwV9Hv By Jemima Kelly LONDON Jan 22 Reuters Sterling steadied around 139 on Monday with traders cautious about pushing the pound higher after five consecutive weeks of gains against the dollar the currency8217s longest winning streak since 2014 Data published on Friday showed speculators increased their netlong positions on sterling or bets that it would rise to the highest level in 312 years in the latest week on the view that Brexit talks had so far gone relatively well and that the economy was ticking along better than some had expected Former Goldman Sachs economist and Treasury minister Jim O8217Neill said on Monday morning that Britain8217s economy is likely to do better in 2018 than many forecasts suggest and the benefits of global growth in the coming years will 8220easily dwarf8221 any Brexit hit But some analysts say there have been few fundamental drivers behind the pound8217s 3 percent climb against the dollar since the start of the year that there remains a great deal of political uncertainty and that sterling is due a correction lower 8220With speculative long positioning close to multiyear extremes we advise against chasing the currency higher If anything we remain of the view that the currency is trading in overbought territory8221 said Credit Agricole currency strategists Manuel Oliveri Sterling traded flat at 13907 on Monday close to Friday8217s peak of 13945 its highest since the results of Britain8217s vote to leave the European Union in June 2016 Although it is still down more than 7 percent since the day of the ballot thee pound is now trading higher against the dollar than during a dip four months before the EU referendum when the currency briefly touched as low as 13836 Versus the euro however which has strengthened across the board in recent months sterling is still trading far lower than its prereferendum levels and is down almost 14 percent since the day of the vote The pound was trading up 01 percent on the day at 8808 pence per euro on Monday 8220Euro strength has pulled the pound higher lately pushing sterlingdollar to postreferendum highs8221 wrote UBS Wealth Management strategists in a note to clients 8220We expect this trend to continue as the UK economy remains relatively solid A strong US dollar rebound remains unlikely given the US8217s large trade and budget deficits but rising US interest rates should deliver some support to the dollar8221 they added French President Emmanuel Macron said on Saturday Britain would be able to have a bespoke deal with the European Union after Brexit one of Prime Minister Theresa May8217s objectives though London8217s financial centre could not enjoy the same level of access to the EU under May8217s current Brexit plan Reporting by Jemima Kelly Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters Starbucks Corp SBUXO and other coffee sellers must put a cancer warning on coffee sold in California a Los Angeles judge has ruled possibly exposing the companies to millions of dollars in fines FILE PHOTO A woman holds a Frappuccino at a Starbucks store inside the Tom Bradley terminal at LAX airport in Los Angeles California United States October 27 2015 REUTERSLucy Nicholson A littleknown notforprofit group sued some 90 coffee retailers including Starbucks on grounds they were violating a California law requiring companies to warn consumers of chemicals in their products that could cause cancer One of those chemicals is acrylamide a byproduct of roasting coffee beans that is present in high levels in brewed coffee Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle said in a decision dated Wednesday that Starbucks and other companies had failed to show there was no significant risk from a carcinogen produced in the coffee roasting process court documents showed Starbucks and other defendants have until April 10 to file objections to the decision Starbucks declined to comment referring reporters to a statement by the National Coffee Association NCA that said the industry was considering an appeal and further legal actions 8220Cancer warning labels on coffee would be misleading The US government8217s own Dietary Guidelines state that coffee can be part of a healthy lifestyle8221 the NCA statement said Starbucks Corp 5789 SBUXO Nasdaq 001 002 SBUXO DNKNO MCDN In his decision Berle said 8220Defendants failed to satisfy their burden of proving by a preponderance of evidence that consumption of coffee confers a benefit to human health8221 Officials from Dunkin8217 Donuts DNKNO McDonald8217s Corp MCDN Peet8217s and other big coffee sellers did not immediately respond to requests for comment The lawsuit was filed in 2010 by the Council for Education and Research on Toxics CERT It calls for fines as large as 2500 per person for every exposure to the chemical since 2002 at the defendants8217 shops in California Any civil penalties which will be decided in a third phase of the trial could be huge in California which has a population of nearly 40 million CERT8217s lawyer Raphael Metzger did not immediately respond to a request for comment Starbucks lost the first phase of the trial in which it failed to show the level of acrylamide in coffee was below that which would pose a significant risk of cancer In the second phase of the trial defendants failed to prove there was an acceptable 8220alternative8221 risk level for the carcinogen court documents showed Several defendants in the case settled before Wednesday8217s decision agreeing to post signage about the cancerlinked chemical and pay millions in fines according to published reports Reporting by Nate Raymond Additional reporting by Lisa Baertlein Writing by Andrew Hay Editing by Richard Chang and Leslie Adler Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BEIJING Reuters China warned the United States on Thursday not to open Pandora8217s Box and spark a flurry of protectionist practices across the globe even as Beijing pointed to US goods that it could target in a deepening SinoUS trade dispute China could target a broad range of US businesses from agriculture to aircraft autos semiconductors and even services if the trade conflict escalates the official China Daily newspaper said in an editorial on Thursday President Donald Trump8217s move last week to slap up to 60 billion in tariffs on some Chinese imports has since provoked a warning from Beijing that it could retaliate with duties of up to 3 billion of US imports China8217s biggest US imports are aircraft and related equipment soybeans and autos with the total bill about 40 billion last year 8220The malicious practices of the United States are like opening Pandora8217s Box and there is a danger of triggering a chain reaction that will spread the virus of trade protectionism across the globe8221 a commerce ministry spokesman said Related Coverage China issues guidelines on transfer of IP rights to foreign investors The official line from China continues to be stern even as Beijing says it is all for dialogue and negotiations The feedback from US and Chinese officials on the nature and extent of trade talks remains mixed media reports show The Financial Times reported only on Monday that China had offered to buy more US microchips and move more quickly to finalize rules allowing foreign firms to take majority stakes in Chinese securities firms citing people briefed on the negotiations Chinese customs data shows the US accounted for just 26 billion or 1 percent of China8217s total semiconductor imports last year by value with suppliers in South Korea Taiwan and Japan commanding a bigger share But a source in the US semiconductor industry said US companies have slightly more than 50 percent of China8217s market for chips though export data does not reflect that because much of the product is sent offshore for low value added processing The source said the US semiconductor industry had not asked the Trump administration to urge China to buy more US chips and had been told by senior US officials that the US government had not made such a request to Beijing 8220We don8217t need China to buy more chips8221 the source said adding that US industry was concerned about being targeted by Chinese nontariff barriers 8220It8217s more about Chinese subsidies IP protection and cyber rules8221 the source said referring to concerns over Chinese retaliation China has long said it would like to import more US hightech goods including highend chips but has been stymied by US export controls set on national security grounds The Trump administration is accusing Chinese firms of stealing intellectual property and forcing US firms to share commercial secrets allegations that China denies On Thursday China8217s State Council or cabinet said transfers of Chinese intellectual property rights to foreign investors will be reviewed if national security is determined to be at stake or if core technological innovations are involved Government approval will also be needed for intellectual property transfers involving semiconductors software and agriculture SERVICES MAY BE TARGETED China8217s commerce ministry said on Thursday the US approach to trade could trigger a domino effect and US trade protectionism will only hurt US consumers FILE PHOTO Container boxes are seen at the Yangshan Deep Water Port part of the Shanghai Free Trade Zone in Shanghai China September 24 2016 REUTERSAly SongFile Photo While China hopes the US will resolve trade conflicts with China through dialogue it will take all possible steps to protect its interests ministry spokesman Gao Feng told a regular briefing in Beijing 8220Negotiations must be equal and China will not accept any consultation under unilateral coercion8221 Gao said On Wednesday Trump8217s top trade envoy said he would give China a 60day window before tariffs on Chinese goods take effect but added that it would take years to bring the two countries8217 trading relationship 8220to a good place8221 The tariff list is expected in the next several days The China Daily on Thursday quoted Premier Li Keqiang as telling a US Congressional delegation this week that China was open to dialogue but 8220fully prepared with countermeasures8221 FILE PHOTO Containers are seen at the port in San Pedro California US March 22 2018 REUTERSBob Riha Jr It warned that if the conflict continued to escalate 8220China could consider taking reciprocal measures against US imports of agricultural products besides soybeans as well as aircraft automobiles and semiconductors8221 8220And should the Trump administration further obstruct Chinese investments in the US even tougher measures such as restrictions on imports of US services and similar investment reviews would likely be on the table8221 it said Separately Hong Kong8217s South China Morning Post reported on Thursday that US and Chinese officials had been holding talks to shield American soybeans and other agricultural products from trade sanctions China is still considering import curbs on US soybeans US Soybean Export Council Asia director Paul Burke said on Thursday following a meeting with the Ministry of Agriculture Reporting by Se Young Lee and Yawen Chen in BEIJING Additional reporting by Michael Martina John Ruwitch Dominique Patton and Stella Qiu Additional writing by Ryan Woo Editing by Shri Navaratnam and Kim Coghill Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORK Reuters Three firms that bought crude oil last year from US emergency stockpiles raised concerns about dangerous levels of a poisonous chemical in the cargoes according to internal Energy Department emails and shipping documents reviewed by Reuters Problems with crude quality would make the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve SPR less useful in an emergency because refiners would need to spend time and money removing contamination before producing fuel The reserve is the world8217s largest government stockpile currently holding 665 million barrels Hydrogen sulfide H2S occurs naturally in crude and natural gas but oil producers typically decontaminate such products before delivery to buyers High levels of H2S can corrode refinery parts and pipelines and can be lethal to humans in gas form Authorities in all major consuming countries keep oil in reserve to ensure that they do not run out of crude to refine into fuels if a natural disaster or war disrupts global supplies The US government established its reserve in 1975 following the Arab oil embargo The US Department of Energy oversees the reserve and periodically sells some of its oil at times when there are no emergencies as it did with the sales that sparked contamination concerns Department Spokeswoman Shaylyn Hynes declined to comment about the contamination complaints uncovered by Reuters The three firms that raised concerns about high H2S levels were Royal Dutch Shell Co RDSaL Australian bank Macquarie Group and PetroChina International America the US trading arm of stateowned energy firm PetroChina Co Ltd 601857SS according to the shipping documents emails provided by the Energy Department in response to a public records request and a department official who declined to be identified The department took responsibility for cleaning the shipment to PetroChina with an additive after it determined in May of last year that levels of H2S were too high according to the department official The department disputes tests showing levels were too high in the other two cargoes the official said All three firms bought cargoes of SPR oil stored in an underground salt cavern in Bryan Mound Texas last year The oil was pumped from Bryan Mound through pipelines to the nearest oil terminal at Freeport Texas before being loaded onto ships according to records reviewed by Reuters and the department official The Freeport facility is owned by Houstonbased Enterprise Products Partners LP EPDN Enterprise knew about higher levels of H2S in a small number of cargoes traded between private firms that passed through its terminal Enterprise Senior Vice President Brent Secrest told Reuters in an interview 8220Of the hundreds of cargoes we8217ve loaded across Freeport and other Enterprise terminals we8217ve only had a handful of customers give us feedback regarding high levels of H2S8221 he said UNPLEASANT SURPRISE In March Shell complained to the Energy Department after finding high levels of H2S in a cargo the company bought as part of a 62 millionbarrel purchase from the US government in January according to emails provided by the department in response to the Reuters public records request The firm was 8220unpleasantly surprised8221 to find the high levels Shell oil trader Steve Sellers wrote to the department adding that the issue caused concern at Shell about the quality of SPR crude for future purchases Shell declined to comment on its complaint to the government The oil firm8217s emails said an initial test sample detected H2S gas at levels of less than five parts per million ppm But a later test by Shell after it shipped the crude by boat to another US location showed H2S levels of 600 parts per million according to Shell8217s emails to the department Exposure to vapors containing 500700 ppm of H2S could cause a person to collapse in five minutes and die within an hour according to the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration SAFETY CONCERNS In November Australian bank Macquarie Group bought the third shipment from the SPR and sold it to PetroChina according to the shipping documents reviewed by Reuters Slideshow 3 Images The cargo was loaded at Freeport onto a ship called the Stena Sunrise the documents show A testing company named Inspectorate tested a sample from the SPR cargo purchased by Macquarie according to the documents and found H2S levels of up to 9000 ppm Inspectorate declined to comment and referred questions to the Energy Department Macquarie declined to comment After the Inspectorate testing the terminal operator refused to allow workers to perform additional tests out of concern about violating safety regulations according to the shipping documents It is unclear if PetroChina or Macquarie decontaminated the cargo PetroChina shipped the oil to China where it arrived on Jan 18 according to Thomson Reuters shipping data RARE INCIDENTS Reuters was not able to determine how often high levels of H2S are detected across the industry but industry experts and chemical petroleum engineers said such incidents are rare Royal Dutch Shell PLC 22335 RDSaL London Stock Exchange 200 009 RDSaL EPDN Some crude grades can have H2S levels as high as 1000 ppm when produced said Ramanan Krishnamoorti chief energy officer and a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of Houston But producers remove most of that before transporting crude to customers Contamination could result from blending different crude grades for example when one grade of crude is stored in a tank that previously contained a different grade Krishnamoorti said 8220There has to be some concentrated source of it8221 Krishnamoorti said 8220It8217s just very odd8221 Reporting by Catherine Ngai Editing by David Gaffen Simon Webb and Brian Thevenot Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters Online retailing behemoth Amazoncom Inc AMZNO has cut ties with Washington lobbying firms Akin Gump Strauss Hauer ampamp Feld LLP and Squire Patton Boggs Bloomberg reported on Friday FILE PHOTO An Amazoncom Inc driver stands next to an Amazon delivery truck in Los Angeles California US May 21 2016 REUTERSLucy NicholsonFile Photo Amazoncom Inc 144734 AMZNO Nasdaq 1592 111 AMZNO ORCLN The changes took place about a week before US President Donald Trump accused Amazon in a tweet on Thursday of not paying enough tax taking advantage of the US postal system and putting small retailers out of business Amazon had cut ties from the lobbying firms last Friday and in their place hired Paul Brathwaite of Federal Street Strategies LLC and Josh Holly of Holly Strategies Inc both of whom have previously worked as outside lobbyists for Airbnb Inc and Oracle Corp ORCLN the report said citing a source Neither of the parties were immediately available for comment outside regular business hours The ecommerce giant employs about 15 lobbyists according to earlier disclosures submitted to the US Senate with another 15 outside lobbying firms who each assign more lobbyists to work on behalf of the company The retailer spent 154 million in 2017 on lobbying in Washington up from 12 million a year earlier Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru Editing by Sunil Nair Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>ALLENTOWN, Pa. (Reuters) - The mayor of Allentown, Pennsylvania&#8217;s third most-populous city, solicited bribes to fund an expected run for the U.S. Senate, prosecutors told a court on Monday, but the defense said the Federal Bureau of Investigation had falsely accused him.</p> <p>Edwin Pawlowski, a Democrat who was elected in November to his fourth term as mayor despite a sweeping &#8220;pay-to-play&#8221; indictment, went on trial in U.S. District Court in Allentown on 54 criminal counts, including bribery, conspiracy and fraud.</p> <p>Pawlowski and former Reading, Pennsylvania, Mayor Vaughn Spencer were charged in July in a long-running federal corruption investigation. The trial of Spencer, who is also a Democrat, is scheduled to begin on March 5.</p> <p>In his opening argument to the seven-man, five-woman jury, Assistant U.S. Attorney Anthony Wzorek described a quid pro quo scheme for city contracts.</p> <p>&#8220;It is a case about a man who sold his office, soliciting bribes from the highest bidder,&#8221; Wzorek said.</p> <p>Wzorek said Pawlowski solicited bribes to fund his expected 2016 Senate campaign against incumbent Pat Toomey, a Republican. The mayor had attempted a run for the Democratic nomination for governor of Pennsylvania in 2014 but gave it up for lack of funds.</p> <p>&#8220;He realized he needed lots of money to run for Senate,&#8221; Wzorek said. &#8220;He vowed to raise $1 million in three months after he announced his candidacy (in 2015).&#8221;</p> <p>Pawlowski suspended his campaign before the primary because of the FBI investigation. Toomey was re-elected in November 2016.</p> <p>Pawlowski is accused of accepting more than $150,000 in contributions to his various campaigns from vendors with the understanding that they would receive city contracts in exchange.</p> <p>The mayor sought to cover up the scheme by deleting emails, instructing his campaign aides to do the same and sweeping his office for listening devices installed by law enforcement, the indictment said.</p> <p>In opening defense arguments, lawyer Jack McMahon said Pawlowski sought perfectly legal campaign contributions, with no explicit promise to the donors. Instead, he was the unwitting victim of an overzealous FBI and a scheme concocted by two mayoral consultants, Mike Fleck and his assistant Sam Ruchlewicz.</p> <p>Several defendants have pleaded guilty in the Allentown and Reading schemes, including Fleck, a former campaign manager for both mayors.</p> <p>Early last year, the former managing director of Allentown, which has about 120,000 residents, pleaded guilty as part of the investigation and implicated Pawlowski in a $3 million bid-rigging scheme to benefit a campaign donor.</p> <p>Editing by Barbara Goldberg, Frances Kerry and Lisa Von Ahn</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The internal watchdog at the U.S. Justice Department said on Wednesday he is launching a review into allegations by Republican lawmakers that the FBI made serious missteps when it sought a warrant to monitor a former adviser to President Donald Trump&#8217;s 2016 election campaign.</p> Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz testifies during a Judiciary Committee hearing into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., July 26, 2017. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein <p>Michael Horowitz, the department&#8217;s inspector general, said in a statement his review will examine whether the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department followed proper procedures when they applied for a warrant with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to secretly conduct surveillance on Carter Page and his ties to Russia.</p> <p>Attorney General Jeff Sessions told reporters last month he planned to ask Horowitz to investigate the alleged surveillance abuses.</p> <p>The allegations were outlined in a memo commissioned by U.S. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes and declassified for public release by Trump, over the objections of Justice Department officials and Democrats on the panel.</p> <p>The Republican memo claims that the FBI used in part a dossier compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele to justify the warrant, and failed to disclose to the court that Steele was employed by a firm funded by Democrats to do opposition research on Trump&#8217;s business dealings.</p> <p>The FBI staunchly opposed the public release of the memo at the time, saying there were &#8220;material omissions of fact.&#8221;</p> <p>Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee have since released their own memo, accusing Republicans of deliberately omitting facts in an effort to undermine Special Counsel Robert Mueller&#8217;s investigation into whether Trump&#8217;s campaign colluded with Russia.</p> <p>The Democrats concluded that the Justice Department did not engage in misconduct when applying for the warrant.</p> <p>House Judiciary Committee Ranking Democrat Jerrold Nadler said it is a &#8220;shame&#8221; that Horowitz must devote resources to probe a &#8220;conspiracy theory.&#8221;</p> <p>Trump lambasted Sessions in late February for referring the Republican memo to Horowitz for investigation. The president wrote in a tweet: &#8220;Why is A.G. Sessions asking the Inspector General to investigate massive FISA abuse? Will take forever, has no prosecutorial power and already late with reports on Comey, etc.&#8221;</p> <p>Trump&#8217;s tweet mischaracterized the role inspector generals play in investigating alleged misconduct inside federal agencies, and it prompted Sessions to issue a sharp rebuttal defending his decision.</p> <p>Horowitz was sworn into his post in 2012 during the Obama administration, and previously served on the U.S. Sentencing Commission under Republican President George W. Bush.</p> <p>A still non-public report by Horowitz accusing former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe of lack of candor was used recently as the basis for Sessions to fire McCabe on March 16, less than two days before he was set to retire.</p> <p>Despite Trump&#8217;s prior concerns with letting Horowitz investigate the alleged surveillance abuses outlined by Republicans, the president cheered the decision to terminate McCabe, calling it on Twitter a &#8220;great day for Democracy.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; editing by James Dalgleish and David Gregorio</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - Former Subway pitchman Jared Fogle is seeking release from a Colorado federal prison, saying his guilty plea in a child pornography case was based on an illegal conspiracy charge and should be thrown out.</p> Jared Fogle is led from federal court in Indianapolis, Indiana August 19, 2015. REUTERS/Susan Guyett/File Photo <p>Fogle, 40, this week sought a writ of habeas corpus from the federal court in Denver.</p> <p>He is serving a 15-year, eight-month sentence in nearby Littleton, following a 2015 guilty plea to distributing child pornography and traveling for paid sex with girls.</p> <p>Fogle said his plea was unlawful because it included a &#8220;charge of conspiracy&#8221; not covered by the text of a federal law concerning sexual misconduct involving minors.</p> <p>Fogle said he would not have pleaded guilty but for the improper charge and said his imprisonment violates his due process rights under the U.S. Constitution.</p> <p>The habeas application named Fogle&#8217;s prison warden, the sentencing judge and U.S. President Donald Trump as defendants.</p> <p>A federal magistrate judge said the application was missing some details and gave Fogle 30 days to submit a revised version that omits the sentencing judge and Trump as defendants.</p> <p>Fogle was a Subway spokesman for 15 years, and famous for losing more than 200 pounds (91 kg) through exercise and eating Subway sandwiches.</p> <p>In June 2016, a federal appeals court upheld his sentence, rejecting Fogle&#8217;s argument that it improperly exceeded the length recommended under federal sentencing guidelines.</p> <p>The case is Fogle v Walton-Pratt et al, U.S. District Court, District of Colorado, No. 18-00704.</p> <p>Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Leslie Adler</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Trump administration has sharply curtailed a once-common practice of granting long-term reprieves to immigrants targeted for deportation, a Reuters analysis of court records shows, adding to an already huge backlog of cases in U.S. immigration courts.</p> <p>The trend underscores how the Trump administration&#8217;s broad crackdown on illegal immigration has sometimes had unintended consequences. Attorney-General Jeff Sessions had vowed to reduce that case backlog, but the government&#8217;s aggressive opposition to reprieves has caused the opposite to happen.</p> <p>Under a procedure known as &#8220;administrative closure,&#8221; judges can indefinitely shelve deportation cases of immigrants who have lived illegally for years in the United States but have not committed serious crimes and have strong family or other ties in the country. The immigrants are not granted full legal status and their cases can be reopened at any time. In the interim they can remain in the country and often are eligible to work legally.</p> <p>The practice became more common after the Obama administration instructed prosecutors in 2011 to prioritize immigration cases involving criminals. Closures accelerated further after a 2012 decision by the Board of Immigration Appeals, which gave judges additional authority to close cases.</p> <p>As a result, the number of shelved cases rose steadily for several years. In the last year of the Obama administration, more than 56,000 such cases were closed, the Reuters analysis of court records found.</p> <p>In the first year after Donald Trump became president, the trend was sharply reversed, with about 20,000 cases closed, 64 percent fewer than the previous year. (Graphic: <a href="http://tmsnrt.rs/2DKhoAJ" type="external">tmsnrt.rs/2DKhoAJ</a>)</p> <p>Immigrant advocates say some of the most vulnerable immigrants - victims of domestic violence and unaccompanied minors - could potentially be deported even though they are eligible for a visa, because the courts will not set their cases aside.</p> <p>In January, Sessions announced he will review a recent decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals and consider whether judges should have authority to close cases.&amp;#160;He sought legal arguments from all sides as he considers the matter.</p> <p>In a December speech, Sessions skewered the Obama administration for closing &#8220;nearly 200,000 pending immigration court cases without a final decision&#8221; over a five-year period. &#8220;We are completing, not closing, immigration cases,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>About 542,000 cases were pending three weeks before Trump took office in January 2017, according to a Department of Justice estimate. Since then, the backlog has grown by another estimated 145,000 cases, a 27 percent increase.</p> <p>In comparison, the Obama administration added an average of 41,000 cases to the backlog each year, according to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a New York-based research organization.</p> OPPOSING VIEWS <p>Trump was elected on a platform of tightening border security and speeding the removal of people living in the country illegally. Early in his presidency, he announced that all categories of immigrants in the country illegally would be considered targets for deportation.</p> <p>Justice Department spokesman Devin O&#8217;Malley declined to comment on Reuters&#8217; findings and on when Sessions might conclude his review of whether judges can close cases.</p> <p>Groups advocating stricter immigration enforcement have long opposed the policy of administrative closure.</p> <p>&#8220;We see this as one more example of attempts by the Obama administration to work around the rules of law,&#8221; said Michael Hethmon, senior counsel with the conservative Immigration Reform Law Institute in Washington.</p> <p>In a legal filing in the Sessions&#8217; review, the American Bar Association cautioned that &#8220;withdrawal of administrative closure ... would have profound and long-lasting consequences on the operation of the immigration adjudication system and the lives of those who must proceed through it.&#8221;</p> <p>Supporters of the policy also say it allows judges to focus on cases involving criminals and ones in which an immigrant has little possibility of gaining legal status. They note that many of the closed cases involved immigrants who had applications pending for legal status, through asylum claims, marriages to citizens or other means.&amp;#160;</p> Two young girls watch a soccer match on a television from their holding area where hundreds of mostly Central American immigrant children are being processed and held at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Nogales Placement Center in Nogales, Arizona June 18, 2014. REUTERS/Ross D. Franklin/Pool RUNNING FROM THE GANGS <p>After gangs shot her father, paralyzing him and placing him permanently in a wheelchair, Jennifer Mendoza fled Honduras by herself in 2016. She was 10 years old.</p> <p>She was detained after crossing the border, placed in deportation proceedings and held for four months at a facility for unaccompanied minors in Texas until she could be reunited with her mother, Ruth. The two applied for a U visa, which is granted to undocumented immigrants who are victims of violent crime and who help law enforcement try to catch the perpetrators.</p> <p>In February this year, Mendoza moved to close her deportation case while she waited for a decision on her visa. The immigration court judge agreed, but the government lawyer objected and appealed. The case is now pending at the Board of Immigration Appeals.</p> <p>Mendoza&#8217;s lawyer, Vicky Dobrin, said the case shows how aggressively the government is fighting closures. Prosecutors used to routinely support closing cases like Mendoza&#8217;s, said Dobrin.</p> <p>&#8220;Within a few months they were starting to oppose everything,&#8221; she said.</p> <p>During the last four years of the Obama administration, prosecutors appealed less than one percent of all case closures. Since Trump took office in January 2017, ICE prosecutors have appealed decisions to close cases 10 times more often, Reuters found.</p> <p>Ashley Tabaddor, president of the immigration judges&#8217; union, said the pushback from prosecutors has meant more work for judges.</p> Slideshow (4 Images) <p>&#8220;The case is going to take much longer and is going to take more resources,&#8221; she said.</p> <p>Reporting by Reade Levinson; Editing by Sue Horton and Ross Colvin</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump ousted Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin on Wednesday in response to heavy criticism and nominated his personal physician, Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson, to replace him in the latest turnover among Trump&#8217;s team.</p> <p>White House officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Shulkin had become a distraction due to a constant wave of speculation about his future and said he would be leaving in the next day or two. They said an undersecretary at the Department of Defense, Robert Wilkie, will be the acting secretary.</p> <p>Shulkin had drawn fire for a damning report from the inspector general of the Department of Veterans Affairs. It found that during a trip to London and Denmark he improperly accepted tickets to the Wimbledon tennis tournament and his chief of staff made false statements so Shulkin&#8217;s wife could travel at government expense.</p> <p>One official said the criticism of Shulkin was &#8220;making it harder for him to carry out the duties of secretary of the VA, which is something the president has made clear is a big priority for him.&#8221;</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-usa-trump-veterans-jackson/trump-taps-doctor-decorated-diver-to-rescue-veterans-affairs-idUSKBN1H43IL" type="external">Trump taps doctor, decorated diver to rescue Veterans Affairs</a> <p>Jackson, a rear admiral of the U.S. Navy, has been working as a presidential physician since the George W. Bush administration, and has been the lead doctor monitoring Trump&#8217;s health since Trump became president.</p> <p>Jackson gave Trump a clean bill of health early this year after giving the president a physical. He put him on a diet to lose some weight and directed him to get some exercise. Aides said Trump has been eating more fish and fewer cheeseburgers lately.</p> <p>A Texas native who has been on active duty since 1995, Jackson served during the U.S.-led war in Iraq as an emergency medicine physician in Taqaddum, Iraq.</p> <p>&#8220;Admiral Jackson is highly trained and qualified and as a service member himself, he has seen firsthand the tremendous sacrifice our veterans make and has a deep appreciation for the debt our great country owes them,&#8221; Trump said.</p> <p>A White House official said Trump warmed to Jackson and had been aware that Shulkin had sought to make Jackson the VA undersecretary last year.</p> <p>&#8220;The president wants somebody who gives him the best possible care to go over and give that same care to the veterans. That&#8217;s how strongly he feels about getting them represented properly,&#8221; the official said.</p> <p>Trump said he appreciated Shulkin&#8217;s work, including passage of the VA Accountability Act.&#8221;He has been a great supporter of veterans across the country and I am grateful for his service,&#8221; Trump said in a statement.</p> <p>U.S. Representative Phil Roe, a Republican who chairs the House Committee on Veterans Affairs, said he hated to see Shulkin go but respected Trump&#8217;s decision.</p> <p>&#8220;At the end of the day, cabinet secretaries serve at the pleasure of the president,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>Will Fischer, director of government relations for the VoteVets lobby group, said his group hopes Jackson will oppose any attempt to privatize the VA or its health services, a concept that Republicans talk about occasionally.</p> FILE PHOTO: Secretary of the Department of Veteran Affairs David Shulkin talks with U.S. President Donald Trump during the signing of an executive order entitled "Supporting our Veterans during their Transition from Uniformed Service to Civilian Life" in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, U.S., January 9, 2018. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/Files <p>&#8220;If Dr. Jackson can do that, immediately, he will do a lot to help his chances at confirmation,&#8221; Fischer said.</p> <p>The VA oversees healthcare and benefits going to roughly 20 million U.S. military veterans. The Veterans Health Administration, the largest integrated healthcare system in the United States, provides care at more than 1,200 facilities, including 170 VA Medical Centers, to more than 9 million veterans.</p> <p>Trump praised Shulkin as &#8220;fantastic&#8221; when he chose him to head the VA in January 2017. Trump, who promised improved veterans&#8217; care during his presidential campaign, last year said the department had made &#8220;tremendous progress&#8221; under Shulkin.</p> <p>But support for him at the White House eroded quickly in recent weeks as Trump grew weary of the drumbeat of negative headlines about him.</p> Slideshow (4 Images) <p>Shulkin said after the release of the inspector general&#8217;s report that he would comply with its recommendations, including reimbursing the government for his wife&#8217;s $4,312 airfare and paying his friend for the Wimbledon tickets. The department announced two days after the report was issued that Shulkin&#8217;s chief of staff, Vivieca Wright Simpson, would retire.</p> <p>Shulkin joins a long list of senior officials who have either resigned or been fired since Trump took office in January 2017. Others include Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price, FBI chief James Comey and FBI No. 2 Andrew McCabe, Trump&#8217;s chief strategist Steve Bannon, national security advisers H.R. McMaster and Michael Flynn, White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, communications directors Hope Hicks and Anthony Scaramucci, and economic adviser Gary Cohn.</p> <p>Reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Leslie Adler and James Dalgleish</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Allentown, Pennsylvania, mayor's corruption trial gets under way U.S. watchdog to probe Republican claims of FBI surveillance abuses Ex-Subway pitchman Jared Fogle seeks release from prison Exclusive: Under Trump, prosecutors fight reprieves for people facing deportation Trump pushes out Shulkin at VA, nominates Jackson as replacement

https://reuters.com/article/us-pennsylvania-corruption/allentown-pennsylvania-mayors-corruption-trial-gets-under-way-idUSKBN1FB19C

2018-01-22

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ALLENTOWN Pa Reuters The mayor of Allentown Pennsylvania8217s third mostpopulous city solicited bribes to fund an expected run for the US Senate prosecutors told a court on Monday but the defense said the Federal Bureau of Investigation had falsely accused him Edwin Pawlowski a Democrat who was elected in November to his fourth term as mayor despite a sweeping 8220paytoplay8221 indictment went on trial in US District Court in Allentown on 54 criminal counts including bribery conspiracy and fraud Pawlowski and former Reading Pennsylvania Mayor Vaughn Spencer were charged in July in a longrunning federal corruption investigation The trial of Spencer who is also a Democrat is scheduled to begin on March 5 In his opening argument to the sevenman fivewoman jury Assistant US Attorney Anthony Wzorek described a quid pro quo scheme for city contracts 8220It is a case about a man who sold his office soliciting bribes from the highest bidder8221 Wzorek said Wzorek said Pawlowski solicited bribes to fund his expected 2016 Senate campaign against incumbent Pat Toomey a Republican The mayor had attempted a run for the Democratic nomination for governor of Pennsylvania in 2014 but gave it up for lack of funds 8220He realized he needed lots of money to run for Senate8221 Wzorek said 8220He vowed to raise 1 million in three months after he announced his candidacy in 20158221 Pawlowski suspended his campaign before the primary because of the FBI investigation Toomey was reelected in November 2016 Pawlowski is accused of accepting more than 150000 in contributions to his various campaigns from vendors with the understanding that they would receive city contracts in exchange The mayor sought to cover up the scheme by deleting emails instructing his campaign aides to do the same and sweeping his office for listening devices installed by law enforcement the indictment said In opening defense arguments lawyer Jack McMahon said Pawlowski sought perfectly legal campaign contributions with no explicit promise to the donors Instead he was the unwitting victim of an overzealous FBI and a scheme concocted by two mayoral consultants Mike Fleck and his assistant Sam Ruchlewicz Several defendants have pleaded guilty in the Allentown and Reading schemes including Fleck a former campaign manager for both mayors Early last year the former managing director of Allentown which has about 120000 residents pleaded guilty as part of the investigation and implicated Pawlowski in a 3 million bidrigging scheme to benefit a campaign donor Editing by Barbara Goldberg Frances Kerry and Lisa Von Ahn Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters The internal watchdog at the US Justice Department said on Wednesday he is launching a review into allegations by Republican lawmakers that the FBI made serious missteps when it sought a warrant to monitor a former adviser to President Donald Trump8217s 2016 election campaign Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz testifies during a Judiciary Committee hearing into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election on Capitol Hill in Washington US July 26 2017 REUTERSAaron P Bernstein Michael Horowitz the department8217s inspector general said in a statement his review will examine whether the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department followed proper procedures when they applied for a warrant with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to secretly conduct surveillance on Carter Page and his ties to Russia Attorney General Jeff Sessions told reporters last month he planned to ask Horowitz to investigate the alleged surveillance abuses The allegations were outlined in a memo commissioned by US House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes and declassified for public release by Trump over the objections of Justice Department officials and Democrats on the panel The Republican memo claims that the FBI used in part a dossier compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele to justify the warrant and failed to disclose to the court that Steele was employed by a firm funded by Democrats to do opposition research on Trump8217s business dealings The FBI staunchly opposed the public release of the memo at the time saying there were 8220material omissions of fact8221 Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee have since released their own memo accusing Republicans of deliberately omitting facts in an effort to undermine Special Counsel Robert Mueller8217s investigation into whether Trump8217s campaign colluded with Russia The Democrats concluded that the Justice Department did not engage in misconduct when applying for the warrant House Judiciary Committee Ranking Democrat Jerrold Nadler said it is a 8220shame8221 that Horowitz must devote resources to probe a 8220conspiracy theory8221 Trump lambasted Sessions in late February for referring the Republican memo to Horowitz for investigation The president wrote in a tweet 8220Why is AG Sessions asking the Inspector General to investigate massive FISA abuse Will take forever has no prosecutorial power and already late with reports on Comey etc8221 Trump8217s tweet mischaracterized the role inspector generals play in investigating alleged misconduct inside federal agencies and it prompted Sessions to issue a sharp rebuttal defending his decision Horowitz was sworn into his post in 2012 during the Obama administration and previously served on the US Sentencing Commission under Republican President George W Bush A still nonpublic report by Horowitz accusing former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe of lack of candor was used recently as the basis for Sessions to fire McCabe on March 16 less than two days before he was set to retire Despite Trump8217s prior concerns with letting Horowitz investigate the alleged surveillance abuses outlined by Republicans the president cheered the decision to terminate McCabe calling it on Twitter a 8220great day for Democracy8221 Reporting by Sarah N Lynch editing by James Dalgleish and David Gregorio Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters Former Subway pitchman Jared Fogle is seeking release from a Colorado federal prison saying his guilty plea in a child pornography case was based on an illegal conspiracy charge and should be thrown out Jared Fogle is led from federal court in Indianapolis Indiana August 19 2015 REUTERSSusan GuyettFile Photo Fogle 40 this week sought a writ of habeas corpus from the federal court in Denver He is serving a 15year eightmonth sentence in nearby Littleton following a 2015 guilty plea to distributing child pornography and traveling for paid sex with girls Fogle said his plea was unlawful because it included a 8220charge of conspiracy8221 not covered by the text of a federal law concerning sexual misconduct involving minors Fogle said he would not have pleaded guilty but for the improper charge and said his imprisonment violates his due process rights under the US Constitution The habeas application named Fogle8217s prison warden the sentencing judge and US President Donald Trump as defendants A federal magistrate judge said the application was missing some details and gave Fogle 30 days to submit a revised version that omits the sentencing judge and Trump as defendants Fogle was a Subway spokesman for 15 years and famous for losing more than 200 pounds 91 kg through exercise and eating Subway sandwiches In June 2016 a federal appeals court upheld his sentence rejecting Fogle8217s argument that it improperly exceeded the length recommended under federal sentencing guidelines The case is Fogle v WaltonPratt et al US District Court District of Colorado No 1800704 Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York Editing by Leslie Adler Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORK Reuters The Trump administration has sharply curtailed a oncecommon practice of granting longterm reprieves to immigrants targeted for deportation a Reuters analysis of court records shows adding to an already huge backlog of cases in US immigration courts The trend underscores how the Trump administration8217s broad crackdown on illegal immigration has sometimes had unintended consequences AttorneyGeneral Jeff Sessions had vowed to reduce that case backlog but the government8217s aggressive opposition to reprieves has caused the opposite to happen Under a procedure known as 8220administrative closure8221 judges can indefinitely shelve deportation cases of immigrants who have lived illegally for years in the United States but have not committed serious crimes and have strong family or other ties in the country The immigrants are not granted full legal status and their cases can be reopened at any time In the interim they can remain in the country and often are eligible to work legally The practice became more common after the Obama administration instructed prosecutors in 2011 to prioritize immigration cases involving criminals Closures accelerated further after a 2012 decision by the Board of Immigration Appeals which gave judges additional authority to close cases As a result the number of shelved cases rose steadily for several years In the last year of the Obama administration more than 56000 such cases were closed the Reuters analysis of court records found In the first year after Donald Trump became president the trend was sharply reversed with about 20000 cases closed 64 percent fewer than the previous year Graphic tmsnrtrs2DKhoAJ Immigrant advocates say some of the most vulnerable immigrants victims of domestic violence and unaccompanied minors could potentially be deported even though they are eligible for a visa because the courts will not set their cases aside In January Sessions announced he will review a recent decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals and consider whether judges should have authority to close casesamp160He sought legal arguments from all sides as he considers the matter In a December speech Sessions skewered the Obama administration for closing 8220nearly 200000 pending immigration court cases without a final decision8221 over a fiveyear period 8220We are completing not closing immigration cases8221 he said About 542000 cases were pending three weeks before Trump took office in January 2017 according to a Department of Justice estimate Since then the backlog has grown by another estimated 145000 cases a 27 percent increase In comparison the Obama administration added an average of 41000 cases to the backlog each year according to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse TRAC a New Yorkbased research organization OPPOSING VIEWS Trump was elected on a platform of tightening border security and speeding the removal of people living in the country illegally Early in his presidency he announced that all categories of immigrants in the country illegally would be considered targets for deportation Justice Department spokesman Devin O8217Malley declined to comment on Reuters8217 findings and on when Sessions might conclude his review of whether judges can close cases Groups advocating stricter immigration enforcement have long opposed the policy of administrative closure 8220We see this as one more example of attempts by the Obama administration to work around the rules of law8221 said Michael Hethmon senior counsel with the conservative Immigration Reform Law Institute in Washington In a legal filing in the Sessions8217 review the American Bar Association cautioned that 8220withdrawal of administrative closure would have profound and longlasting consequences on the operation of the immigration adjudication system and the lives of those who must proceed through it8221 Supporters of the policy also say it allows judges to focus on cases involving criminals and ones in which an immigrant has little possibility of gaining legal status They note that many of the closed cases involved immigrants who had applications pending for legal status through asylum claims marriages to citizens or other meansamp160 Two young girls watch a soccer match on a television from their holding area where hundreds of mostly Central American immigrant children are being processed and held at the US Customs and Border Protection Nogales Placement Center in Nogales Arizona June 18 2014 REUTERSRoss D FranklinPool RUNNING FROM THE GANGS After gangs shot her father paralyzing him and placing him permanently in a wheelchair Jennifer Mendoza fled Honduras by herself in 2016 She was 10 years old She was detained after crossing the border placed in deportation proceedings and held for four months at a facility for unaccompanied minors in Texas until she could be reunited with her mother Ruth The two applied for a U visa which is granted to undocumented immigrants who are victims of violent crime and who help law enforcement try to catch the perpetrators In February this year Mendoza moved to close her deportation case while she waited for a decision on her visa The immigration court judge agreed but the government lawyer objected and appealed The case is now pending at the Board of Immigration Appeals Mendoza8217s lawyer Vicky Dobrin said the case shows how aggressively the government is fighting closures Prosecutors used to routinely support closing cases like Mendoza8217s said Dobrin 8220Within a few months they were starting to oppose everything8221 she said During the last four years of the Obama administration prosecutors appealed less than one percent of all case closures Since Trump took office in January 2017 ICE prosecutors have appealed decisions to close cases 10 times more often Reuters found Ashley Tabaddor president of the immigration judges8217 union said the pushback from prosecutors has meant more work for judges Slideshow 4 Images 8220The case is going to take much longer and is going to take more resources8221 she said Reporting by Reade Levinson Editing by Sue Horton and Ross Colvin Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters President Donald Trump ousted Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin on Wednesday in response to heavy criticism and nominated his personal physician Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson to replace him in the latest turnover among Trump8217s team White House officials speaking on condition of anonymity said Shulkin had become a distraction due to a constant wave of speculation about his future and said he would be leaving in the next day or two They said an undersecretary at the Department of Defense Robert Wilkie will be the acting secretary Shulkin had drawn fire for a damning report from the inspector general of the Department of Veterans Affairs It found that during a trip to London and Denmark he improperly accepted tickets to the Wimbledon tennis tournament and his chief of staff made false statements so Shulkin8217s wife could travel at government expense One official said the criticism of Shulkin was 8220making it harder for him to carry out the duties of secretary of the VA which is something the president has made clear is a big priority for him8221 Related Coverage Trump taps doctor decorated diver to rescue Veterans Affairs Jackson a rear admiral of the US Navy has been working as a presidential physician since the George W Bush administration and has been the lead doctor monitoring Trump8217s health since Trump became president Jackson gave Trump a clean bill of health early this year after giving the president a physical He put him on a diet to lose some weight and directed him to get some exercise Aides said Trump has been eating more fish and fewer cheeseburgers lately A Texas native who has been on active duty since 1995 Jackson served during the USled war in Iraq as an emergency medicine physician in Taqaddum Iraq 8220Admiral Jackson is highly trained and qualified and as a service member himself he has seen firsthand the tremendous sacrifice our veterans make and has a deep appreciation for the debt our great country owes them8221 Trump said A White House official said Trump warmed to Jackson and had been aware that Shulkin had sought to make Jackson the VA undersecretary last year 8220The president wants somebody who gives him the best possible care to go over and give that same care to the veterans That8217s how strongly he feels about getting them represented properly8221 the official said Trump said he appreciated Shulkin8217s work including passage of the VA Accountability Act8221He has been a great supporter of veterans across the country and I am grateful for his service8221 Trump said in a statement US Representative Phil Roe a Republican who chairs the House Committee on Veterans Affairs said he hated to see Shulkin go but respected Trump8217s decision 8220At the end of the day cabinet secretaries serve at the pleasure of the president8221 he said Will Fischer director of government relations for the VoteVets lobby group said his group hopes Jackson will oppose any attempt to privatize the VA or its health services a concept that Republicans talk about occasionally FILE PHOTO Secretary of the Department of Veteran Affairs David Shulkin talks with US President Donald Trump during the signing of an executive order entitled Supporting our Veterans during their Transition from Uniformed Service to Civilian Life in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington US January 9 2018 REUTERSCarlos BarriaFiles 8220If Dr Jackson can do that immediately he will do a lot to help his chances at confirmation8221 Fischer said The VA oversees healthcare and benefits going to roughly 20 million US military veterans The Veterans Health Administration the largest integrated healthcare system in the United States provides care at more than 1200 facilities including 170 VA Medical Centers to more than 9 million veterans Trump praised Shulkin as 8220fantastic8221 when he chose him to head the VA in January 2017 Trump who promised improved veterans8217 care during his presidential campaign last year said the department had made 8220tremendous progress8221 under Shulkin But support for him at the White House eroded quickly in recent weeks as Trump grew weary of the drumbeat of negative headlines about him Slideshow 4 Images Shulkin said after the release of the inspector general8217s report that he would comply with its recommendations including reimbursing the government for his wife8217s 4312 airfare and paying his friend for the Wimbledon tickets The department announced two days after the report was issued that Shulkin8217s chief of staff Vivieca Wright Simpson would retire Shulkin joins a long list of senior officials who have either resigned or been fired since Trump took office in January 2017 Others include Secretary of State Rex Tillerson Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price FBI chief James Comey and FBI No 2 Andrew McCabe Trump8217s chief strategist Steve Bannon national security advisers HR McMaster and Michael Flynn White House chief of staff Reince Priebus communications directors Hope Hicks and Anthony Scaramucci and economic adviser Gary Cohn Reporting by Steve Holland Editing by Leslie Adler and James Dalgleish Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>WASHINGTON (AP) &#8212; The federal government shutdown only partially curbs operations. But the longer the shutdown continues, the more likely its impact will be felt.</p> <p>U.S. troops will stay at their posts and mail will get delivered, but almost half of the 2 million civilian federal workers will be barred from doing their jobs if the shutdown extends into Monday.</p> <p>How key parts of the federal government would be affected by a shutdown:</p> <p>___</p> <p>INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE</p> <p>A shutdown plan posted on the Treasury Department's website shows that nearly 44 percent of the IRS' 80,565 employees will be exempt from being furloughed during a shutdown. That would mean nearly 45,500 IRS employees will be sent home just as the agency is preparing for the start of the tax filing season and ingesting the sweeping changes made by the new GOP tax law.</p> <p>The Republican architects of the tax law have promised that millions of working Americans will see heftier paychecks next month, with less money withheld by employers in anticipation of lower income taxes. The IRS recently issued new withholding tables for employers.</p> <p>But Marcus Owens, who for 10 years headed the IRS division dealing with charities and political organizations, said it's a "virtual certainty" that the larger paychecks will be delayed if there's a lengthy government shutdown.</p> <p>___</p> <p>HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES DEPARTMENT</p> <p>Half of the more than 80,000 employees will be sent home. Key programs will continue to function because their funding has ongoing authorization and doesn't depend on annual approval by Congress. But critical disruptions could occur across the vast jurisdiction of HHS programs &#8212; including the seasonal flu program.</p> <p>Medicare, which insures nearly 59 million seniors and disabled people, will keep going. And so will Medicaid, which covers more than 74 million low-income and disabled people, including most nursing home residents.</p> <p>States will continue to receive payments for the Children's Health Insurance Program, which covers about 9 million kids. However, long-term funding for the program will run out soon unless Congress acts to renew it.</p> <p>Deep into a tough flu season, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will be unable to support the government's annual seasonal flu program. And CDC's ability to respond to disease outbreaks will be significantly reduced.</p> <p>___</p> <p>JUSTICE DEPARTMENT</p> <p>Many of the nearly 115,000 Justice Department employees have national security and public safety responsibilities that allow them to keep working during a shutdown. Special counsel Robert Mueller's team investigating Russian meddling in the presidential election will also continue working. His office is paid for indefinitely.</p> <p>The more than 95,000 employees who are "exempted" include most of the members of the national security division, U.S. attorneys, and most of the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, U.S. Marshals Service and federal prison employees. Criminal cases will continue, but civil cases will be postponed as long as doing so doesn't compromise public safety. Most law enforcement training will be canceled, per the department's contingency plan.</p> <p>___</p> <p>STATE DEPARTMENT</p> <p>Many State Department operations will continue in a shutdown. Passport and visa processing, which are largely self-funded by consumer fees, will not shut down. The agency's main headquarters in Washington, in consultation with the nearly 300 embassies, consulates and other diplomatic missions around the world, will draw up lists of nonessential employees who will be furloughed.</p> <p>Department operations will continue through the weekend and staffers will be instructed to report for work as usual on Monday to find out whether they have been furloughed.</p> <p>___</p> <p>DEFENSE DEPARTMENT</p> <p>The U.S. military will continue to fight wars and conduct missions around the world, including in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. And members of the military will report to work, though they won't get paid until Congress approves funding.</p> <p>But Defense Secretary Jim Mattis warned Friday that a shutdown will have far-reaching effects.</p> <p>"Our maintenance activities will probably pretty much shut down," he said during remarks at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. "We do a lot of intelligence operations around the world, and they cost money. Those, obviously, would stop. And I would just tell you that training for almost our entire reserve force will stop."</p> <p>And, while ships will remain at sea and airstrikes against enemy fighters will continue, any National Guard forces heading out to do weekend training duty around the country will arrive at armories and be told to go home.</p> <p>___</p> <p>U.S. INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES</p> <p>The workforce at the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies will be pared down significantly, according to a person familiar with contingency procedures.</p> <p>The official, who was not authorized to publicly discuss the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity, said employees who are considered essential and have to work will do so with no expectation of a regular paycheck.</p> <p>While they can be kept on the job, federal workers can't be paid for days worked during a shutdown. In the past, however, they have been paid retroactively even if they were ordered to stay home.</p> <p>___</p> <p>HOMELAND SECURITY DEPARTMENT</p> <p>A department spokesman said nearly 90 percent of Homeland Security employees are considered essential and will continue to perform their duties during a government shutdown.</p> <p>That means most Customs and Border Protection and Transportation Security Administration workers will stay on the job, according to the department's shutdown plan, dated Friday.</p> <p>Immigration and Customs Enforcement will be staffed at about 78 percent, meaning more than 15,000 of the agency's employees will keep working. The Secret Service, also part of Homeland Security, will retain more than 5,700 employees during the shutdown.</p> <p>___</p> <p>INTERIOR DEPARTMENT</p> <p>The Interior Department says national parks and other public lands will remain as accessible as possible. That position is a change from previous shutdowns, when most parks were closed and became high-profile symbols of dysfunction.</p> <p>Spokeswoman Heather Swift said the American public &#8212; especially veterans who come to the nation's capital &#8212; should find war memorials and open-air parks available to visitors. Swift said many national parks and wildlife refuges nationwide will also be open with limited access when possible.</p> <p>She said public roads that already are open are likely to remain open, though services that require staffing and maintenance such as campgrounds, full-service restrooms and concessions won't be operating. Backcountry lands and culturally sensitive sites are likely to be restricted or closed, she said.</p> <p>___</p> <p>TRANSPORTATION DEPARTMENT</p> <p>More than half &#8212; 34,600 &#8212; of the Department of Transportation's 55,100 employees will continue working during a shutdown. The bulk of those staying on the job work for the Federal Aviation Administration, which operates the nation's air traffic control system.</p> <p>Controllers and aviation, pipeline and railroad safety inspectors are among those who would continue to work.</p> <p>But certification of new aircraft will be limited, and processing of airport construction grants, training of new controllers, registration of planes, air traffic control modernization research and development, and issuance of new pilot licenses and medical certificates will stop.</p> <p>At the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, investigations on auto safety defects will be suspended, incoming information on possible defects from manufacturers and consumers won't be reviewed and compliance testing of vehicles and equipment will be delayed.</p> <p>The Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, whose operations are mostly paid for out of the Federal Highway Trust Fund, will continue most of their functions. The fund's revenue comes from federal gas and diesel taxes, which will continue to be collected. But work on issuing new regulations will stop throughout the department and its nine agencies.</p> <p>___</p> <p>NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH</p> <p>Dr. Anthony Fauci, the agency's infectious disease chief, said a government shutdown will be disruptive to research and morale at the National Institutes of Health but will not adversely affect patients already in medical studies.</p> <p>"We still take care of them," he said of current NIH patients. But other types of research would be seriously harmed, Fauci said.</p> <p>A shutdown could mean interrupting research that's been going on for years, Fauci said. The NIH is the government's primary agency responsible for biomedical and public health research across 27 institutes and centers. Its research ranges from cancer studies to the testing and creation of vaccines.</p> <p>"You can't push the pause button on an experiment," he said.</p> <p>___</p> <p>ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY</p> <p>EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has instructed workers there to come to work next week even with a shutdown. Pruitt said in an email to all EPA employees on Friday that the agency had "sufficient resources to remain open for a limited amount of time." He said further instructions would come if the shutdown lasts for more than a week.</p> <p>The instructions from Pruitt are different from how the agency has operated during prior shutdowns and the contingency plan posted on EPA's website. A spokesman for the agency said earlier on Friday that the December 2017 plan was no longer valid.</p> <p>___</p> <p>Associated Press writers Sadie Gurman, Joan Lowy, Michael Biesecker, Lolita Baldor, Andrew Taylor, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Laurie Kellman, Deb Riechmann, Matthew Lee and Marcy Gordon contributed to this report.</p> <p>___</p> <p>Contact Richard Lardner on Twitter at <a href="http://twitter.com/rplardner" type="external">http://twitter.com/rplardner</a></p> <p>WASHINGTON (AP) &#8212; The federal government shutdown only partially curbs operations. But the longer the shutdown continues, the more likely its impact will be felt.</p> <p>U.S. troops will stay at their posts and mail will get delivered, but almost half of the 2 million civilian federal workers will be barred from doing their jobs if the shutdown extends into Monday.</p> <p>How key parts of the federal government would be affected by a shutdown:</p> <p>___</p> <p>INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE</p> <p>A shutdown plan posted on the Treasury Department's website shows that nearly 44 percent of the IRS' 80,565 employees will be exempt from being furloughed during a shutdown. That would mean nearly 45,500 IRS employees will be sent home just as the agency is preparing for the start of the tax filing season and ingesting the sweeping changes made by the new GOP tax law.</p> <p>The Republican architects of the tax law have promised that millions of working Americans will see heftier paychecks next month, with less money withheld by employers in anticipation of lower income taxes. The IRS recently issued new withholding tables for employers.</p> <p>But Marcus Owens, who for 10 years headed the IRS division dealing with charities and political organizations, said it's a "virtual certainty" that the larger paychecks will be delayed if there's a lengthy government shutdown.</p> <p>___</p> <p>HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES DEPARTMENT</p> <p>Half of the more than 80,000 employees will be sent home. Key programs will continue to function because their funding has ongoing authorization and doesn't depend on annual approval by Congress. But critical disruptions could occur across the vast jurisdiction of HHS programs &#8212; including the seasonal flu program.</p> <p>Medicare, which insures nearly 59 million seniors and disabled people, will keep going. And so will Medicaid, which covers more than 74 million low-income and disabled people, including most nursing home residents.</p> <p>States will continue to receive payments for the Children's Health Insurance Program, which covers about 9 million kids. However, long-term funding for the program will run out soon unless Congress acts to renew it.</p> <p>Deep into a tough flu season, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will be unable to support the government's annual seasonal flu program. And CDC's ability to respond to disease outbreaks will be significantly reduced.</p> <p>___</p> <p>JUSTICE DEPARTMENT</p> <p>Many of the nearly 115,000 Justice Department employees have national security and public safety responsibilities that allow them to keep working during a shutdown. Special counsel Robert Mueller's team investigating Russian meddling in the presidential election will also continue working. His office is paid for indefinitely.</p> <p>The more than 95,000 employees who are "exempted" include most of the members of the national security division, U.S. attorneys, and most of the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, U.S. Marshals Service and federal prison employees. Criminal cases will continue, but civil cases will be postponed as long as doing so doesn't compromise public safety. Most law enforcement training will be canceled, per the department's contingency plan.</p> <p>___</p> <p>STATE DEPARTMENT</p> <p>Many State Department operations will continue in a shutdown. Passport and visa processing, which are largely self-funded by consumer fees, will not shut down. The agency's main headquarters in Washington, in consultation with the nearly 300 embassies, consulates and other diplomatic missions around the world, will draw up lists of nonessential employees who will be furloughed.</p> <p>Department operations will continue through the weekend and staffers will be instructed to report for work as usual on Monday to find out whether they have been furloughed.</p> <p>___</p> <p>DEFENSE DEPARTMENT</p> <p>The U.S. military will continue to fight wars and conduct missions around the world, including in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. And members of the military will report to work, though they won't get paid until Congress approves funding.</p> <p>But Defense Secretary Jim Mattis warned Friday that a shutdown will have far-reaching effects.</p> <p>"Our maintenance activities will probably pretty much shut down," he said during remarks at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. "We do a lot of intelligence operations around the world, and they cost money. Those, obviously, would stop. And I would just tell you that training for almost our entire reserve force will stop."</p> <p>And, while ships will remain at sea and airstrikes against enemy fighters will continue, any National Guard forces heading out to do weekend training duty around the country will arrive at armories and be told to go home.</p> <p>___</p> <p>U.S. INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES</p> <p>The workforce at the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies will be pared down significantly, according to a person familiar with contingency procedures.</p> <p>The official, who was not authorized to publicly discuss the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity, said employees who are considered essential and have to work will do so with no expectation of a regular paycheck.</p> <p>While they can be kept on the job, federal workers can't be paid for days worked during a shutdown. In the past, however, they have been paid retroactively even if they were ordered to stay home.</p> <p>___</p> <p>HOMELAND SECURITY DEPARTMENT</p> <p>A department spokesman said nearly 90 percent of Homeland Security employees are considered essential and will continue to perform their duties during a government shutdown.</p> <p>That means most Customs and Border Protection and Transportation Security Administration workers will stay on the job, according to the department's shutdown plan, dated Friday.</p> <p>Immigration and Customs Enforcement will be staffed at about 78 percent, meaning more than 15,000 of the agency's employees will keep working. The Secret Service, also part of Homeland Security, will retain more than 5,700 employees during the shutdown.</p> <p>___</p> <p>INTERIOR DEPARTMENT</p> <p>The Interior Department says national parks and other public lands will remain as accessible as possible. That position is a change from previous shutdowns, when most parks were closed and became high-profile symbols of dysfunction.</p> <p>Spokeswoman Heather Swift said the American public &#8212; especially veterans who come to the nation's capital &#8212; should find war memorials and open-air parks available to visitors. Swift said many national parks and wildlife refuges nationwide will also be open with limited access when possible.</p> <p>She said public roads that already are open are likely to remain open, though services that require staffing and maintenance such as campgrounds, full-service restrooms and concessions won't be operating. Backcountry lands and culturally sensitive sites are likely to be restricted or closed, she said.</p> <p>___</p> <p>TRANSPORTATION DEPARTMENT</p> <p>More than half &#8212; 34,600 &#8212; of the Department of Transportation's 55,100 employees will continue working during a shutdown. The bulk of those staying on the job work for the Federal Aviation Administration, which operates the nation's air traffic control system.</p> <p>Controllers and aviation, pipeline and railroad safety inspectors are among those who would continue to work.</p> <p>But certification of new aircraft will be limited, and processing of airport construction grants, training of new controllers, registration of planes, air traffic control modernization research and development, and issuance of new pilot licenses and medical certificates will stop.</p> <p>At the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, investigations on auto safety defects will be suspended, incoming information on possible defects from manufacturers and consumers won't be reviewed and compliance testing of vehicles and equipment will be delayed.</p> <p>The Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, whose operations are mostly paid for out of the Federal Highway Trust Fund, will continue most of their functions. The fund's revenue comes from federal gas and diesel taxes, which will continue to be collected. But work on issuing new regulations will stop throughout the department and its nine agencies.</p> <p>___</p> <p>NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH</p> <p>Dr. Anthony Fauci, the agency's infectious disease chief, said a government shutdown will be disruptive to research and morale at the National Institutes of Health but will not adversely affect patients already in medical studies.</p> <p>"We still take care of them," he said of current NIH patients. But other types of research would be seriously harmed, Fauci said.</p> <p>A shutdown could mean interrupting research that's been going on for years, Fauci said. The NIH is the government's primary agency responsible for biomedical and public health research across 27 institutes and centers. Its research ranges from cancer studies to the testing and creation of vaccines.</p> <p>"You can't push the pause button on an experiment," he said.</p> <p>___</p> <p>ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY</p> <p>EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has instructed workers there to come to work next week even with a shutdown. Pruitt said in an email to all EPA employees on Friday that the agency had "sufficient resources to remain open for a limited amount of time." He said further instructions would come if the shutdown lasts for more than a week.</p> <p>The instructions from Pruitt are different from how the agency has operated during prior shutdowns and the contingency plan posted on EPA's website. A spokesman for the agency said earlier on Friday that the December 2017 plan was no longer valid.</p> <p>___</p> <p>Associated Press writers Sadie Gurman, Joan Lowy, Michael Biesecker, Lolita Baldor, Andrew Taylor, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Laurie Kellman, Deb Riechmann, Matthew Lee and Marcy Gordon contributed to this report.</p> <p>___</p> <p>Contact Richard Lardner on Twitter at <a href="http://twitter.com/rplardner" type="external">http://twitter.com/rplardner</a></p>

Government Shutdown: What's closed, who is affected?

https://apnews.com/amp/aa7d1925b58e4285ad1f64c309fb7b88

2018-01-20

2least

WASHINGTON AP 8212 The federal government shutdown only partially curbs operations But the longer the shutdown continues the more likely its impact will be felt US troops will stay at their posts and mail will get delivered but almost half of the 2 million civilian federal workers will be barred from doing their jobs if the shutdown extends into Monday How key parts of the federal government would be affected by a shutdown ___ INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE A shutdown plan posted on the Treasury Departments website shows that nearly 44 percent of the IRS 80565 employees will be exempt from being furloughed during a shutdown That would mean nearly 45500 IRS employees will be sent home just as the agency is preparing for the start of the tax filing season and ingesting the sweeping changes made by the new GOP tax law The Republican architects of the tax law have promised that millions of working Americans will see heftier paychecks next month with less money withheld by employers in anticipation of lower income taxes The IRS recently issued new withholding tables for employers But Marcus Owens who for 10 years headed the IRS division dealing with charities and political organizations said its a virtual certainty that the larger paychecks will be delayed if theres a lengthy government shutdown ___ HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES DEPARTMENT Half of the more than 80000 employees will be sent home Key programs will continue to function because their funding has ongoing authorization and doesnt depend on annual approval by Congress But critical disruptions could occur across the vast jurisdiction of HHS programs 8212 including the seasonal flu program Medicare which insures nearly 59 million seniors and disabled people will keep going And so will Medicaid which covers more than 74 million lowincome and disabled people including most nursing home residents States will continue to receive payments for the Childrens Health Insurance Program which covers about 9 million kids However longterm funding for the program will run out soon unless Congress acts to renew it Deep into a tough flu season the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will be unable to support the governments annual seasonal flu program And CDCs ability to respond to disease outbreaks will be significantly reduced ___ JUSTICE DEPARTMENT Many of the nearly 115000 Justice Department employees have national security and public safety responsibilities that allow them to keep working during a shutdown Special counsel Robert Muellers team investigating Russian meddling in the presidential election will also continue working His office is paid for indefinitely The more than 95000 employees who are exempted include most of the members of the national security division US attorneys and most of the FBI Drug Enforcement Administration Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives US Marshals Service and federal prison employees Criminal cases will continue but civil cases will be postponed as long as doing so doesnt compromise public safety Most law enforcement training will be canceled per the departments contingency plan ___ STATE DEPARTMENT Many State Department operations will continue in a shutdown Passport and visa processing which are largely selffunded by consumer fees will not shut down The agencys main headquarters in Washington in consultation with the nearly 300 embassies consulates and other diplomatic missions around the world will draw up lists of nonessential employees who will be furloughed Department operations will continue through the weekend and staffers will be instructed to report for work as usual on Monday to find out whether they have been furloughed ___ DEFENSE DEPARTMENT The US military will continue to fight wars and conduct missions around the world including in Iraq Syria and Afghanistan And members of the military will report to work though they wont get paid until Congress approves funding But Defense Secretary Jim Mattis warned Friday that a shutdown will have farreaching effects Our maintenance activities will probably pretty much shut down he said during remarks at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies We do a lot of intelligence operations around the world and they cost money Those obviously would stop And I would just tell you that training for almost our entire reserve force will stop And while ships will remain at sea and airstrikes against enemy fighters will continue any National Guard forces heading out to do weekend training duty around the country will arrive at armories and be told to go home ___ US INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES The workforce at the 17 US intelligence agencies will be pared down significantly according to a person familiar with contingency procedures The official who was not authorized to publicly discuss the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity said employees who are considered essential and have to work will do so with no expectation of a regular paycheck While they can be kept on the job federal workers cant be paid for days worked during a shutdown In the past however they have been paid retroactively even if they were ordered to stay home ___ HOMELAND SECURITY DEPARTMENT A department spokesman said nearly 90 percent of Homeland Security employees are considered essential and will continue to perform their duties during a government shutdown That means most Customs and Border Protection and Transportation Security Administration workers will stay on the job according to the departments shutdown plan dated Friday Immigration and Customs Enforcement will be staffed at about 78 percent meaning more than 15000 of the agencys employees will keep working The Secret Service also part of Homeland Security will retain more than 5700 employees during the shutdown ___ INTERIOR DEPARTMENT The Interior Department says national parks and other public lands will remain as accessible as possible That position is a change from previous shutdowns when most parks were closed and became highprofile symbols of dysfunction Spokeswoman Heather Swift said the American public 8212 especially veterans who come to the nations capital 8212 should find war memorials and openair parks available to visitors Swift said many national parks and wildlife refuges nationwide will also be open with limited access when possible She said public roads that already are open are likely to remain open though services that require staffing and maintenance such as campgrounds fullservice restrooms and concessions wont be operating Backcountry lands and culturally sensitive sites are likely to be restricted or closed she said ___ TRANSPORTATION DEPARTMENT More than half 8212 34600 8212 of the Department of Transportations 55100 employees will continue working during a shutdown The bulk of those staying on the job work for the Federal Aviation Administration which operates the nations air traffic control system Controllers and aviation pipeline and railroad safety inspectors are among those who would continue to work But certification of new aircraft will be limited and processing of airport construction grants training of new controllers registration of planes air traffic control modernization research and development and issuance of new pilot licenses and medical certificates will stop At the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration investigations on auto safety defects will be suspended incoming information on possible defects from manufacturers and consumers wont be reviewed and compliance testing of vehicles and equipment will be delayed The Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration whose operations are mostly paid for out of the Federal Highway Trust Fund will continue most of their functions The funds revenue comes from federal gas and diesel taxes which will continue to be collected But work on issuing new regulations will stop throughout the department and its nine agencies ___ NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH Dr Anthony Fauci the agencys infectious disease chief said a government shutdown will be disruptive to research and morale at the National Institutes of Health but will not adversely affect patients already in medical studies We still take care of them he said of current NIH patients But other types of research would be seriously harmed Fauci said A shutdown could mean interrupting research thats been going on for years Fauci said The NIH is the governments primary agency responsible for biomedical and public health research across 27 institutes and centers Its research ranges from cancer studies to the testing and creation of vaccines You cant push the pause button on an experiment he said ___ ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has instructed workers there to come to work next week even with a shutdown Pruitt said in an email to all EPA employees on Friday that the agency had sufficient resources to remain open for a limited amount of time He said further instructions would come if the shutdown lasts for more than a week The instructions from Pruitt are different from how the agency has operated during prior shutdowns and the contingency plan posted on EPAs website A spokesman for the agency said earlier on Friday that the December 2017 plan was no longer valid ___ Associated Press writers Sadie Gurman Joan Lowy Michael Biesecker Lolita Baldor Andrew Taylor Ricardo AlonsoZaldivar Laurie Kellman Deb Riechmann Matthew Lee and Marcy Gordon contributed to this report ___ Contact Richard Lardner on Twitter at httptwittercomrplardner WASHINGTON AP 8212 The federal government shutdown only partially curbs operations But the longer the shutdown continues the more likely its impact will be felt US troops will stay at their posts and mail will get delivered but almost half of the 2 million civilian federal workers will be barred from doing their jobs if the shutdown extends into Monday How key parts of the federal government would be affected by a shutdown ___ INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE A shutdown plan posted on the Treasury Departments website shows that nearly 44 percent of the IRS 80565 employees will be exempt from being furloughed during a shutdown That would mean nearly 45500 IRS employees will be sent home just as the agency is preparing for the start of the tax filing season and ingesting the sweeping changes made by the new GOP tax law The Republican architects of the tax law have promised that millions of working Americans will see heftier paychecks next month with less money withheld by employers in anticipation of lower income taxes The IRS recently issued new withholding tables for employers But Marcus Owens who for 10 years headed the IRS division dealing with charities and political organizations said its a virtual certainty that the larger paychecks will be delayed if theres a lengthy government shutdown ___ HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES DEPARTMENT Half of the more than 80000 employees will be sent home Key programs will continue to function because their funding has ongoing authorization and doesnt depend on annual approval by Congress But critical disruptions could occur across the vast jurisdiction of HHS programs 8212 including the seasonal flu program Medicare which insures nearly 59 million seniors and disabled people will keep going And so will Medicaid which covers more than 74 million lowincome and disabled people including most nursing home residents States will continue to receive payments for the Childrens Health Insurance Program which covers about 9 million kids However longterm funding for the program will run out soon unless Congress acts to renew it Deep into a tough flu season the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will be unable to support the governments annual seasonal flu program And CDCs ability to respond to disease outbreaks will be significantly reduced ___ JUSTICE DEPARTMENT Many of the nearly 115000 Justice Department employees have national security and public safety responsibilities that allow them to keep working during a shutdown Special counsel Robert Muellers team investigating Russian meddling in the presidential election will also continue working His office is paid for indefinitely The more than 95000 employees who are exempted include most of the members of the national security division US attorneys and most of the FBI Drug Enforcement Administration Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives US Marshals Service and federal prison employees Criminal cases will continue but civil cases will be postponed as long as doing so doesnt compromise public safety Most law enforcement training will be canceled per the departments contingency plan ___ STATE DEPARTMENT Many State Department operations will continue in a shutdown Passport and visa processing which are largely selffunded by consumer fees will not shut down The agencys main headquarters in Washington in consultation with the nearly 300 embassies consulates and other diplomatic missions around the world will draw up lists of nonessential employees who will be furloughed Department operations will continue through the weekend and staffers will be instructed to report for work as usual on Monday to find out whether they have been furloughed ___ DEFENSE DEPARTMENT The US military will continue to fight wars and conduct missions around the world including in Iraq Syria and Afghanistan And members of the military will report to work though they wont get paid until Congress approves funding But Defense Secretary Jim Mattis warned Friday that a shutdown will have farreaching effects Our maintenance activities will probably pretty much shut down he said during remarks at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies We do a lot of intelligence operations around the world and they cost money Those obviously would stop And I would just tell you that training for almost our entire reserve force will stop And while ships will remain at sea and airstrikes against enemy fighters will continue any National Guard forces heading out to do weekend training duty around the country will arrive at armories and be told to go home ___ US INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES The workforce at the 17 US intelligence agencies will be pared down significantly according to a person familiar with contingency procedures The official who was not authorized to publicly discuss the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity said employees who are considered essential and have to work will do so with no expectation of a regular paycheck While they can be kept on the job federal workers cant be paid for days worked during a shutdown In the past however they have been paid retroactively even if they were ordered to stay home ___ HOMELAND SECURITY DEPARTMENT A department spokesman said nearly 90 percent of Homeland Security employees are considered essential and will continue to perform their duties during a government shutdown That means most Customs and Border Protection and Transportation Security Administration workers will stay on the job according to the departments shutdown plan dated Friday Immigration and Customs Enforcement will be staffed at about 78 percent meaning more than 15000 of the agencys employees will keep working The Secret Service also part of Homeland Security will retain more than 5700 employees during the shutdown ___ INTERIOR DEPARTMENT The Interior Department says national parks and other public lands will remain as accessible as possible That position is a change from previous shutdowns when most parks were closed and became highprofile symbols of dysfunction Spokeswoman Heather Swift said the American public 8212 especially veterans who come to the nations capital 8212 should find war memorials and openair parks available to visitors Swift said many national parks and wildlife refuges nationwide will also be open with limited access when possible She said public roads that already are open are likely to remain open though services that require staffing and maintenance such as campgrounds fullservice restrooms and concessions wont be operating Backcountry lands and culturally sensitive sites are likely to be restricted or closed she said ___ TRANSPORTATION DEPARTMENT More than half 8212 34600 8212 of the Department of Transportations 55100 employees will continue working during a shutdown The bulk of those staying on the job work for the Federal Aviation Administration which operates the nations air traffic control system Controllers and aviation pipeline and railroad safety inspectors are among those who would continue to work But certification of new aircraft will be limited and processing of airport construction grants training of new controllers registration of planes air traffic control modernization research and development and issuance of new pilot licenses and medical certificates will stop At the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration investigations on auto safety defects will be suspended incoming information on possible defects from manufacturers and consumers wont be reviewed and compliance testing of vehicles and equipment will be delayed The Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration whose operations are mostly paid for out of the Federal Highway Trust Fund will continue most of their functions The funds revenue comes from federal gas and diesel taxes which will continue to be collected But work on issuing new regulations will stop throughout the department and its nine agencies ___ NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH Dr Anthony Fauci the agencys infectious disease chief said a government shutdown will be disruptive to research and morale at the National Institutes of Health but will not adversely affect patients already in medical studies We still take care of them he said of current NIH patients But other types of research would be seriously harmed Fauci said A shutdown could mean interrupting research thats been going on for years Fauci said The NIH is the governments primary agency responsible for biomedical and public health research across 27 institutes and centers Its research ranges from cancer studies to the testing and creation of vaccines You cant push the pause button on an experiment he said ___ ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has instructed workers there to come to work next week even with a shutdown Pruitt said in an email to all EPA employees on Friday that the agency had sufficient resources to remain open for a limited amount of time He said further instructions would come if the shutdown lasts for more than a week The instructions from Pruitt are different from how the agency has operated during prior shutdowns and the contingency plan posted on EPAs website A spokesman for the agency said earlier on Friday that the December 2017 plan was no longer valid ___ Associated Press writers Sadie Gurman Joan Lowy Michael Biesecker Lolita Baldor Andrew Taylor Ricardo AlonsoZaldivar Laurie Kellman Deb Riechmann Matthew Lee and Marcy Gordon contributed to this report ___ Contact Richard Lardner on Twitter at httptwittercomrplardner

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<p>Connor Carrick&#8217;s go-ahead goal midway through the third period helped the Toronto Maple Leafs erase a two-goal deficit to beat the Ottawa Senators 4-3 in the Battle of Ontario on Saturday night at Canadian Tire Centre in Ottawa.</p> <p>Carrick fired his dragging wrist shot through a crowded crease and past Ottawa goalie Craig Anderson for the decisive strike with 11:02 remaining in the game. It was Carrick&#8217;s third goal of the season.</p> <p>Zach Hyman, Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner each scored a goal for Toronto, which snapped its season-high four-game losing streak (0-1-3) and avenged Wednesday&#8217;s 4-3 loss to the Senators.</p> <p>The Maple Leafs had lost four straight against Ottawa and were 1-6-3 in the past 10 meetings.</p> <p>Frederik Andersen made his ninth straight start and stopped 15 shots for Toronto.</p> <p>Erik Karlsson, Mike Hoffman and Tom Pyatt scored for Ottawa &#8212; all in the second period &#8212; and Anderson stopped 29 of 33 shots as the Senators lost their second straight after Thursday&#8217;s 4-1 loss to St. Louis.</p> <p>The Senators have dropped three of their last four and fell to 3-3-1 in 2018.</p> <p>Hyman fought through chaos in front of the net and slipped the loose puck past Anderson to put the Maple Leafs ahead 1-0 with 12:34 left in the first period.</p> <p>Karlsson, who missed practice Friday with an illness but was healthy enough to play, tied the game at 1-1 with a wrist shot from the right circle during a power play only 3:08 into the middle period.</p> <p>Hoffman&#8217;s goal came just over four minutes later to put Ottawa in control. After taking a feed from Cody Ceci on a rush, Hoffman beat Andersen stick side with his wrister.</p> <p>Pyatt tacked on his sixth goal of the year while shorthanded with just under two minutes to play in the second, giving Ottawa a two-goal cushion.</p> <p>Matthews lit the lamp for his 20th goal just 2:53 into the third before Marner&#8217;s sixth tally tied it at 4:21 on the power play.</p> <p>Despite being a game-time decision, Toronto&#8217;s Morgan Rielly missed the game with an upper-body ailment he sustained Thursday against Philadelphia. Ottawa third-liner Nate Thompson also sat out with a lower-body injury.</p> <p>Toronto breaks up a stretch of four out of five games on the road with a home tilt against Colorado on Monday. Ottawa begins a quick two-game road trip Monday in Minnesota.</p> <p>&#8212;Field Level Media</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>SAN BRUNO, Calif. (Reuters) - A woman who had voiced complaints online about YouTube opened fire with a handgun at the tech company&#8217;s headquarters near San Francisco on Tuesday, wounding three people before shooting herself dead, authorities and media said.</p> <p>It was the latest in a string of mass shootings in the United States in recent years. Most recently, the massacre of 17 people at a Florida high school has led to calls for tighter curbs on gun ownership.</p> <p>Police did not identify the suspect or say what might have motivated Tuesday&#8217;s shooting at YouTube, a video-sharing service owned by Alphabet Inc&#8217;s Google which employs nearly 2,000 people at the San Bruno, California offices.</p> <p>The woman approached an outdoor patio and dining courtyard on the campus around lunchtime and began to fire before entering the building, police said.</p> <p>An affiliate of ABC and other local media, citing unnamed sources, identified the woman as Nasim Aghdam.</p> <p>San Bruno police officials could not immediately be reached for comment on the identity of the attacker.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-california-youtube-shooting-ceos/tech-ceos-call-for-gun-control-following-youtube-shooting-idUSKCN1HB05T" type="external">Tech CEOs call for gun control following YouTube shooting</a> <p>YouTube spokeswoman Jessica Mason could not immediately be reached for comment on the identification by media.</p> <p>The website NasimeSabz.com, which media said was linked to the attacker, had several posts about Persian culture and veganism, interspersed with screeds against YouTube.</p> <p>Those complaints included claims the company was not sharing enough revenue with people who create videos for the platform.</p> <p>&#8220;There is no equal growth opportunity on YouTube, or any other video-sharing site, your channel will grow if they want to,&#8221; read one posting on the site.</p> <p>A YouTube account in the name of Nasime Sabz was deleted on Tuesday evening.</p> <p>A U.S. government security official told Reuters there was no known connection to terrorism.</p> <p>ABC News, citing unnamed law enforcement sources, said the suspect was 35 to 40 years old, and lived in Southern California.</p> <p>A YouTube product manager, Todd Sherman, described on Twitter hearing people running, first thinking it was an earthquake before he was told that a person had a gun.</p> <p>&#8220;At that point every new person I saw was a potential shooter. Someone else said that the person shot out the back doors and then shot themselves,&#8221; Sherman said in a tweet.</p> <p>&#8220;I looked down and saw blood drips on the floor and stairs. Peeked around for threats and then we headed downstairs, and out the front,&#8221; Sherman said.</p> <p>In a recording of a 911 call posted online by the Los Angeles Times, a dispatcher can be heard saying: &#8220;Shooter. Another party said they spotted someone with a gun. Suspect came from the back patio ... Again we have a report of a subject with a gun. They heard seven or eight shots being fired.&#8221;</p> <p>Dozens of emergency vehicles quickly converged on the YouTube campus, and police could be seen on televised aerial video systematically frisking several employees leaving the area with their hands raised.</p> <p>One victim, a 36-year-old man, was listed in critical condition at San Francisco General Hospital. A 32-year-old woman was listed in serious condition and a 27-year-old woman in fair condition. Authorities did not release names of the victims.</p> <p>The three patients taken to San Francisco General Hospital were all awake, Dr. Andre Campbell, a trauma surgeon at the hospital, told a news conference. All were victims of gunshot wounds, Campbell said, but none of them had undergone surgery.</p> <p>A fourth person was taken to a local hospital with an ankle injury from fleeing the scene.</p> <p>&#8220;It&#8217;s with great sadness that I tell you - based on the latest information - four people were injured in this horrific act of violence,&#8221; Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai said in letter to employees posted on Twitter.</p> Police officers and crime scene tape are seen at Youtube headquarters following an active shooter situation in San Bruno, California, U.S., April 3, 2018. REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage <p>&#8220;I know a lot of you are in shock right now. Over the coming days, we will continue to provide support to help everyone in our Google family heal from this unimaginable tragedy.&#8221;</p> <p>In a separate tweet, Pichai said he and YouTube Chief Executive Susan Wojcicki were &#8220;focused on supporting our employees and the @YouTube community through this difficult time together.&#8221;</p> <p>President Donald Trump said on Twitter that he had been briefed on the shooting.</p> <p>&#8220;Our thoughts and prayers are with everybody involved,&#8221; Trump tweeted. &#8220;Thank you to our phenomenal law enforcement officers and first responders that are currently on the scene.&#8221;</p> <p>In response, Twitter Chief Executive Jack Dorsey tweeted: &#8220;We can&#8217;t keep being reactive to this, thinking and praying it won&#8217;t happen again at our schools, jobs, or our community spots. It&#8217;s beyond time to evolve our policies.&#8221;</p> <p>Last month, YouTube announced it would ban content promoting the sale of guns and gun accessories, as well as videos that teach how to make guns.</p> Slideshow (11 Images) <p>Female mass shooters are rare. A recent Washington Post analysis shows only three of 150 U.S. shootings with more than four victims since 1966 were carried out by women. In 2015, a husband and wife killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Gina Cherelus in New York, Suzannah Gonzales in Chicago, Mark Hosenball in Washington, D.C.; Andrew Hay in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Alex Dobuzinskis and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Salvador Rodriguez, Heather Somerville, Noel Randewich, Stephen Nellis and Jeffrey Dastin in San Francisco; Keith Coffman in Denver; Writing by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Peter Cooney and Clarence Fernandez</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BEIJING (Reuters) - China will raise anti-dumping tariffs on ethylene glycol and diethylene glycol imported from the United States and some European suppliers, the Ministry of Commerce said on Wednesday.</p> <p>Producers impacted by the tariffs include Dow Chemical, now known as DowDuPont, Equistar, Eastman, Ineos, Sasol and BASF.</p> <p>The tariffs, which are as high as 75.5 percent for some companies including DowDuPont, will be effective from April 12, the statement said.</p> <p>Ethylene glycol is used in many consumer products including antifreeze, coolant and other solvents and paints.</p> <p>Reporting by Cheng Fang and Dominique Patton; Editing by Christian Schmollinger</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FB.O" type="external">FB.O</a>) Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said on Tuesday that he agreed &#8220;in spirit&#8221; with a strict new European Union law on data privacy but stopped short of committing to it as the standard for the social network across the world.</p> <p>As Facebook reels from a scandal over the mishandling of personal information belonging to millions of users, the company is facing demands to improve privacy and learn lessons from the landmark EU law scheduled to take effect next month.</p> <p>Zuckerberg told Reuters in a phone interview that Facebook was working on a version of the law that would work globally, bringing some European privacy guarantees worldwide, but the 33-year-old billionaire demurred when asked what parts of the law he would not extend worldwide.</p> <p>&#8220;We&#8217;re still nailing down details on this, but it should directionally be, in spirit, the whole thing,&#8221; Zuckerberg said. He did not elaborate.</p> <p>His comments signal that U.S. Facebook users, many of them still angry over the company&#8217;s admission that political consultancy Cambridge Analytica got hold of Facebook data on 50 million members, could find themselves in a worse position than Europeans.</p> <p>The European law, called the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), is the biggest overhaul of online privacy since the birth of the internet, giving Europeans the right to know what data is stored on them and the right to have it deleted.</p> <p>Apple Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AAPL.O" type="external">AAPL.O</a>) and some other tech firms have said they do plan to give people in the United States and elsewhere the same protections and rights that Europeans will gain.</p> <p>Shares of Facebook closed up 0.5 percent on Tuesday at $156.11. They are down more than 15 percent since March 16, when the scandal broke over Cambridge Analytica.</p> PUSH FOR DATA PRIVACY <p>Privacy advocacy groups have been urging Facebook and its Silicon Valley competitors such as Alphabet Inc&#8217;s ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=GOOGL.O" type="external">GOOGL.O</a>) Google to apply EU data laws worldwide, largely without success.</p> <p>&#8220;We want Facebook and Google and all the other companies to immediately adopt in the United States and worldwide any new protections that they implement in Europe,&#8221; said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, in Washington.</p> <p>Zuckerberg said many of the tools that are part of the law, such as the ability of users to delete all their data, are already available for people on Facebook.</p> <p>&#8220;We think that this is a good opportunity to take that moment across the rest of the world,&#8221; he said. &#8220;The vast majority of what is required here are things that we&#8217;ve already had for years across the world for everyone.&#8221;</p> FILE PHOTO: Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks on stage during the annual Facebook F8 developers conference in San Jose, California, U.S., April 18, 2017. REUTERS/Stephen Lam/File Photo <p>Google and Facebook are the global leaders in internet ad revenue. Both based in California, they possess enormous amounts of data on billions of people.</p> <p>Google has declined to comment on its plans.</p> <p>When GDPR takes effect on May 25, people in EU countries will gain the right to transfer their data to other social networks, for example. Facebook and its competitors will also need to be much more specific about how they plan to use people&#8217;s data, and they will need to get explicit consent.</p> <p>GDPR is likely to hurt profit at Facebook because it could reduce the value of ads if the company cannot use personal information as freely and the added expense of hiring lawyers to ensure compliance with the new law.</p> <p>Data is central to Facebook&#8217;s advertising business, and it has not yet sketched out a satisfying plan for how it plans to comply, said Pivotal Research analyst Brian Wieser.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FB.O" type="external">Facebook Inc</a> 156.11 FB.O Nasdaq +0.72 (+0.46%) FB.O AAPL.O GOOGL.O <p>&#8220;I haven&#8217;t heard any solutions from Facebook to get ahead of the problem yet,&#8221; Wieser said.</p> <p>Failure to comply with the law carries a maximum penalty of up to 4 percent of annual revenue.</p> <p>It should not be difficult for companies to extend EU practices and policies elsewhere because they already have systems in place, said Nicole Ozer, director of technology and civil liberties at the American Civil Liberties Union of California.</p> <p>Companies&#8217; promises are less reassuring than laws, she said: &#8220;If user privacy is going to be properly protected, the law has to require it.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by David Ingram and Joseph Menn in San Francisco; Additional reporting by Salvador Rodriguez ; Editing by Peter Henderson, Bill Rigby and Himani Sarkar</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>MATIAS ROMERO, Mexico (Reuters) - Mexican officials on Tuesday screened a dwindling group of hundreds of largely Central American migrants who are moving through Mexico toward the United States, seeking to break up the &#8220;caravan&#8221; that has drawn the ire of U.S. President Donald Trump.</p> <p>Trump, doubling down on his tough stance against illegal immigration, has railed against those making their way from the Guatemala-Mexico border in the past 10 days.</p> <p>Trump repeated threats to torpedo the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which underpins much of Mexico&#8217;s foreign trade, and said he wanted to send troops to the U.S. border to stop illegal immigrants until a long-promised border wall is built.</p> <p>In response, the Mexican government has said the migrants are being vetted to determine whether they have a right to stay, or would be returned to their countries of origin.</p> <p>Hundreds of men, women and children from Central America were stuck on Tuesday in the town of Matias Romero in the poor southern Mexican state of Oaxaca awaiting clarification of their legal status after officials began registering them.</p> <p>Confused and frustrated by paperwork, many were uncertain what lay in store, and desperate for information.</p> <p>&#8220;What was the point of all this then if they don&#8217;t let us stay?&#8221; Elizabeth Avalos, 23, a migrant from El Salvador who was traveling with two children, said angrily. &#8220;There&#8217;s no food, my children haven&#8217;t eaten since yesterday.&#8221;</p> <p>Hundreds of people camped out overnight in a park near the town&#8217;s train station, with shoes and bags strewn about.</p> <p>Jaime Alexander Variega, 35, sat alone in a patch of shade and cupped his head in his hands, weeping or praying, his feet still bearing lacerations from walking for four or five days straight through Guatemala from El Salvador.</p> <p>&#8220;We&#8217;re not safe in El Salvador,&#8221; said the former security guard, his hat smeared in dirt, explaining he had left his home because of the threats from local gangs. &#8220;I know it&#8217;s difficult to get into the United States. But it&#8217;s not impossible.&#8221;</p> <p>Around them, Mexican migration officials with notepads and pens took basic information from the migrants, asking for names, nationalities, dates of birth and proof of identity.</p> <p>The caravan was organized by U.S-based advocacy group Pueblo Sin Fronteras, which seeks to draw attention to the rights of migrants and provide them with aid. The Mexican government says the caravan, which like others travels by road, rail and on foot, has been organized every year since 2010.</p> <p>Honduran Carlos Ricardo Ellis Garcia clutched a handwritten list of names belonging to more than 100 people who joined the caravan in the southern border town of Tapachula, where it began on March 25, reaching a peak of around 1,500 people.</p> <p>But by Tuesday the number was down to about 1,100, according to Pueblo Sin Fronteras spokeswoman Gina Garibo.</p> <p>Many had broken off from the group, eager to move on more quickly, she said. Many others aimed to stay in Mexico because they had family ties there or planned to work, Garibo said.</p> <p>&#8220;Now they&#8217;re separating these groups,&#8221; Ellis Garcia said, referring to an estimated 300 people who split from the caravan on Monday. &#8220;I don&#8217;t know what&#8217;s the deal, we have no answers.&#8221;</p> Central American migrants take a break from traveling in their caravan, as they journey to the U.S., in Matias Romero, Oaxaca, Mexico April 3, 2018. REUTERS/Henry Romero <p>Advocacy groups told Reuters dozens of people left the caravan and traveled to the crime-ridden eastern state of Veracruz, where they were met by migration officials and police.</p> <p>The government said on Monday evening around 400 people in the caravan had already been sent back to their home countries.</p> <p>Geronimo Gutierrez, Mexico&#8217;s ambassador to the United States, told CNN that Mexican authorities were &#8220;looking at the status of the individuals so we can proceed either with a repatriation process&#8221; or offer humanitarian relief. That could include granting asylum or humanitarian visas.</p> <p>Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala are among the most violent and impoverished countries in the Americas, prompting many people to leave in search of a better life.</p> <p>Trump, who ran for office in 2016 on a platform to stem illegal immigrants from Mexico, said he had &#8220;told Mexico&#8221; he hoped it would halt the caravan.</p> <p>The migrant caravan also poses a political problem for Mexico&#8217;s unpopular government in a presidential election year.</p> Slideshow (7 Images) <p>President Enrique Pena Nieto is barred by law from seeking re-election in the July 1 vote, but the ruling party candidate is running third, well behind the front-runner.</p> <p>The government does not want to be seen as kowtowing to threats by Trump, who is deeply unpopular in Mexico.</p> <p>In a country where millions of people have friends or relatives who have migrated legally or illegally to the United States, many Mexicans harbor sympathy for the Central Americans.</p> <p>Reporting by Delphine Schrank; Additional reporting by Lizbeth Diaz, Diego Ore and Daina Solomon; Editing by Dave Graham and Grant McCool</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Leafs rally from two down to top Senators 4-3 Woman wounds three at YouTube headquarters in California, then kills herself China raises anti-dumping tariffs on ethylene glycol, diethylene glycol: commerce ministry Exclusive: Facebook CEO stops short of extending European privacy globally Mexico vets and disperses Central American migrant 'caravan'

https://reuters.com/article/icehockey-nhl-ott-tor-recap/leafs-rally-from-two-down-to-top-senators-4-3-idUSMTZEE1LVYHPPR

2018-01-21

2least

Connor Carrick8217s goahead goal midway through the third period helped the Toronto Maple Leafs erase a twogoal deficit to beat the Ottawa Senators 43 in the Battle of Ontario on Saturday night at Canadian Tire Centre in Ottawa Carrick fired his dragging wrist shot through a crowded crease and past Ottawa goalie Craig Anderson for the decisive strike with 1102 remaining in the game It was Carrick8217s third goal of the season Zach Hyman Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner each scored a goal for Toronto which snapped its seasonhigh fourgame losing streak 013 and avenged Wednesday8217s 43 loss to the Senators The Maple Leafs had lost four straight against Ottawa and were 163 in the past 10 meetings Frederik Andersen made his ninth straight start and stopped 15 shots for Toronto Erik Karlsson Mike Hoffman and Tom Pyatt scored for Ottawa 8212 all in the second period 8212 and Anderson stopped 29 of 33 shots as the Senators lost their second straight after Thursday8217s 41 loss to St Louis The Senators have dropped three of their last four and fell to 331 in 2018 Hyman fought through chaos in front of the net and slipped the loose puck past Anderson to put the Maple Leafs ahead 10 with 1234 left in the first period Karlsson who missed practice Friday with an illness but was healthy enough to play tied the game at 11 with a wrist shot from the right circle during a power play only 308 into the middle period Hoffman8217s goal came just over four minutes later to put Ottawa in control After taking a feed from Cody Ceci on a rush Hoffman beat Andersen stick side with his wrister Pyatt tacked on his sixth goal of the year while shorthanded with just under two minutes to play in the second giving Ottawa a twogoal cushion Matthews lit the lamp for his 20th goal just 253 into the third before Marner8217s sixth tally tied it at 421 on the power play Despite being a gametime decision Toronto8217s Morgan Rielly missed the game with an upperbody ailment he sustained Thursday against Philadelphia Ottawa thirdliner Nate Thompson also sat out with a lowerbody injury Toronto breaks up a stretch of four out of five games on the road with a home tilt against Colorado on Monday Ottawa begins a quick twogame road trip Monday in Minnesota 8212Field Level Media Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles SAN BRUNO Calif Reuters A woman who had voiced complaints online about YouTube opened fire with a handgun at the tech company8217s headquarters near San Francisco on Tuesday wounding three people before shooting herself dead authorities and media said It was the latest in a string of mass shootings in the United States in recent years Most recently the massacre of 17 people at a Florida high school has led to calls for tighter curbs on gun ownership Police did not identify the suspect or say what might have motivated Tuesday8217s shooting at YouTube a videosharing service owned by Alphabet Inc8217s Google which employs nearly 2000 people at the San Bruno California offices The woman approached an outdoor patio and dining courtyard on the campus around lunchtime and began to fire before entering the building police said An affiliate of ABC and other local media citing unnamed sources identified the woman as Nasim Aghdam San Bruno police officials could not immediately be reached for comment on the identity of the attacker Related Coverage Tech CEOs call for gun control following YouTube shooting YouTube spokeswoman Jessica Mason could not immediately be reached for comment on the identification by media The website NasimeSabzcom which media said was linked to the attacker had several posts about Persian culture and veganism interspersed with screeds against YouTube Those complaints included claims the company was not sharing enough revenue with people who create videos for the platform 8220There is no equal growth opportunity on YouTube or any other videosharing site your channel will grow if they want to8221 read one posting on the site A YouTube account in the name of Nasime Sabz was deleted on Tuesday evening A US government security official told Reuters there was no known connection to terrorism ABC News citing unnamed law enforcement sources said the suspect was 35 to 40 years old and lived in Southern California A YouTube product manager Todd Sherman described on Twitter hearing people running first thinking it was an earthquake before he was told that a person had a gun 8220At that point every new person I saw was a potential shooter Someone else said that the person shot out the back doors and then shot themselves8221 Sherman said in a tweet 8220I looked down and saw blood drips on the floor and stairs Peeked around for threats and then we headed downstairs and out the front8221 Sherman said In a recording of a 911 call posted online by the Los Angeles Times a dispatcher can be heard saying 8220Shooter Another party said they spotted someone with a gun Suspect came from the back patio Again we have a report of a subject with a gun They heard seven or eight shots being fired8221 Dozens of emergency vehicles quickly converged on the YouTube campus and police could be seen on televised aerial video systematically frisking several employees leaving the area with their hands raised One victim a 36yearold man was listed in critical condition at San Francisco General Hospital A 32yearold woman was listed in serious condition and a 27yearold woman in fair condition Authorities did not release names of the victims The three patients taken to San Francisco General Hospital were all awake Dr Andre Campbell a trauma surgeon at the hospital told a news conference All were victims of gunshot wounds Campbell said but none of them had undergone surgery A fourth person was taken to a local hospital with an ankle injury from fleeing the scene 8220It8217s with great sadness that I tell you based on the latest information four people were injured in this horrific act of violence8221 Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai said in letter to employees posted on Twitter Police officers and crime scene tape are seen at Youtube headquarters following an active shooter situation in San Bruno California US April 3 2018 REUTERSElijah Nouvelage 8220I know a lot of you are in shock right now Over the coming days we will continue to provide support to help everyone in our Google family heal from this unimaginable tragedy8221 In a separate tweet Pichai said he and YouTube Chief Executive Susan Wojcicki were 8220focused on supporting our employees and the YouTube community through this difficult time together8221 President Donald Trump said on Twitter that he had been briefed on the shooting 8220Our thoughts and prayers are with everybody involved8221 Trump tweeted 8220Thank you to our phenomenal law enforcement officers and first responders that are currently on the scene8221 In response Twitter Chief Executive Jack Dorsey tweeted 8220We can8217t keep being reactive to this thinking and praying it won8217t happen again at our schools jobs or our community spots It8217s beyond time to evolve our policies8221 Last month YouTube announced it would ban content promoting the sale of guns and gun accessories as well as videos that teach how to make guns Slideshow 11 Images Female mass shooters are rare A recent Washington Post analysis shows only three of 150 US shootings with more than four victims since 1966 were carried out by women In 2015 a husband and wife killed 14 people in San Bernardino California Additional reporting by Gina Cherelus in New York Suzannah Gonzales in Chicago Mark Hosenball in Washington DC Andrew Hay in Santa Fe New Mexico Alex Dobuzinskis and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles Salvador Rodriguez Heather Somerville Noel Randewich Stephen Nellis and Jeffrey Dastin in San Francisco Keith Coffman in Denver Writing by Dan Whitcomb Editing by Peter Cooney and Clarence Fernandez Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BEIJING Reuters China will raise antidumping tariffs on ethylene glycol and diethylene glycol imported from the United States and some European suppliers the Ministry of Commerce said on Wednesday Producers impacted by the tariffs include Dow Chemical now known as DowDuPont Equistar Eastman Ineos Sasol and BASF The tariffs which are as high as 755 percent for some companies including DowDuPont will be effective from April 12 the statement said Ethylene glycol is used in many consumer products including antifreeze coolant and other solvents and paints Reporting by Cheng Fang and Dominique Patton Editing by Christian Schmollinger Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles SAN FRANCISCO Reuters Facebook Inc FBO Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said on Tuesday that he agreed 8220in spirit8221 with a strict new European Union law on data privacy but stopped short of committing to it as the standard for the social network across the world As Facebook reels from a scandal over the mishandling of personal information belonging to millions of users the company is facing demands to improve privacy and learn lessons from the landmark EU law scheduled to take effect next month Zuckerberg told Reuters in a phone interview that Facebook was working on a version of the law that would work globally bringing some European privacy guarantees worldwide but the 33yearold billionaire demurred when asked what parts of the law he would not extend worldwide 8220We8217re still nailing down details on this but it should directionally be in spirit the whole thing8221 Zuckerberg said He did not elaborate His comments signal that US Facebook users many of them still angry over the company8217s admission that political consultancy Cambridge Analytica got hold of Facebook data on 50 million members could find themselves in a worse position than Europeans The European law called the General Data Protection Regulation GDPR is the biggest overhaul of online privacy since the birth of the internet giving Europeans the right to know what data is stored on them and the right to have it deleted Apple Inc AAPLO and some other tech firms have said they do plan to give people in the United States and elsewhere the same protections and rights that Europeans will gain Shares of Facebook closed up 05 percent on Tuesday at 15611 They are down more than 15 percent since March 16 when the scandal broke over Cambridge Analytica PUSH FOR DATA PRIVACY Privacy advocacy groups have been urging Facebook and its Silicon Valley competitors such as Alphabet Inc8217s GOOGLO Google to apply EU data laws worldwide largely without success 8220We want Facebook and Google and all the other companies to immediately adopt in the United States and worldwide any new protections that they implement in Europe8221 said Jeff Chester executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy in Washington Zuckerberg said many of the tools that are part of the law such as the ability of users to delete all their data are already available for people on Facebook 8220We think that this is a good opportunity to take that moment across the rest of the world8221 he said 8220The vast majority of what is required here are things that we8217ve already had for years across the world for everyone8221 FILE PHOTO Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks on stage during the annual Facebook F8 developers conference in San Jose California US April 18 2017 REUTERSStephen LamFile Photo Google and Facebook are the global leaders in internet ad revenue Both based in California they possess enormous amounts of data on billions of people Google has declined to comment on its plans When GDPR takes effect on May 25 people in EU countries will gain the right to transfer their data to other social networks for example Facebook and its competitors will also need to be much more specific about how they plan to use people8217s data and they will need to get explicit consent GDPR is likely to hurt profit at Facebook because it could reduce the value of ads if the company cannot use personal information as freely and the added expense of hiring lawyers to ensure compliance with the new law Data is central to Facebook8217s advertising business and it has not yet sketched out a satisfying plan for how it plans to comply said Pivotal Research analyst Brian Wieser Facebook Inc 15611 FBO Nasdaq 072 046 FBO AAPLO GOOGLO 8220I haven8217t heard any solutions from Facebook to get ahead of the problem yet8221 Wieser said Failure to comply with the law carries a maximum penalty of up to 4 percent of annual revenue It should not be difficult for companies to extend EU practices and policies elsewhere because they already have systems in place said Nicole Ozer director of technology and civil liberties at the American Civil Liberties Union of California Companies8217 promises are less reassuring than laws she said 8220If user privacy is going to be properly protected the law has to require it8221 Reporting by David Ingram and Joseph Menn in San Francisco Additional reporting by Salvador Rodriguez Editing by Peter Henderson Bill Rigby and Himani Sarkar Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles MATIAS ROMERO Mexico Reuters Mexican officials on Tuesday screened a dwindling group of hundreds of largely Central American migrants who are moving through Mexico toward the United States seeking to break up the 8220caravan8221 that has drawn the ire of US President Donald Trump Trump doubling down on his tough stance against illegal immigration has railed against those making their way from the GuatemalaMexico border in the past 10 days Trump repeated threats to torpedo the North American Free Trade Agreement NAFTA which underpins much of Mexico8217s foreign trade and said he wanted to send troops to the US border to stop illegal immigrants until a longpromised border wall is built In response the Mexican government has said the migrants are being vetted to determine whether they have a right to stay or would be returned to their countries of origin Hundreds of men women and children from Central America were stuck on Tuesday in the town of Matias Romero in the poor southern Mexican state of Oaxaca awaiting clarification of their legal status after officials began registering them Confused and frustrated by paperwork many were uncertain what lay in store and desperate for information 8220What was the point of all this then if they don8217t let us stay8221 Elizabeth Avalos 23 a migrant from El Salvador who was traveling with two children said angrily 8220There8217s no food my children haven8217t eaten since yesterday8221 Hundreds of people camped out overnight in a park near the town8217s train station with shoes and bags strewn about Jaime Alexander Variega 35 sat alone in a patch of shade and cupped his head in his hands weeping or praying his feet still bearing lacerations from walking for four or five days straight through Guatemala from El Salvador 8220We8217re not safe in El Salvador8221 said the former security guard his hat smeared in dirt explaining he had left his home because of the threats from local gangs 8220I know it8217s difficult to get into the United States But it8217s not impossible8221 Around them Mexican migration officials with notepads and pens took basic information from the migrants asking for names nationalities dates of birth and proof of identity The caravan was organized by USbased advocacy group Pueblo Sin Fronteras which seeks to draw attention to the rights of migrants and provide them with aid The Mexican government says the caravan which like others travels by road rail and on foot has been organized every year since 2010 Honduran Carlos Ricardo Ellis Garcia clutched a handwritten list of names belonging to more than 100 people who joined the caravan in the southern border town of Tapachula where it began on March 25 reaching a peak of around 1500 people But by Tuesday the number was down to about 1100 according to Pueblo Sin Fronteras spokeswoman Gina Garibo Many had broken off from the group eager to move on more quickly she said Many others aimed to stay in Mexico because they had family ties there or planned to work Garibo said 8220Now they8217re separating these groups8221 Ellis Garcia said referring to an estimated 300 people who split from the caravan on Monday 8220I don8217t know what8217s the deal we have no answers8221 Central American migrants take a break from traveling in their caravan as they journey to the US in Matias Romero Oaxaca Mexico April 3 2018 REUTERSHenry Romero Advocacy groups told Reuters dozens of people left the caravan and traveled to the crimeridden eastern state of Veracruz where they were met by migration officials and police The government said on Monday evening around 400 people in the caravan had already been sent back to their home countries Geronimo Gutierrez Mexico8217s ambassador to the United States told CNN that Mexican authorities were 8220looking at the status of the individuals so we can proceed either with a repatriation process8221 or offer humanitarian relief That could include granting asylum or humanitarian visas Honduras El Salvador and Guatemala are among the most violent and impoverished countries in the Americas prompting many people to leave in search of a better life Trump who ran for office in 2016 on a platform to stem illegal immigrants from Mexico said he had 8220told Mexico8221 he hoped it would halt the caravan The migrant caravan also poses a political problem for Mexico8217s unpopular government in a presidential election year Slideshow 7 Images President Enrique Pena Nieto is barred by law from seeking reelection in the July 1 vote but the ruling party candidate is running third well behind the frontrunner The government does not want to be seen as kowtowing to threats by Trump who is deeply unpopular in Mexico In a country where millions of people have friends or relatives who have migrated legally or illegally to the United States many Mexicans harbor sympathy for the Central Americans Reporting by Delphine Schrank Additional reporting by Lizbeth Diaz Diego Ore and Daina Solomon Editing by Dave Graham and Grant McCool Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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granting/VERB asylum/NOUN or/CCONJ humanitarian/ADJ visas/NOUN Honduras/PROPN El/PROPN Salvador/PROPN and/CCONJ Guatemala/PROPN are/AUX among/ADP the/DET most/ADV violent/ADJ and/CCONJ impoverished/ADJ countries/NOUN in/ADP the/DET Americas/PROPN prompting/VERB many/ADJ people/NOUN to/PART leave/VERB in/ADP search/NOUN of/ADP a/DET better/ADJ life/NOUN Trump/PROPN who/PRON ran/VERB for/ADP office/NOUN in/ADP 2016/NUM on/ADP a/DET platform/NOUN to/PART stem/VERB illegal/ADJ immigrants/NOUN from/ADP Mexico/PROPN said/VERB he/PRON had/VERB 8220told/NOUN Mexico8221/PROPN he/PRON hoped/VERB it/PRON would/AUX halt/VERB the/DET caravan/NOUN The/DET migrant/ADJ caravan/NOUN also/ADV poses/VERB a/DET political/ADJ problem/NOUN for/ADP Mexico8217s/PROPN unpopular/ADJ government/NOUN in/ADP a/DET presidential/ADJ election/NOUN year/NOUN Slideshow/PROPN 7/NUM Images/PROPN President/PROPN Enrique/PROPN Pena/PROPN Nieto/PROPN is/AUX barred/VERB by/ADP law/NOUN from/ADP seeking/VERB reelection/NOUN in/ADP the/DET July/PROPN 1/NUM vote/NOUN but/CCONJ the/DET ruling/VERB party/NOUN candidate/NOUN is/AUX running/VERB third/ADV well/ADV behind/ADP the/DET frontrunner/NOUN The/DET government/NOUN does/AUX not/PART want/VERB to/PART be/AUX seen/VERB as/ADP kowtowing/VERB to/ADP threats/NOUN by/ADP Trump/PROPN who/PRON is/AUX deeply/ADV unpopular/ADJ in/ADP Mexico/PROPN In/ADP a/DET country/NOUN where/SCONJ millions/NOUN of/ADP people/NOUN have/VERB friends/NOUN or/CCONJ relatives/NOUN who/PRON have/AUX migrated/VERB legally/ADV or/CCONJ illegally/ADV to/ADP the/DET United/PROPN States/PROPN many/ADJ Mexicans/PROPN harbor/VERB sympathy/NOUN for/ADP the/DET Central/PROPN Americans/PROPN Reporting/VERB by/ADP Delphine/PROPN Schrank/PROPN Additional/PROPN reporting/NOUN by/ADP Lizbeth/PROPN Diaz/PROPN Diego/PROPN Ore/PROPN and/CCONJ Daina/PROPN Solomon/PROPN Editing/PROPN by/ADP Dave/PROPN Graham/PROPN and/CCONJ Grant/PROPN McCool/PROPN Our/PRON Standards/PROPN The/DET Thomson/PROPN Reuters/PROPN Trust/PROPN Principles/PROPN

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) &#8212; The federal government shutdown only partially curbs operations. But the longer the shutdown continues, the more likely its impact will be felt.</p> <p>U.S. troops will stay at their posts and mail will get delivered, but almost half of the 2 million civilian federal workers will be barred from doing their jobs if the shutdown extends into Monday.</p> <p>How key parts of the federal government would be affected by a shutdown:</p> <p>___</p> <p>INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE</p> <p>A shutdown plan posted on the Treasury Department's website shows that nearly 44 percent of the IRS' 80,565 employees will be exempt from being furloughed during a shutdown. That would mean nearly 45,500 IRS employees will be sent home just as the agency is preparing for the start of the tax filing season and ingesting the sweeping changes made by the new GOP tax law.</p> <p>The Republican architects of the tax law have promised that millions of working Americans will see heftier paychecks next month, with less money withheld by employers in anticipation of lower income taxes. The IRS recently issued new withholding tables for employers.</p> <p>But Marcus Owens, who for 10 years headed the IRS division dealing with charities and political organizations, said it's a "virtual certainty" that the larger paychecks will be delayed if there's a lengthy government shutdown.</p> <p>___</p> <p>HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES DEPARTMENT</p> <p>Half of the more than 80,000 employees will be sent home. Key programs will continue to function because their funding has ongoing authorization and doesn't depend on annual approval by Congress. But critical disruptions could occur across the vast jurisdiction of HHS programs &#8212; including the seasonal flu program.</p> <p>Medicare, which insures nearly 59 million seniors and disabled people, will keep going. And so will Medicaid, which covers more than 74 million low-income and disabled people, including most nursing home residents.</p> <p>States will continue to receive payments for the Children's Health Insurance Program, which covers about 9 million kids. However, long-term funding for the program will run out soon unless Congress acts to renew it.</p> <p>Deep into a tough flu season, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will be unable to support the government's annual seasonal flu program. And CDC's ability to respond to disease outbreaks will be significantly reduced.</p> <p>___</p> <p>JUSTICE DEPARTMENT</p> <p>Many of the nearly 115,000 Justice Department employees have national security and public safety responsibilities that allow them to keep working during a shutdown. Special counsel Robert Mueller's team investigating Russian meddling in the presidential election will also continue working. His office is paid for indefinitely.</p> <p>The more than 95,000 employees who are "exempted" include most of the members of the national security division, U.S. attorneys, and most of the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, U.S. Marshals Service and federal prison employees. Criminal cases will continue, but civil cases will be postponed as long as doing so doesn't compromise public safety. Most law enforcement training will be canceled, per the department's contingency plan.</p> <p>___</p> <p>STATE DEPARTMENT</p> <p>Many State Department operations will continue in a shutdown. Passport and visa processing, which are largely self-funded by consumer fees, will not shut down. The agency's main headquarters in Washington, in consultation with the nearly 300 embassies, consulates and other diplomatic missions around the world, will draw up lists of nonessential employees who will be furloughed.</p> <p>Department operations will continue through the weekend and staffers will be instructed to report for work as usual on Monday to find out whether they have been furloughed.</p> <p>___</p> <p>DEFENSE DEPARTMENT</p> <p>The U.S. military will continue to fight wars and conduct missions around the world, including in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. And members of the military will report to work, though they won't get paid until Congress approves funding.</p> <p>But Defense Secretary Jim Mattis warned Friday that a shutdown will have far-reaching effects.</p> <p>"Our maintenance activities will probably pretty much shut down," he said during remarks at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. "We do a lot of intelligence operations around the world, and they cost money. Those, obviously, would stop. And I would just tell you that training for almost our entire reserve force will stop."</p> <p>And, while ships will remain at sea and airstrikes against enemy fighters will continue, any National Guard forces heading out to do weekend training duty around the country will arrive at armories and be told to go home.</p> <p>___</p> <p>U.S. INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES</p> <p>The workforce at the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies will be pared down significantly, according to a person familiar with contingency procedures.</p> <p>The official, who was not authorized to publicly discuss the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity, said employees who are considered essential and have to work will do so with no expectation of a regular paycheck.</p> <p>While they can be kept on the job, federal workers can't be paid for days worked during a shutdown. In the past, however, they have been paid retroactively even if they were ordered to stay home.</p> <p>___</p> <p>HOMELAND SECURITY DEPARTMENT</p> <p>A department spokesman said nearly 90 percent of Homeland Security employees are considered essential and will continue to perform their duties during a government shutdown.</p> <p>That means most Customs and Border Protection and Transportation Security Administration workers will stay on the job, according to the department's shutdown plan, dated Friday.</p> <p>Immigration and Customs Enforcement will be staffed at about 78 percent, meaning more than 15,000 of the agency's employees will keep working. The Secret Service, also part of Homeland Security, will retain more than 5,700 employees during the shutdown.</p> <p>___</p> <p>INTERIOR DEPARTMENT</p> <p>The Interior Department says national parks and other public lands will remain as accessible as possible. That position is a change from previous shutdowns, when most parks were closed and became high-profile symbols of dysfunction.</p> <p>Spokeswoman Heather Swift said the American public &#8212; especially veterans who come to the nation's capital &#8212; should find war memorials and open-air parks available to visitors. Swift said many national parks and wildlife refuges nationwide will also be open with limited access when possible.</p> <p>She said public roads that already are open are likely to remain open, though services that require staffing and maintenance such as campgrounds, full-service restrooms and concessions won't be operating. Backcountry lands and culturally sensitive sites are likely to be restricted or closed, she said.</p> <p>___</p> <p>TRANSPORTATION DEPARTMENT</p> <p>More than half &#8212; 34,600 &#8212; of the Department of Transportation's 55,100 employees will continue working during a shutdown. The bulk of those staying on the job work for the Federal Aviation Administration, which operates the nation's air traffic control system.</p> <p>Controllers and aviation, pipeline and railroad safety inspectors are among those who would continue to work.</p> <p>But certification of new aircraft will be limited, and processing of airport construction grants, training of new controllers, registration of planes, air traffic control modernization research and development, and issuance of new pilot licenses and medical certificates will stop.</p> <p>At the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, investigations on auto safety defects will be suspended, incoming information on possible defects from manufacturers and consumers won't be reviewed and compliance testing of vehicles and equipment will be delayed.</p> <p>The Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, whose operations are mostly paid for out of the Federal Highway Trust Fund, will continue most of their functions. The fund's revenue comes from federal gas and diesel taxes, which will continue to be collected. But work on issuing new regulations will stop throughout the department and its nine agencies.</p> <p>___</p> <p>NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH</p> <p>Dr. Anthony Fauci, the agency's infectious disease chief, said a government shutdown will be disruptive to research and morale at the National Institutes of Health but will not adversely affect patients already in medical studies.</p> <p>"We still take care of them," he said of current NIH patients. But other types of research would be seriously harmed, Fauci said.</p> <p>A shutdown could mean interrupting research that's been going on for years, Fauci said. The NIH is the government's primary agency responsible for biomedical and public health research across 27 institutes and centers. Its research ranges from cancer studies to the testing and creation of vaccines.</p> <p>"You can't push the pause button on an experiment," he said.</p> <p>___</p> <p>ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY</p> <p>EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has instructed workers there to come to work next week even with a shutdown. Pruitt said in an email to all EPA employees on Friday that the agency had "sufficient resources to remain open for a limited amount of time." He said further instructions would come if the shutdown lasts for more than a week.</p> <p>The instructions from Pruitt are different from how the agency has operated during prior shutdowns and the contingency plan posted on EPA's website. A spokesman for the agency said earlier on Friday that the December 2017 plan was no longer valid.</p> <p>___</p> <p>Associated Press writers Sadie Gurman, Joan Lowy, Michael Biesecker, Lolita Baldor, Andrew Taylor, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Laurie Kellman, Deb Riechmann, Matthew Lee and Marcy Gordon contributed to this report.</p> <p>___</p> <p>Contact Richard Lardner on Twitter at <a href="http://twitter.com/rplardner" type="external">http://twitter.com/rplardner</a></p> <p>WASHINGTON (AP) &#8212; The federal government shutdown only partially curbs operations. But the longer the shutdown continues, the more likely its impact will be felt.</p> <p>U.S. troops will stay at their posts and mail will get delivered, but almost half of the 2 million civilian federal workers will be barred from doing their jobs if the shutdown extends into Monday.</p> <p>How key parts of the federal government would be affected by a shutdown:</p> <p>___</p> <p>INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE</p> <p>A shutdown plan posted on the Treasury Department's website shows that nearly 44 percent of the IRS' 80,565 employees will be exempt from being furloughed during a shutdown. That would mean nearly 45,500 IRS employees will be sent home just as the agency is preparing for the start of the tax filing season and ingesting the sweeping changes made by the new GOP tax law.</p> <p>The Republican architects of the tax law have promised that millions of working Americans will see heftier paychecks next month, with less money withheld by employers in anticipation of lower income taxes. The IRS recently issued new withholding tables for employers.</p> <p>But Marcus Owens, who for 10 years headed the IRS division dealing with charities and political organizations, said it's a "virtual certainty" that the larger paychecks will be delayed if there's a lengthy government shutdown.</p> <p>___</p> <p>HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES DEPARTMENT</p> <p>Half of the more than 80,000 employees will be sent home. Key programs will continue to function because their funding has ongoing authorization and doesn't depend on annual approval by Congress. But critical disruptions could occur across the vast jurisdiction of HHS programs &#8212; including the seasonal flu program.</p> <p>Medicare, which insures nearly 59 million seniors and disabled people, will keep going. And so will Medicaid, which covers more than 74 million low-income and disabled people, including most nursing home residents.</p> <p>States will continue to receive payments for the Children's Health Insurance Program, which covers about 9 million kids. However, long-term funding for the program will run out soon unless Congress acts to renew it.</p> <p>Deep into a tough flu season, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will be unable to support the government's annual seasonal flu program. And CDC's ability to respond to disease outbreaks will be significantly reduced.</p> <p>___</p> <p>JUSTICE DEPARTMENT</p> <p>Many of the nearly 115,000 Justice Department employees have national security and public safety responsibilities that allow them to keep working during a shutdown. Special counsel Robert Mueller's team investigating Russian meddling in the presidential election will also continue working. His office is paid for indefinitely.</p> <p>The more than 95,000 employees who are "exempted" include most of the members of the national security division, U.S. attorneys, and most of the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, U.S. Marshals Service and federal prison employees. Criminal cases will continue, but civil cases will be postponed as long as doing so doesn't compromise public safety. Most law enforcement training will be canceled, per the department's contingency plan.</p> <p>___</p> <p>STATE DEPARTMENT</p> <p>Many State Department operations will continue in a shutdown. Passport and visa processing, which are largely self-funded by consumer fees, will not shut down. The agency's main headquarters in Washington, in consultation with the nearly 300 embassies, consulates and other diplomatic missions around the world, will draw up lists of nonessential employees who will be furloughed.</p> <p>Department operations will continue through the weekend and staffers will be instructed to report for work as usual on Monday to find out whether they have been furloughed.</p> <p>___</p> <p>DEFENSE DEPARTMENT</p> <p>The U.S. military will continue to fight wars and conduct missions around the world, including in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. And members of the military will report to work, though they won't get paid until Congress approves funding.</p> <p>But Defense Secretary Jim Mattis warned Friday that a shutdown will have far-reaching effects.</p> <p>"Our maintenance activities will probably pretty much shut down," he said during remarks at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. "We do a lot of intelligence operations around the world, and they cost money. Those, obviously, would stop. And I would just tell you that training for almost our entire reserve force will stop."</p> <p>And, while ships will remain at sea and airstrikes against enemy fighters will continue, any National Guard forces heading out to do weekend training duty around the country will arrive at armories and be told to go home.</p> <p>___</p> <p>U.S. INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES</p> <p>The workforce at the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies will be pared down significantly, according to a person familiar with contingency procedures.</p> <p>The official, who was not authorized to publicly discuss the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity, said employees who are considered essential and have to work will do so with no expectation of a regular paycheck.</p> <p>While they can be kept on the job, federal workers can't be paid for days worked during a shutdown. In the past, however, they have been paid retroactively even if they were ordered to stay home.</p> <p>___</p> <p>HOMELAND SECURITY DEPARTMENT</p> <p>A department spokesman said nearly 90 percent of Homeland Security employees are considered essential and will continue to perform their duties during a government shutdown.</p> <p>That means most Customs and Border Protection and Transportation Security Administration workers will stay on the job, according to the department's shutdown plan, dated Friday.</p> <p>Immigration and Customs Enforcement will be staffed at about 78 percent, meaning more than 15,000 of the agency's employees will keep working. The Secret Service, also part of Homeland Security, will retain more than 5,700 employees during the shutdown.</p> <p>___</p> <p>INTERIOR DEPARTMENT</p> <p>The Interior Department says national parks and other public lands will remain as accessible as possible. That position is a change from previous shutdowns, when most parks were closed and became high-profile symbols of dysfunction.</p> <p>Spokeswoman Heather Swift said the American public &#8212; especially veterans who come to the nation's capital &#8212; should find war memorials and open-air parks available to visitors. Swift said many national parks and wildlife refuges nationwide will also be open with limited access when possible.</p> <p>She said public roads that already are open are likely to remain open, though services that require staffing and maintenance such as campgrounds, full-service restrooms and concessions won't be operating. Backcountry lands and culturally sensitive sites are likely to be restricted or closed, she said.</p> <p>___</p> <p>TRANSPORTATION DEPARTMENT</p> <p>More than half &#8212; 34,600 &#8212; of the Department of Transportation's 55,100 employees will continue working during a shutdown. The bulk of those staying on the job work for the Federal Aviation Administration, which operates the nation's air traffic control system.</p> <p>Controllers and aviation, pipeline and railroad safety inspectors are among those who would continue to work.</p> <p>But certification of new aircraft will be limited, and processing of airport construction grants, training of new controllers, registration of planes, air traffic control modernization research and development, and issuance of new pilot licenses and medical certificates will stop.</p> <p>At the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, investigations on auto safety defects will be suspended, incoming information on possible defects from manufacturers and consumers won't be reviewed and compliance testing of vehicles and equipment will be delayed.</p> <p>The Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, whose operations are mostly paid for out of the Federal Highway Trust Fund, will continue most of their functions. The fund's revenue comes from federal gas and diesel taxes, which will continue to be collected. But work on issuing new regulations will stop throughout the department and its nine agencies.</p> <p>___</p> <p>NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH</p> <p>Dr. Anthony Fauci, the agency's infectious disease chief, said a government shutdown will be disruptive to research and morale at the National Institutes of Health but will not adversely affect patients already in medical studies.</p> <p>"We still take care of them," he said of current NIH patients. But other types of research would be seriously harmed, Fauci said.</p> <p>A shutdown could mean interrupting research that's been going on for years, Fauci said. The NIH is the government's primary agency responsible for biomedical and public health research across 27 institutes and centers. Its research ranges from cancer studies to the testing and creation of vaccines.</p> <p>"You can't push the pause button on an experiment," he said.</p> <p>___</p> <p>ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY</p> <p>EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has instructed workers there to come to work next week even with a shutdown. Pruitt said in an email to all EPA employees on Friday that the agency had "sufficient resources to remain open for a limited amount of time." He said further instructions would come if the shutdown lasts for more than a week.</p> <p>The instructions from Pruitt are different from how the agency has operated during prior shutdowns and the contingency plan posted on EPA's website. A spokesman for the agency said earlier on Friday that the December 2017 plan was no longer valid.</p> <p>___</p> <p>Associated Press writers Sadie Gurman, Joan Lowy, Michael Biesecker, Lolita Baldor, Andrew Taylor, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Laurie Kellman, Deb Riechmann, Matthew Lee and Marcy Gordon contributed to this report.</p> <p>___</p> <p>Contact Richard Lardner on Twitter at <a href="http://twitter.com/rplardner" type="external">http://twitter.com/rplardner</a></p>

Government Shutdown: What's closed, who is affected?

https://apnews.com/amp/aa7d1925b58e4285ad1f64c309fb7b88

2018-01-20

2least

WASHINGTON AP 8212 The federal government shutdown only partially curbs operations But the longer the shutdown continues the more likely its impact will be felt US troops will stay at their posts and mail will get delivered but almost half of the 2 million civilian federal workers will be barred from doing their jobs if the shutdown extends into Monday How key parts of the federal government would be affected by a shutdown ___ INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE A shutdown plan posted on the Treasury Departments website shows that nearly 44 percent of the IRS 80565 employees will be exempt from being furloughed during a shutdown That would mean nearly 45500 IRS employees will be sent home just as the agency is preparing for the start of the tax filing season and ingesting the sweeping changes made by the new GOP tax law The Republican architects of the tax law have promised that millions of working Americans will see heftier paychecks next month with less money withheld by employers in anticipation of lower income taxes The IRS recently issued new withholding tables for employers But Marcus Owens who for 10 years headed the IRS division dealing with charities and political organizations said its a virtual certainty that the larger paychecks will be delayed if theres a lengthy government shutdown ___ HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES DEPARTMENT Half of the more than 80000 employees will be sent home Key programs will continue to function because their funding has ongoing authorization and doesnt depend on annual approval by Congress But critical disruptions could occur across the vast jurisdiction of HHS programs 8212 including the seasonal flu program Medicare which insures nearly 59 million seniors and disabled people will keep going And so will Medicaid which covers more than 74 million lowincome and disabled people including most nursing home residents States will continue to receive payments for the Childrens Health Insurance Program which covers about 9 million kids However longterm funding for the program will run out soon unless Congress acts to renew it Deep into a tough flu season the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will be unable to support the governments annual seasonal flu program And CDCs ability to respond to disease outbreaks will be significantly reduced ___ JUSTICE DEPARTMENT Many of the nearly 115000 Justice Department employees have national security and public safety responsibilities that allow them to keep working during a shutdown Special counsel Robert Muellers team investigating Russian meddling in the presidential election will also continue working His office is paid for indefinitely The more than 95000 employees who are exempted include most of the members of the national security division US attorneys and most of the FBI Drug Enforcement Administration Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives US Marshals Service and federal prison employees Criminal cases will continue but civil cases will be postponed as long as doing so doesnt compromise public safety Most law enforcement training will be canceled per the departments contingency plan ___ STATE DEPARTMENT Many State Department operations will continue in a shutdown Passport and visa processing which are largely selffunded by consumer fees will not shut down The agencys main headquarters in Washington in consultation with the nearly 300 embassies consulates and other diplomatic missions around the world will draw up lists of nonessential employees who will be furloughed Department operations will continue through the weekend and staffers will be instructed to report for work as usual on Monday to find out whether they have been furloughed ___ DEFENSE DEPARTMENT The US military will continue to fight wars and conduct missions around the world including in Iraq Syria and Afghanistan And members of the military will report to work though they wont get paid until Congress approves funding But Defense Secretary Jim Mattis warned Friday that a shutdown will have farreaching effects Our maintenance activities will probably pretty much shut down he said during remarks at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies We do a lot of intelligence operations around the world and they cost money Those obviously would stop And I would just tell you that training for almost our entire reserve force will stop And while ships will remain at sea and airstrikes against enemy fighters will continue any National Guard forces heading out to do weekend training duty around the country will arrive at armories and be told to go home ___ US INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES The workforce at the 17 US intelligence agencies will be pared down significantly according to a person familiar with contingency procedures The official who was not authorized to publicly discuss the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity said employees who are considered essential and have to work will do so with no expectation of a regular paycheck While they can be kept on the job federal workers cant be paid for days worked during a shutdown In the past however they have been paid retroactively even if they were ordered to stay home ___ HOMELAND SECURITY DEPARTMENT A department spokesman said nearly 90 percent of Homeland Security employees are considered essential and will continue to perform their duties during a government shutdown That means most Customs and Border Protection and Transportation Security Administration workers will stay on the job according to the departments shutdown plan dated Friday Immigration and Customs Enforcement will be staffed at about 78 percent meaning more than 15000 of the agencys employees will keep working The Secret Service also part of Homeland Security will retain more than 5700 employees during the shutdown ___ INTERIOR DEPARTMENT The Interior Department says national parks and other public lands will remain as accessible as possible That position is a change from previous shutdowns when most parks were closed and became highprofile symbols of dysfunction Spokeswoman Heather Swift said the American public 8212 especially veterans who come to the nations capital 8212 should find war memorials and openair parks available to visitors Swift said many national parks and wildlife refuges nationwide will also be open with limited access when possible She said public roads that already are open are likely to remain open though services that require staffing and maintenance such as campgrounds fullservice restrooms and concessions wont be operating Backcountry lands and culturally sensitive sites are likely to be restricted or closed she said ___ TRANSPORTATION DEPARTMENT More than half 8212 34600 8212 of the Department of Transportations 55100 employees will continue working during a shutdown The bulk of those staying on the job work for the Federal Aviation Administration which operates the nations air traffic control system Controllers and aviation pipeline and railroad safety inspectors are among those who would continue to work But certification of new aircraft will be limited and processing of airport construction grants training of new controllers registration of planes air traffic control modernization research and development and issuance of new pilot licenses and medical certificates will stop At the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration investigations on auto safety defects will be suspended incoming information on possible defects from manufacturers and consumers wont be reviewed and compliance testing of vehicles and equipment will be delayed The Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration whose operations are mostly paid for out of the Federal Highway Trust Fund will continue most of their functions The funds revenue comes from federal gas and diesel taxes which will continue to be collected But work on issuing new regulations will stop throughout the department and its nine agencies ___ NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH Dr Anthony Fauci the agencys infectious disease chief said a government shutdown will be disruptive to research and morale at the National Institutes of Health but will not adversely affect patients already in medical studies We still take care of them he said of current NIH patients But other types of research would be seriously harmed Fauci said A shutdown could mean interrupting research thats been going on for years Fauci said The NIH is the governments primary agency responsible for biomedical and public health research across 27 institutes and centers Its research ranges from cancer studies to the testing and creation of vaccines You cant push the pause button on an experiment he said ___ ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has instructed workers there to come to work next week even with a shutdown Pruitt said in an email to all EPA employees on Friday that the agency had sufficient resources to remain open for a limited amount of time He said further instructions would come if the shutdown lasts for more than a week The instructions from Pruitt are different from how the agency has operated during prior shutdowns and the contingency plan posted on EPAs website A spokesman for the agency said earlier on Friday that the December 2017 plan was no longer valid ___ Associated Press writers Sadie Gurman Joan Lowy Michael Biesecker Lolita Baldor Andrew Taylor Ricardo AlonsoZaldivar Laurie Kellman Deb Riechmann Matthew Lee and Marcy Gordon contributed to this report ___ Contact Richard Lardner on Twitter at httptwittercomrplardner WASHINGTON AP 8212 The federal government shutdown only partially curbs operations But the longer the shutdown continues the more likely its impact will be felt US troops will stay at their posts and mail will get delivered but almost half of the 2 million civilian federal workers will be barred from doing their jobs if the shutdown extends into Monday How key parts of the federal government would be affected by a shutdown ___ INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE A shutdown plan posted on the Treasury Departments website shows that nearly 44 percent of the IRS 80565 employees will be exempt from being furloughed during a shutdown That would mean nearly 45500 IRS employees will be sent home just as the agency is preparing for the start of the tax filing season and ingesting the sweeping changes made by the new GOP tax law The Republican architects of the tax law have promised that millions of working Americans will see heftier paychecks next month with less money withheld by employers in anticipation of lower income taxes The IRS recently issued new withholding tables for employers But Marcus Owens who for 10 years headed the IRS division dealing with charities and political organizations said its a virtual certainty that the larger paychecks will be delayed if theres a lengthy government shutdown ___ HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES DEPARTMENT Half of the more than 80000 employees will be sent home Key programs will continue to function because their funding has ongoing authorization and doesnt depend on annual approval by Congress But critical disruptions could occur across the vast jurisdiction of HHS programs 8212 including the seasonal flu program Medicare which insures nearly 59 million seniors and disabled people will keep going And so will Medicaid which covers more than 74 million lowincome and disabled people including most nursing home residents States will continue to receive payments for the Childrens Health Insurance Program which covers about 9 million kids However longterm funding for the program will run out soon unless Congress acts to renew it Deep into a tough flu season the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will be unable to support the governments annual seasonal flu program And CDCs ability to respond to disease outbreaks will be significantly reduced ___ JUSTICE DEPARTMENT Many of the nearly 115000 Justice Department employees have national security and public safety responsibilities that allow them to keep working during a shutdown Special counsel Robert Muellers team investigating Russian meddling in the presidential election will also continue working His office is paid for indefinitely The more than 95000 employees who are exempted include most of the members of the national security division US attorneys and most of the FBI Drug Enforcement Administration Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives US Marshals Service and federal prison employees Criminal cases will continue but civil cases will be postponed as long as doing so doesnt compromise public safety Most law enforcement training will be canceled per the departments contingency plan ___ STATE DEPARTMENT Many State Department operations will continue in a shutdown Passport and visa processing which are largely selffunded by consumer fees will not shut down The agencys main headquarters in Washington in consultation with the nearly 300 embassies consulates and other diplomatic missions around the world will draw up lists of nonessential employees who will be furloughed Department operations will continue through the weekend and staffers will be instructed to report for work as usual on Monday to find out whether they have been furloughed ___ DEFENSE DEPARTMENT The US military will continue to fight wars and conduct missions around the world including in Iraq Syria and Afghanistan And members of the military will report to work though they wont get paid until Congress approves funding But Defense Secretary Jim Mattis warned Friday that a shutdown will have farreaching effects Our maintenance activities will probably pretty much shut down he said during remarks at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies We do a lot of intelligence operations around the world and they cost money Those obviously would stop And I would just tell you that training for almost our entire reserve force will stop And while ships will remain at sea and airstrikes against enemy fighters will continue any National Guard forces heading out to do weekend training duty around the country will arrive at armories and be told to go home ___ US INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES The workforce at the 17 US intelligence agencies will be pared down significantly according to a person familiar with contingency procedures The official who was not authorized to publicly discuss the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity said employees who are considered essential and have to work will do so with no expectation of a regular paycheck While they can be kept on the job federal workers cant be paid for days worked during a shutdown In the past however they have been paid retroactively even if they were ordered to stay home ___ HOMELAND SECURITY DEPARTMENT A department spokesman said nearly 90 percent of Homeland Security employees are considered essential and will continue to perform their duties during a government shutdown That means most Customs and Border Protection and Transportation Security Administration workers will stay on the job according to the departments shutdown plan dated Friday Immigration and Customs Enforcement will be staffed at about 78 percent meaning more than 15000 of the agencys employees will keep working The Secret Service also part of Homeland Security will retain more than 5700 employees during the shutdown ___ INTERIOR DEPARTMENT The Interior Department says national parks and other public lands will remain as accessible as possible That position is a change from previous shutdowns when most parks were closed and became highprofile symbols of dysfunction Spokeswoman Heather Swift said the American public 8212 especially veterans who come to the nations capital 8212 should find war memorials and openair parks available to visitors Swift said many national parks and wildlife refuges nationwide will also be open with limited access when possible She said public roads that already are open are likely to remain open though services that require staffing and maintenance such as campgrounds fullservice restrooms and concessions wont be operating Backcountry lands and culturally sensitive sites are likely to be restricted or closed she said ___ TRANSPORTATION DEPARTMENT More than half 8212 34600 8212 of the Department of Transportations 55100 employees will continue working during a shutdown The bulk of those staying on the job work for the Federal Aviation Administration which operates the nations air traffic control system Controllers and aviation pipeline and railroad safety inspectors are among those who would continue to work But certification of new aircraft will be limited and processing of airport construction grants training of new controllers registration of planes air traffic control modernization research and development and issuance of new pilot licenses and medical certificates will stop At the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration investigations on auto safety defects will be suspended incoming information on possible defects from manufacturers and consumers wont be reviewed and compliance testing of vehicles and equipment will be delayed The Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration whose operations are mostly paid for out of the Federal Highway Trust Fund will continue most of their functions The funds revenue comes from federal gas and diesel taxes which will continue to be collected But work on issuing new regulations will stop throughout the department and its nine agencies ___ NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH Dr Anthony Fauci the agencys infectious disease chief said a government shutdown will be disruptive to research and morale at the National Institutes of Health but will not adversely affect patients already in medical studies We still take care of them he said of current NIH patients But other types of research would be seriously harmed Fauci said A shutdown could mean interrupting research thats been going on for years Fauci said The NIH is the governments primary agency responsible for biomedical and public health research across 27 institutes and centers Its research ranges from cancer studies to the testing and creation of vaccines You cant push the pause button on an experiment he said ___ ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has instructed workers there to come to work next week even with a shutdown Pruitt said in an email to all EPA employees on Friday that the agency had sufficient resources to remain open for a limited amount of time He said further instructions would come if the shutdown lasts for more than a week The instructions from Pruitt are different from how the agency has operated during prior shutdowns and the contingency plan posted on EPAs website A spokesman for the agency said earlier on Friday that the December 2017 plan was no longer valid ___ Associated Press writers Sadie Gurman Joan Lowy Michael Biesecker Lolita Baldor Andrew Taylor Ricardo AlonsoZaldivar Laurie Kellman Deb Riechmann Matthew Lee and Marcy Gordon contributed to this report ___ Contact Richard Lardner on Twitter at httptwittercomrplardner

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<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p /> <p>ST. JOHNS, Ariz. &#8212; Over the past three weeks, an escaped Arizona prisoner and his girlfriend bedeviled the hundreds of lawmen hunting them across the desolate highways and thick forests of the West.</p> <p>There would be sightings of John McCluskey and Casslyn Welch. One in Montana. Another as far away as Arkansas. And then sometimes nothing.</p> <p>Until Thursday, when an alert forest ranger&#8217;s tip led police right to them. The self-styled &#8220;Bonnie and Clyde&#8221; offered little resistance. A few threats. No shootout. They didn&#8217;t even try to run.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>As the nation kept a look out for them and law enforcers put up alerts at campgrounds and truck stops, the couple somehow slipped back into Arizona, their beat-up Nissan hidden at a campground across the state from the prison where McCluskey escaped, police say, with help from Welch &#8212; his cousin and fiancee.</p> <p>When a SWAT team descended on the campsite at dusk, Welch reached for a weapon but dropped it when she realized she was outgunned, police said. A shirtless, tattoo-covered McCluskey told officers that he regretted not shooting them with the gun he had in a nearby tent.</p> <p>&#8220;He has no remorse,&#8221; Apache County Sheriff&#8217;s Cmdr. Webb Hogle said.</p> <p>The capture brought an end to a manhunt that began July 30 when McCluskey and two murderers broke out of a medium-security prison in Kingman, 185 miles northwest of Phoenix. Authorities say Welch threw a set of wire cutters onto prison grounds, allowing them to cut open a fence.</p> <p>One inmate was caught after a shootout in Colorado. The other was nabbed in a small Wyoming town after he was spotted at a church.</p> <p>The escape cast a critical spotlight on Arizona&#8217;s prison system. A report on Thursday found a series of breakdowns that allowed the inmates to slip away into the desert, including alarms that went off so often that prison personnel often just ignored them.</p> <p>Police on Friday were still trying to piece together details about the couple&#8217;s time on the lam.</p> <p>McCluskey, 45, and Welch, 44, are suspected in several crimes, including the killing of a couple in New Mexico whose torched bodies were found near Santa Rosa. Officials said the Nissan had New Mexico license plates that were stolen around the time they were killed.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>During the arrest, he suggested that the gun used in the killings was in his tent, police said.</p> <p>Police were looking through the campsite for any evidence that could link them to other crimes.</p> <p>Investigators looked into 700 tips from nearly every state in a manhunt that had officers swarming into small towns from Montana to Arkansas, said David Gonzales, U.S. marshal for Arizona.</p> <p>The last credible sightings came on Aug. 6 in Billings, Mont. More tips led authorities north to Glacier National Park and the Canadian border.</p> <p>&#8220;We threw a lot of resources at that border and that area in general, to where I don&#8217;t think anybody could have stayed there long without being detected,&#8221; said Rod Ostermiller, the acting U.S. marshal in Montana.</p> <p>It&#8217;s unclear how long they were in Arizona. At some point they were in tiny Eagar, just west of the New Mexico border, to have a tire fixed, Apache County Sheriff Joseph Dedman said.</p> <p>Only a handful of houses can be spotted from the winding road that leads up to the campsite. Motorists pass towering trees, vast meadows and bodies of water before reaching it, about 20 miles and an hour&#8217;s drive from an earlier turnoff.</p> <p>&#8220;They were starting to feel pretty comfortable, like they had a pretty good chance of not being captured,&#8221; Hogle said.</p> <p>Around 4 p.m. Thursday, the U.S. Forest Service ranger investigated what appeared to be an unattended campfire in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, Gonzales said. He found the silver Nissan Sentra backed suspiciously into the trees as if someone were trying to hide it.</p> <p>The ranger had a brief conversation with McCluskey, who appeared nervous and fidgety.</p> <p>Arriving officers left nothing to chance &#8212; fully expecting a guns-blazing shootout by two desperate fugitives. A helicopter, ambulance, bloodhounds and a secondary team were brought in to respond to any reports of officers down at the campsite.</p> <p>Hogle said McCluskey and Welch were standing next to a car that belonged to a neighboring camper as the SWAT team swarmed in. He yelled at McCluskey to &#8220;get down.&#8221; When the fugitive didn&#8217;t comply, Hogle said, he took him down with force.</p> <p>SWAT members reminded one another not to handle Welch&#8217;s weapon too much in case it was used in the New Mexico killings, Hogle said.</p> <p>McCluskey responded, &#8220;No, the murder weapon is over in the tent,&#8221; Hogle said.</p> <p>McCluskey also told authorities he would have used the gun in the tent to shoot them if he had been able to reach it. He also told them that he should&#8217;ve blown away the ranger when he had the chance, police said.</p> <p>McCluskey was serving a 15-year prison term for attempted second-degree murder, aggravated assault and discharge of a firearm, and previously did time in Pennsylvania related to a string of armed robberies in the 1990s.</p> <p>The other inmates who escaped, Tracy Province and Daniel Renwick, were serving time for murder.</p> <p>Province, McCluskey and Welch have been linked to the slayings of Gary and Linda Haas of Tecumseh, Okla., whose burned bodies were found in a travel trailer Aug. 4 on a remote ranch.</p> <p>&#8220;That&#8217;s the best news we&#8217;ve had in 10 days,&#8221; Sheila Walker, one of the Haases&#8217; best friends, said of the capture. &#8220;Everybody just broke down and cried for a little bit.&#8221;</p> <p>McCluskey and Welch were being held in jail on $1 million bail each. They were scheduled for preliminary hearings in Kingman later this month.</p> <p>When a judge asked McCluskey his address Friday, he said, &#8220;I don&#8217;t have one.&#8221; She then marked down the state Department of Corrections as his residence.</p> <p>To that, McCluskey said, &#8220;Yeah, I guess that would be it.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8212;&#8212;</p> <p>Cooper contributed to this report from Phoenix.</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>Friday, 20 August 2010 17:05</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>ST. JOHNS, Ariz. &#8212; Over the past three weeks, an escaped Arizona prisoner and his girlfriend bedeviled the hundreds of lawmen hunting them across the desolate highways and thick forests of the West.</p> <p>There would be sightings of John McCluskey and Casslyn Welch. One in Montana. Another as far away as Arkansas. And then sometimes nothing.</p> <p>Until Thursday, when an alert forest ranger&#8217;s tip led police right to them. The self-styled &#8220;Bonnie and Clyde&#8221; offered little resistance. A few threats. No shootout. They didn&#8217;t even try to run.</p> <p>As the nation kept a look out for them and law enforcers put up alerts at campgrounds and truck stops, the couple somehow slipped back into Arizona, their beat-up Nissan hidden at a campground across the state from the prison where McCluskey escaped, police say, with her help.</p> <p>When a SWAT team descended on the campsite at dusk, Welch reached for a weapon but dropped it when she realized she was outgunned, police said. A shirtless, tattoo-covered McCluskey told officers that he regretted not shooting them with the gun he had in a nearby tent.</p> <p>&#8220;He has no remorse,&#8221; Apache County Sheriff&#8217;s Cmdr. Webb Hogle said.</p> <p>The capture brought an end to a manhunt that began July 30 when McCluskey and two murderers broke out of a medium-security prison in Kingman, 185 miles northwest of Phoenix. Authorities say Welch threw a set of wire cutters onto prison grounds, allowing them to cut open a fence.</p> <p>One inmate was caught after a shootout in Colorado. The other was nabbed in a small Wyoming town after he was spotted at a church.</p> <p>The escape cast a critical spotlight on Arizona&#8217;s prison system. A report on Thursday found a series of breakdowns that allowed the inmates to slip away into the desert, including an alarm system that went off so often that prison personnel often just ignored them.</p> <p>Police on Friday were still trying to piece together details about the couple&#8217;s time on the lam.</p> <p>McCluskey and Welch are suspected in several crimes, including the killing of a couple in New Mexico whose torched bodies were found near Santa Rosa. Officials said the Nissan had New Mexico license plates and was stolen around the time they were killed.</p> <p>During the arrest, McCluskey suggested that the gun used in the killings was in his tent, police said.</p> <p>Police were looking through the campsite for any evidence that could link them to other crimes.</p> <p>Investigators looked into 700 tips from nearly every state in a manhunt that had officers swarming into small towns from Montana to Arkansas, said David Gonzales, U.S. marshal for Arizona.</p> <p>The last credible sightings came on Aug. 6 in Billings, Mont. More tips led authorities north to Glacier National Park and the Canadian border.</p> <p>&#8220;We threw a lot of resources at that border and that area in general, to where I don&#8217;t think anybody could have stayed there long without being detected,&#8221; said Rod Ostermiller, the acting U.S. marshal in Montana.</p> <p>It&#8217;s unclear how long they were in Arizona. At some point they were in tiny Eagar, just west of the New Mexico border, to have a tire fixed, said Apache County Sheriff Joseph Dedman said.</p> <p>Around 4 p.m. Thursday, the U.S. Forest Service ranger investigated what appeared to be an unattended campfire in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, Gonzales said. He found the silver Nissan Sentra backed suspiciously into the trees as if someone were trying to hide it.</p> <p>The ranger had a brief conversation with McCluskey, who appeared nervous and fidgety.</p> <p>Arriving officers left nothing to chance &#8212; fully expecting a guns-blazing shootout by two desperate fugitives. A helicopter, ambulance, bloodhounds and a secondary team were brought in to respond to any reports of officers down at the campsite.</p> <p>Hogle said McCluskey and Welch were standing next to a car that belonged to a neighboring camper as the SWAT team swarmed in. He yelled at McCluskey to &#8220;get down.&#8221; When the fugitive didn&#8217;t comply, Hogle said, he took him down with force.</p> <p>SWAT members reminded one another not to handle Welch&#8217;s weapon too much in case it was used in the New Mexico killings, Hogle said.</p> <p>McCluskey responded, &#8220;No, the murder weapon is over in the tent,&#8221; Hogle said.</p> <p>McCluskey also told authorities he would have used the gun in the tent to shoot them if he had been able to reach it.</p> <p>McCluskey, 45, was serving a 15-year prison term for attempted second-degree murder, aggravated assault and discharge of a firearm, and previously did time in Pennsylvania related to a string of armed robberies in the 1990s.</p> <p>The other inmates who escaped, Tracy Province and Daniel Renwick, were serving time for murder.</p> <p>Province, McCluskey and Welch have been linked to the slayings of Gary and Linda Haas of Tecumseh, Okla., whose burned bodies were found in a travel trailer Aug. 4 on a remote ranch.</p> <p>McCluskey and Welch were being held in jail on $1 million bail each.</p> <p>&#8220;That&#8217;s the best news we&#8217;ve had in 10 days,&#8221; said Sheila Walker, one of the Haases&#8217; best friends. &#8220;Everybody just broke down and cried for a little bit.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8212;&#8212;</p> <p>Cooper contributed to this report from Phoenix.</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>Friday, 20 August 2010 13:35</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>ST. JOHNS, Ariz. &#8212; A forest ranger who alertly spotted a pair of fugitives at a remote Arizona campsite was hailed Friday as &#8220;a true hero&#8221; after his tip allowed a heavily armed law enforcement contingent to capture the couple.</p> <p>The efforts by the ranger came at great risk. Fugitive John McCluskey had a gun in his possession and said he wished he would have shot the forest ranger and arresting officers when he had the chance, authorities said.</p> <p>&#8220;He is a true hero,&#8221; Apache County Sheriff Joseph Dedman said of the ranger. &#8220;He made contact. He was out there doing his job when he saw these two fugitives.&#8221;</p> <p>McCluskey and Casslyn Welch were captured after a three-week manhunt that made them two of the most wanted fugitives in America and drew hundreds of false sightings.</p> <p>It&#8217;s not clear where the fugitives traveled while on the run in a beat-up Nissan. They are suspected in several crimes, including the killing of a couple in New Mexico.</p> <p>McCluskey and Welch are scheduled to appear in court later Friday for an initial appearance.</p> <p>McCluskey fled July 30 with two other inmates from a privately run state prison in northwest Arizona and evaded authorities in at least six states before being caught Thursday evening just 300 miles east of the prison.</p> <p>Authorities arrested McCluskey, 45, and Welch, 44, at a campsite in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest in eastern Arizona. Welch is McCluskey&#8217;s fiance and cousin.</p> <p>Apache County sheriff&#8217;s Cmdr. Webb Hogle said McCluskey and Welch were standing next to a car that belonged to a neighboring camper as the SWAT team swarmed the campground just before dark. He yelled at McCluskey to &#8220;get down.&#8221; When the inmate didn&#8217;t comply, Hogle said he took him down with force.</p> <p>Welch reached for a weapon but dropped it when she realized she was outgunned by the team led by Hogle. SWAT members reminded one another not to handle Welch&#8217;s weapon too much in case it was used in the New Mexico killings, Hogle said.</p> <p>McCluskey responded, &#8220;No, the murder weapon is over in the tent,&#8221; Hogle said. McCluskey also told authorities he would have used the gun in the tent to shoot them if he had been able to reach it.</p> <p>&#8220;He has no remorse,&#8221; Hogle said.</p> <p>Hogle still was jittery the morning after the capture he called the most significant of his career. He has served on the SWAT team for six years and was promoted to commander a week ago.</p> <p>&#8220;We train for that, that&#8217;s what we expect,&#8221; he said. &#8220;You try to remain professional and you always fall back on your training.&#8221;</p> <p>A helicopter, ambulance, flares, bloodhounds and a secondary team that were brought in to respond to any reports of officers down weren&#8217;t needed.</p> <p>It was a peaceful close to a manhunt that authorities had said was likely to end in a bloody shootout between officers and desperate outlaws who fancied themselves as a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde.</p> <p>&#8220;The nightmare that began July 30 is finally over,&#8221; David Gonzales, U.S. marshal for Arizona, said Thursday evening.</p> <p>The fugitives&#8217; ruse began to crumble about 4 p.m. Thursday when the U.S. Forest Service ranger investigated what appeared to be an unattended campfire, Gonzales said. He found the silver Nissan Sentra backed suspiciously into the trees as if someone were trying to hide it.</p> <p>The ranger had a brief conversation with McCluskey, who appeared nervous and fidgety. A SWAT team and surveillance unit surrounded the campsite and swarmed on the fugitives about three hours later.</p> <p>A photo released by authorities showed McCluskey wearing dirty blue jeans and no shirt with an &#8220;Arizona&#8221; tattoo across his chest.</p> <p>&#8220;I hope the citizens of Arizona and the nation can rest easier this evening,&#8221; state Corrections Department Director Charles Ryan said Thursday evening.</p> <p>Authorities were looking through the campsite Friday for any evidence that could link the fugitives to other crimes during their time on the lam.</p> <p>Gonzales said investigators looked into 700 tips from nearly every state in a manhunt that had officers swarming into small towns from Montana to Arkansas. Authorities said the trail had gone cold since McCluskey and Welch were last seen Aug. 6 in Billings, Mont.</p> <p>It&#8217;s unclear how long they were in Arizona, but Gonzales said authorities suspected they might return to the state they know best. Dedman said the two were in the small town of Eagar near the campsite at some point to have a tire fixed.</p> <p>Corrections officials have said that Welch helped McCluskey and fellow inmates Tracy Province and Daniel Renwick escape from the private prison near Kingman by cutting through a security fence.</p> <p>Renwick was recaptured in Rifle, Colo., on Aug. 1, and Province was found in Meeteetse, Wyo., on Aug. 9.</p> <p>Renwick and Province were serving time for murder. McCluskey was serving a 15-year prison term for attempted second-degree murder, aggravated assault and discharge of a firearm.</p> <p>Province, McCluskey and Welch have been linked to the slayings of Gary and Linda Haas of Tecumseh, Okla., whose burned bodies were found in a travel trailer Aug. 4 on a remote ranch near Santa Rosa, N.M. They had been traveling to Colorado on an annual camping trip.</p> <p>Officials said the stolen car found Thursday at the Arizona campsite had New Mexico license plates stolen around the time the Haases were killed.</p> <p>&#8220;That&#8217;s the best news we&#8217;ve had in 10 days. Everybody just broke down and cried for a little bit,&#8221; Sheila Walker, one of the Haases&#8217; best friends, told The Associated Press late Thursday. &#8220;That was the one thing we wanted to hear.&#8221;</p> <p>The arrests came hours after officials discussed a report that outlined a series of embarrassing security breakdowns that allowed the escape.</p> <p>The prison has a badly defective alarm system, a perimeter post was unstaffed, an outside dormitory door had been propped open with a rock and the alarms went off so often that prison personnel often just ignored them, the report said. Also, operational practices often led to a gap of 15 minutes or longer during shift changes along the perimeter fence, Ryan said.</p> <p>Prison staff told a review team that the dormitory door was left open because of the heavy amount of foot traffic. That open door allowed the three inmates to reach a 10-foot chain-linked fence that hadn&#8217;t been topped with razor wire. They scaled that fence and hid out for a time behind a building in an area that isn&#8217;t visible to staff from the yard.</p> <p>Using wire cutters, which Welch tossed into the prison yard shortly before the 9 p.m. shift change, the inmates cut a 30-by-22-inch hole and held the fence back with a dog leash.</p> <p>&#8212;&#8212;</p> <p>Associated Press writers Walter Berry and Paul Davenport in Phoenix and Tim Korte and Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque contributed to this report.</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p>

UPDATED: Fugitives Arrested Without Fight After Three Weeks on Run

https://abqjournal.com/8977/updated-fugitives-arrested-without-fight-after-three-weeks-on-run.html

2least

ST JOHNS Ariz 8212 Over the past three weeks an escaped Arizona prisoner and his girlfriend bedeviled the hundreds of lawmen hunting them across the desolate highways and thick forests of the West There would be sightings of John McCluskey and Casslyn Welch One in Montana Another as far away as Arkansas And then sometimes nothing Until Thursday when an alert forest ranger8217s tip led police right to them The selfstyled 8220Bonnie and Clyde8221 offered little resistance A few threats No shootout They didn8217t even try to run ADVERTISEMENT As the nation kept a look out for them and law enforcers put up alerts at campgrounds and truck stops the couple somehow slipped back into Arizona their beatup Nissan hidden at a campground across the state from the prison where McCluskey escaped police say with help from Welch 8212 his cousin and fiancee When a SWAT team descended on the campsite at dusk Welch reached for a weapon but dropped it when she realized she was outgunned police said A shirtless tattoocovered McCluskey told officers that he regretted not shooting them with the gun he had in a nearby tent 8220He has no remorse8221 Apache County Sheriff8217s Cmdr Webb Hogle said The capture brought an end to a manhunt that began July 30 when McCluskey and two murderers broke out of a mediumsecurity prison in Kingman 185 miles northwest of Phoenix Authorities say Welch threw a set of wire cutters onto prison grounds allowing them to cut open a fence One inmate was caught after a shootout in Colorado The other was nabbed in a small Wyoming town after he was spotted at a church The escape cast a critical spotlight on Arizona8217s prison system A report on Thursday found a series of breakdowns that allowed the inmates to slip away into the desert including alarms that went off so often that prison personnel often just ignored them Police on Friday were still trying to piece together details about the couple8217s time on the lam McCluskey 45 and Welch 44 are suspected in several crimes including the killing of a couple in New Mexico whose torched bodies were found near Santa Rosa Officials said the Nissan had New Mexico license plates that were stolen around the time they were killed ADVERTISEMENT During the arrest he suggested that the gun used in the killings was in his tent police said Police were looking through the campsite for any evidence that could link them to other crimes Investigators looked into 700 tips from nearly every state in a manhunt that had officers swarming into small towns from Montana to Arkansas said David Gonzales US marshal for Arizona The last credible sightings came on Aug 6 in Billings Mont More tips led authorities north to Glacier National Park and the Canadian border 8220We threw a lot of resources at that border and that area in general to where I don8217t think anybody could have stayed there long without being detected8221 said Rod Ostermiller the acting US marshal in Montana It8217s unclear how long they were in Arizona At some point they were in tiny Eagar just west of the New Mexico border to have a tire fixed Apache County Sheriff Joseph Dedman said Only a handful of houses can be spotted from the winding road that leads up to the campsite Motorists pass towering trees vast meadows and bodies of water before reaching it about 20 miles and an hour8217s drive from an earlier turnoff 8220They were starting to feel pretty comfortable like they had a pretty good chance of not being captured8221 Hogle said Around 4 pm Thursday the US Forest Service ranger investigated what appeared to be an unattended campfire in the ApacheSitgreaves National Forest Gonzales said He found the silver Nissan Sentra backed suspiciously into the trees as if someone were trying to hide it The ranger had a brief conversation with McCluskey who appeared nervous and fidgety Arriving officers left nothing to chance 8212 fully expecting a gunsblazing shootout by two desperate fugitives A helicopter ambulance bloodhounds and a secondary team were brought in to respond to any reports of officers down at the campsite Hogle said McCluskey and Welch were standing next to a car that belonged to a neighboring camper as the SWAT team swarmed in He yelled at McCluskey to 8220get down8221 When the fugitive didn8217t comply Hogle said he took him down with force SWAT members reminded one another not to handle Welch8217s weapon too much in case it was used in the New Mexico killings Hogle said McCluskey responded 8220No the murder weapon is over in the tent8221 Hogle said McCluskey also told authorities he would have used the gun in the tent to shoot them if he had been able to reach it He also told them that he should8217ve blown away the ranger when he had the chance police said McCluskey was serving a 15year prison term for attempted seconddegree murder aggravated assault and discharge of a firearm and previously did time in Pennsylvania related to a string of armed robberies in the 1990s The other inmates who escaped Tracy Province and Daniel Renwick were serving time for murder Province McCluskey and Welch have been linked to the slayings of Gary and Linda Haas of Tecumseh Okla whose burned bodies were found in a travel trailer Aug 4 on a remote ranch 8220That8217s the best news we8217ve had in 10 days8221 Sheila Walker one of the Haases8217 best friends said of the capture 8220Everybody just broke down and cried for a little bit8221 McCluskey and Welch were being held in jail on 1 million bail each They were scheduled for preliminary hearings in Kingman later this month When a judge asked McCluskey his address Friday he said 8220I don8217t have one8221 She then marked down the state Department of Corrections as his residence To that McCluskey said 8220Yeah I guess that would be it8221 82128212 Cooper contributed to this report from Phoenix amp160 Friday 20 August 2010 1705 amp160 ST JOHNS Ariz 8212 Over the past three weeks an escaped Arizona prisoner and his girlfriend bedeviled the hundreds of lawmen hunting them across the desolate highways and thick forests of the West There would be sightings of John McCluskey and Casslyn Welch One in Montana Another as far away as Arkansas And then sometimes nothing Until Thursday when an alert forest ranger8217s tip led police right to them The selfstyled 8220Bonnie and Clyde8221 offered little resistance A few threats No shootout They didn8217t even try to run As the nation kept a look out for them and law enforcers put up alerts at campgrounds and truck stops the couple somehow slipped back into Arizona their beatup Nissan hidden at a campground across the state from the prison where McCluskey escaped police say with her help When a SWAT team descended on the campsite at dusk Welch reached for a weapon but dropped it when she realized she was outgunned police said A shirtless tattoocovered McCluskey told officers that he regretted not shooting them with the gun he had in a nearby tent 8220He has no remorse8221 Apache County Sheriff8217s Cmdr Webb Hogle said The capture brought an end to a manhunt that began July 30 when McCluskey and two murderers broke out of a mediumsecurity prison in Kingman 185 miles northwest of Phoenix Authorities say Welch threw a set of wire cutters onto prison grounds allowing them to cut open a fence One inmate was caught after a shootout in Colorado The other was nabbed in a small Wyoming town after he was spotted at a church The escape cast a critical spotlight on Arizona8217s prison system A report on Thursday found a series of breakdowns that allowed the inmates to slip away into the desert including an alarm system that went off so often that prison personnel often just ignored them Police on Friday were still trying to piece together details about the couple8217s time on the lam McCluskey and Welch are suspected in several crimes including the killing of a couple in New Mexico whose torched bodies were found near Santa Rosa Officials said the Nissan had New Mexico license plates and was stolen around the time they were killed During the arrest McCluskey suggested that the gun used in the killings was in his tent police said Police were looking through the campsite for any evidence that could link them to other crimes Investigators looked into 700 tips from nearly every state in a manhunt that had officers swarming into small towns from Montana to Arkansas said David Gonzales US marshal for Arizona The last credible sightings came on Aug 6 in Billings Mont More tips led authorities north to Glacier National Park and the Canadian border 8220We threw a lot of resources at that border and that area in general to where I don8217t think anybody could have stayed there long without being detected8221 said Rod Ostermiller the acting US marshal in Montana It8217s unclear how long they were in Arizona At some point they were in tiny Eagar just west of the New Mexico border to have a tire fixed said Apache County Sheriff Joseph Dedman said Around 4 pm Thursday the US Forest Service ranger investigated what appeared to be an unattended campfire in the ApacheSitgreaves National Forest Gonzales said He found the silver Nissan Sentra backed suspiciously into the trees as if someone were trying to hide it The ranger had a brief conversation with McCluskey who appeared nervous and fidgety Arriving officers left nothing to chance 8212 fully expecting a gunsblazing shootout by two desperate fugitives A helicopter ambulance bloodhounds and a secondary team were brought in to respond to any reports of officers down at the campsite Hogle said McCluskey and Welch were standing next to a car that belonged to a neighboring camper as the SWAT team swarmed in He yelled at McCluskey to 8220get down8221 When the fugitive didn8217t comply Hogle said he took him down with force SWAT members reminded one another not to handle Welch8217s weapon too much in case it was used in the New Mexico killings Hogle said McCluskey responded 8220No the murder weapon is over in the tent8221 Hogle said McCluskey also told authorities he would have used the gun in the tent to shoot them if he had been able to reach it McCluskey 45 was serving a 15year prison term for attempted seconddegree murder aggravated assault and discharge of a firearm and previously did time in Pennsylvania related to a string of armed robberies in the 1990s The other inmates who escaped Tracy Province and Daniel Renwick were serving time for murder Province McCluskey and Welch have been linked to the slayings of Gary and Linda Haas of Tecumseh Okla whose burned bodies were found in a travel trailer Aug 4 on a remote ranch McCluskey and Welch were being held in jail on 1 million bail each 8220That8217s the best news we8217ve had in 10 days8221 said Sheila Walker one of the Haases8217 best friends 8220Everybody just broke down and cried for a little bit8221 82128212 Cooper contributed to this report from Phoenix amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 Friday 20 August 2010 1335 amp160 ST JOHNS Ariz 8212 A forest ranger who alertly spotted a pair of fugitives at a remote Arizona campsite was hailed Friday as 8220a true hero8221 after his tip allowed a heavily armed law enforcement contingent to capture the couple The efforts by the ranger came at great risk Fugitive John McCluskey had a gun in his possession and said he wished he would have shot the forest ranger and arresting officers when he had the chance authorities said 8220He is a true hero8221 Apache County Sheriff Joseph Dedman said of the ranger 8220He made contact He was out there doing his job when he saw these two fugitives8221 McCluskey and Casslyn Welch were captured after a threeweek manhunt that made them two of the most wanted fugitives in America and drew hundreds of false sightings It8217s not clear where the fugitives traveled while on the run in a beatup Nissan They are suspected in several crimes including the killing of a couple in New Mexico McCluskey and Welch are scheduled to appear in court later Friday for an initial appearance McCluskey fled July 30 with two other inmates from a privately run state prison in northwest Arizona and evaded authorities in at least six states before being caught Thursday evening just 300 miles east of the prison Authorities arrested McCluskey 45 and Welch 44 at a campsite in the ApacheSitgreaves National Forest in eastern Arizona Welch is McCluskey8217s fiance and cousin Apache County sheriff8217s Cmdr Webb Hogle said McCluskey and Welch were standing next to a car that belonged to a neighboring camper as the SWAT team swarmed the campground just before dark He yelled at McCluskey to 8220get down8221 When the inmate didn8217t comply Hogle said he took him down with force Welch reached for a weapon but dropped it when she realized she was outgunned by the team led by Hogle SWAT members reminded one another not to handle Welch8217s weapon too much in case it was used in the New Mexico killings Hogle said McCluskey responded 8220No the murder weapon is over in the tent8221 Hogle said McCluskey also told authorities he would have used the gun in the tent to shoot them if he had been able to reach it 8220He has no remorse8221 Hogle said Hogle still was jittery the morning after the capture he called the most significant of his career He has served on the SWAT team for six years and was promoted to commander a week ago 8220We train for that that8217s what we expect8221 he said 8220You try to remain professional and you always fall back on your training8221 A helicopter ambulance flares bloodhounds and a secondary team that were brought in to respond to any reports of officers down weren8217t needed It was a peaceful close to a manhunt that authorities had said was likely to end in a bloody shootout between officers and desperate outlaws who fancied themselves as a modernday Bonnie and Clyde 8220The nightmare that began July 30 is finally over8221 David Gonzales US marshal for Arizona said Thursday evening The fugitives8217 ruse began to crumble about 4 pm Thursday when the US Forest Service ranger investigated what appeared to be an unattended campfire Gonzales said He found the silver Nissan Sentra backed suspiciously into the trees as if someone were trying to hide it The ranger had a brief conversation with McCluskey who appeared nervous and fidgety A SWAT team and surveillance unit surrounded the campsite and swarmed on the fugitives about three hours later A photo released by authorities showed McCluskey wearing dirty blue jeans and no shirt with an 8220Arizona8221 tattoo across his chest 8220I hope the citizens of Arizona and the nation can rest easier this evening8221 state Corrections Department Director Charles Ryan said Thursday evening Authorities were looking through the campsite Friday for any evidence that could link the fugitives to other crimes during their time on the lam Gonzales said investigators looked into 700 tips from nearly every state in a manhunt that had officers swarming into small towns from Montana to Arkansas Authorities said the trail had gone cold since McCluskey and Welch were last seen Aug 6 in Billings Mont It8217s unclear how long they were in Arizona but Gonzales said authorities suspected they might return to the state they know best Dedman said the two were in the small town of Eagar near the campsite at some point to have a tire fixed Corrections officials have said that Welch helped McCluskey and fellow inmates Tracy Province and Daniel Renwick escape from the private prison near Kingman by cutting through a security fence Renwick was recaptured in Rifle Colo on Aug 1 and Province was found in Meeteetse Wyo on Aug 9 Renwick and Province were serving time for murder McCluskey was serving a 15year prison term for attempted seconddegree murder aggravated assault and discharge of a firearm Province McCluskey and Welch have been linked to the slayings of Gary and Linda Haas of Tecumseh Okla whose burned bodies were found in a travel trailer Aug 4 on a remote ranch near Santa Rosa NM They had been traveling to Colorado on an annual camping trip Officials said the stolen car found Thursday at the Arizona campsite had New Mexico license plates stolen around the time the Haases were killed 8220That8217s the best news we8217ve had in 10 days Everybody just broke down and cried for a little bit8221 Sheila Walker one of the Haases8217 best friends told The Associated Press late Thursday 8220That was the one thing we wanted to hear8221 The arrests came hours after officials discussed a report that outlined a series of embarrassing security breakdowns that allowed the escape The prison has a badly defective alarm system a perimeter post was unstaffed an outside dormitory door had been propped open with a rock and the alarms went off so often that prison personnel often just ignored them the report said Also operational practices often led to a gap of 15 minutes or longer during shift changes along the perimeter fence Ryan said Prison staff told a review team that the dormitory door was left open because of the heavy amount of foot traffic That open door allowed the three inmates to reach a 10foot chainlinked fence that hadn8217t been topped with razor wire They scaled that fence and hid out for a time behind a building in an area that isn8217t visible to staff from the yard Using wire cutters which Welch tossed into the prison yard shortly before the 9 pm shift change the inmates cut a 30by22inch hole and held the fence back with a dog leash 82128212 Associated Press writers Walter Berry and Paul Davenport in Phoenix and Tim Korte and Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque contributed to this report amp160

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<p>Photo by Daga95 | <a href="" type="internal">CC BY 2.0</a></p> <p>Trump&#8217;s threats against Venezuela escalated recently from the economic to the military: after announcing sanctions he threatened that all military options were &#8220;on the table.&#8221; Trump&#8217;s actions were perfectly timed to lend support to the U.S.-backed opposition in Venezuela, whose ongoing violent rebellion aims to topple the government of democratically elected President Nicolas Maduro.</p> <p>The apex of violence was focused on stopping the recent elections to the National Constituent Assembly (ANC), convened by President Maduro to rewrite Venezuela&#8217;s constitution with the goal of resolving the current social-economic crisis.</p> <p>The ANC was tasked to become the most powerful governmental body while in session. Part of Maduro&#8217;s motivation in convening the ANC was to break the political deadlock that started when the U.S.-backed opposition gained control of the Venezuelan parliament, the National Assembly.</p> <p>The wealthy opposition promised to prevent the ANC elections from taking place, while Trump promised economic sanctions if the ANC election wasn&#8217;t cancelled. The other usual suspects of Latin American counter-revolution also condemned the ANC elections: Spain, the Vatican, and the Organization of American States (OAS) were among other governmental and western NGOs that denounced the ANC, since they recognized that the U.S.-backed opposition would be deflated if the ANC were successful.</p> <p>The western media that condemned the ANC elections has consistently failed to condemn the ongoing street violence by the U.S.-backed opposition, who used attacks on voting centers, roadblocks, economic sabotage and &#8220;general strikes&#8221; to prevent the election from taking place.</p> <p>But the elections happened, and the unexpectedly high turnout rattled the nerves of the opposition, who didn&#8217;t expect the traditional base of Chavismo &#8212; the working and poor &#8212; would come out by the millions to support a broad diversity of candidates within the Chavismo Left.</p> <p>The Chavismo Base Revived, For Now</p> <p>The international media covering the election took zero notice of the enthusiasm from Venezuela&#8217;s poorest neighborhoods. A U.S. labor delegation that travelled to Venezuela to witness the elections was impressed by the broad participation and long lines at various voting centers in poor neighborhoods. SEIU 1199 Executive Vice President Estela Vasquez made notice of the&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">lack of western media attention</a>:</p> <p>&#8220;One thing that I did think was significant is that I didn&#8217;t see any international media. No reporters from the New York Times, no cameras from CNN, no cameras from Fox Television, or any other international media&#8230; covering the poor working class neighborhoods that are the backbone of this revolutionary process in this country,&#8221;</p> <p>The enthusiasm for the election that Vasquez noticed was echoed by a prominent left critic of Maduro,&amp;#160; <a href="https://tendanceclaire.org/breve.php?id=24782" type="external">Stalin Perez Borges, who said</a>:</p> <p>&#8220;July 30 [the election] was also a tsunami within the ranks of Chavismo that propelled even those who are unhappy with the government to participate and send a message to the domestic and international right that we have not yet surrendered to imperialism nor are we willing to kneel before the neoliberal plans that the politicians and economists of the [opposition] have prepared for us&#8230;the [election] result has led to a recuperation of confidence as a social force, and provided a glimpse of the possibility for Chavismo to once again be able to call itself the majority.&#8221;</p> <p>Because the opposition boycotted the elections, the ANC consists overwhelmingly of representatives of the left, where there lives a diversity of revolutionary political opinion. A third of the ANC was specifically reserved for representatives of trade unions, communal councils, indigenous groups, farmers, students, and pensioners, all sectors that have been radicalized by their experience under Chavez and by the violent actions of the opposition.</p> <p>The class basis of the Constituent Assembly &#8212; the poor and working class &#8212; provides hope that this governmental body can provide real revolutionary initiative to resolve key issues that have been demoralizing the Chavismo ranks while empowering the wealthy opposition.</p> <p>The ANC will not fix every problem and it will likely not usher in a socialist economy, but radical measures can precipitate a revolutionary dynamic that carries with it a logic of its own. The left in Venezuela is more dynamic than the Stalinist images accorded to it by the western media and U.S. Left.</p> <p>Ultimately, the very convening of the ANC means that Maduro has moved to the left; and it was this leftward shift that provoked enthusiasm from the Chavismo rank and file. Convening the ANC surprised everyone and carried enormous political risks, especially in the middle of an opposition uprising backed by U.S. imperialism: if the masses did not participate in the elections the government would be exposed as lacking a broad social base, and such a weakness would have been instantly exploited by the Trump-supported opposition. But Maduro proved that he has a bit of Chavez in him yet, having correctly predicted that the masses would consider the ANC as a revolutionary tool to be used against the oligarchy.</p> <p>Much of the international left has either not recognized Maduro&#8217;s shift to the left or not realized its significance. Their error is rooted in a misunderstanding of the Venezuelan revolution, which has always been a contradictory movement rooted in the poorest neighborhoods of Venezuela, yet reflected through a bureaucratic prism at the top; a process that under Chavez retained, at times, a call and responsive dynamic that propelled the base to take action, which, in turn resulted in more pressure on the leadership to move left. Such a fluctuating, complicated phenomenon is difficult to pigeonhole, and requires a more nuanced analysis than the intellectually lazy &#8220;pox on both houses&#8221; approach that has long-infected the U.S. left.</p> <p>It&#8217;s true that there are powerful sections of Maduro&#8217;s bureaucracy who plan to use the ANC simply to out-maneuver the wealthy opposition and maintain their power and, if possible, to strike a deal with the opposition should the opportunity arise. Such a betrayal would, in effect, mark the end of Chavismo and prepare the ground for total victory of the opposition.</p> <p>But the victory of the bureaucrats in the ANC isn&#8217;t a foregone conclusion, as some cynics on the left would have you believe. Maduro doesn&#8217;t command Chavez&#8217;s authority; he lacks the charisma and he&#8217;s been lacking in revolutionary initiative. The divisions within Chavismo&#8217;s upper layers opens up further opportunities for the impatient ranks that can push the project forward against the will of even the more conservative sections of leadership.</p> <p>The job of the international left is to highlight the possibilities, amplify the program of the revolutionary wing and to educate people internationally about what&#8217;s at stake in order to reduce the interventionist options of Trump&#8217;s imperialism.</p> <p>The majority of left analysis regarding the Venezuelan crisis fails at these basic tasks, focusing wasted energy on Maduro&#8217;s shortcomings while proposing nothing of substance to win the fight in progress. The ranks of Chavismo need concrete solutions not endless denunciations.</p> <p>The central question is not whether one is pro-Maduro or pro-opposition, the question is &#8220;how do the revolutionary forces resolve the current crisis&#8221; and &#8220;what strategy should revolutionaries deploy?&#8221; Most of the left has nothing to say about these basic questions, while refusing to even discuss the relevance of the Constituent Assembly.</p> <p>The working class in Venezuela recognizes that their fate depends on the outcome of the current struggle; they are in a fight for their lives and hope to use the Constituent Assembly as a weapon. The slogan &#8220;No Volveran&#8221; remains a revolutionary demand of Chavismo that declares the oligarchy will never return to power. But unless bold action is taken to drive the revolution forward the victory of the opposition is inevitable, and such a nightmare is currently trying to kick in the front door.</p> <p>False Solutions From the Left</p> <p>The current intensified class fight cannot be wished away, it&#8217;s based on the material conditions embedded in the economy: the unfulfilled needs of the working poor versus the opposition&#8217;s demand to retake the state apparatus and privatize public resources. The two sides cannot &#8220;make peace&#8221; with another round of elections or negotiations, yet this is exactly what many pro-revolution analysts are promoting as &#8220;solutions&#8221; to the crisis.</p> <p>One such mistake can be found in the analysis of Carlos Carcione from Marea Socialista, a grouping who until recently was in coalition with the other socialist parties inside of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).</p> <p>The analysis put forward by Carcione contains some important critiques of Maduro&#8217;s government, but a key error is his &#8220;solution&#8221; to the crisis, which was put forward at the end of&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">a recent interview:</a></p> <p>&#8220;&#8230;the only democratic road, which cannot be captured by either of the two elites [Maduro&#8217;s government and the opposition] that are instigating violence, is the struggle to renew the Constitution of 1999.&#8221;</p> <p>The demand to &#8220;renew the Constitution&#8221; is a talking point taken directly from the wealthy opposition. To renew the Constitution means to disband the Constituent Assembly and carry on with the electoral process on its normal timeline, as if a life or death crisis wasn&#8217;t engulfing the nation that requires revolutionary action now. It&#8217;s as if Carcione believes that erasing the ANC would be a &#8220;pause button&#8221; to the conflict.</p> <p>Such a &#8220;demand&#8221; will find zero resonance in the Chavismo rank and file; they&#8217;ve voted more in recent decades than any other population in the world, and their voting for the Constituent Assembly was itself a showcase of democracy that Carcione oddly fails to recognize as important or legitimate.</p> <p>The demand to &#8220;renew the Constitution&#8221; also fails to acknowledge that the opposition is skillfully using the elections to the National Assembly to retake power and undermine the government, by exacerbating the crisis and talking openly of overthrowing Maduro.</p> <p>Elections to the National Assembly have become the path to power for the oligarchy, while a more directly democratic path has emerged with the Constituent Assembly elections, an infinitely more representative body than the National Assembly with actual capabilities of taking revolutionary action.</p> <p>Ultimately one&#8217;s attitude towards the situation in Venezuela shouldn&#8217;t be decided by legal or so called democratic norms, but by which actions promote the interests of the working class and poor and push the revolution forward.</p> <p>A similar non-solution to the crisis was&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">put forth by Eva Gollinger</a>, a longtime promoter of Chavismo who has been an increasingly vocal critic of Maduro. Gollinger&#8217;s critique of Maduro is often spot on, but her solution falls into the fantasy realm, where both sides realize they&#8217;re guilty of excess and thus agree to dampen the rhetoric for the good of the country:</p> <p>&#8220;Voices of moderation need to emerge without fear of being branded traitors or opportunists, as has been happening to anyone publicly criticizing the government or opposition. The opposition leadership and its international backers must immediately condemn all violence&#8230;.The opposition must accept the legitimacy of President Maduro and his administration and allow him to fulfill his presidential term, which ends in 2019. In return, the parliament should be allowed to assume its full mandate without further obstacles. Fair elections overseen by an independent electoral council should be held within the timeframe stipulated by law instead of being manipulated by political parties or foreign pressure.&#8221;</p> <p>Gollinger certainly has good intentions, but her &#8220;solutions&#8221; are daydreams that ignore the material interests radicalizing both sides: the ranks of Chavismo need radical solutions to the crisis and the U.S. backed opposition will continue to take radical, right-wing action to regain state power. There hasn&#8217;t been a &#8220;reasonable middle ground&#8221; between these two extremes in decades, if ever, in Venezuela.</p> <p>Revolutions are notoriously absent of moderation. Chavez himself was accused of being an extremist every time he took action against the oligarchy, which earned him the love and respect of the broader population in Venezuela and inspired revolutionary movements across the hemisphere.</p> <p>Maduro&#8217;s moderation is precisely what has demoralized his base and empowered the U.S.-backed opposition. The working class of Venezuela does not have moderate demands, they require revolutionary action against their class enemies before the wealthy regains the state power to use against them. Moderate actions cannot attack the drastic inequality that pervades Venezuela to this day.</p> <p>The left &#8220;demand&#8221; to renew the Constitution is a return to a dead end: one of the limitations of Chavismo was the over reliance on a representative democracy, as opposed to direct democracy. The energy of the revolution was funneled into constant electioneering, and the representative system wasn&#8217;t representative enough, allowing politicians to be unaccountable to the movement that opened the door to careerism, while the slower moving legislative system allowed the demoralization to creep in.</p> <p>The Constituent Assembly is a legitimate tool of revolution that can be used or wasted. Wishing for the return of the conditions that precipitated the crisis is an odd &#8220;solution.&#8221; The opposition chose to boycott the ANC elections because they hoped for a U.S.-backed coup. Let their miscalculation be their undoing.</p> <p>What actions should the Constituent Assembly take?</p> <p>Instead of warning incessantly of authoritarianism the left should be advocating revolutionary solutions: ones that stem the power of both the oligarchy and Chavismo upper-bureaucrats, a &#8220;revolution within the revolution.&#8221; Divisions among Chavismo&#8217;s leadership make such a scenario possible, and it&#8217;s desperately needed.</p> <p>Agitational demands from the Chavismo base in a time of flux can move mountains. Economic solutions that incorporate more socialist policies at the expense of the oligarchy-controlled private sector are also crucial to advancing the revolution, since the capitalists have used their ownership over important economic sectors &#8212; like food production &#8212; to sabotage the economy.</p> <p>Some of the below demands have been discussed in different sectors of the Chavismo left, and may find expression in the Constituent Assembly if left groups organize effectively. Ultimately demands that empower the working class at the expense of the oligarchy have the potential to inspire the broader population to action, keeping the revolutionary flame lit:</p> <p>1. Remove the economic power of the oligarchyby nationalizing the sectors of the economy that have been used in economic sabotage, especially food production, the banking sector and international trade.</p> <p>2. Strategically default on the foreign debt repaymentsthat are bankrupting the nation, so that the money can be used for basic necessities and rebuilding the economy. The high interest debt repayments are shifting billions of dollars from the Venezuelan state into the pockets of rich foreign investors.</p> <p>3. Fully fund and expand the key victories of Chavismo: education, health care, pensions, and housing&amp;#160;while increasing the power of localities to administer these programs. Ensure that wages are rising above inflation for all wage workers. Pay for these initiatives by drastically raising taxes on capital gains, property, inheritance, and other oligarchy-targeted measures.</p> <p>4. Jail the oligarchs who promote street violence and participate in economic sabotage. A longstanding demand&amp;#160;among&amp;#160;the Chavismo ranks is to take a firmer hand with an opposition who&#8217;s grown accustomed to no consequences for violent behavior.</p> <p>5. Attack corruption&amp;#160;of black market dollar profiteering by nationalizing foreign trade.</p> <p>6. No reconciliation with the oligarchyand their patron, U.S. imperialism. Any &#8220;deal&#8221; cut by the opposition will be intended to stall the revolutionary process and require economic concessions that come at the expense of the Chavismo base. The opposition has proven that they will never accept a government they don&#8217;t directly control. With each new uprising they test the resolve of the government and its popular support, and when this support dissipates a successful coup &#8212; either militarily or legislative &#8212; is inevitable.</p> <p>7. Use the National Constituent Assembly as a weapon of the revolutionby taking the above actions while expanding direct democracy, enshrining increased constitutional power of communal councils, labor unions and other social-political bodies of the Chavismo rank and file to directly exercise state power.</p> <p>If the ANC doesn&#8217;t take bold actions soon, the new constitution won&#8217;t survive the national referendum vote. And if the Chavismo rank and file don&#8217;t see a pathway to a better, more stable life with the ANC they will abstain, and the U.S.-backed opposition will have an unobstructed path to power.</p> <p>Another reason the ANC needs to take radical action immediately is the upcoming gubernatorial elections that the opposition plans to participate in. These elections can be easily won by the left if the ANC takes swift action that inspires people to the polls.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Time is&amp;#160;short. The ANC gave itself two years to fulfill its mission, but the enthusiasm generated by the election will fade quickly if revolutionary action isn&#8217;t forthcoming, or if the masses conclude that the new legislative body is content on maintaining the current balance of power instead of smashing it. Maduro&#8217;s bureaucratic/administrative maneuvers have outlived their usefulness, and projecting this strategy onto the ANC will transfer the disease of demoralization onto an otherwise healthy body.</p> <p>The several co-occurring crises in Venezuela require a shift of power to the masses at the expense of the capitalists: any action that the ANC takes that promotes this while encouraging the self-activity of the working class will help refresh the cycle of bottom-up activity that flourished under Chavez but has waned under Maduro.</p> <p>The street violence of the U.S.-backed opposition that has killed over 100 people and included two coup attempts will not subside on its own, especially when Trump has prioritized Venezuela for regime change. Successive U.S. presidents have understood the special &#8220;threat&#8221; to imperialism that Venezuela has posed, even if much of the left doesn&#8217;t.&amp;#160; Defeating Trump requires that Venezuelans move towards socialism, while requiring that socialists in the U.S. actively support this movement.</p> <p>If the new constitution is a lifeless document it will fail the referendum vote and catapult the opposition into power. However, if the path to the constitution is full of revolutionary action the people will respond enthusiastically, and the broader hemisphere will be re-infected by the revolutionary energy that originally birthed the &#8220;pink tide.&#8221;</p> <p>But the pink tide politics that eschewed western imperialism and neoliberalism has reached its ideological limits, demanding deep socialist inroads against the capitalists who&#8217;ve frustrated the project. A &#8220;red tide&#8221; can rejuvenate the revolutionary forces across the hemisphere and easily drown out the recent victories of various counter-revolutions. Venezuela remains the focal point of hemispheric revolution, to be won or lost, supported or ignored.</p>

Trump Versus the Venezuelan Revolution

https://counterpunch.org/2017/08/14/trump-versus-the-venezuelan-revolution/

2017-08-14

4left

Photo by Daga95 CC BY 20 Trump8217s threats against Venezuela escalated recently from the economic to the military after announcing sanctions he threatened that all military options were 8220on the table8221 Trump8217s actions were perfectly timed to lend support to the USbacked opposition in Venezuela whose ongoing violent rebellion aims to topple the government of democratically elected President Nicolas Maduro The apex of violence was focused on stopping the recent elections to the National Constituent Assembly ANC convened by President Maduro to rewrite Venezuela8217s constitution with the goal of resolving the current socialeconomic crisis The ANC was tasked to become the most powerful governmental body while in session Part of Maduro8217s motivation in convening the ANC was to break the political deadlock that started when the USbacked opposition gained control of the Venezuelan parliament the National Assembly The wealthy opposition promised to prevent the ANC elections from taking place while Trump promised economic sanctions if the ANC election wasn8217t cancelled The other usual suspects of Latin American counterrevolution also condemned the ANC elections Spain the Vatican and the Organization of American States OAS were among other governmental and western NGOs that denounced the ANC since they recognized that the USbacked opposition would be deflated if the ANC were successful The western media that condemned the ANC elections has consistently failed to condemn the ongoing street violence by the USbacked opposition who used attacks on voting centers roadblocks economic sabotage and 8220general strikes8221 to prevent the election from taking place But the elections happened and the unexpectedly high turnout rattled the nerves of the opposition who didn8217t expect the traditional base of Chavismo 8212 the working and poor 8212 would come out by the millions to support a broad diversity of candidates within the Chavismo Left The Chavismo Base Revived For Now The international media covering the election took zero notice of the enthusiasm from Venezuela8217s poorest neighborhoods A US labor delegation that travelled to Venezuela to witness the elections was impressed by the broad participation and long lines at various voting centers in poor neighborhoods SEIU 1199 Executive Vice President Estela Vasquez made notice of theamp160 lack of western media attention 8220One thing that I did think was significant is that I didn8217t see any international media No reporters from the New York Times no cameras from CNN no cameras from Fox Television or any other international media8230 covering the poor working class neighborhoods that are the backbone of this revolutionary process in this country8221 The enthusiasm for the election that Vasquez noticed was echoed by a prominent left critic of Maduroamp160 Stalin Perez Borges who said 8220July 30 the election was also a tsunami within the ranks of Chavismo that propelled even those who are unhappy with the government to participate and send a message to the domestic and international right that we have not yet surrendered to imperialism nor are we willing to kneel before the neoliberal plans that the politicians and economists of the opposition have prepared for us8230the election result has led to a recuperation of confidence as a social force and provided a glimpse of the possibility for Chavismo to once again be able to call itself the majority8221 Because the opposition boycotted the elections the ANC consists overwhelmingly of representatives of the left where there lives a diversity of revolutionary political opinion A third of the ANC was specifically reserved for representatives of trade unions communal councils indigenous groups farmers students and pensioners all sectors that have been radicalized by their experience under Chavez and by the violent actions of the opposition The class basis of the Constituent Assembly 8212 the poor and working class 8212 provides hope that this governmental body can provide real revolutionary initiative to resolve key issues that have been demoralizing the Chavismo ranks while empowering the wealthy opposition The ANC will not fix every problem and it will likely not usher in a socialist economy but radical measures can precipitate a revolutionary dynamic that carries with it a logic of its own The left in Venezuela is more dynamic than the Stalinist images accorded to it by the western media and US Left Ultimately the very convening of the ANC means that Maduro has moved to the left and it was this leftward shift that provoked enthusiasm from the Chavismo rank and file Convening the ANC surprised everyone and carried enormous political risks especially in the middle of an opposition uprising backed by US imperialism if the masses did not participate in the elections the government would be exposed as lacking a broad social base and such a weakness would have been instantly exploited by the Trumpsupported opposition But Maduro proved that he has a bit of Chavez in him yet having correctly predicted that the masses would consider the ANC as a revolutionary tool to be used against the oligarchy Much of the international left has either not recognized Maduro8217s shift to the left or not realized its significance Their error is rooted in a misunderstanding of the Venezuelan revolution which has always been a contradictory movement rooted in the poorest neighborhoods of Venezuela yet reflected through a bureaucratic prism at the top a process that under Chavez retained at times a call and responsive dynamic that propelled the base to take action which in turn resulted in more pressure on the leadership to move left Such a fluctuating complicated phenomenon is difficult to pigeonhole and requires a more nuanced analysis than the intellectually lazy 8220pox on both houses8221 approach that has longinfected the US left It8217s true that there are powerful sections of Maduro8217s bureaucracy who plan to use the ANC simply to outmaneuver the wealthy opposition and maintain their power and if possible to strike a deal with the opposition should the opportunity arise Such a betrayal would in effect mark the end of Chavismo and prepare the ground for total victory of the opposition But the victory of the bureaucrats in the ANC isn8217t a foregone conclusion as some cynics on the left would have you believe Maduro doesn8217t command Chavez8217s authority he lacks the charisma and he8217s been lacking in revolutionary initiative The divisions within Chavismo8217s upper layers opens up further opportunities for the impatient ranks that can push the project forward against the will of even the more conservative sections of leadership The job of the international left is to highlight the possibilities amplify the program of the revolutionary wing and to educate people internationally about what8217s at stake in order to reduce the interventionist options of Trump8217s imperialism The majority of left analysis regarding the Venezuelan crisis fails at these basic tasks focusing wasted energy on Maduro8217s shortcomings while proposing nothing of substance to win the fight in progress The ranks of Chavismo need concrete solutions not endless denunciations The central question is not whether one is proMaduro or proopposition the question is 8220how do the revolutionary forces resolve the current crisis8221 and 8220what strategy should revolutionaries deploy8221 Most of the left has nothing to say about these basic questions while refusing to even discuss the relevance of the Constituent Assembly The working class in Venezuela recognizes that their fate depends on the outcome of the current struggle they are in a fight for their lives and hope to use the Constituent Assembly as a weapon The slogan 8220No Volveran8221 remains a revolutionary demand of Chavismo that declares the oligarchy will never return to power But unless bold action is taken to drive the revolution forward the victory of the opposition is inevitable and such a nightmare is currently trying to kick in the front door False Solutions From the Left The current intensified class fight cannot be wished away it8217s based on the material conditions embedded in the economy the unfulfilled needs of the working poor versus the opposition8217s demand to retake the state apparatus and privatize public resources The two sides cannot 8220make peace8221 with another round of elections or negotiations yet this is exactly what many prorevolution analysts are promoting as 8220solutions8221 to the crisis One such mistake can be found in the analysis of Carlos Carcione from Marea Socialista a grouping who until recently was in coalition with the other socialist parties inside of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela PSUV The analysis put forward by Carcione contains some important critiques of Maduro8217s government but a key error is his 8220solution8221 to the crisis which was put forward at the end ofamp160 a recent interview 82208230the only democratic road which cannot be captured by either of the two elites Maduro8217s government and the opposition that are instigating violence is the struggle to renew the Constitution of 19998221 The demand to 8220renew the Constitution8221 is a talking point taken directly from the wealthy opposition To renew the Constitution means to disband the Constituent Assembly and carry on with the electoral process on its normal timeline as if a life or death crisis wasn8217t engulfing the nation that requires revolutionary action now It8217s as if Carcione believes that erasing the ANC would be a 8220pause button8221 to the conflict Such a 8220demand8221 will find zero resonance in the Chavismo rank and file they8217ve voted more in recent decades than any other population in the world and their voting for the Constituent Assembly was itself a showcase of democracy that Carcione oddly fails to recognize as important or legitimate The demand to 8220renew the Constitution8221 also fails to acknowledge that the opposition is skillfully using the elections to the National Assembly to retake power and undermine the government by exacerbating the crisis and talking openly of overthrowing Maduro Elections to the National Assembly have become the path to power for the oligarchy while a more directly democratic path has emerged with the Constituent Assembly elections an infinitely more representative body than the National Assembly with actual capabilities of taking revolutionary action Ultimately one8217s attitude towards the situation in Venezuela shouldn8217t be decided by legal or so called democratic norms but by which actions promote the interests of the working class and poor and push the revolution forward A similar nonsolution to the crisis wasamp160 put forth by Eva Gollinger a longtime promoter of Chavismo who has been an increasingly vocal critic of Maduro Gollinger8217s critique of Maduro is often spot on but her solution falls into the fantasy realm where both sides realize they8217re guilty of excess and thus agree to dampen the rhetoric for the good of the country 8220Voices of moderation need to emerge without fear of being branded traitors or opportunists as has been happening to anyone publicly criticizing the government or opposition The opposition leadership and its international backers must immediately condemn all violence8230The opposition must accept the legitimacy of President Maduro and his administration and allow him to fulfill his presidential term which ends in 2019 In return the parliament should be allowed to assume its full mandate without further obstacles Fair elections overseen by an independent electoral council should be held within the timeframe stipulated by law instead of being manipulated by political parties or foreign pressure8221 Gollinger certainly has good intentions but her 8220solutions8221 are daydreams that ignore the material interests radicalizing both sides the ranks of Chavismo need radical solutions to the crisis and the US backed opposition will continue to take radical rightwing action to regain state power There hasn8217t been a 8220reasonable middle ground8221 between these two extremes in decades if ever in Venezuela Revolutions are notoriously absent of moderation Chavez himself was accused of being an extremist every time he took action against the oligarchy which earned him the love and respect of the broader population in Venezuela and inspired revolutionary movements across the hemisphere Maduro8217s moderation is precisely what has demoralized his base and empowered the USbacked opposition The working class of Venezuela does not have moderate demands they require revolutionary action against their class enemies before the wealthy regains the state power to use against them Moderate actions cannot attack the drastic inequality that pervades Venezuela to this day The left 8220demand8221 to renew the Constitution is a return to a dead end one of the limitations of Chavismo was the over reliance on a representative democracy as opposed to direct democracy The energy of the revolution was funneled into constant electioneering and the representative system wasn8217t representative enough allowing politicians to be unaccountable to the movement that opened the door to careerism while the slower moving legislative system allowed the demoralization to creep in The Constituent Assembly is a legitimate tool of revolution that can be used or wasted Wishing for the return of the conditions that precipitated the crisis is an odd 8220solution8221 The opposition chose to boycott the ANC elections because they hoped for a USbacked coup Let their miscalculation be their undoing What actions should the Constituent Assembly take Instead of warning incessantly of authoritarianism the left should be advocating revolutionary solutions ones that stem the power of both the oligarchy and Chavismo upperbureaucrats a 8220revolution within the revolution8221 Divisions among Chavismo8217s leadership make such a scenario possible and it8217s desperately needed Agitational demands from the Chavismo base in a time of flux can move mountains Economic solutions that incorporate more socialist policies at the expense of the oligarchycontrolled private sector are also crucial to advancing the revolution since the capitalists have used their ownership over important economic sectors 8212 like food production 8212 to sabotage the economy Some of the below demands have been discussed in different sectors of the Chavismo left and may find expression in the Constituent Assembly if left groups organize effectively Ultimately demands that empower the working class at the expense of the oligarchy have the potential to inspire the broader population to action keeping the revolutionary flame lit 1 Remove the economic power of the oligarchyby nationalizing the sectors of the economy that have been used in economic sabotage especially food production the banking sector and international trade 2 Strategically default on the foreign debt repaymentsthat are bankrupting the nation so that the money can be used for basic necessities and rebuilding the economy The high interest debt repayments are shifting billions of dollars from the Venezuelan state into the pockets of rich foreign investors 3 Fully fund and expand the key victories of Chavismo education health care pensions and housingamp160while increasing the power of localities to administer these programs Ensure that wages are rising above inflation for all wage workers Pay for these initiatives by drastically raising taxes on capital gains property inheritance and other oligarchytargeted measures 4 Jail the oligarchs who promote street violence and participate in economic sabotage A longstanding demandamp160amongamp160the Chavismo ranks is to take a firmer hand with an opposition who8217s grown accustomed to no consequences for violent behavior 5 Attack corruptionamp160of black market dollar profiteering by nationalizing foreign trade 6 No reconciliation with the oligarchyand their patron US imperialism Any 8220deal8221 cut by the opposition will be intended to stall the revolutionary process and require economic concessions that come at the expense of the Chavismo base The opposition has proven that they will never accept a government they don8217t directly control With each new uprising they test the resolve of the government and its popular support and when this support dissipates a successful coup 8212 either militarily or legislative 8212 is inevitable 7 Use the National Constituent Assembly as a weapon of the revolutionby taking the above actions while expanding direct democracy enshrining increased constitutional power of communal councils labor unions and other socialpolitical bodies of the Chavismo rank and file to directly exercise state power If the ANC doesn8217t take bold actions soon the new constitution won8217t survive the national referendum vote And if the Chavismo rank and file don8217t see a pathway to a better more stable life with the ANC they will abstain and the USbacked opposition will have an unobstructed path to power Another reason the ANC needs to take radical action immediately is the upcoming gubernatorial elections that the opposition plans to participate in These elections can be easily won by the left if the ANC takes swift action that inspires people to the polls Conclusion Time isamp160short The ANC gave itself two years to fulfill its mission but the enthusiasm generated by the election will fade quickly if revolutionary action isn8217t forthcoming or if the masses conclude that the new legislative body is content on maintaining the current balance of power instead of smashing it Maduro8217s bureaucraticadministrative maneuvers have outlived their usefulness and projecting this strategy onto the ANC will transfer the disease of demoralization onto an otherwise healthy body The several cooccurring crises in Venezuela require a shift of power to the masses at the expense of the capitalists any action that the ANC takes that promotes this while encouraging the selfactivity of the working class will help refresh the cycle of bottomup activity that flourished under Chavez but has waned under Maduro The street violence of the USbacked opposition that has killed over 100 people and included two coup attempts will not subside on its own especially when Trump has prioritized Venezuela for regime change Successive US presidents have understood the special 8220threat8221 to imperialism that Venezuela has posed even if much of the left doesn8217tamp160 Defeating Trump requires that Venezuelans move towards socialism while requiring that socialists in the US actively support this movement If the new constitution is a lifeless document it will fail the referendum vote and catapult the opposition into power However if the path to the constitution is full of revolutionary action the people will respond enthusiastically and the broader hemisphere will be reinfected by the revolutionary energy that originally birthed the 8220pink tide8221 But the pink tide politics that eschewed western imperialism and neoliberalism has reached its ideological limits demanding deep socialist inroads against the capitalists who8217ve frustrated the project A 8220red tide8221 can rejuvenate the revolutionary forces across the hemisphere and easily drown out the recent victories of various counterrevolutions Venezuela remains the focal point of hemispheric revolution to be won or lost supported or ignored

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<p>Jan 23 (Reuters) -</p> <p>* VERIZON CEO LOWELL MCADAM SAYS CO GIVING 50 SHARES OF RESTRICTED STOCK TO NON-EXECUTIVES - CNBC &#8205;&#8203;</p> <p>* VERIZON CEO LOWELL MCADAM SAYS WE&#8217;LL KEEP OUR DEAL OPTIONS OPEN - CNBC &#8205;&#8203; Further company coverage:</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>SACRAMENTO/LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Did police tell an unarmed black man who they were before shooting him to death in a dark backyard in Sacramento, California? That question is forcing an examination of policies dictating when and how police identify themselves while encountering suspects.</p> Stephon Clark, 22, is visible on the ground after two police officers (L) shot him, in this still image captured from police aerial video footage released by Sacramento Police Department, California, U.S., on March 21, 2018. Courtesy Sacramento Police Department/Handout via REUTERS <p>Two Sacramento police officers, responding to a report of someone shattering car windows, killed Stephon Alonzo Clark, 22, on Sunday in a hail of bullets.</p> <p>Police video has shown the officers chasing Clark around the side of his grandparents&#8217; house, yelling &#8220;Show me your hands&#8221; and &#8220;Gun&#8221; before firing. Police said they believed Clark held a gun, but it turned out to be a mobile phone.</p> <p>The release of the video late on Wednesday sparked street protests. Clark&#8217;s family, through their attorney Benjamin Crump, disputed the police account that Clark was breaking windows.</p> <p>Many protesters have said police did not appear to have identified themselves when they confronted Clark on that dark night as he stood in his grandparents&#8217; backyard. On the video, the officers cannot be heard saying they are police.</p> <p>&#8220;He (Clark) didn&#8217;t make any threats against the police, there is no evidence he committed a crime, there was no warning from the police, there was no identification from the police,&#8221; Crump said.</p> <p>Crump represented the family of black teenager Michael Brown, whose shooting death in Ferguson, Missouri, by police in 2014 sparked nationwide protests.</p> <p>Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg said this week that city officials would examine police protocol for how they identify themselves in such cases.</p> <p>&#8220;I have a 21-year-old son and I never had to teach him the importance of holding his hands high if he is ever stopped by a police officer,&#8221; Steinberg said Friday on Facebook. &#8220;No words can describe how it must feel for an African-American family who has to teach that lesson as a reality of growing up black.&#8221;</p> Demonstrators march to protest the police shooting of Stephon Clark, in Sacramento, California, U.S. March 23, 2018. REUTERS/Bob Strong <p>Sacramento police guidelines posted on the department&#8217;s website do not specify that officers must identify themselves when encountering suspects. Sacramento police spokeswoman Linda Matthew said she did not believe such a policy existed.</p> <p>Jim Pasco, executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police, said that policies for departments vary across the country, but it would be impractical under such circumstances to expect officers to identify themselves.</p> <p>&#8220;If you&#8217;re in a chase and everybody&#8217;s running, there isn&#8217;t a lot of talking back and forth going on,&#8221; he said.</p> Slideshow (5 Images) <p>The Sacramento shooting could lead some police departments to change their rules, but such policies can be difficult to follow in the heat of the moment, said Eugene O&#8217;Donnell, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.</p> <p>&#8220;It won&#8217;t surprise me if some departments add some other specific rule after this, but the cops are already weighed down with rules,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>Sacramento police spokeswoman Matthew said Clark could have assumed police were in the area because a Sacramento County Sheriff&#8217;s Department helicopter was circling overhead.</p> <p>&#8220;The officers were in full uniform and the suspect fled from them,&#8221; she said.</p> <p>Investigators are looking into whether the officers, who were searching the neighborhood for several minutes for a suspect, announced to Clark that they were police, Matthew said.</p> <p>&#8220;With this incident and with every incident we have, we always look for ways in which we can improve,&#8221; Matthew said. &#8220;However, this was very rapidly evolving.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Sharon Bernstein in Sacramento and Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles; Editing by Ben Klayman, Toni Reinhold</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>PARIS (Reuters) - A gendarme who was shot three times after voluntarily taking the place of a hostage during a supermarket siege in southwestern France on Friday has died, France announced on Saturday.</p> A general view shows gendarmes and police officers at a supermarket after a hostage situation in Trebes, France, March 23, 2018. REUTERS/Jean-Paul Pelissier <p>Arnaud Beltrame, who once served in Iraq, had been raced to hospital fighting for his life after the siege in which he took the place of a female hostage at the Super U store in the town of Trebes, near the Pyrenees mountains.</p> <p>&#8220;He fell as a hero, giving up his life to halt the murderous outfit of a jihadist terrorist,&#8221; President Emmanuel Macron said in a statement shortly before dawn on Saturday.</p> <p>Friday&#8217;s attacker was identified by authorities as Redouane Lakdim, a 25-year-old Moroccan-born French national from the city of Carcassonne, not far from Trebes, a tranquil town of about 5,000 people where he struck on Friday afternoon.</p> <p>Lakdim was known to authorities for drug-dealing and other petty crimes, but had also been under surveillance by security services in 2016-2017 for links to the radical Salafist movement, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said on Friday.</p> <p>The attacker, whose rampage began when he shot at a group of police joggers and also shot the occupants of a car he stole, killed three people and injured 16 others on Friday, according to a government readout.</p> <p>Beltrame was part of a team of gendarmes who were among the first to arrive at the supermarket scene; most of the people in the supermarket escaped after hiding in a cold storage room and then fleeing through an emergency exit.</p> <p>He offered to trade places with a hostage the attacker was still holding, whereafter he took her place and left his mobile phone on a table, line open. When shots rang out, elite police stormed the building to kill the assailant. Police sources said Beltrame was shot three times.</p> <p>The 44-year-old&#8217;s death takes the number killed to four.</p> <p>The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the attack. Macron has said security services are checking that claim.</p> <p>More than 240 people have been killed in France in attacks since 2015 by assailants who either pledged allegiance to Islamic State or were inspired by the group.</p> <p>France is part of a group of countries whose warplanes have been bombing Islamic State strongholds in Iraq and Syria, where the group has lost substantial ground in recent months.</p> <p>One multiple attack by Islamist gunmen and suicide bombers killed 130 people in Paris while another killed close to 90 when a man ran a truck into partying crowds in the Riviera seaside city of Nice.</p> <p>Beltrame, who would have turned 45 in April, was a qualified parachutist who served in Iraq in 2005. He also worked as part of the elite Republican Guard that protects the presidential Elysee Place offices and residence in Paris, Macron said.</p> <p>Friday&#8217;s assault was the first deadly attack since October 2017, when a man stabbed two young women to death in the port city of Marseille before soldiers killed him.</p> <p>Several attacks over the past year or more have targeted police and soldiers deployed in big numbers to protect civilians and patrol sensitive spots such as airports and train stations.</p> <p>Macron said of Beltrame: &#8220;In offering himself as a hostage to the terrorist holed up in the Trebes supermarket, lieutenant colonel Beltrame saved the life of a civilian hostage, showing exceptional self-sacrifice and courage.&#8221;</p> <p>The news of Beltrame&#8217;s death was first announced France&#8217;s interior minister, who said in a Twitter post: &#8220;Dead for his country. France will never forget his heroism, bravery and sacrifice.&#8221;</p> <p>Additional reporting by BEmmanuel Jarry; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Mark Potter</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>TREBES, France (Reuters) - A gunman killed three people in southwestern France on Friday as he held up a car, fired on police and seized hostages in a supermarket, screaming &#8220;Allahu Akbar&#8221; before security forces stormed the building and killed him, authorities said.</p> <p>Sixteen other people were wounded, including two who were seriously hurt, in what President Emmanuel Macron called an act of &#8220;Islamist terrorism&#8221;.</p> <p>The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack. Macron said security services were checking that claim.</p> <p>&#8220;I want to tell the nation tonight of my absolute determination in leading this fight,&#8221; said Macron, who returned to Paris from Brussels to chair a crisis meeting with ministers and security officials.</p> <p>More than 240 people have been killed in France in attacks since 2015 by assailants who pledged allegiance to Islamic State or were inspired by the group.</p> <p>Friday&#8217;s attacker was identified by authorities as Redouane Lakdim, 25, from the city of Carcassonne.</p> <p>Two people were killed when he attacked the supermarket in the nearby small town of Trebes.</p> <p>Witnesses said about 20 people in the supermarket found refuge in its cold storage room.</p> <p>A lieutenant-colonel of the gendarmes who swapped himself in exchange for one of the hostages was fighting for his life in hospital, Macron said.</p> <p>Moroccan-born Lakdim was known to authorities for petty crimes, but had been under surveillance by security services in 2016-2017 for links to the radical Salafist movement, said Paris prosecutor Francois Molins, who is leading the investigation.</p> <p>&#8220;The monitoring ... did not reveal any apparent signs that could lead (us) to foresee he would act,&#8221; Molins said.</p> <p>He said one woman connected to Lakdim had been arrested.</p> <p>Interior Minister Gerard Collomb told reporters at the scene that he believed Lakdim had acted alone.</p> <p>&#8220;Every day we detect facts and foil new attacks. Alas, this one struck without us being able to counter it,&#8221; Collomb said.</p> <p>Lakdim first killed one person with a bullet in the head while stealing a car in Carcassonne, a walled city with a medieval citadel that is one of France&#8217;s top tourist attractions.</p> <p>He pulled up in the car to four police officers who were jogging in the city and opened fire, hitting one in the shoulder, then sped off to Trebes, about 8 km (5 miles) to the east, where he took the hostages in the supermarket.</p> <p>&#8220;The perpetrator entered the store shouting &#8216;Allahu Akbar&#8217; and indicated that he was an Islamic State soldier who was ready to die for Syria, seeking the release of brothers, before shooting at a client and a store employee who died on the spot,&#8221; Molins said.</p> <p>Police were carrying out searches at Lakdim&#8217;s family home.</p> A general view shows police officers and investigators at a supermarket after a hostage situation in Trebes, France, March 23, 2018. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau ESCAPE <p>One supermarket worker said some shoppers had escaped from the building after the gunman burst in.</p> <p>&#8220;I was in my department when I heard gunshots. I went to the area of the gunshots and came face to face with the person,&#8221; said the employee, who gave his name only as Francois.</p> <p>&#8220;He raised his gun and fired, I ran away, he shouted &#8216;Allahu Akbar&#8217; and spoke about the Islamic State. I then evacuated the clients, about 20, who were in my area and we went quietly out of the back,&#8221; said Francois, who has been employed at the supermarket since November.</p> <p>Collomb said the gunman had demanded the release of Salah Abdeslam - the prime surviving suspect in Islamic State suicide bombing and mass shooting attacks on a sports stadium, concert hall and restaurants that killed 130 people in Paris in 2015.</p> <p>Abdeslam, a French citizen born and raised in Brussels, went on trial in Belgium last month. He is accused of &#8220;attempted murder in a terrorist context&#8221; over a Brussels shootout in March 2016, four months after he fled Paris on the night of the carnage during which his brother was among the suicide bombers.</p> Slideshow (14 Images) &#8220;THE THREAT IS EVERYWHERE&#8221; <p>France is part of a U.S.-led coalition fighting against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq and also has thousands of soldiers in West Africa fighting al Qaeda-linked militants.</p> <p>In February, Collomb said French security forces had foiled two planned attacks so far this year as Islamic State militants set their sights on domestic targets in response to the group&#8217;s military setbacks in Iraq and Syria.</p> <p>&#8220;This is a small, quiet town. Unfortunately the threat is everywhere,&#8221; Collomb told reporters in Trebes.</p> <p>Carcassonne, a UNESCO heritage site, lies in the Languedoc region, known for its wine and picturesque countryside but also one of the poorest areas in France, with unemployment about 3 percentage points above the national average.</p> <p>Nearby Beziers is one of the biggest cities controlled by the far-right, while the smaller town of Lunel further east became a breeding ground for many French jihadists who travelled to Syria to fight.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-france-security-molins/prosecutor-says-one-person-arrested-after-southern-france-attack-idUSKBN1GZ2XN" type="external">Prosecutor says one person arrested after southern France attack</a> <a href="/article/us-france-security-gendarme/french-policeman-who-took-place-of-hostage-dies-of-gunshot-wounds-idUSKBN1GZ2ZF" type="external">French policeman who took place of hostage dies of gunshot wounds</a> <a href="/article/us-france-security-witness/french-supermarket-hostages-dodge-attacker-hide-in-cold-store-idUSKBN1GZ2T4" type="external">French supermarket hostages dodge attacker, hide in cold store</a> <p>Almost six years ago to the day, Islamist gunman Mohammed Merah killed seven people in the Toulouse region, about 90 km from Carcassonne. He was killed by security forces after a more than 30-hour stand-off.</p> <p>The last lethal Islamist attack in France was in October 2017 when a Tunisian-born man stabbed two young women to death in Marseille before he was shot dead by soldiers. Islamic State also claimed responsibility for that attack.</p> <p>For other stories on the attack, click on:</p> <p>French gendarme fighting for his life after trading places with hostage</p> <p>France supermarket attacker pledged to &#8220;die for Syria&#8221;</p> <p>French supermarket hostages dodge attacker, hide in cold store</p> <p>Reporting by Emmanuel Jarry, Sophie Louet, John Irish, Michel Rose, Leigh Thomas, Brian Love and Bate Felix in Paris; Writing by Ingrid Melander and David Stamp; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Catherine Evans</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump signed a memorandum on Friday that bans some transgender individuals from serving in the U.S. military, but gives the armed forces latitude in implementing policies.</p> U.S. President Donald Trump boards Air Force One as he departs for Palm Beach, Florida, from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, U.S., March 23, 2018. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts <p>The memorandum said transgender individuals with a history of gender dysphoria, defined as &#8220;those who may require substantial medical treatment, including through medical drugs or surgery,&#8221; are disqualified from military service &#8220;except under certain limited circumstances.&#8221;</p> <p>It added that the secretaries of defense and homeland security &#8220;may exercise their authority to implement any appropriate policies concerning military service by transgender individuals.&#8221;</p> <p>The White House said Defense Secretary Jim Mattis had found that individuals with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria presented a risk to military effectiveness.</p> <p>&#8220;This new policy will enable the military to apply well-established mental and physical health standards ... equally to all individuals who want to join and fight for the best military force the world has ever seen,&#8221; it said.</p> <p>The Democratic National Committee criticized the move as an insult to transgender service members. In a strongly-worded statement, U.S. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said the policy would harm the nation.</p> <p>&#8220;This latest memorandum is the same cowardly, disgusting ban the President announced last summer,&#8221; she said. &#8220;The President&#8217;s hateful ban is purpose-built to humiliate our brave transgender members of the military who serve with honor and dignity.&#8221;</p> <p>Trump&#8217;s decision is less restrictive than his initial comments in a July Twitter message saying he would prohibit transgender people from military service. That blanket ban reversed former President Barack Obama&#8217;s policy.</p> <p>At the time, Trump said on Twitter, the military &#8220;cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail.&#8221;</p> <p>However, a number of federal judges have already issued rulings blocking Trump&#8217;s ban, saying it would probably violate the right, under the U.S. Constitution, to equal protection under the law.</p> <p>On Friday, the Pentagon reaffirmed that it would continue to comply with federal law.</p> <p>&#8220;(The Pentagon) will continue to assess and retain transgender service members,&#8221; Pentagon spokesman Major David Eastburn said.</p> <p>In a February memorandum to the White House, made public on Friday, Mattis said transgender individuals with a history of gender dysphoria were disqualified from military service.</p> <p>But he added that those currently serving could continue to serve if they had been diagnosed with gender dysphoria since Obama&#8217;s policy took effect.</p> <p>Mattis also recommended that transgender individuals who require or have undergone gender transition be disqualified from military service.</p> <p>&#8220;In my professional judgment, these policies will place the Department of Defense in the strongest position to protect the American people, to fight and win America&#8217;s wars, and to ensure the survival and success of our service members around the world,&#8221; Mattis wrote.</p> <p>A court filing by the Trump administration said 8,980 service members reportedly identify as transgender, but only 937 active duty service members were diagnosed with gender dysphoria since June 30, 2016.</p> <p>At least one openly transgender recruit has already signed a contract to join the U.S. military since a federal court ruled late last year that the military would have to accept transgender individuals.</p> <p>The Department of Justice said it would continue to defend the defense department&#8217;s authority to create and implement personnel policies.</p> Related Video <p>&#8220;Consistent with this new policy, we are asking the courts to lift all related preliminary injunctions in order to ensure the safety and security of the American people and the best fighting force in the world,&#8221; it said in a statement.</p> <p>Advocates have said they believe dozens, if not hundreds, of transgender people will seek to join those already serving.</p> <p>The Human Rights Campaign, a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender advocacy group, condemned the Trump policy.</p> <p>&#8220;There is simply no way to spin it, the Trump-Pence administration is going all in on its discriminatory, unconstitutional and despicable ban on transgender troops,&#8221; Chad Griffin, its president, said in a statement.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Richard Pullin</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

BRIEF-Verizon CEO Says Co Giving 50 Shares Of Restricted Stock To Non-Executives - CNBC California police shooting of unarmed black man forcing look at policies French policeman who took place of hostage dies of gunshot wounds Islamist gunman attacks French supermarket, kills three Trump moves to limit transgender individuals from military service

https://reuters.com/article/brief-verizon-ceo-says-co-giving-50-shar/brief-verizon-ceo-says-co-giving-50-shares-of-restricted-stock-to-non-executives-cnbc-idUSFWN1PI17E

2018-01-23

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Jan 23 Reuters VERIZON CEO LOWELL MCADAM SAYS CO GIVING 50 SHARES OF RESTRICTED STOCK TO NONEXECUTIVES CNBC 82058203 VERIZON CEO LOWELL MCADAM SAYS WE8217LL KEEP OUR DEAL OPTIONS OPEN CNBC 82058203 Further company coverage Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles SACRAMENTOLOS ANGELES Reuters Did police tell an unarmed black man who they were before shooting him to death in a dark backyard in Sacramento California That question is forcing an examination of policies dictating when and how police identify themselves while encountering suspects Stephon Clark 22 is visible on the ground after two police officers L shot him in this still image captured from police aerial video footage released by Sacramento Police Department California US on March 21 2018 Courtesy Sacramento Police DepartmentHandout via REUTERS Two Sacramento police officers responding to a report of someone shattering car windows killed Stephon Alonzo Clark 22 on Sunday in a hail of bullets Police video has shown the officers chasing Clark around the side of his grandparents8217 house yelling 8220Show me your hands8221 and 8220Gun8221 before firing Police said they believed Clark held a gun but it turned out to be a mobile phone The release of the video late on Wednesday sparked street protests Clark8217s family through their attorney Benjamin Crump disputed the police account that Clark was breaking windows Many protesters have said police did not appear to have identified themselves when they confronted Clark on that dark night as he stood in his grandparents8217 backyard On the video the officers cannot be heard saying they are police 8220He Clark didn8217t make any threats against the police there is no evidence he committed a crime there was no warning from the police there was no identification from the police8221 Crump said Crump represented the family of black teenager Michael Brown whose shooting death in Ferguson Missouri by police in 2014 sparked nationwide protests Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg said this week that city officials would examine police protocol for how they identify themselves in such cases 8220I have a 21yearold son and I never had to teach him the importance of holding his hands high if he is ever stopped by a police officer8221 Steinberg said Friday on Facebook 8220No words can describe how it must feel for an AfricanAmerican family who has to teach that lesson as a reality of growing up black8221 Demonstrators march to protest the police shooting of Stephon Clark in Sacramento California US March 23 2018 REUTERSBob Strong Sacramento police guidelines posted on the department8217s website do not specify that officers must identify themselves when encountering suspects Sacramento police spokeswoman Linda Matthew said she did not believe such a policy existed Jim Pasco executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police said that policies for departments vary across the country but it would be impractical under such circumstances to expect officers to identify themselves 8220If you8217re in a chase and everybody8217s running there isn8217t a lot of talking back and forth going on8221 he said Slideshow 5 Images The Sacramento shooting could lead some police departments to change their rules but such policies can be difficult to follow in the heat of the moment said Eugene O8217Donnell a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City 8220It won8217t surprise me if some departments add some other specific rule after this but the cops are already weighed down with rules8221 he said Sacramento police spokeswoman Matthew said Clark could have assumed police were in the area because a Sacramento County Sheriff8217s Department helicopter was circling overhead 8220The officers were in full uniform and the suspect fled from them8221 she said Investigators are looking into whether the officers who were searching the neighborhood for several minutes for a suspect announced to Clark that they were police Matthew said 8220With this incident and with every incident we have we always look for ways in which we can improve8221 Matthew said 8220However this was very rapidly evolving8221 Reporting by Sharon Bernstein in Sacramento and Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles Editing by Ben Klayman Toni Reinhold Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles PARIS Reuters A gendarme who was shot three times after voluntarily taking the place of a hostage during a supermarket siege in southwestern France on Friday has died France announced on Saturday A general view shows gendarmes and police officers at a supermarket after a hostage situation in Trebes France March 23 2018 REUTERSJeanPaul Pelissier Arnaud Beltrame who once served in Iraq had been raced to hospital fighting for his life after the siege in which he took the place of a female hostage at the Super U store in the town of Trebes near the Pyrenees mountains 8220He fell as a hero giving up his life to halt the murderous outfit of a jihadist terrorist8221 President Emmanuel Macron said in a statement shortly before dawn on Saturday Friday8217s attacker was identified by authorities as Redouane Lakdim a 25yearold Moroccanborn French national from the city of Carcassonne not far from Trebes a tranquil town of about 5000 people where he struck on Friday afternoon Lakdim was known to authorities for drugdealing and other petty crimes but had also been under surveillance by security services in 20162017 for links to the radical Salafist movement Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said on Friday The attacker whose rampage began when he shot at a group of police joggers and also shot the occupants of a car he stole killed three people and injured 16 others on Friday according to a government readout Beltrame was part of a team of gendarmes who were among the first to arrive at the supermarket scene most of the people in the supermarket escaped after hiding in a cold storage room and then fleeing through an emergency exit He offered to trade places with a hostage the attacker was still holding whereafter he took her place and left his mobile phone on a table line open When shots rang out elite police stormed the building to kill the assailant Police sources said Beltrame was shot three times The 44yearold8217s death takes the number killed to four The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the attack Macron has said security services are checking that claim More than 240 people have been killed in France in attacks since 2015 by assailants who either pledged allegiance to Islamic State or were inspired by the group France is part of a group of countries whose warplanes have been bombing Islamic State strongholds in Iraq and Syria where the group has lost substantial ground in recent months One multiple attack by Islamist gunmen and suicide bombers killed 130 people in Paris while another killed close to 90 when a man ran a truck into partying crowds in the Riviera seaside city of Nice Beltrame who would have turned 45 in April was a qualified parachutist who served in Iraq in 2005 He also worked as part of the elite Republican Guard that protects the presidential Elysee Place offices and residence in Paris Macron said Friday8217s assault was the first deadly attack since October 2017 when a man stabbed two young women to death in the port city of Marseille before soldiers killed him Several attacks over the past year or more have targeted police and soldiers deployed in big numbers to protect civilians and patrol sensitive spots such as airports and train stations Macron said of Beltrame 8220In offering himself as a hostage to the terrorist holed up in the Trebes supermarket lieutenant colonel Beltrame saved the life of a civilian hostage showing exceptional selfsacrifice and courage8221 The news of Beltrame8217s death was first announced France8217s interior minister who said in a Twitter post 8220Dead for his country France will never forget his heroism bravery and sacrifice8221 Additional reporting by BEmmanuel Jarry Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Mark Potter Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles TREBES France Reuters A gunman killed three people in southwestern France on Friday as he held up a car fired on police and seized hostages in a supermarket screaming 8220Allahu Akbar8221 before security forces stormed the building and killed him authorities said Sixteen other people were wounded including two who were seriously hurt in what President Emmanuel Macron called an act of 8220Islamist terrorism8221 The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack Macron said security services were checking that claim 8220I want to tell the nation tonight of my absolute determination in leading this fight8221 said Macron who returned to Paris from Brussels to chair a crisis meeting with ministers and security officials More than 240 people have been killed in France in attacks since 2015 by assailants who pledged allegiance to Islamic State or were inspired by the group Friday8217s attacker was identified by authorities as Redouane Lakdim 25 from the city of Carcassonne Two people were killed when he attacked the supermarket in the nearby small town of Trebes Witnesses said about 20 people in the supermarket found refuge in its cold storage room A lieutenantcolonel of the gendarmes who swapped himself in exchange for one of the hostages was fighting for his life in hospital Macron said Moroccanborn Lakdim was known to authorities for petty crimes but had been under surveillance by security services in 20162017 for links to the radical Salafist movement said Paris prosecutor Francois Molins who is leading the investigation 8220The monitoring did not reveal any apparent signs that could lead us to foresee he would act8221 Molins said He said one woman connected to Lakdim had been arrested Interior Minister Gerard Collomb told reporters at the scene that he believed Lakdim had acted alone 8220Every day we detect facts and foil new attacks Alas this one struck without us being able to counter it8221 Collomb said Lakdim first killed one person with a bullet in the head while stealing a car in Carcassonne a walled city with a medieval citadel that is one of France8217s top tourist attractions He pulled up in the car to four police officers who were jogging in the city and opened fire hitting one in the shoulder then sped off to Trebes about 8 km 5 miles to the east where he took the hostages in the supermarket 8220The perpetrator entered the store shouting 8216Allahu Akbar8217 and indicated that he was an Islamic State soldier who was ready to die for Syria seeking the release of brothers before shooting at a client and a store employee who died on the spot8221 Molins said Police were carrying out searches at Lakdim8217s family home A general view shows police officers and investigators at a supermarket after a hostage situation in Trebes France March 23 2018 REUTERSRegis Duvignau ESCAPE One supermarket worker said some shoppers had escaped from the building after the gunman burst in 8220I was in my department when I heard gunshots I went to the area of the gunshots and came face to face with the person8221 said the employee who gave his name only as Francois 8220He raised his gun and fired I ran away he shouted 8216Allahu Akbar8217 and spoke about the Islamic State I then evacuated the clients about 20 who were in my area and we went quietly out of the back8221 said Francois who has been employed at the supermarket since November Collomb said the gunman had demanded the release of Salah Abdeslam the prime surviving suspect in Islamic State suicide bombing and mass shooting attacks on a sports stadium concert hall and restaurants that killed 130 people in Paris in 2015 Abdeslam a French citizen born and raised in Brussels went on trial in Belgium last month He is accused of 8220attempted murder in a terrorist context8221 over a Brussels shootout in March 2016 four months after he fled Paris on the night of the carnage during which his brother was among the suicide bombers Slideshow 14 Images 8220THE THREAT IS EVERYWHERE8221 France is part of a USled coalition fighting against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq and also has thousands of soldiers in West Africa fighting al Qaedalinked militants In February Collomb said French security forces had foiled two planned attacks so far this year as Islamic State militants set their sights on domestic targets in response to the group8217s military setbacks in Iraq and Syria 8220This is a small quiet town Unfortunately the threat is everywhere8221 Collomb told reporters in Trebes Carcassonne a UNESCO heritage site lies in the Languedoc region known for its wine and picturesque countryside but also one of the poorest areas in France with unemployment about 3 percentage points above the national average Nearby Beziers is one of the biggest cities controlled by the farright while the smaller town of Lunel further east became a breeding ground for many French jihadists who travelled to Syria to fight Related Coverage Prosecutor says one person arrested after southern France attack French policeman who took place of hostage dies of gunshot wounds French supermarket hostages dodge attacker hide in cold store Almost six years ago to the day Islamist gunman Mohammed Merah killed seven people in the Toulouse region about 90 km from Carcassonne He was killed by security forces after a more than 30hour standoff The last lethal Islamist attack in France was in October 2017 when a Tunisianborn man stabbed two young women to death in Marseille before he was shot dead by soldiers Islamic State also claimed responsibility for that attack For other stories on the attack click on French gendarme fighting for his life after trading places with hostage France supermarket attacker pledged to 8220die for Syria8221 French supermarket hostages dodge attacker hide in cold store Reporting by Emmanuel Jarry Sophie Louet John Irish Michel Rose Leigh Thomas Brian Love and Bate Felix in Paris Writing by Ingrid Melander and David Stamp Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Catherine Evans Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters President Donald Trump signed a memorandum on Friday that bans some transgender individuals from serving in the US military but gives the armed forces latitude in implementing policies US President Donald Trump boards Air Force One as he departs for Palm Beach Florida from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland US March 23 2018 REUTERSJoshua Roberts The memorandum said transgender individuals with a history of gender dysphoria defined as 8220those who may require substantial medical treatment including through medical drugs or surgery8221 are disqualified from military service 8220except under certain limited circumstances8221 It added that the secretaries of defense and homeland security 8220may exercise their authority to implement any appropriate policies concerning military service by transgender individuals8221 The White House said Defense Secretary Jim Mattis had found that individuals with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria presented a risk to military effectiveness 8220This new policy will enable the military to apply wellestablished mental and physical health standards equally to all individuals who want to join and fight for the best military force the world has ever seen8221 it said The Democratic National Committee criticized the move as an insult to transgender service members In a stronglyworded statement US House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said the policy would harm the nation 8220This latest memorandum is the same cowardly disgusting ban the President announced last summer8221 she said 8220The President8217s hateful ban is purposebuilt to humiliate our brave transgender members of the military who serve with honor and dignity8221 Trump8217s decision is less restrictive than his initial comments in a July Twitter message saying he would prohibit transgender people from military service That blanket ban reversed former President Barack Obama8217s policy At the time Trump said on Twitter the military 8220cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail8221 However a number of federal judges have already issued rulings blocking Trump8217s ban saying it would probably violate the right under the US Constitution to equal protection under the law On Friday the Pentagon reaffirmed that it would continue to comply with federal law 8220The Pentagon will continue to assess and retain transgender service members8221 Pentagon spokesman Major David Eastburn said In a February memorandum to the White House made public on Friday Mattis said transgender individuals with a history of gender dysphoria were disqualified from military service But he added that those currently serving could continue to serve if they had been diagnosed with gender dysphoria since Obama8217s policy took effect Mattis also recommended that transgender individuals who require or have undergone gender transition be disqualified from military service 8220In my professional judgment these policies will place the Department of Defense in the strongest position to protect the American people to fight and win America8217s wars and to ensure the survival and success of our service members around the world8221 Mattis wrote A court filing by the Trump administration said 8980 service members reportedly identify as transgender but only 937 active duty service members were diagnosed with gender dysphoria since June 30 2016 At least one openly transgender recruit has already signed a contract to join the US military since a federal court ruled late last year that the military would have to accept transgender individuals The Department of Justice said it would continue to defend the defense department8217s authority to create and implement personnel policies Related Video 8220Consistent with this new policy we are asking the courts to lift all related preliminary injunctions in order to ensure the safety and security of the American people and the best fighting force in the world8221 it said in a statement Advocates have said they believe dozens if not hundreds of transgender people will seek to join those already serving The Human Rights Campaign a lesbian gay bisexual and transgender advocacy group condemned the Trump policy 8220There is simply no way to spin it the TrumpPence administration is going all in on its discriminatory unconstitutional and despicable ban on transgender troops8221 Chad Griffin its president said in a statement Additional reporting by Brendan OBrien in Milwaukee Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Richard Pullin Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>Over the past month, Multnomah County, one of the largest employers in the Portland Metropolitan area has been roiled by claims of systemic employment discrimination. While other major cities across the U.S. have experienced an increase in African American residents in recent years, between 2012 and 2014, &#8220;liberal&#8221; Portland, Oregon&#8217;s Black community&#8212;already among the smallest of any major city in the country&#8211;saw its numbers <a href="" type="internal">drop even further</a>.</p> <p>For some in Portland, the recent firing of Tricia Tillman, one of the highest-ranking Black professionals in Multnomah County, and the first person of color to serve as the director of Multnomah County Public Health, has sent a chilling message about the prospects for upward mobility among professionals of color&#8212;and Black professionals in particular&#8211; in city and county government. But it also signals a potentially serious setback for people of color across the board, because arguably no one in the state has done more than Tillman to raise public awareness of equity, particularly with respect to the links between health disparities and environmental racism. Both are part of the long and lethal legacy of white supremacy in Oregon, the only state in the union with founding documents that expressly excluded African Americans.</p> <p>On August 18, as Portland activists began gearing up for another face-off between anti-fascists and white supremacists, at a meeting with Joanne Fuller, Tillman&#8217;s supervisor, the Director of the Multnomah County Health Department, Tillman was reportedly pressured to &#8220;gracefully&#8221; resign from the position she had held for the past two years. Over the past month, Tillman&#8217;s firing has set off a storm of criticism culminating in the launch of a formal investigation into institutional racism in the Multnomah County government, a hefty financial settlement, and the abrupt resignation of Fuller. &amp;#160;For many, Tillman&#8217;s dismissal also serves as yet another reminder of the disconnect between Portland&#8217;s reputation for progressive politics and sustainability, and the lived experience of people of color in Portland. For many, Tillman&#8217;s dismissal demonstrates that white supremacy often takes more subtle and insidious forms than the visible and <a href="" type="internal">high profile violence</a> that drew national attention to Portland in May.</p> <p>Tillman, who was widely expected to succeed Fulton as Director of the Health Department, was seen by many in the city as uniquely skilled, well suited and committed to advancing equity in a region where it is sorely lacking. A native Portlander, raised by a single mother, Tillman graduated from St. Mary&#8217;s Academy in downtown Portland, and went on to earn an undergraduate degree at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., the first on her mother&#8217;s side of the family to complete university. In this respect, her background could hardly form a more stark comparison to the inherited wealth and privilege of Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury and Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler.&amp;#160; Kafoury&#8217;s mother Gretchen Kafoury preceded her as a member of the Multnomah County Commissioner and also served on the Portland City Council, and as an Oregon state representative. If Deborah Kafoury hails from a family of regional power brokers, her immediate predecessor as County Chair, Wheeler could easily serve as a kind of poster boy for the benefits of intergenerational capital&#8212;and political power&#8212;accrued through settler colonialism. Wheeler descends from a family of lumber barons, who set up business in the coastal town that still bears the family name. As documented in a 2016 <a href="" type="internal">Willamette Week</a> article, after merging with Willamette Industries, the family business would be sold to Weyerhauser in 2002 for $6 billion, with Wheeler&#8217;s father Samuel garnering an estimated $83 million from the sale.</p> <p>As she recounted in a phone interview, Tillman&#8217;s interest in pursuing a Masters in Public Health was spurred by her experience working in Tucson at the El Rio Neighborhood Health Center. Tillman describes her experience in Tucson as &#8220;transformative,&#8221; as a critical lesson in &#8220;working in partnership with communities&#8230;in a culturally specific capacity.&#8221;&amp;#160; As <a href="" type="internal">The Skanner</a> has reported, as a graduate student pursuing a Masters in Public Health at Boston University, Tillman&amp;#160;&#8220;received a Martin Luther King Fellowship&#8221; from BU and a public health fellowship through the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation.&#8221;</p> <p>While she worked on her MPH, Tillman honed her commitment to a community-based approach to health issues impacting communities of color. She volunteered at a childcare center focused on children &#8220;infected or affected by HIV&#8221;; and with an organization that served Haitian women, with services addressing health care, immigration and domestic violence. After completing her MPH, Tillman went on to intern with the famed Boston Women&#8217;s Health Collective and the Codman Square Women&#8217;s Health Center.</p> <p>By 2007, when she was tapped to launch the Multnomah County Health Equity Initiative at the instigation of then County Chair Wheeler, Tillman already had a history of collaborating with grassroots organizers on environmental racism in the region, alongside work on adolescent sexual health disparities and county policies impacting HIV. A September 13 letter of support for Tillman signed by fourteen prominent leaders of color, including two retired state senators, Avel Gordley and Margaret Carter, describes Tillman as &#8220;a critical architect in much of the equity work that was implemented throughout the county and health department,&#8221; and as a &#8220;visionary&#8221; who was &#8220;notably effective at building community partnerships with organizations that are often left out and marginalized.&#8221; As an article in the <a href="" type="internal">Portland Tribune</a> noted, Tillman has been the recipient of &#8220;several awards, including the Oregon Advocacy Commission&#8217;s Health Equity Champion award, and was appointed by Gov. Kate Brown to the state Public Health Advisory Board last year.&#8221; Tillman, moreover, is presently &#8220;awaiting state Senate confirmation to the Oregon Housing Stability Council.&#8221;</p> <p>Under Tillman&#8217;s leadership, the Health Equity Initiative, the first in the state to address health issues that disproportionately impact communities of color, was among the frontrunners nationwide. Tillman would go on to be appointed in 2009 to direct the Oregon Health Authority&#8217;s Office of Equity and Inclusion, before being heavily recruited to return to lead Multnomah County&#8217;s Public Health Division. <a href="" type="internal">Documents</a> secured by the Portland Tribune demonstrate that Tillman received strong formal reviews from her supervisor, Health Director Joanne Fuller.</p> <p>Six weeks after Tillman returned, however, from a family leave caring for her mother, who has been diagnosed with stage 4 recurrent lung cancer, citing conflicts with two subordinates under Tillman&#8217;s supervision, Fuller <a href="" type="internal">reportedly</a> informed Tillman that she had &#8220;no future&#8221; at an agency where she had worked for a total of twelve years. .</p> <p>Under Tillman&#8217;s leadership, the Multnomah County Equity Initiative, along with other emerging initiatives nationwide, would gain traction with the 2008 release of the four-part PBS documentary series &#8220;Unnatural Causes&#8212;Is Inequality Making Us Sick?&#8221; which helped spur national and local dialogue and awareness of the health effects of racism and inequality. &#8220;The single strongest predictor of our health,&#8221; extolls the educational materials accompanying the film, &#8220;is our position on the class pyramid.&#8221; Historical and ongoing patterns of housing, education and employment discrimination, together with the chronic stress of racism in the U.S., mean that &#8220;African Americans typically have worse health and die sooner than their white counterparts,&#8221; even those with c <a href="http://unnaturalcauses.org/discussion_guides.php" type="external">omparable incomes</a>. Historic patterns of housing discrimination and discriminatory practices in the siting of toxic waste and interstate highways are among the variables accounting for higher rates of asthma and other diseases among communities of color.</p> <p>If higher wealth and income correlate with better health outcomes, nationwide, people of color have lost considerable economic ground over the past three and a half decades. According to a 2017 study by the <a href="https://prosperitynow.org/files/PDFs/road_to_zero_wealth.pdf" type="external">NGO Prosperity Now</a> and the Institute for Policy Studies, &#8220;between 1983 and 2013, the wealth of median Black and Latino households decreased by 75% (from $6,800 to $1,700) and 50% (from $4,000 to $2,000), respectively, while median White household wealth rose by 14% (from $102,200 to $116,800).&#8221;</p> <p>Excluded from the housing loans and benefits that helped spur white homeownership among veterans returning from World War II, and subjected to &#8220;redlining&#8221; and other forms of housing discrimination, historically oppressed communities of color in the U.S. only began to gain ground in homeownership in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement and passage of the 1968 Fair Housing Act. But much of the wealth gained during that era was lost during the subprime lending crisis, which &#8220;erased&#8221; any progress since realized in <a href="https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/are-gains-black-homeownership-history" type="external">Black homeownership</a>, which was reduced nationally by six percent, to 41.2 percent .</p> <p>While nationwide health outcomes for communities of color are significantly lower for several markers than their white counterparts, in &#8220;progressive&#8221; Multnomah County, the situation for communities of color and Blacks in particular is, by a number of markers, significantly worse than the national average. In the wake of the subprime lending crisis, amid <a href="" type="internal">a wave of gentrification and housing speculation</a>, while &#8220;white homeownership held steady&#8230;black homeownership [in Portland] fell by more than one-quarter, from 37.7 percent to 27.1 percent&#8221;.&amp;#160;&amp;#160;According to a 2014 study by the <a href="" type="internal">Multnomah County Health Department</a>, &#8220;child poverty prevalence is higher for all communities of color&#8221; in Multnomah County&#8221; than it is nationally, with the stats on Black/African Americans in Multnomah County (50.5%) exceeding by 15% the national average (35.4%) for Black/African Americans.&#8221;</p> <p>By many measures, according to the 2014 report, &amp;#160;health outcomes for people of color in Multnomah County lag significantly below not simply those of &#8220;non-Latino whites&#8221; but of their own demographic groups nationwide. With the exception of Native Americans, the death rates from cancer for all other communities of color in Multnomah County exceed those of the same demographic groups nationwide, while significantly outstripping cancer death rates for whites both locally and nationally. With the exception of American Indian/Alaskan Natives, infant mortality rates among communities of color in Multnomah County are, lower than the national average &#8211;in a country that, according to the Center for Disease Control, ranks 26th in the world, behind the Czech Republic and Slovakia). However, compared to infant mortality rates among non-white Latinos in the County, the disparities are startling, with the Black/African American infant mortality rate &#8220;2.6 times greater than the non-Latino white rate.&#8221; &amp;#160;The 2014 study also demonstrated significant racial disparities in exposure to diesel particulate matter, which, the study notes, citing the World Health Association, is correlated with a host of health issues, from &#8220;irritation of the eyes, throat, and lungs,&#8221; to asthma and &#8220;early death caused by heart disease, lung disease, and a variety of cancers.&#8221;</p> <p>While Portland&#8217;s record of health disparities has yet to garner significant media attention, over the past few years the city&#8217;s reputation for &#8220;sustainability&#8221; has been more than a bit sullied in the wake of wide spread airborne heavy metal contamination. In 2013, researchers at the University of Massachusetts identified Portland as the home of the nation&#8217;s number 1 industrial polluter Precision Castparts Corp. Toxics emitted from Precise Castparts, noted a story in the Oregonian, topped even that of the notorious polluter E.I Dupont. Three Portland-area Precision Castparts factories emitted high levels of cobalt and cobalt compounds, placing exposed communities in danger of a host of respiratory problems. In early 2016, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) and Oregon Health Authority (OHA) announced that <a href="" type="internal">high levels of arsenic and cadmium</a>&#8212;159 times the rate deemed safe for arsenic, and 49 times the &#8220;safe&#8221; rate for cadmium&amp;#160;&#8211;had been detected in Portland neighborhoods in proximity to two Portland glass factories. The agency had reportedly waited eight months to make the information public. Within a week or two of the announcement, Oregon senators Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden declared the air borne contamination a &#8220;public health emergency,&#8221; as the DEQ and OHA worked to map the toxic plume and set up neighborhood meetings to field questions and concerns. Frustrated by the DEQ&#8217;s foot dragging, <a href="" type="internal">Merkley and Wyden</a> &#8220;demand[ed] that the agencies entrusted to protect public health act decisively on the matter.&#8221;</p> <p>In the week following news of Tillman&#8217;s dismissal, with the county commissioners ironically poised to vote on a new workforce equity initiative,&amp;#160;the September 14 county commissioners meeting was jammed with employees of color and outraged supporters. Among them was Sarah Clark, an activist with the community group South Portland Air Quality, whose testimony in support of Tillman drew a standing ovation from the crowd. Clark spoke to Tillman&#8217;s role in working with residents of the low income Brentwood Darlington neighborhood, where &#8220;families speak eleven different languages&#8221; and residents have a long history of being shut out of public processes. While other officials told activists it would be months before they could expect to hear back about their concerns, Tillman &#8220;reached out&#8221; to organizers; she &#8220;listened to all our needs&#8230;.She honored the role of the community and supported rather than directed.&#8221; Tillman, said Clark, was instrumental in facilitating a &#8220;joint effort&#8221; between residents and &#8220;the Multnomah County Health Department, DEQ and OHA&#8221; to address community concerns. &#8220;When DEQ, OHA, and the Mayor&#8217;s Office [and] the city commissioners were giving us the runaround, dismissing our concerns, and speaking with condescension, and trying to put us off at every turn, in her role as public health director,&#8221; Tillman &#8220;stood shoulders above her colleagues&#8230;.&#8221; As a result, the health department had &#8220;garnered a reputation for being a resource and for taking thoughtful action.&#8221; With other community voices joining with Tillman to demand an investigation into the role that institutional racism may have played in Tillman&#8217;s dismissal, the investigation, Clark argued, needed to solicit particular input from &#8220;communities and individuals&#8221; who would be most &#8220;impacted&#8221; by the loss of her leadership at the County.</p> <p>As the <a href="" type="internal">Oregonian</a> reported, Tillman&#8217;s claims of systemic racism in Multnomah County government were bolstered at the hearing as &#8220;more than a dozen employees testified about experiencing or witnessing systemic racism within Multnomah County&#8217;s workforce. Among those testifying was <a href="https://docs.google.com/viewerng/viewer" type="external">Leslie Thomas</a>, an employee with the County&#8217;s Aging and Disability Services, who recounted an incident in which a coworker jokingly equated the post-Harvey Texas clean up efforts with &#8220;killing every n&#8212;&#8212; in sight&#8221;.</p> <p>Publicly calling out the &#8220;inactive role&#8221; of the County and her own supervisors,&#8221; Thomas reported that the incident was treated as a workplace &#8220;conflict&#8221; requiring mediation, rather than as a matter warranting disciplinary action. Also testifying at the hearing, as the <a href="http://portlandtribune.com/pt/9-news/372747-256413-packed-audience-mulls-county-workforce-equity" type="external">Portland Tribune</a> noted, was &#8220;Sherelle Jackson, a county human services manager,&#8221; who &#8220;called racism &#8216;rampant and prevalent in this county,&#8217; saying &#8216;this is personal to me and to every employee who&#8217;s pulled me in a corner, pulled me in a room or sent me an email pleading for help because of discrimination they are facing.&#8217;&#8221;</p> <p>Within days of the hearing, at which Chair Kafoury promised a sustained investigation into racial discrimination in the Multnomah County workforce, the county settled with Tillman, offering her an expanded severance package amounting to $165,000 on the condition that Tillman agree not to pursue any further legal claim. The county issued a letter on September 25, reporting on the results of an investigation conducted by the county&#8217;s Human Resources Director Travis Graves concluding that racial discrimination had played no part in Tillman&#8217;s termination. &amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">Tillman&#8217;s termination</a>, the county has continued to insist, was rooted in complaints from subordinates about her managerial style&#8211;complaints that were never formally documented in Tillman&#8217;s employment reviews.</p> <p>The same day that the determination was issued, the Director of the Multnomah County Health Department, <a href="http://portlandtribune.com/pt/9-news/373235-257756-multnomah-health-director-joanne-fuller-resigns-abruptly-following-controversial-ouster" type="external">Joanne Fuller</a>, Tillman&#8217;s supervisor who, together, presumably, with Kafoury and Multnomah County Chief Operating Officer Marissa Madrigal, presided over her termination, announced her retirement&#8212;effective the same day.</p> <p>Two days later, Loretta Smith, the sole Black county commissioner, held a joint press conference with other community leaders of color, including Gordly, Carter and Oregon Senator Lew Frederick.&amp;#160; In a rare political contest for Portland, Smith, herself the focus of an earlier County ethics investigation, will be facing off against another highly visible Black community leader, Jo Ann Hardesty, an outspoken police accountability advocate, former Oregon state representative, and current President of the Portland NAACP, for a seat on the Portland City Council. The group dismissed the results of <a href="" type="internal">the County&#8217;s investigation</a>, particularly in light of Graves&#8217; own role&#8212;as County Human Resources Director&#8212;in Tillman&#8217;s termination. &#8220;This appears to be a one-sided process focused on justifying the previous actions of the human resources bureaucracy, said Smith, &#8220;and the end result is the manager of color is the one left having been smeared in the media and, more importantly, in the public&#8217;s eye.&#8221;</p> <p>The group called for an independent investigation into both the treatment of Tricia Tillman, and systemic racism in Multnomah County.</p> <p>In an interview with Portland&#8217;s <a href="" type="internal">Willamette Week</a>, &#8220;Multnomah County Chief Operating Officer Marissa Madrigal pledged&#8230; that there will be a thorough independent review of the type Smith is seeking&#8221; with Tillman&#8217;s firing to be used as a &#8220;&#8217;case study&#8217;&#8221; . While Smith specifically sought input from the county commissioners in selecting the reviewer, the selection, it seems will be Madrigal&#8217;s to make. Given the long history of involuntary medical experimentation on people of color, and the repeated relegation of people of color to objects of a white medical gaze, the prospect of treating Tillman&#8211; whose career has focused on empowering people of color and low-income people&#8211;as a &#8220;case study&#8221; seems bitterly ironic. It seems likely, moreover, that serving as a &#8220;case study&#8221; for the county will only open her up to forms of disproportionate scrutiny that, as a number of people testified at the September county commissioners hearing, are common among people of color in Multnomah County.</p> <p>Given the sizable severance package Tillman ultimately secured, she undoubtedly fared better than many other people of color who have been fired by the county. Tillman is currently working under contract on an organizational equity assessment for the Oregon Department of Human Services. And while hopefully her expertise will continue to benefit Oregonians statewide, one is left to ponder the health effects of this ordeal for Tillman, her family, and more broadly, for other workers of color in Multnomah County, who&#8217;ve followed Tillman&#8217;s &#8220;case&#8221; over the past six weeks. One thing is certain: communities like Brentwood Darlington are unlikely to find any time soon another ally and advocate like Tillman who, in the words of South Portland Air Quality&#8217;s Sarah Clark, &#8220;listened to all our needs&#8230;. honored the role of the community and supported rather than directed,&#8221; one who &#8220;stood shoulders above her colleagues.&#8221;</p>

“Unnatural Causes”: Health Takes a Hit in Portland, Oregon

https://counterpunch.org/2017/10/19/unnatural-causes-health-takes-a-hit-in-portland/

2017-10-19

4left

Over the past month Multnomah County one of the largest employers in the Portland Metropolitan area has been roiled by claims of systemic employment discrimination While other major cities across the US have experienced an increase in African American residents in recent years between 2012 and 2014 8220liberal8221 Portland Oregon8217s Black community8212already among the smallest of any major city in the country8211saw its numbers drop even further For some in Portland the recent firing of Tricia Tillman one of the highestranking Black professionals in Multnomah County and the first person of color to serve as the director of Multnomah County Public Health has sent a chilling message about the prospects for upward mobility among professionals of color8212and Black professionals in particular8211 in city and county government But it also signals a potentially serious setback for people of color across the board because arguably no one in the state has done more than Tillman to raise public awareness of equity particularly with respect to the links between health disparities and environmental racism Both are part of the long and lethal legacy of white supremacy in Oregon the only state in the union with founding documents that expressly excluded African Americans On August 18 as Portland activists began gearing up for another faceoff between antifascists and white supremacists at a meeting with Joanne Fuller Tillman8217s supervisor the Director of the Multnomah County Health Department Tillman was reportedly pressured to 8220gracefully8221 resign from the position she had held for the past two years Over the past month Tillman8217s firing has set off a storm of criticism culminating in the launch of a formal investigation into institutional racism in the Multnomah County government a hefty financial settlement and the abrupt resignation of Fuller amp160For many Tillman8217s dismissal also serves as yet another reminder of the disconnect between Portland8217s reputation for progressive politics and sustainability and the lived experience of people of color in Portland For many Tillman8217s dismissal demonstrates that white supremacy often takes more subtle and insidious forms than the visible and high profile violence that drew national attention to Portland in May Tillman who was widely expected to succeed Fulton as Director of the Health Department was seen by many in the city as uniquely skilled well suited and committed to advancing equity in a region where it is sorely lacking A native Portlander raised by a single mother Tillman graduated from St Mary8217s Academy in downtown Portland and went on to earn an undergraduate degree at Catholic University in Washington DC the first on her mother8217s side of the family to complete university In this respect her background could hardly form a more stark comparison to the inherited wealth and privilege of Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury and Portland Mayor Ted Wheeleramp160 Kafoury8217s mother Gretchen Kafoury preceded her as a member of the Multnomah County Commissioner and also served on the Portland City Council and as an Oregon state representative If Deborah Kafoury hails from a family of regional power brokers her immediate predecessor as County Chair Wheeler could easily serve as a kind of poster boy for the benefits of intergenerational capital8212and political power8212accrued through settler colonialism Wheeler descends from a family of lumber barons who set up business in the coastal town that still bears the family name As documented in a 2016 Willamette Week article after merging with Willamette Industries the family business would be sold to Weyerhauser in 2002 for 6 billion with Wheeler8217s father Samuel garnering an estimated 83 million from the sale As she recounted in a phone interview Tillman8217s interest in pursuing a Masters in Public Health was spurred by her experience working in Tucson at the El Rio Neighborhood Health Center Tillman describes her experience in Tucson as 8220transformative8221 as a critical lesson in 8220working in partnership with communities8230in a culturally specific capacity8221amp160 As The Skanner has reported as a graduate student pursuing a Masters in Public Health at Boston University Tillmanamp1608220received a Martin Luther King Fellowship8221 from BU and a public health fellowship through the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation8221 While she worked on her MPH Tillman honed her commitment to a communitybased approach to health issues impacting communities of color She volunteered at a childcare center focused on children 8220infected or affected by HIV8221 and with an organization that served Haitian women with services addressing health care immigration and domestic violence After completing her MPH Tillman went on to intern with the famed Boston Women8217s Health Collective and the Codman Square Women8217s Health Center By 2007 when she was tapped to launch the Multnomah County Health Equity Initiative at the instigation of then County Chair Wheeler Tillman already had a history of collaborating with grassroots organizers on environmental racism in the region alongside work on adolescent sexual health disparities and county policies impacting HIV A September 13 letter of support for Tillman signed by fourteen prominent leaders of color including two retired state senators Avel Gordley and Margaret Carter describes Tillman as 8220a critical architect in much of the equity work that was implemented throughout the county and health department8221 and as a 8220visionary8221 who was 8220notably effective at building community partnerships with organizations that are often left out and marginalized8221 As an article in the Portland Tribune noted Tillman has been the recipient of 8220several awards including the Oregon Advocacy Commission8217s Health Equity Champion award and was appointed by Gov Kate Brown to the state Public Health Advisory Board last year8221 Tillman moreover is presently 8220awaiting state Senate confirmation to the Oregon Housing Stability Council8221 Under Tillman8217s leadership the Health Equity Initiative the first in the state to address health issues that disproportionately impact communities of color was among the frontrunners nationwide Tillman would go on to be appointed in 2009 to direct the Oregon Health Authority8217s Office of Equity and Inclusion before being heavily recruited to return to lead Multnomah County8217s Public Health Division Documents secured by the Portland Tribune demonstrate that Tillman received strong formal reviews from her supervisor Health Director Joanne Fuller Six weeks after Tillman returned however from a family leave caring for her mother who has been diagnosed with stage 4 recurrent lung cancer citing conflicts with two subordinates under Tillman8217s supervision Fuller reportedly informed Tillman that she had 8220no future8221 at an agency where she had worked for a total of twelve years Under Tillman8217s leadership the Multnomah County Equity Initiative along with other emerging initiatives nationwide would gain traction with the 2008 release of the fourpart PBS documentary series 8220Unnatural Causes8212Is Inequality Making Us Sick8221 which helped spur national and local dialogue and awareness of the health effects of racism and inequality 8220The single strongest predictor of our health8221 extolls the educational materials accompanying the film 8220is our position on the class pyramid8221 Historical and ongoing patterns of housing education and employment discrimination together with the chronic stress of racism in the US mean that 8220African Americans typically have worse health and die sooner than their white counterparts8221 even those with c omparable incomes Historic patterns of housing discrimination and discriminatory practices in the siting of toxic waste and interstate highways are among the variables accounting for higher rates of asthma and other diseases among communities of color If higher wealth and income correlate with better health outcomes nationwide people of color have lost considerable economic ground over the past three and a half decades According to a 2017 study by the NGO Prosperity Now and the Institute for Policy Studies 8220between 1983 and 2013 the wealth of median Black and Latino households decreased by 75 from 6800 to 1700 and 50 from 4000 to 2000 respectively while median White household wealth rose by 14 from 102200 to 1168008221 Excluded from the housing loans and benefits that helped spur white homeownership among veterans returning from World War II and subjected to 8220redlining8221 and other forms of housing discrimination historically oppressed communities of color in the US only began to gain ground in homeownership in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement and passage of the 1968 Fair Housing Act But much of the wealth gained during that era was lost during the subprime lending crisis which 8220erased8221 any progress since realized in Black homeownership which was reduced nationally by six percent to 412 percent While nationwide health outcomes for communities of color are significantly lower for several markers than their white counterparts in 8220progressive8221 Multnomah County the situation for communities of color and Blacks in particular is by a number of markers significantly worse than the national average In the wake of the subprime lending crisis amid a wave of gentrification and housing speculation while 8220white homeownership held steady8230black homeownership in Portland fell by more than onequarter from 377 percent to 271 percent8221amp160amp160According to a 2014 study by the Multnomah County Health Department 8220child poverty prevalence is higher for all communities of color8221 in Multnomah County8221 than it is nationally with the stats on BlackAfrican Americans in Multnomah County 505 exceeding by 15 the national average 354 for BlackAfrican Americans8221 By many measures according to the 2014 report amp160health outcomes for people of color in Multnomah County lag significantly below not simply those of 8220nonLatino whites8221 but of their own demographic groups nationwide With the exception of Native Americans the death rates from cancer for all other communities of color in Multnomah County exceed those of the same demographic groups nationwide while significantly outstripping cancer death rates for whites both locally and nationally With the exception of American IndianAlaskan Natives infant mortality rates among communities of color in Multnomah County are lower than the national average 8211in a country that according to the Center for Disease Control ranks 26th in the world behind the Czech Republic and Slovakia However compared to infant mortality rates among nonwhite Latinos in the County the disparities are startling with the BlackAfrican American infant mortality rate 822026 times greater than the nonLatino white rate8221 amp160The 2014 study also demonstrated significant racial disparities in exposure to diesel particulate matter which the study notes citing the World Health Association is correlated with a host of health issues from 8220irritation of the eyes throat and lungs8221 to asthma and 8220early death caused by heart disease lung disease and a variety of cancers8221 While Portland8217s record of health disparities has yet to garner significant media attention over the past few years the city8217s reputation for 8220sustainability8221 has been more than a bit sullied in the wake of wide spread airborne heavy metal contamination In 2013 researchers at the University of Massachusetts identified Portland as the home of the nation8217s number 1 industrial polluter Precision Castparts Corp Toxics emitted from Precise Castparts noted a story in the Oregonian topped even that of the notorious polluter EI Dupont Three Portlandarea Precision Castparts factories emitted high levels of cobalt and cobalt compounds placing exposed communities in danger of a host of respiratory problems In early 2016 the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality DEQ and Oregon Health Authority OHA announced that high levels of arsenic and cadmium8212159 times the rate deemed safe for arsenic and 49 times the 8220safe8221 rate for cadmiumamp1608211had been detected in Portland neighborhoods in proximity to two Portland glass factories The agency had reportedly waited eight months to make the information public Within a week or two of the announcement Oregon senators Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden declared the air borne contamination a 8220public health emergency8221 as the DEQ and OHA worked to map the toxic plume and set up neighborhood meetings to field questions and concerns Frustrated by the DEQ8217s foot dragging Merkley and Wyden 8220demanded that the agencies entrusted to protect public health act decisively on the matter8221 In the week following news of Tillman8217s dismissal with the county commissioners ironically poised to vote on a new workforce equity initiativeamp160the September 14 county commissioners meeting was jammed with employees of color and outraged supporters Among them was Sarah Clark an activist with the community group South Portland Air Quality whose testimony in support of Tillman drew a standing ovation from the crowd Clark spoke to Tillman8217s role in working with residents of the low income Brentwood Darlington neighborhood where 8220families speak eleven different languages8221 and residents have a long history of being shut out of public processes While other officials told activists it would be months before they could expect to hear back about their concerns Tillman 8220reached out8221 to organizers she 8220listened to all our needs8230She honored the role of the community and supported rather than directed8221 Tillman said Clark was instrumental in facilitating a 8220joint effort8221 between residents and 8220the Multnomah County Health Department DEQ and OHA8221 to address community concerns 8220When DEQ OHA and the Mayor8217s Office and the city commissioners were giving us the runaround dismissing our concerns and speaking with condescension and trying to put us off at every turn in her role as public health director8221 Tillman 8220stood shoulders above her colleagues82308221 As a result the health department had 8220garnered a reputation for being a resource and for taking thoughtful action8221 With other community voices joining with Tillman to demand an investigation into the role that institutional racism may have played in Tillman8217s dismissal the investigation Clark argued needed to solicit particular input from 8220communities and individuals8221 who would be most 8220impacted8221 by the loss of her leadership at the County As the Oregonian reported Tillman8217s claims of systemic racism in Multnomah County government were bolstered at the hearing as 8220more than a dozen employees testified about experiencing or witnessing systemic racism within Multnomah County8217s workforce Among those testifying was Leslie Thomas an employee with the County8217s Aging and Disability Services who recounted an incident in which a coworker jokingly equated the postHarvey Texas clean up efforts with 8220killing every n82128212 in sight8221 Publicly calling out the 8220inactive role8221 of the County and her own supervisors8221 Thomas reported that the incident was treated as a workplace 8220conflict8221 requiring mediation rather than as a matter warranting disciplinary action Also testifying at the hearing as the Portland Tribune noted was 8220Sherelle Jackson a county human services manager8221 who 8220called racism 8216rampant and prevalent in this county8217 saying 8216this is personal to me and to every employee who8217s pulled me in a corner pulled me in a room or sent me an email pleading for help because of discrimination they are facing82178221 Within days of the hearing at which Chair Kafoury promised a sustained investigation into racial discrimination in the Multnomah County workforce the county settled with Tillman offering her an expanded severance package amounting to 165000 on the condition that Tillman agree not to pursue any further legal claim The county issued a letter on September 25 reporting on the results of an investigation conducted by the county8217s Human Resources Director Travis Graves concluding that racial discrimination had played no part in Tillman8217s termination amp160 Tillman8217s termination the county has continued to insist was rooted in complaints from subordinates about her managerial style8211complaints that were never formally documented in Tillman8217s employment reviews The same day that the determination was issued the Director of the Multnomah County Health Department Joanne Fuller Tillman8217s supervisor who together presumably with Kafoury and Multnomah County Chief Operating Officer Marissa Madrigal presided over her termination announced her retirement8212effective the same day Two days later Loretta Smith the sole Black county commissioner held a joint press conference with other community leaders of color including Gordly Carter and Oregon Senator Lew Frederickamp160 In a rare political contest for Portland Smith herself the focus of an earlier County ethics investigation will be facing off against another highly visible Black community leader Jo Ann Hardesty an outspoken police accountability advocate former Oregon state representative and current President of the Portland NAACP for a seat on the Portland City Council The group dismissed the results of the County8217s investigation particularly in light of Graves8217 own role8212as County Human Resources Director8212in Tillman8217s termination 8220This appears to be a onesided process focused on justifying the previous actions of the human resources bureaucracy said Smith 8220and the end result is the manager of color is the one left having been smeared in the media and more importantly in the public8217s eye8221 The group called for an independent investigation into both the treatment of Tricia Tillman and systemic racism in Multnomah County In an interview with Portland8217s Willamette Week 8220Multnomah County Chief Operating Officer Marissa Madrigal pledged8230 that there will be a thorough independent review of the type Smith is seeking8221 with Tillman8217s firing to be used as a 82208217case study82178221 While Smith specifically sought input from the county commissioners in selecting the reviewer the selection it seems will be Madrigal8217s to make Given the long history of involuntary medical experimentation on people of color and the repeated relegation of people of color to objects of a white medical gaze the prospect of treating Tillman8211 whose career has focused on empowering people of color and lowincome people8211as a 8220case study8221 seems bitterly ironic It seems likely moreover that serving as a 8220case study8221 for the county will only open her up to forms of disproportionate scrutiny that as a number of people testified at the September county commissioners hearing are common among people of color in Multnomah County Given the sizable severance package Tillman ultimately secured she undoubtedly fared better than many other people of color who have been fired by the county Tillman is currently working under contract on an organizational equity assessment for the Oregon Department of Human Services And while hopefully her expertise will continue to benefit Oregonians statewide one is left to ponder the health effects of this ordeal for Tillman her family and more broadly for other workers of color in Multnomah County who8217ve followed Tillman8217s 8220case8221 over the past six weeks One thing is certain communities like Brentwood Darlington are unlikely to find any time soon another ally and advocate like Tillman who in the words of South Portland Air Quality8217s Sarah Clark 8220listened to all our needs8230 honored the role of the community and supported rather than directed8221 one who 8220stood shoulders above her colleagues8221

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<p>It&#8217;s unclear just what West Virginia&#8217;s future will hold. Coal has been the region&#8217;s mono-industry for so long that it&#8217;s hard to imagine anything else.</p> <p>This post first <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176040/" type="external">appeared</a> at TomDispatch.com.</p> <p>In Appalachia, explosions have leveled the mountain tops into perfect race tracks for Ryan Hensley&#8217;s all-terrain vehicle (ATV). At least, that&#8217;s how the 14-year-old sees the barren expanses of dirt that stretch for miles atop the hills surrounding his home in the former coal town of Whitesville, West Virginia.</p> <p>&#8220;They&#8217;re going to blast that one next,&#8221; he says, pointing to a peak in the distance. He&#8217;s referring to a process known as &#8220;mountain-top removal,&#8221; in which coal companies use explosives to blast away hundreds of feet of rock in order to unearth underground seams of coal.</p> <p>&#8220;And then it&#8217;ll be just blank space,&#8221; he adds. &#8220;Like the Taylor Swift song.&#8221;</p> <p>Skinny and shirtless, Hensley looks no more than 11 or 12. His ribs and collarbones protrude from his taut skin. Dipping tobacco is tucked into his right cheek. He has a head of cropped blond curls that jog some memory of mine, but I can&#8217;t quite figure out what it is. He&#8217;s pointing at a peak named Coal River Mountain. These days, though, it&#8217;s known to activists here as &#8220;the Last Mountain,&#8221; as it&#8217;s the only ridgeline in this area that's still largely intact.</p> <p>We continue picking our way along a path on topless Kayford &#8220;Mountain,&#8221; a few miles from Hensley&#8217;s hometown (population 514, according to the 2010 census), as he resumes chronicling his adventures on ATVs. Nearby is the Seng Creek mine, still semi-active and one of Hensley&#8217;s favorite racing spots. Active mines are always the best race tracks, he assures me, since you get the added thrill of outrunning security guards and watching explosions, which sound, he tells me, like hundreds of dump trucks emptying their loads all at once.</p> <p>As we walk, we&#8217;re careful to step over crevices known as &#8220;mine cracks&#8221;&#8212;deep narrow drops into the earth most often formed by the caving in of old underground mines. Hensley stops to peer into one crack filled with broken Bud Lite bottles and I joke that it leads straight through to China.</p> <p>But Hensley knows better. At his young age, he&#8217;s already an expert on everything about mountain-top removal: how companies blast the peaks with <a href="http://ohvec.org/issues/mountaintop_removal/articles/health/MTR_Mining_April_18_2013.pdf" type="external">ammonium nitrate and fuel oil</a>&#8212;the same chemical combination that Timothy McVeigh used to detonate the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. He knows that the <a href="http://ohvec.org/issues/mountaintop_removal/articles/health/MTR_Mining_April_18_2013.pdf" type="external">process fills</a> the air with toxic coal dust, benzene, and carbon monoxide, while contaminating nearby streams with arsenic.</p> <p>However, Hensley doesn&#8217;t know and can hardly imagine what this region&#8212;his home&#8212;was like before the peaks were removed. &#8220;I wasn&#8217;t alive when those mountains were there,&#8221; he observes a few hours later. And even though the industry in West Virginia is in the grips of an unprecedented collapse that threatens to dethrone King Coal once and for all, this 14-year-old and all the other children growing up in the shadow of these &#8220;blank spaces&#8221; will never see the decapitated peaks return to thickly forested mountain tops.</p> <p>In the first half of this year, <a href="https://www.snl.com/InteractiveX/Article.aspx?cdid=A-32872208-12845" type="external">at least six</a> domestic coal companies filed for bankruptcy. In February, West Virginia&#8217;s Covington Coal fell, followed by Xinergy and Grass Creek Coal in April, Patriot and Birmingham Coal &amp;amp; Coke in May, and A&amp;amp;M Coal in June. In August came the biggest announcement of all: the $10-billion coal giant Alpha Natural Resources had <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/alpha-joins-the-lineup-of-coal-miners-in-bankruptcy/" type="external">entered</a> the bankruptcy sweepstakes, too.</p> <p>Only four years earlier, Alpha had secured its position as one of the <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/alpha-joins-the-lineup-of-coal-miners-in-bankruptcy/" type="external">world&#8217;s largest</a> coal outfits by purchasing the Appalachian company Massey Energy for $7 billion and expanding its operations to 60 mines, many in Appalachia. But its reign would prove short-lived. The price of coal has been plummeting as utility companies shift to significantly cheaper shale gas, extracted through the drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to produce power. This April, for the first time since the U.S. Energy Information Administration began collecting data in 1973, gas <a href="http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=22312" type="external">surpassed</a> coal as the nation&#8217;s number one producer of energy.</p> <p>By late July, the New York Stock Exchange announced that it had <a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/news/walter-energy-nyse-stops-alpha-155601822.html" type="external">suspended</a> trading of Alpha Natural Resources&#8217; stock because it was worth next to nothing.</p> <p>In August, the inevitable occurred. Alpha submitted a bankruptcy filing which <a href="https://www.snl.com/InteractiveX/Article.aspx?cdid=A-33431390-11831" type="external">read</a> in part: &#8220;The unprecedented changes facing the coal industry run deep and are occurring at a frenetic and unpredictable pace&#8230; The U.S. coal industry as currently structured is unsustainable.&#8221;</p> <p>By now, the funeral was underway and the first obituaries were appearing. Headlines in various papers not only announced Alpha&#8217;s demise, but offered autopsies for the entire industry. As the New York Times put it in its <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/07/business/energy-environment/coal-industry-wobbles-as-market-forces-slug-away.html" type="external">headline</a> three days after the filing: &#8220;King Coal, Long Besieged, Is Deposed by the Market.&#8221;</p> <p>Causes of death: the explosion of cheap natural gas, the rising costs of new environmental and worker safety regulations, and a simple geological reality&#8212;the industry has already mined out the majority of all economically recoverable coal.</p> <p>This energy version of regime change had been long in the making. The coalfields are filled with now-abandoned company towns, where the industry once employed hundreds of thousands of men to work in underground mines. The extraction process generated massive wealth, at least for the mine owners. In the late 1880s, Bramwell, West Virginia, was reputedly home to the <a href="http://www.bramwellwv.com/history.html" type="external">highest concentration</a> of millionaires per capita of any town in the United States. Today, its high school still boasts of that legacy through its teams&#8217; <a href="http://www.bramwellwv.com/school.html" type="external">nickname</a>: the Bramwell Millionaires.</p> <p>In the second half of the twentieth century, many of those towns all but evaporated as the industry turned to strip mining, a mechanized process that uses heavy machinery rather than muscle power to carve away rock and expose seams of coal running along hillsides. The town of Kayford, which sits at the base of its namesake mountain, is one such example. Once a company town for men employed in the mines, its main road is now lined only with poplars, sycamores, and basswood, a few poured-concrete foundations, and a crumbling single-story brick wall. The town&#8217;s last building is said to have burned down toward the end of the 1970s.</p> <p>The former town is still, however, home to an active strip mine called Alpha&#8217;s Republic #1, which employs few people but has managed to extract a considerable amount of coal. In 2012, organizers with the climate justice group Mountain Justice formed a human blockade to shut down work traffic going in and out of the site. It was just one of dozens and dozens of blockades, &#8220;tree-sits,&#8221; and other direct actions Mountain Justice has executed as part of a decade-long campaign, which has won regulatory improvements to reduce water contamination, shielded schools in the coalfields from the worst health impacts of mining, moderated flooding caused by that mining, and demanded the industry do more to replant trees and grasses on old mine sites. That campaign also helped inspire almost all the major environmental activism in the nation today&#8212;from the <a href="http://www.npr.org/2015/04/11/398757780/students-push-college-fossil-fuel-divestment-to-stigmatize-industry" type="external">university divestment movement</a> to <a href="http://www.texasobserver.org/east-texas-showdown/" type="external">tree sits in Texas</a> to block the Keystone XL pipeline to the <a href="http://www.sltrib.com/home/2823318-155/tar-sands-mine-protesters-in-tripods" type="external">arrest this month</a> of people seeking to halt the construction of the first commercial tar sands mine in this country.</p> <p>In many ways, however, Mountain Justice's protests were among the least extreme in the state&#8217;s long history of organizing. Drive farther up the mountain and you'll find <a href="https://coalcountrytours.com/Mine_War_Images.html" type="external">concrete bunkers</a> built by hired guns from the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency sent in to quell a powerful miner's strike in 1912-1913. Less than 10 years later, as many as <a href="http://www.pawv.org/news/blairhist.htm" type="external">10,000 armed miners</a> from West Virginia would launch the largest labor uprising in the nation&#8217;s history.</p> <p>Even higher up the mountain, past the bunkers, lies Stanley Heirs Park, a 50-acre swath of land surrounded by the final stage of coal extraction: mountain-top removal.</p> <p>In the 1970s, as more and more of the readily available coal was extracted from West Virginia&#8217;s underground mines and ridge lines, companies decided to take strip mining to its logical conclusion: they would simply blast away the entire tops of mountains to get at the remaining coal. The results are visible in the flattened, barren mines that surround the park, including the Seng Creek mine where Ryan Hensley likes to ride his ATV.</p> <p>Hensley and dozens of others converged here for an annual Fourth of July celebration, an event hosted by the family of the late Larry Gibson, a prominent organizer against mountain-top removal. His family has lived here on Kayford Mountain since the late 1700s and this section alone has remained unblasted because Gibson turned the family plot into a land trust in order to fend off the industry.</p> <p>Before his death in 2012, Gibson was much hated in the area for taking on the coal companies, so his friends and neighbors tell me as we share fried chicken and Budweiser. His house was riddled with bullets. His dogs were poisoned or shot. But he succeeded in protecting at least his small plot of land from the explosives. Now, as his family points out, the land that used to lie in the shadow of surrounding taller peaks has become, after 30 years of mountain-top removal, the highest site in the area.</p> <p>Few know more about the impact of the mining industry than Elise Keaton, a 30-something native West Virginian with the enthusiastic, commanding voice of a camp counselor. Years ago, she did what many of the state&#8217;s residents do if they can: she left. She earned a law degree in Texas and later helped with disaster relief in post-Katrina New Orleans.</p> <p>&#8220;But being from West Virginia is like having a fishhook in your heart,&#8221; she tells me. So she returned and, following Gibson&#8217;s death, took over the role of educating newcomers about Kayford. Standing at the edge of the Seng Creek mine, owned by the now bankrupt coal company Patriot, Keaton explains that the surrounding mountain peaks have been reduced by at least 400 feet, if not more. The removed earth&#8212;known in industry parlance as the &#8220;overburden&#8221;&#8212;was dumped into the nearby valleys, where it covered streams, reducing the region&#8217;s fresh water supply.</p> <p>Before coal companies came along, Appalachia had been &#8220;burdened&#8221; by these mountains for more than 400 million years. They were <a href="http://geomaps.wr.usgs.gov/parks/province/appalach.html" type="external">formed</a> by the same collision of tectonic plates that produced the single supercontinent Pangea. The Appalachian mountain range then lay at the heart of the world&#8217;s only unified landmass.</p> <p>Today, the unblasted sections of West Virginia&#8217;s mountains are blanketed by a temperate forest so diverse that researchers are <a href="http://www.wvgazettemail.com/News/201401020121" type="external">still discovering</a> new species, including a reddish-orange crayfish that was plucked out of the water in 2013 and dubbed Cambarus hatfieldi&#8212;a Latin play on the name of the famed West Virginia family, the Hatfields, who feuded with their neighbors across the river in Kentucky, the McCoys.</p> <p>Keaton recently invited a forest expert to visit Kayford Mountain and survey the decommissioned mines. The coal companies have made only the most meager efforts to reclaim this devastated land by planting quick-growth pine trees, black locust, grass seed, and other plants that can live with high levels of acids in the soil. Keaton wanted to know how long it would take for these stands of identical pines to be transformed into a diverse rainforest, so she took the expert to one of the ridges and asked him when the real forest would grow back.</p> <p>&#8220;And he said,&#8221; Elise recalled, &#8220;&#8216;About 100 million years.&#8217;&#8221;</p> <p>Before his death, Gibson dubbed the entrance to the Seng Creek mine &#8220;Hell&#8217;s Gate,&#8221; since for many years this site looked out across a vast expanse of gray broken only by the movements of massive machines and those explosions, which occurred every day of the year. A writer for Smithsonian Magazine who visited Kayford in 2009, while this mine was still being blasted frequently, <a href="http://www.smithsonianmag.com/ecocenter-energy/mining-the-mountains-130454620/?all" type="external">wrote</a> that &#8220;entering a mountaintop site is like crossing into a war zone.&#8221;</p> <p>Now, few are the explosions at Seng Creek, but the nothingness remains.</p> <p>There&#8217;s almost no sound down in the mine itself except for the muffled rush of the wind unshielded by trees. Heaps of sandstone and fragmented shale rock stretch for what looks like miles. Much of the surface dirt has been packed down into undulating wide roads by the giant wheels of coal trucks. Most of the birds long ago left this desolate spot, although you can hear the occasional singing of meadowlarks from nearby reclamation sites. (&#8220;We&#8217;ve never had meadow larks here before,&#8221; Keaton later tells me, as she stands on a nearby ridge overlooking a decommissioned mine seeded with grass. &#8220;But this is more like a meadow now.&#8221;)</p> <p>I walk to the far edge of the mine, sit down, and peer into some of the cylindrical holes, about 11 inches in diameter, that workers once drilled into the shale rock as places to pack full of ammonium nitrate. I recall what one of the festival&#8217;s musicians said about coal&#8212;that he liked to think of it as old sunlight trapped inside rocks as long decomposed organic matter. Maybe it would be simpler, he added, just to use new sunlight, as the weekend&#8217;s solar-powered event was, in fact, doing.</p> <p>Finally, hours later, I conclude that there is very little else to be written, at least by me, at the edge of a mountain top that&#8217;s been transformed into blank, dead space. After all, I&#8217;m new to West Virginia, which gives me something in common with Ryan Hensley: I never saw the mountains here, either. And I never will.</p> <p>This state&#8217;s longest-serving governor once famously asked: &#8220;Why does everything bad happen to West Virginia?&#8221;</p> <p>His question gibed well with the sense I ran into that the state&#8217;s history is a tragic one and that the coal industry&#8217;s collapse is its grim final act. Indeed, it&#8217;s unclear just what West Virginia&#8217;s future will hold. Coal has been the region&#8217;s mono-industry for so long that it&#8217;s hard to imagine anything else. Elise Keaton points out that the region&#8217;s rich coalfields were a major part of the reason President Abraham Lincoln approved a controversial Act of Congress in 1863 to carve out West Virginia as a new state. It was one of only two states created in the midst of the Civil War and even some of Lincoln&#8217;s advisors deemed the move unconstitutional. But annexing the region was militarily expedient. It gave the north all those rich coalfields and the prized <a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/13/Baltimore_and_Ohio_RR_in_1961.jpg" type="external">Baltimore &amp;amp; Ohio Railroad</a>, which hauled Union soldiers south to the front lines and Appalachian coal north from Charleston to stations in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City.</p> <p>In other words, West Virginia was created, as Keaton puts it, as a resource colony.</p> <p>Perhaps, in the end, the death of coal will spell not doom but liberation for the state, freeing it from the energy needs of the rest of the nation. These days, as the coal industry crumbles, West Virginians are rallying in support of what&#8217;s being called &#8220; <a href="http://www.yesmagazine.org/commonomics/appalachia-s-post-coal-economy" type="external">transition work</a>&#8221;&#8212;the building, that is, of a new economy based on agriculture, local arts, wineries, and the like.</p> <p>Indeed, if West Virginia is able to build these alternative economies, if the state is able to do more than simply pivot from being a coal colony to becoming a shale gas supplier, it will provide evidence that any region can be transformed as the planet&#8217;s industrialized nations hurtle into a post-fossil fuel future, kicking and screaming every step of the way.</p> <p>Such a transition will require not only building anew, but also healing old wounds.</p> <p>Hours later, Hensley begins pleading for one more expedition in Stanley Heirs Park, so we set off for Hell&#8217;s Gate with a handful of others. As we walk, I suddenly realize just whom his cropped blond hair, which has felt so eerily familiar, brought to mind: a young worker I met in North Dakota&#8217;s fracking fields in the summer of 2014, shortly before he was <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175906/tomgram%3A_laura_gottesdiener,_adrift_in_oil_country/" type="external">beaten to death</a> outside a bar. In that moment of recognition, I find myself pleased that Hensley will have, at best, a slim chance of finding a coal job when he&#8217;s older, but then I begin to worry about where the need for work will carry him if new industries haven&#8217;t sprung up in time.</p> <p>Another member of our group is Charles Lee Williams, a former miner who lives a few miles away. Forty-six years old, Williams has a round head and small, deep-set blue eyes. He&#8217;s a man who knows about death in the coalfields better than most. He worked for coal giant Massey Energy until 2010, when a <a href="http://www.npr.org/tags/129437792/upper-big-branch-mine-disaster" type="external">series of explosions</a> ripped through subterranean tunnels at his worksite killing 29 of his co-workers&#8212;and nearly getting him, too. The force of the blasts, he tells me, was so powerful that it felt as if his skull were being sucked out of his head.</p> <p>Now, Williams spends most nights dreaming of the ghosts of those men. He sought treatment once for the resulting PTSD, but the pills prescribed for him only seemed to make the nightmares worse. In them, he tells me, his former co-workers usually appear headless.</p> <p>After we&#8217;ve returned from Hell&#8217;s Gate, Williams confesses that it&#8217;s his first time surveying a mountain-top removal site from above&#8212;despite living so close to mines that the explosions sometimes shake his house.</p> <p>&#8220;It feels like there&#8217;s nothing alive left over there,&#8221; he says. Then he pauses and adds, &#8220;That&#8217;s what it feels like in the mornings, too. That there ain&#8217;t no life left in me, neither.&#8221;</p> <p>Like what you&#8217;ve read? <a href="https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/itt-subscription-offer?refcode=WS_ITT_Article_Footer&amp;amp;noskip=true" type="external">Subscribe to In These Times magazine</a>, or <a href="https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/support-in-these-times?refcode=WS_ITT_Article_Footer&amp;amp;noskip=true" type="external">make a tax-deductible donation to fund this reporting</a>.</p> <p>Laura Gottesdiener is a journalist, social justice activist, and author of A Dream Foreclosed: Black America and the Fight for a Place to Call Home published this month by Zuccotti Park Press. She is an associate editor for Waging Nonviolence, and she has written for Rolling Stone, Ms. magazine, The Arizona Republic, The New Haven Advocate, The Huffington Post, AlterNet and other publications. She lived and worked in the People&#8217;s Kitchen during the occupation of Zuccotti Park.</p>

Appalachia’s Coal Industry is Collapsing—But the Mountains Aren’t Coming Back

http://inthesetimes.com/article/18345/appalachias-coal-industry-is-collapsingbut-the-mountains-arent-coming-back

2015-08-25

4left

It8217s unclear just what West Virginia8217s future will hold Coal has been the region8217s monoindustry for so long that it8217s hard to imagine anything else This post first appeared at TomDispatchcom In Appalachia explosions have leveled the mountain tops into perfect race tracks for Ryan Hensley8217s allterrain vehicle ATV At least that8217s how the 14yearold sees the barren expanses of dirt that stretch for miles atop the hills surrounding his home in the former coal town of Whitesville West Virginia 8220They8217re going to blast that one next8221 he says pointing to a peak in the distance He8217s referring to a process known as 8220mountaintop removal8221 in which coal companies use explosives to blast away hundreds of feet of rock in order to unearth underground seams of coal 8220And then it8217ll be just blank space8221 he adds 8220Like the Taylor Swift song8221 Skinny and shirtless Hensley looks no more than 11 or 12 His ribs and collarbones protrude from his taut skin Dipping tobacco is tucked into his right cheek He has a head of cropped blond curls that jog some memory of mine but I can8217t quite figure out what it is He8217s pointing at a peak named Coal River Mountain These days though it8217s known to activists here as 8220the Last Mountain8221 as it8217s the only ridgeline in this area thats still largely intact We continue picking our way along a path on topless Kayford 8220Mountain8221 a few miles from Hensley8217s hometown population 514 according to the 2010 census as he resumes chronicling his adventures on ATVs Nearby is the Seng Creek mine still semiactive and one of Hensley8217s favorite racing spots Active mines are always the best race tracks he assures me since you get the added thrill of outrunning security guards and watching explosions which sound he tells me like hundreds of dump trucks emptying their loads all at once As we walk we8217re careful to step over crevices known as 8220mine cracks82218212deep narrow drops into the earth most often formed by the caving in of old underground mines Hensley stops to peer into one crack filled with broken Bud Lite bottles and I joke that it leads straight through to China But Hensley knows better At his young age he8217s already an expert on everything about mountaintop removal how companies blast the peaks with ammonium nitrate and fuel oil8212the same chemical combination that Timothy McVeigh used to detonate the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995 He knows that the process fills the air with toxic coal dust benzene and carbon monoxide while contaminating nearby streams with arsenic However Hensley doesn8217t know and can hardly imagine what this region8212his home8212was like before the peaks were removed 8220I wasn8217t alive when those mountains were there8221 he observes a few hours later And even though the industry in West Virginia is in the grips of an unprecedented collapse that threatens to dethrone King Coal once and for all this 14yearold and all the other children growing up in the shadow of these 8220blank spaces8221 will never see the decapitated peaks return to thickly forested mountain tops In the first half of this year at least six domestic coal companies filed for bankruptcy In February West Virginia8217s Covington Coal fell followed by Xinergy and Grass Creek Coal in April Patriot and Birmingham Coal ampamp Coke in May and AampampM Coal in June In August came the biggest announcement of all the 10billion coal giant Alpha Natural Resources had entered the bankruptcy sweepstakes too Only four years earlier Alpha had secured its position as one of the world8217s largest coal outfits by purchasing the Appalachian company Massey Energy for 7 billion and expanding its operations to 60 mines many in Appalachia But its reign would prove shortlived The price of coal has been plummeting as utility companies shift to significantly cheaper shale gas extracted through the drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing or fracking to produce power This April for the first time since the US Energy Information Administration began collecting data in 1973 gas surpassed coal as the nation8217s number one producer of energy By late July the New York Stock Exchange announced that it had suspended trading of Alpha Natural Resources8217 stock because it was worth next to nothing In August the inevitable occurred Alpha submitted a bankruptcy filing which read in part 8220The unprecedented changes facing the coal industry run deep and are occurring at a frenetic and unpredictable pace8230 The US coal industry as currently structured is unsustainable8221 By now the funeral was underway and the first obituaries were appearing Headlines in various papers not only announced Alpha8217s demise but offered autopsies for the entire industry As the New York Times put it in its headline three days after the filing 8220King Coal Long Besieged Is Deposed by the Market8221 Causes of death the explosion of cheap natural gas the rising costs of new environmental and worker safety regulations and a simple geological reality8212the industry has already mined out the majority of all economically recoverable coal This energy version of regime change had been long in the making The coalfields are filled with nowabandoned company towns where the industry once employed hundreds of thousands of men to work in underground mines The extraction process generated massive wealth at least for the mine owners In the late 1880s Bramwell West Virginia was reputedly home to the highest concentration of millionaires per capita of any town in the United States Today its high school still boasts of that legacy through its teams8217 nickname the Bramwell Millionaires In the second half of the twentieth century many of those towns all but evaporated as the industry turned to strip mining a mechanized process that uses heavy machinery rather than muscle power to carve away rock and expose seams of coal running along hillsides The town of Kayford which sits at the base of its namesake mountain is one such example Once a company town for men employed in the mines its main road is now lined only with poplars sycamores and basswood a few pouredconcrete foundations and a crumbling singlestory brick wall The town8217s last building is said to have burned down toward the end of the 1970s The former town is still however home to an active strip mine called Alpha8217s Republic 1 which employs few people but has managed to extract a considerable amount of coal In 2012 organizers with the climate justice group Mountain Justice formed a human blockade to shut down work traffic going in and out of the site It was just one of dozens and dozens of blockades 8220treesits8221 and other direct actions Mountain Justice has executed as part of a decadelong campaign which has won regulatory improvements to reduce water contamination shielded schools in the coalfields from the worst health impacts of mining moderated flooding caused by that mining and demanded the industry do more to replant trees and grasses on old mine sites That campaign also helped inspire almost all the major environmental activism in the nation today8212from the university divestment movement to tree sits in Texas to block the Keystone XL pipeline to the arrest this month of people seeking to halt the construction of the first commercial tar sands mine in this country In many ways however Mountain Justices protests were among the least extreme in the state8217s long history of organizing Drive farther up the mountain and youll find concrete bunkers built by hired guns from the BaldwinFelts Detective Agency sent in to quell a powerful miners strike in 19121913 Less than 10 years later as many as 10000 armed miners from West Virginia would launch the largest labor uprising in the nation8217s history Even higher up the mountain past the bunkers lies Stanley Heirs Park a 50acre swath of land surrounded by the final stage of coal extraction mountaintop removal In the 1970s as more and more of the readily available coal was extracted from West Virginia8217s underground mines and ridge lines companies decided to take strip mining to its logical conclusion they would simply blast away the entire tops of mountains to get at the remaining coal The results are visible in the flattened barren mines that surround the park including the Seng Creek mine where Ryan Hensley likes to ride his ATV Hensley and dozens of others converged here for an annual Fourth of July celebration an event hosted by the family of the late Larry Gibson a prominent organizer against mountaintop removal His family has lived here on Kayford Mountain since the late 1700s and this section alone has remained unblasted because Gibson turned the family plot into a land trust in order to fend off the industry Before his death in 2012 Gibson was much hated in the area for taking on the coal companies so his friends and neighbors tell me as we share fried chicken and Budweiser His house was riddled with bullets His dogs were poisoned or shot But he succeeded in protecting at least his small plot of land from the explosives Now as his family points out the land that used to lie in the shadow of surrounding taller peaks has become after 30 years of mountaintop removal the highest site in the area Few know more about the impact of the mining industry than Elise Keaton a 30something native West Virginian with the enthusiastic commanding voice of a camp counselor Years ago she did what many of the state8217s residents do if they can she left She earned a law degree in Texas and later helped with disaster relief in postKatrina New Orleans 8220But being from West Virginia is like having a fishhook in your heart8221 she tells me So she returned and following Gibson8217s death took over the role of educating newcomers about Kayford Standing at the edge of the Seng Creek mine owned by the now bankrupt coal company Patriot Keaton explains that the surrounding mountain peaks have been reduced by at least 400 feet if not more The removed earth8212known in industry parlance as the 8220overburden82218212was dumped into the nearby valleys where it covered streams reducing the region8217s fresh water supply Before coal companies came along Appalachia had been 8220burdened8221 by these mountains for more than 400 million years They were formed by the same collision of tectonic plates that produced the single supercontinent Pangea The Appalachian mountain range then lay at the heart of the world8217s only unified landmass Today the unblasted sections of West Virginia8217s mountains are blanketed by a temperate forest so diverse that researchers are still discovering new species including a reddishorange crayfish that was plucked out of the water in 2013 and dubbed Cambarus hatfieldi8212a Latin play on the name of the famed West Virginia family the Hatfields who feuded with their neighbors across the river in Kentucky the McCoys Keaton recently invited a forest expert to visit Kayford Mountain and survey the decommissioned mines The coal companies have made only the most meager efforts to reclaim this devastated land by planting quickgrowth pine trees black locust grass seed and other plants that can live with high levels of acids in the soil Keaton wanted to know how long it would take for these stands of identical pines to be transformed into a diverse rainforest so she took the expert to one of the ridges and asked him when the real forest would grow back 8220And he said8221 Elise recalled 82208216About 100 million years82178221 Before his death Gibson dubbed the entrance to the Seng Creek mine 8220Hell8217s Gate8221 since for many years this site looked out across a vast expanse of gray broken only by the movements of massive machines and those explosions which occurred every day of the year A writer for Smithsonian Magazine who visited Kayford in 2009 while this mine was still being blasted frequently wrote that 8220entering a mountaintop site is like crossing into a war zone8221 Now few are the explosions at Seng Creek but the nothingness remains There8217s almost no sound down in the mine itself except for the muffled rush of the wind unshielded by trees Heaps of sandstone and fragmented shale rock stretch for what looks like miles Much of the surface dirt has been packed down into undulating wide roads by the giant wheels of coal trucks Most of the birds long ago left this desolate spot although you can hear the occasional singing of meadowlarks from nearby reclamation sites 8220We8217ve never had meadow larks here before8221 Keaton later tells me as she stands on a nearby ridge overlooking a decommissioned mine seeded with grass 8220But this is more like a meadow now8221 I walk to the far edge of the mine sit down and peer into some of the cylindrical holes about 11 inches in diameter that workers once drilled into the shale rock as places to pack full of ammonium nitrate I recall what one of the festival8217s musicians said about coal8212that he liked to think of it as old sunlight trapped inside rocks as long decomposed organic matter Maybe it would be simpler he added just to use new sunlight as the weekend8217s solarpowered event was in fact doing Finally hours later I conclude that there is very little else to be written at least by me at the edge of a mountain top that8217s been transformed into blank dead space After all I8217m new to West Virginia which gives me something in common with Ryan Hensley I never saw the mountains here either And I never will This state8217s longestserving governor once famously asked 8220Why does everything bad happen to West Virginia8221 His question gibed well with the sense I ran into that the state8217s history is a tragic one and that the coal industry8217s collapse is its grim final act Indeed it8217s unclear just what West Virginia8217s future will hold Coal has been the region8217s monoindustry for so long that it8217s hard to imagine anything else Elise Keaton points out that the region8217s rich coalfields were a major part of the reason President Abraham Lincoln approved a controversial Act of Congress in 1863 to carve out West Virginia as a new state It was one of only two states created in the midst of the Civil War and even some of Lincoln8217s advisors deemed the move unconstitutional But annexing the region was militarily expedient It gave the north all those rich coalfields and the prized Baltimore ampamp Ohio Railroad which hauled Union soldiers south to the front lines and Appalachian coal north from Charleston to stations in Baltimore Philadelphia and New York City In other words West Virginia was created as Keaton puts it as a resource colony Perhaps in the end the death of coal will spell not doom but liberation for the state freeing it from the energy needs of the rest of the nation These days as the coal industry crumbles West Virginians are rallying in support of what8217s being called 8220 transition work82218212the building that is of a new economy based on agriculture local arts wineries and the like Indeed if West Virginia is able to build these alternative economies if the state is able to do more than simply pivot from being a coal colony to becoming a shale gas supplier it will provide evidence that any region can be transformed as the planet8217s industrialized nations hurtle into a postfossil fuel future kicking and screaming every step of the way Such a transition will require not only building anew but also healing old wounds Hours later Hensley begins pleading for one more expedition in Stanley Heirs Park so we set off for Hell8217s Gate with a handful of others As we walk I suddenly realize just whom his cropped blond hair which has felt so eerily familiar brought to mind a young worker I met in North Dakota8217s fracking fields in the summer of 2014 shortly before he was beaten to death outside a bar In that moment of recognition I find myself pleased that Hensley will have at best a slim chance of finding a coal job when he8217s older but then I begin to worry about where the need for work will carry him if new industries haven8217t sprung up in time Another member of our group is Charles Lee Williams a former miner who lives a few miles away Fortysix years old Williams has a round head and small deepset blue eyes He8217s a man who knows about death in the coalfields better than most He worked for coal giant Massey Energy until 2010 when a series of explosions ripped through subterranean tunnels at his worksite killing 29 of his coworkers8212and nearly getting him too The force of the blasts he tells me was so powerful that it felt as if his skull were being sucked out of his head Now Williams spends most nights dreaming of the ghosts of those men He sought treatment once for the resulting PTSD but the pills prescribed for him only seemed to make the nightmares worse In them he tells me his former coworkers usually appear headless After we8217ve returned from Hell8217s Gate Williams confesses that it8217s his first time surveying a mountaintop removal site from above8212despite living so close to mines that the explosions sometimes shake his house 8220It feels like there8217s nothing alive left over there8221 he says Then he pauses and adds 8220That8217s what it feels like in the mornings too That there ain8217t no life left in me neither8221 Like what you8217ve read Subscribe to In These Times magazine or make a taxdeductible donation to fund this reporting Laura Gottesdiener is a journalist social justice activist and author of A Dream Foreclosed Black America and the Fight for a Place to Call Home published this month by Zuccotti Park Press She is an associate editor for Waging Nonviolence and she has written for Rolling Stone Ms magazine The Arizona Republic The New Haven Advocate The Huffington Post AlterNet and other publications She lived and worked in the People8217s Kitchen during the occupation of Zuccotti Park

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<p>Photo by bixentro | <a href="" type="internal">CC BY 2.0</a></p> <p>John Kennedy (1917-1963) was 46 years old when he took office; Donald Trump (1946-) was 71 when he was inaugurated.&amp;#160;&amp;#160;A half-century separates Kennedy&#8217;s assassination and Trump&#8217;s presidency, a half-century in which America&#8217;s moral order profoundly changed.</p> <p>Once upon a time a president could engage in an almost-endless series of sexual relations with women &#8211; before and once-assuming office &#8211; and a wink-and-a-nod attitude among the media would keep it a public secret, a secret that morphed from scandal to presidential lore after his assassination.&amp;#160;&amp;#160;Decades later, a president &#8211; before assuming office &#8211; could engage in an almost-endless series of sexual relations (consensual, commercial and unwanted) with women that the media promoted as red-meat distraction but had little influence on his public standing.</p> <p>The juxtaposition of the sexual mythologies associated with Kennedy and Trump offers a unique vantage point to assess the changes in the nation&#8217;s sexual values over the last half-century.</p> <p>Between these two sexual mavericks, nine presidents have held office &#8211; Obama, Bush-II, Clinton, Bush-I, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon and Johnson.&amp;#160;&amp;#160;Many were involved in a sex scandal, with Clinton being impeached partially due to lying about such a misadventure.&amp;#160;&amp;#160;However, in the wake of Kennedy&#8217;s assassination, stories of politicians and celebrities involved in a sex scandal became the red-meat of media journalism. Trump&#8217;s election made presidential sex scandal a media circus, but with little sticking power.&amp;#160;&amp;#160;The outing of Harvey Weinstein and innumerable other male sexual abusers and the rise of #MeToo! movement many testify to a shift in social values.</p> <p>Trump&#8217;s election revealed many things, one often overlooked is the continuing &#8211; and seemingly uncritical &#8211; support he&#8217;s received from white evangelicals.&amp;#160;&amp;#160;They&#8217;ve embraced a man whose been married three time, has engaged in innumerable non-commercial and commercial sexual relations &#8211; many while married &#8211; and is accused by more than a dozen women of unwanted sexual assaults; three women are pursuing civil claims in local courts, thus raising the likelihood that he will be questioned under oath.&amp;#160;&amp;#160;America&#8217;s come a long way from the grand fictions of &#8220;Camelot&#8221; and JFK.</p> <p>***</p> <p>In the summer of 1963, just months before Pres. Kennedy&#8217;s assassination, a truly international sex scandal captured media headlines.&amp;#160;&amp;#160;John Profumo, the UK&#8217;s minister of war, was outed in a&amp;#160;particularly British affair, an extra-marital indulgence with a high-class call girl, Christine Keeler. It was further revealed that Keeler was having a simultaneous affair with a senior naval attach&#233; at the Soviet Embassy,&amp;#160;Eugene Ivanov.&amp;#160;The story crossed the pond when one of Keller&#8217;s fellow call girls, Mariella Novotny, claimed she had a relationship with both Kennedy and Ivanov. The American media heard about the allegations involving JFK and raised the story with the White House. Robert Kennedy, then attorney general, intervened to keep the story from going public.</p> <p>After his assassination, rumors about Kennedy&#8217;s sexual dalliances became fodder for gossip columnists and others. His affairs involved movie stars Marilyn Monroe&amp;#160;and Angie Dickinson;&amp;#160;Inga Arvad, a&amp;#160;Danish journalist;&amp;#160;the stripper, Blaze Starr; Judith Exner Campbell, mistress to mob boss Sam Giancana; and White House secretaries Priscilla Weir and Jill Cowan, who were referred to as &#8220;Fiddle&#8221; and &#8220;Faddle.&#8221; The son of&amp;#160;Mary Evelyn Bibb Worthington, a society lady, <a href="" type="internal">Jack Worthington II</a>, claims he&#8217;s JFK&#8217;s bastard&amp;#160;or&amp;#160;illegitimate&amp;#160;offspring.</p> <p>The sad tale of Sen. Edward Kennedy&#8217;s ill-fated car ride with&amp;#160;Mary Jo Kopechne, a 28-year-old secretary, on the night of July 18, 1969, challenged the era&#8217;s wink-and-a-nod journalism.&amp;#160;&amp;#160;The Kennedy clan gathered to host an intimate barbeque on Chappaquiddick Island, near Martha&#8217;s Vineyard, MA, and, at around 11:00 pm, Kopechne sought a ride to a nearby ferry and Kennedy give her a lift. As Kennedy later claimed, he made a wrong turn onto an unlit dirt road and drove off the Dyke Bridge. The car turned over into the tidal water.</p> <p>The Senator got out of the submerged car, but, he says, failed in his attempts to pull out Kopechne. Kennedy walked back to the party and, after speaking with some of his closest confidants, returned to the scene of the accident but could not access the submerged car. Nevertheless, neither Kennedy nor his associates called the police that night.</p> <p>Next morning, local Chappaquiddick fishermen found the car, pulled it from the water and notified the police. When local police questioned Kennedy about the accident, he initially denied all knowledge of it, but then admitted his involvement only to refuse further comment until his attorney arrived. Controversy emerged when a witness reported that&amp;#160;Kopechne&#8217;s body was in a position that suggested she had suffocated and had not drowned. This implied that she might have been saved if Kennedy had acted more expeditiously. Others suggested that Kennedy might have been drunk while driving. Still others suggested that he may have made inappropriate sexual advances to Kopechne. However, these issues went unaddressed as the Kopechne family refused to submit her body to an autopsy.</p> <p>The incident ended with Kennedy being charged with leaving the scene of the accident, for which he received a two-month suspended sentence and one-year probation. In a subsequent television interview, he called his actions &#8220;indefensible&#8221; and said he would not run for re-election in 1972. Nevertheless, he reversed course and was reelected.</p> <p>The social fiction that presidents had private sex lives continued under Johnson and Nixon, but slowly faded with Ford (and VP Nelson Rockefeller), Carter and Reagan.&amp;#160;LBJ&amp;#160;once boasted: &#8220;I have had more women by accident than he [JFK] has had on purpose.&#8221; Among his reported conquests were Madeline Brown, who claims that they had an affair that lasted more than two decades and that LBJ fathered her son. Brown insists that their affair was purely physical and remained hidden from Lady Bird. In his biography of LBJ, Robert Caro revealed that Johnson also had a thirty-year affair with Alice Glass. Their friendship began in 1937 when she was living with her common-law husband, Charles Marsh, and their two children. Marsh was a newspaper mogul and one of his papers, the&amp;#160;Austin American-Statesman, was an influential LBJ supporter. It is rumored that Glass ended her affair with LBJ in 1967 over her opposition to the Vietnam War. She also burned their love letters.</p> <p>Much gossip circulated about&amp;#160;Nixon&amp;#160;long-term friendship with Marianna Liu, a Chinese cocktail waitress.&amp;#160;&amp;#160;Nixon apparently first met Liu in 1958 while she was a Hong Kong tour-guide. It is reported that, in the mid-60s, Liu and a female friend had a party with Nixon and his buddy, Bebe Rebozo, in a suite at the Mandarin Hotel. What gives this scandal a sleazy cast is the alleged role of Hoover in exploiting the affair to gain leverage over Nixon. As the story goes, one of Liu&#8217;s closest friends was a general in the Communist Chinese army. In 1969, Liu moved to Nixon&#8217;s hometown of Whittier, CA, and denied that there ever had been an affair.</p> <p>In the wake of Nixon&#8217;s resignation, Gerald Ford assumed the presidency and Nelson Rockefeller, one of the nation&#8217;s richest men and grand philanderers, became vice president.&amp;#160;&amp;#160;Rockefeller, while private arts tycoon and then New York governor, is rumored to have had many extra-marital liaisons. He died of a heart attack in January 1979, naked, having sex with his 27-year-old mistress, Megan Marshak. She was pinned underneath him and had a hard time getting out from under the 71-year-old overweight statesman. For all her pain and suffering, Rockefeller left Marshak the deed to the mid-town Manhattan townhouse in which he died and $50,000.</p> <p>Jimmy Carter, a &#8220;born again&#8221; Christian and very morally-married president, famously admitted in a 1976&amp;#160;Playboy&amp;#160;interview, &#8220;I&#8217;ve committed adultery in my heart many times.&#8221;</p> <p>George H.W. Bush presented himself as the all-American family man, married to the upstanding Barbara and father to a subsequent president.&amp;#160;However, rumors long circulated the he had an extra-marital affair with his&amp;#160;former assistant, Jennifer Fitzgerald.&amp;#160;&amp;#160;More recently, there&#8217;ve been <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41987895" type="external">numerous reports</a> of&amp;#160;Bush-the-Elder groped younger women &#8211; and him even apologizing.</p> <p>In 1991,&amp;#160;People&amp;#160;magazine published a story charging the former president Ronald Reagan with raping an&amp;#160;actress four-decades earlier. The story was put forward by the gossip-journalist Kitty Kelley in her top-seller,&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">Nancy Reagan:&amp;#160;The&amp;#160;Unauthorized Biography</a>.&amp;#160;As champion of the conservative ascension to federal power, Reagan had come under Christianscrutiny because he was the first, and then only, divorced man elected president. He married Jane Wyman in January 1940, her third husband; she filed for divorce in 1948. In 1952, he married the actress Nancy Davis.</p> <p>More importantly, Kelley uncovered a long-forgotten episode that shocked many. In 1952,&amp;#160;Reagan, then president of the Screen Actors Guild, visited the home of Selene Walter and, she insisted, overpowered and raped her. In the&amp;#160;People&amp;#160;magazine story, Walters stated: &#8220;I opened the door, then it was the battle of the couch. I was fighting him. I didn&#8217;t want him to make love to me. He&#8217;s a very big man, and he just had his way.&#8221; (Kelley also reported, without substantiation, that the Reagans smoked pot with Jack Benny and George Burns and that Frank Sinatra had an affair with Nancy Reagan. It should be noted that no legal actions were undertaken.</p> <p>And then there was Bill Clinton.&amp;#160;&amp;#160;In January 1992, just weeks before the all-important New Hampshire primary,&amp;#160;Star, the gossip tabloid, published an expos&#233; claiming that&amp;#160;Gennifer Flowers, an Arkansas state employee and cabaret singer, had had a 12-year affair with the governor. Moving quickly to counter the scandalous claim, Clinton, joined by his wife, Hillary, appeared later that week on CBS&#8217;s &#8220;60 Minutes&#8221; immediately following the Super Bowl, thus ensuring a huge national audience. The couples&#8217; denial, offered with a sincerity not seen since Nixon&#8217;s famous Checkers speech of a half-century earlier, was so convincing that it helped him defeat the incumbent president, George H.W. Bush, in a three-way race with Ross Perot.</p> <p>Clinton&#8217;s victory was seen by many as illegitimate, an electoral anomaly. Republicans, religious conservatives and other right-wingers started gunning for him from day one of his presidency. Early in1994, conservative gossipmongers started spreading stories about Paula Jones, an Arkansas state clerical worker, who claimed that she was sexually assaulted by then-governor Clinton. As she later detailed in a formal deposition, she insisted that in 1991 state police escorted her to a Little Rock hotel room where Clinton dropped his trousers and asked her to perform a sex act. Clinton initially denied the&amp;#160;charge, his supporters dismissing her&amp;#160;as &#8220;trailer park trash.&#8221; However, later in &#8217;94 Jones filled a civil lawsuit against Clinton seeking $700,000 in damages and a personal apology. Many credit the Flowers and Jones scandals with helping the Republicans win their &#8217;94 &#8220;revolution&#8221; and capturing both Houses of Congress.</p> <p>In early &#8217;97, rumors began to circulate in Washington about the president&#8217;s fascination with a young intern. According to <a href="http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/resources/lewinsky/timeline/" type="external">a detailed chronology</a> of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal compiled by CNN, the first formal discussion took place in October 1997. Linda Tripp, Lewinsky&#8217;s fellow employee at the Defense Department and confidante,&amp;#160;met with&amp;#160;Newsweek&#8217;s&amp;#160;Michael Isikoff and Lucianne and Jonah Goldberg at the Goldbergs&#8217; apartment in Washington, DC, and listened to a tape of the Tripp-Lewinsky conversations.</p> <p>Slowly, word started to get out about the affair. Conservative Christians and Republicans believed that Clinton&#8217;s compulsive desire for sex in the Oval Office indicated that America needed to be cleansed of its moral rot. This&amp;#160;legitimized a Republican witch-hunt that culminated in the president&#8217;s impeachment by a vindictive Congress&#8212;and contributed to Bush&#8217;s presidential victory in 2000. More compelling, it precipitated a national sex panic that lasted for more than a decade.</p> <p>Sen Gary Hart&#8217;s (D-CO) tryst with Donna Rice captured the most media attention and cost him the 1998 presidential nomination. Like a moth to a flame, in 1987, Hart spent a night with Rice in 1987 aboard the yacht,&amp;#160;Monkey Business,&amp;#160;on the exotic get-a-way of Bimini.&amp;#160;&amp;#160;Hart challenged the media to report on his tryst &#8211; and they did! While first denying any illicit purpose for being with Rice, his fiction proved untenable as additional stories of his wayward activities came out.</p> <p>However, a host of Republicans were swept up in the sex scandals of the late-80s and early-90s.&amp;#160;&amp;#160;Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA) was outed for having sex with a prostitute;&amp;#160;Rep. Helen&amp;#160;Chenoweth&amp;#160;(R-ID), a fierce critic of Bill Clinton, was outed having along-term affair with a married man; and Rep. Dan&amp;#160;Burton&amp;#160;(R-IN) was outed for fathering a child with a woman during an extramarital&amp;#160;affair.&amp;#160;&amp;#160;Nevertheless, a second group of hypocrites, including Reps. Newt Gingrich (R-GA) and Henry Hyde (R-IL), were outed long after Clinton had left the White House. Their prior sexual liaisons seem to have compromised their high-minded moralistic opposition to the president. Truer hypocrites never walked the halls of Congress.</p> <p>A peculiar sexual perversion marked George W. Bush&#8217;s presidency.&amp;#160;In May 2003, he co-piloted a&amp;#160;Navy S-3B Viking as it few above and then landed ontheSS Abraham Lincoln, an air-craft carrier.&amp;#160;Strutting about in his&amp;#160;Top Gun&amp;#160;uniform or with his sleeves rolled up while ineptly asserting command amidst the debacle of Hurricane Katrina, Bush was a fetishist&#8217;s dream come true. He understood (if only subconsciously) that the trappings of power, the costumes, the proclamations, the public presentations, were as essential as its exercise, the wars conducted, the deals cut, the legislation passed. Whether in a&amp;#160;Top Gun&amp;#160;outfit, a business suit or swaggering in a cowboy getup, Bush&#8217;s uniforms codified a fetishistic representation of power.&amp;#160;&amp;#160;Equally revealing, the Bush administration began auspiciously when Attorney General John Ashcroft draped two semi-nude statues, &#8220;Spirit of Justice&#8221; (female) and &#8220;Majesty of Law&#8221; (male), in the Justice Department auditorium.</p> <p>Bush-the-Lesser is haunted by two sex scandals that have been successfully dismissed as crank complaints, effectively swept under the proverbial rug. The first involved a criminal complaint and lawsuit of rape by Margie Schoedinger, who later committed suicide; the second is an accusation by Tammy Phillips,&amp;#160;partner in a gym in Carrollton, TX, and&amp;#160;a former stripper, of having an affair with Bush that ended in 1999.&amp;#160;Reports differ as to whether the alleged affair lasted nine or eighteen months. The scandal did get some initial traction with reports in the&amp;#160;National Enquirer,&amp;#160;Slate, New York Post&amp;#160;and on Fox News, but disappeared as the 2000 campaign got underway. One local politico expressed surprise about Bush&#8217;s alleged affair with Phillips, &#8220;It means that he stopped fooling around just prior to announcing his presidential run.&#8221; Phillips seems to have disappeared and not pursued the accusation.</p> <p>Speaking in terms of presidential sex scandal, Obama is Mr. Clean.&amp;#160;&amp;#160;While Trump and others promoted &#8220;false news&#8221; that he was a Muslim and born in Kenya, little sex-scandal mongering followed Obama.&amp;#160;In 2010, the&amp;#160; <a href="" type="internal">National Enquirer</a>, a long-term Trump backer, promoted the headline:&amp;#160;&#8220;PRESIDENT OBAMA in a shocking cheating scandal after being caught in a D.C. hotel with a former campaign aide.&#8221; &amp;#160;The&amp;#160;un-verified story claimed that as an Illinois State Senator,&amp;#160;Obama alleged had an extramarital affair with a staffer, Vera Baker. Like innumerable stories with no legs, it came and went.</p> <p>Which bring us to Trump.&amp;#160;&amp;#160;Since taking office, he apparently has not had an extra-marital sexual liaison; &#8220;fake news&#8221; gossip briefly circulated that he had an affair with UN Representative&amp;#160;Nikki Haley.&amp;#160;However, in the decades prior to his election, <a href="" type="internal">Trump reputation of philandering</a>, as well as sexual abuse, preceded him.</p> <p>***</p> <p>The scandal is a public spectacle intended to serve two contradictory social functions. First and foremost, a scandal is a morality tale, a public ritual intended to punish or shame the perpetrator. Second, particularly over the last century, the scandal has changed, increasingly becoming a form of entertainment, intended to distract or fascinate the public, in which moral shaming is less valued than the public spectacle engendered.</p> <p>Each age engenders its own sex scandals. Among the Puritans, scandals served a moral purpose, to impose shame and enforce social discipline. This persists even today, but in a culturally augmented form. Scandals are enhanced with a licentiousness unique to postmodern consumer capitalism.</p> <p>The shift in the social function of the scandal is a measure of how moral values of the secular marketplace are increasingly replacing the power of religious tradition. Nothing demonstrates this better than the evolution of scandals involving political figures, especially presidents, over the last half-century.</p> <p>The half-century spanning the eras of Kennedy and Trump marks a critical period in U.S. history.&amp;#160;&amp;#160;JFK invoked a new spirit of possibility; Trump suggests &#8211; specially invoked in his campaign slogan, &#8220;Make America Great Again&#8221; &#8211; the closing of possibility.</p> <p>During the JFK era, patriarchal masculinity was in its ascendency.&amp;#160;&amp;#160;America was capitol of the &#8220;free world&#8221; and Kennedy was its secular king.&amp;#160;Whether endured in the endless military failure in Vietnam or the fictions of&amp;#160;Mad Men, patriarchal certainty ruled.&amp;#160;&amp;#160;In Trump&#8217;s America, masculinity is in crisis.&amp;#160;&amp;#160;Many Americans &#8211; and especially aging white people &#8211; feel threatened, their traditional masculine authority challenged.&amp;#160;&amp;#160;Their old world is coming to an end and they know it but can&#8217;t do anything about it.</p> <p>Against the festering crisis of masculine confidence, Trump preaches a false bravado. It&#8217;s a bravado of denial about recent expos&#233;s involving a former porn star and&amp;#160;Playmate-of-the-Year&amp;#160;and sizable payoff for them to keep quiet.&amp;#160;It&#8217;s the claimed ignorance with regard to the dozen-plus sexual assault claims against him.&amp;#160;&amp;#160;It&#8217;s the false masculinity displayed for all to see in the October 2016 debate with Hillary Clinton, who he literally stalked on stage.</p> <p>Trump&#8217;s bravado is a forceful rejection of a personal sense of shame for the morally-questionable actions he&#8217;s either been actively or allegedly involved in.&amp;#160;&amp;#160;The innumerable outings of politicians and celebrities in sex scandal over the last half-century were based on public shaming, but here is a president who rejects personal shame or moral responsibility for his action.</p> <p>In the good-old days of patriarchal masculinity, Kennedy&#8217;s innumerable sexual extra-marital and abusive relations were public secrets, private chuckles of the good-old-boys network.&amp;#160;The nation&#8217;s morality police &#8211; i.e., the media and religious leaders&amp;#160;&#8211;did not shame him.</p> <p>Today, patriarchal masculinity is being challenged. Trump&#8217;s innumerable sexual extra-marital and abusive relations are headlines, but the nation&#8217;s morality police &#8211; i.e., the media and religious leaders &#8211; can no longer shame him.</p> <p>The outing of Harvey Weinstein and innumerable other male sexual abusers and the rise of the #MeToo movement has shifted the terrain of public shaming.&amp;#160;&amp;#160;Where once the outing of a handful of politicians and celebrities was a media sport, the outing of the legion of male bosses or leaders who took advantage of their position to abuse or take advantage of a female employee, student, colleague, etc., may signal a shift in social values.</p>

Trump v. Kennedy: Presidential Sex and the Transformation of Shame

https://counterpunch.org/2018/04/13/trump-v-kennedy-presidential-sex-and-the-transformation-of-shame/

2018-04-13

4left

Photo by bixentro CC BY 20 John Kennedy 19171963 was 46 years old when he took office Donald Trump 1946 was 71 when he was inauguratedamp160amp160A halfcentury separates Kennedy8217s assassination and Trump8217s presidency a halfcentury in which America8217s moral order profoundly changed Once upon a time a president could engage in an almostendless series of sexual relations with women 8211 before and onceassuming office 8211 and a winkandanod attitude among the media would keep it a public secret a secret that morphed from scandal to presidential lore after his assassinationamp160amp160Decades later a president 8211 before assuming office 8211 could engage in an almostendless series of sexual relations consensual commercial and unwanted with women that the media promoted as redmeat distraction but had little influence on his public standing The juxtaposition of the sexual mythologies associated with Kennedy and Trump offers a unique vantage point to assess the changes in the nation8217s sexual values over the last halfcentury Between these two sexual mavericks nine presidents have held office 8211 Obama BushII Clinton BushI Reagan Carter Ford Nixon and Johnsonamp160amp160Many were involved in a sex scandal with Clinton being impeached partially due to lying about such a misadventureamp160amp160However in the wake of Kennedy8217s assassination stories of politicians and celebrities involved in a sex scandal became the redmeat of media journalism Trump8217s election made presidential sex scandal a media circus but with little sticking poweramp160amp160The outing of Harvey Weinstein and innumerable other male sexual abusers and the rise of MeToo movement many testify to a shift in social values Trump8217s election revealed many things one often overlooked is the continuing 8211 and seemingly uncritical 8211 support he8217s received from white evangelicalsamp160amp160They8217ve embraced a man whose been married three time has engaged in innumerable noncommercial and commercial sexual relations 8211 many while married 8211 and is accused by more than a dozen women of unwanted sexual assaults three women are pursuing civil claims in local courts thus raising the likelihood that he will be questioned under oathamp160amp160America8217s come a long way from the grand fictions of 8220Camelot8221 and JFK In the summer of 1963 just months before Pres Kennedy8217s assassination a truly international sex scandal captured media headlinesamp160amp160John Profumo the UK8217s minister of war was outed in aamp160particularly British affair an extramarital indulgence with a highclass call girl Christine Keeler It was further revealed that Keeler was having a simultaneous affair with a senior naval attach233 at the Soviet Embassyamp160Eugene Ivanovamp160The story crossed the pond when one of Keller8217s fellow call girls Mariella Novotny claimed she had a relationship with both Kennedy and Ivanov The American media heard about the allegations involving JFK and raised the story with the White House Robert Kennedy then attorney general intervened to keep the story from going public After his assassination rumors about Kennedy8217s sexual dalliances became fodder for gossip columnists and others His affairs involved movie stars Marilyn Monroeamp160and Angie Dickinsonamp160Inga Arvad aamp160Danish journalistamp160the stripper Blaze Starr Judith Exner Campbell mistress to mob boss Sam Giancana and White House secretaries Priscilla Weir and Jill Cowan who were referred to as 8220Fiddle8221 and 8220Faddle8221 The son ofamp160Mary Evelyn Bibb Worthington a society lady Jack Worthington II claims he8217s JFK8217s bastardamp160oramp160illegitimateamp160offspring The sad tale of Sen Edward Kennedy8217s illfated car ride withamp160Mary Jo Kopechne a 28yearold secretary on the night of July 18 1969 challenged the era8217s winkandanod journalismamp160amp160The Kennedy clan gathered to host an intimate barbeque on Chappaquiddick Island near Martha8217s Vineyard MA and at around 1100 pm Kopechne sought a ride to a nearby ferry and Kennedy give her a lift As Kennedy later claimed he made a wrong turn onto an unlit dirt road and drove off the Dyke Bridge The car turned over into the tidal water The Senator got out of the submerged car but he says failed in his attempts to pull out Kopechne Kennedy walked back to the party and after speaking with some of his closest confidants returned to the scene of the accident but could not access the submerged car Nevertheless neither Kennedy nor his associates called the police that night Next morning local Chappaquiddick fishermen found the car pulled it from the water and notified the police When local police questioned Kennedy about the accident he initially denied all knowledge of it but then admitted his involvement only to refuse further comment until his attorney arrived Controversy emerged when a witness reported thatamp160Kopechne8217s body was in a position that suggested she had suffocated and had not drowned This implied that she might have been saved if Kennedy had acted more expeditiously Others suggested that Kennedy might have been drunk while driving Still others suggested that he may have made inappropriate sexual advances to Kopechne However these issues went unaddressed as the Kopechne family refused to submit her body to an autopsy The incident ended with Kennedy being charged with leaving the scene of the accident for which he received a twomonth suspended sentence and oneyear probation In a subsequent television interview he called his actions 8220indefensible8221 and said he would not run for reelection in 1972 Nevertheless he reversed course and was reelected The social fiction that presidents had private sex lives continued under Johnson and Nixon but slowly faded with Ford and VP Nelson Rockefeller Carter and Reaganamp160LBJamp160once boasted 8220I have had more women by accident than he JFK has had on purpose8221 Among his reported conquests were Madeline Brown who claims that they had an affair that lasted more than two decades and that LBJ fathered her son Brown insists that their affair was purely physical and remained hidden from Lady Bird In his biography of LBJ Robert Caro revealed that Johnson also had a thirtyyear affair with Alice Glass Their friendship began in 1937 when she was living with her commonlaw husband Charles Marsh and their two children Marsh was a newspaper mogul and one of his papers theamp160Austin AmericanStatesman was an influential LBJ supporter It is rumored that Glass ended her affair with LBJ in 1967 over her opposition to the Vietnam War She also burned their love letters Much gossip circulated aboutamp160Nixonamp160longterm friendship with Marianna Liu a Chinese cocktail waitressamp160amp160Nixon apparently first met Liu in 1958 while she was a Hong Kong tourguide It is reported that in the mid60s Liu and a female friend had a party with Nixon and his buddy Bebe Rebozo in a suite at the Mandarin Hotel What gives this scandal a sleazy cast is the alleged role of Hoover in exploiting the affair to gain leverage over Nixon As the story goes one of Liu8217s closest friends was a general in the Communist Chinese army In 1969 Liu moved to Nixon8217s hometown of Whittier CA and denied that there ever had been an affair In the wake of Nixon8217s resignation Gerald Ford assumed the presidency and Nelson Rockefeller one of the nation8217s richest men and grand philanderers became vice presidentamp160amp160Rockefeller while private arts tycoon and then New York governor is rumored to have had many extramarital liaisons He died of a heart attack in January 1979 naked having sex with his 27yearold mistress Megan Marshak She was pinned underneath him and had a hard time getting out from under the 71yearold overweight statesman For all her pain and suffering Rockefeller left Marshak the deed to the midtown Manhattan townhouse in which he died and 50000 Jimmy Carter a 8220born again8221 Christian and very morallymarried president famously admitted in a 1976amp160Playboyamp160interview 8220I8217ve committed adultery in my heart many times8221 George HW Bush presented himself as the allAmerican family man married to the upstanding Barbara and father to a subsequent presidentamp160However rumors long circulated the he had an extramarital affair with hisamp160former assistant Jennifer Fitzgeraldamp160amp160More recently there8217ve been numerous reports ofamp160BushtheElder groped younger women 8211 and him even apologizing In 1991amp160Peopleamp160magazine published a story charging the former president Ronald Reagan with raping anamp160actress fourdecades earlier The story was put forward by the gossipjournalist Kitty Kelley in her topselleramp160 Nancy Reaganamp160Theamp160Unauthorized Biographyamp160As champion of the conservative ascension to federal power Reagan had come under Christianscrutiny because he was the first and then only divorced man elected president He married Jane Wyman in January 1940 her third husband she filed for divorce in 1948 In 1952 he married the actress Nancy Davis More importantly Kelley uncovered a longforgotten episode that shocked many In 1952amp160Reagan then president of the Screen Actors Guild visited the home of Selene Walter and she insisted overpowered and raped her In theamp160Peopleamp160magazine story Walters stated 8220I opened the door then it was the battle of the couch I was fighting him I didn8217t want him to make love to me He8217s a very big man and he just had his way8221 Kelley also reported without substantiation that the Reagans smoked pot with Jack Benny and George Burns and that Frank Sinatra had an affair with Nancy Reagan It should be noted that no legal actions were undertaken And then there was Bill Clintonamp160amp160In January 1992 just weeks before the allimportant New Hampshire primaryamp160Star the gossip tabloid published an expos233 claiming thatamp160Gennifer Flowers an Arkansas state employee and cabaret singer had had a 12year affair with the governor Moving quickly to counter the scandalous claim Clinton joined by his wife Hillary appeared later that week on CBS8217s 822060 Minutes8221 immediately following the Super Bowl thus ensuring a huge national audience The couples8217 denial offered with a sincerity not seen since Nixon8217s famous Checkers speech of a halfcentury earlier was so convincing that it helped him defeat the incumbent president George HW Bush in a threeway race with Ross Perot Clinton8217s victory was seen by many as illegitimate an electoral anomaly Republicans religious conservatives and other rightwingers started gunning for him from day one of his presidency Early in1994 conservative gossipmongers started spreading stories about Paula Jones an Arkansas state clerical worker who claimed that she was sexually assaulted by thengovernor Clinton As she later detailed in a formal deposition she insisted that in 1991 state police escorted her to a Little Rock hotel room where Clinton dropped his trousers and asked her to perform a sex act Clinton initially denied theamp160charge his supporters dismissing heramp160as 8220trailer park trash8221 However later in 821794 Jones filled a civil lawsuit against Clinton seeking 700000 in damages and a personal apology Many credit the Flowers and Jones scandals with helping the Republicans win their 821794 8220revolution8221 and capturing both Houses of Congress In early 821797 rumors began to circulate in Washington about the president8217s fascination with a young intern According to a detailed chronology of the ClintonLewinsky scandal compiled by CNN the first formal discussion took place in October 1997 Linda Tripp Lewinsky8217s fellow employee at the Defense Department and confidanteamp160met withamp160Newsweek8217samp160Michael Isikoff and Lucianne and Jonah Goldberg at the Goldbergs8217 apartment in Washington DC and listened to a tape of the TrippLewinsky conversations Slowly word started to get out about the affair Conservative Christians and Republicans believed that Clinton8217s compulsive desire for sex in the Oval Office indicated that America needed to be cleansed of its moral rot Thisamp160legitimized a Republican witchhunt that culminated in the president8217s impeachment by a vindictive Congress8212and contributed to Bush8217s presidential victory in 2000 More compelling it precipitated a national sex panic that lasted for more than a decade Sen Gary Hart8217s DCO tryst with Donna Rice captured the most media attention and cost him the 1998 presidential nomination Like a moth to a flame in 1987 Hart spent a night with Rice in 1987 aboard the yachtamp160Monkey Businessamp160on the exotic getaway of Biminiamp160amp160Hart challenged the media to report on his tryst 8211 and they did While first denying any illicit purpose for being with Rice his fiction proved untenable as additional stories of his wayward activities came out However a host of Republicans were swept up in the sex scandals of the late80s and early90samp160amp160Rep Ken Calvert RCA was outed for having sex with a prostituteamp160Rep Helenamp160Chenowethamp160RID a fierce critic of Bill Clinton was outed having alongterm affair with a married man and Rep Danamp160Burtonamp160RIN was outed for fathering a child with a woman during an extramaritalamp160affairamp160amp160Nevertheless a second group of hypocrites including Reps Newt Gingrich RGA and Henry Hyde RIL were outed long after Clinton had left the White House Their prior sexual liaisons seem to have compromised their highminded moralistic opposition to the president Truer hypocrites never walked the halls of Congress A peculiar sexual perversion marked George W Bush8217s presidencyamp160In May 2003 he copiloted aamp160Navy S3B Viking as it few above and then landed ontheSS Abraham Lincoln an aircraft carrieramp160Strutting about in hisamp160Top Gunamp160uniform or with his sleeves rolled up while ineptly asserting command amidst the debacle of Hurricane Katrina Bush was a fetishist8217s dream come true He understood if only subconsciously that the trappings of power the costumes the proclamations the public presentations were as essential as its exercise the wars conducted the deals cut the legislation passed Whether in aamp160Top Gunamp160outfit a business suit or swaggering in a cowboy getup Bush8217s uniforms codified a fetishistic representation of poweramp160amp160Equally revealing the Bush administration began auspiciously when Attorney General John Ashcroft draped two seminude statues 8220Spirit of Justice8221 female and 8220Majesty of Law8221 male in the Justice Department auditorium BushtheLesser is haunted by two sex scandals that have been successfully dismissed as crank complaints effectively swept under the proverbial rug The first involved a criminal complaint and lawsuit of rape by Margie Schoedinger who later committed suicide the second is an accusation by Tammy Phillipsamp160partner in a gym in Carrollton TX andamp160a former stripper of having an affair with Bush that ended in 1999amp160Reports differ as to whether the alleged affair lasted nine or eighteen months The scandal did get some initial traction with reports in theamp160National Enquireramp160Slate New York Postamp160and on Fox News but disappeared as the 2000 campaign got underway One local politico expressed surprise about Bush8217s alleged affair with Phillips 8220It means that he stopped fooling around just prior to announcing his presidential run8221 Phillips seems to have disappeared and not pursued the accusation Speaking in terms of presidential sex scandal Obama is Mr Cleanamp160amp160While Trump and others promoted 8220false news8221 that he was a Muslim and born in Kenya little sexscandal mongering followed Obamaamp160In 2010 theamp160 National Enquirer a longterm Trump backer promoted the headlineamp1608220PRESIDENT OBAMA in a shocking cheating scandal after being caught in a DC hotel with a former campaign aide8221 amp160Theamp160unverified story claimed that as an Illinois State Senatoramp160Obama alleged had an extramarital affair with a staffer Vera Baker Like innumerable stories with no legs it came and went Which bring us to Trumpamp160amp160Since taking office he apparently has not had an extramarital sexual liaison 8220fake news8221 gossip briefly circulated that he had an affair with UN Representativeamp160Nikki Haleyamp160However in the decades prior to his election Trump reputation of philandering as well as sexual abuse preceded him The scandal is a public spectacle intended to serve two contradictory social functions First and foremost a scandal is a morality tale a public ritual intended to punish or shame the perpetrator Second particularly over the last century the scandal has changed increasingly becoming a form of entertainment intended to distract or fascinate the public in which moral shaming is less valued than the public spectacle engendered Each age engenders its own sex scandals Among the Puritans scandals served a moral purpose to impose shame and enforce social discipline This persists even today but in a culturally augmented form Scandals are enhanced with a licentiousness unique to postmodern consumer capitalism The shift in the social function of the scandal is a measure of how moral values of the secular marketplace are increasingly replacing the power of religious tradition Nothing demonstrates this better than the evolution of scandals involving political figures especially presidents over the last halfcentury The halfcentury spanning the eras of Kennedy and Trump marks a critical period in US historyamp160amp160JFK invoked a new spirit of possibility Trump suggests 8211 specially invoked in his campaign slogan 8220Make America Great Again8221 8211 the closing of possibility During the JFK era patriarchal masculinity was in its ascendencyamp160amp160America was capitol of the 8220free world8221 and Kennedy was its secular kingamp160Whether endured in the endless military failure in Vietnam or the fictions ofamp160Mad Men patriarchal certainty ruledamp160amp160In Trump8217s America masculinity is in crisisamp160amp160Many Americans 8211 and especially aging white people 8211 feel threatened their traditional masculine authority challengedamp160amp160Their old world is coming to an end and they know it but can8217t do anything about it Against the festering crisis of masculine confidence Trump preaches a false bravado It8217s a bravado of denial about recent expos233s involving a former porn star andamp160PlaymateoftheYearamp160and sizable payoff for them to keep quietamp160It8217s the claimed ignorance with regard to the dozenplus sexual assault claims against himamp160amp160It8217s the false masculinity displayed for all to see in the October 2016 debate with Hillary Clinton who he literally stalked on stage Trump8217s bravado is a forceful rejection of a personal sense of shame for the morallyquestionable actions he8217s either been actively or allegedly involved inamp160amp160The innumerable outings of politicians and celebrities in sex scandal over the last halfcentury were based on public shaming but here is a president who rejects personal shame or moral responsibility for his action In the goodold days of patriarchal masculinity Kennedy8217s innumerable sexual extramarital and abusive relations were public secrets private chuckles of the goodoldboys networkamp160The nation8217s morality police 8211 ie the media and religious leadersamp1608211did not shame him Today patriarchal masculinity is being challenged Trump8217s innumerable sexual extramarital and abusive relations are headlines but the nation8217s morality police 8211 ie the media and religious leaders 8211 can no longer shame him The outing of Harvey Weinstein and innumerable other male sexual abusers and the rise of the MeToo movement has shifted the terrain of public shamingamp160amp160Where once the outing of a handful of politicians and celebrities was a media sport the outing of the legion of male bosses or leaders who took advantage of their position to abuse or take advantage of a female employee student colleague etc may signal a shift in social values

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<p>MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Roger Federer was a strictly nocturnal beast throughout the first week of the Australian Open but proved just as effective with the sun on his back as he sauntered into the quarter-finals for the 14th time on Monday.</p> Tennis - Australian Open - Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne, Australia, January 22, 2018. Roger Federer of Switzerland celebrates winning against Marton Fucsovics of Hungary. REUTERS/Thomas Peter <p>The defending champion did not require his dazzling best against 80th-ranked Hungarian Marton Fucsovics in his first match scheduled during the day session but still emerged a comfortable 6-4 7-6(3) 6-2 winner.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-tennis-ausopen-sandgren/sandgren-topples-thiem-to-keep-melbourne-dream-alive-idUSKBN1FB14N" type="external">Sandgren topples Thiem to keep Melbourne dream alive</a> <p>After his earlier-than-usual finish, the 36-year-old world number two said he might even be able to make the most of a night off and take his wife Mirka out for dinner.</p> <p>&#8220;I was considering sunglasses and a towel for the beach but, no, the only thing is the racket strings are a bit tighter but it&#8217;s not crazy hot today,&#8221; Federer told former champion Jim Courier in a knockabout post-match chat on court.</p> Tennis - Australian Open - Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne, Australia, January 22, 2018. Roger Federer of Switzerland hits a shot against Marton Fucsovics of Hungary. REUTERS/Thomas Peter <p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a different rhythm playing in the day and not going to bed at 3 a.m. We might go out for dinner tonight but Mirka has left already &#8212; she must have other plans!&#8221;</p> <p>Federer&#8217;s light mood matched the sunny conditions and he was even reduced to giggles during one point late in the second set when he miss-hit a forehand high into the air, then defended three consecutive Fucsovics smashes to win a bizarre rally.</p> <p>&#8220;This one was the biggest joke of a point maybe I have ever played,&#8221; he said later. &#8220;Thankfully it didn&#8217;t decide the outcome of that second set. That would have been too much of a joke, to be honest.&#8221;</p> <p>Federer is yet to drop a set and did not even face a break point against the 25-year-old Fucsovics, who arrived in Melbourne without a grand slam main draw victory to his name.</p> Slideshow (4 Images) <p>Yet his unheralded opponent, bidding to become only the third Hungarian man to reach a grand slam quarter-final in the professional era, offered an all-round display that belied his record, even if it did not surprise Federer.</p> <p>&#8220;I practiced with him for a few days in a row in Switzerland. That helped, you know, knowing his strength and weaknesses a little bit,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>&#8220;He was not completely the unknown opponent that maybe people thought he was.</p> <p>&#8220;He hung with me for a long time. So it was a good match.&#8221;</p> <p>Federer was in cruise control in the first set but struck decisively when Fucsovics served at 4-5, squeezing the throttle enough to earn a set point converted with a smash.</p> <p>Fucsovics kept Federer honest in the second set and played his part in some entertaining rallies to extend the 19-times grand slam champion to a tiebreak.</p> <p>Federer rifled a running forehand pass to earn three set points and again finished the set at the net, with a smash.</p> <p>The third set was all over in 31 minutes as Federer raced into the 52nd grand slam quarter-final of his career, booking a last eight encounter against 19th seeded Czech Tomas Berdych.</p> <p>Reporting by Martyn Herman; Editing by Peter Rutherford/John O'Brien</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) - An autopsy on an unarmed black man killed by police officers in California&#8217;s capital last week shows that none of the eight bullets hit him in the front, contradicting the official version of events, a lawyer for the deceased&#8217;s family said on Friday.</p> <p>Clark was hit six times in the back, once in the side and once in the leg, the independent autopsy found.</p> <p>Benjamin Crump, an attorney for the family of Stephon Clark, a 22-year-old African-American killed in Sacramento on March 18, said the findings refuted police statements that the man had been moving toward officers in a menacing way when they fired.</p> <p>&#8220;This independent autopsy affirms that Stephon was not a threat to police and was slain in another senseless police killing under increasingly questionable circumstances,&#8221; Crump said in a statement.</p> <p>Clark&#8217;s death was the most recent in a string of fatal shootings of black men by police that have triggered protests across the United States and fueled a national debate about bias in the American criminal justice system.</p> <p>The Sacramento Police Department said in a statement that it would have no further comment on the case until after the release of the findings of an official autopsy by the county coroner, and a review by state and local prosecutors.</p> <p>Dr. Bennet Omalu, the forensic pathologist who conducted the independent autopsy, said at a briefing that any one of seven bullets that entered the upper half of Clark&#8217;s body could have killed him.</p> <p>&#8220;Each of these bullets independently possessed a fatal capacity, meaning ... all he needed was one of the seven to die,&#8221; said Omalu, a Nigerian-born physician best known for his research into chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in American football players.</p> <p>Clark&#8217;s shooting has sparked largely peaceful demonstrations in Sacramento. On several occasions over the last two weeks, protesters have marched, held demonstrations and twice blocked fans from reaching games played by the Sacramento Kings NBA basketball team at the Golden 1 Center.</p> <p>Clark, a father of two, was gunned down in the backyard of his grandparents&#8217; house by police responding to a report that someone was breaking windows. Police said the officers who shot at Clark 20 times feared he was holding a firearm, but that he was later found to have been holding a cellphone.</p> A mourner holds up a photo of police shooting victim Stephon Clark during the funeral services for Clark at Bayside Of South Sacramento Church in Sacramento, California, U.S., March 29, 2018. Jeff Chiu/Pool via Reuters <p>The incident was captured in graphic detail in a body cam video released by the police on Wednesday.</p> <p>&#8220;Prior to the shooting, the involved officers saw the suspect facing them, advance forward with his arms extended, and holding an object in his hands,&#8221; a police statement released on Monday read.</p> <p>At the funeral service for Clark on Thursday, veteran civil rights leader the Reverend Al Sharpton said: &#8220;We&#8217;re going to make Donald Trump and the whole world deal with the issue of police misconduct,&#8221; referring to the president.</p> <p>The service at a church in Sacramento came a day after White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters the shooting was a &#8220;local matter.&#8221;</p> Slideshow (8 Images) <p>California Attorney General Xavier Becerra has said state investigators will oversee the investigation and review the police department&#8217;s procedures and practices.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee; writing by Frank McGurty; editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Jonathan Oatis</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An American academic who supports U.S. President Donald Trump and is a strong advocate of Britain&#8217;s exit from the European Union will testify next month before the federal grand jury considering evidence in the investigation into possible collusion between Trump&#8217;s 2016 election campaign and Russia.</p> U.S. President Donald Trump arrives at Palm Beach International Airport, Florida, U.S., for the Easter weekend at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach March 29, 2018. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas <p>Theodore Malloch, the author of a forthcoming pro-Trump book and an ally of Nigel Farage, a former leader of Britain&#8217;s UK Independence Party, said in a statement emailed to Reuters on Friday by the book&#8217;s publisher that he was questioned by FBI agents when he landed at Boston&#8217;s Logan International Airport on Tuesday after a flight from London and served with a subpoena to appear before the grand jury.</p> <p>Malloch &#8220;is scheduled to testify in Washington D.C. on April 13th under Robert Mueller&#8217;s Grand Jury investigation,&#8221; Hector Carosso, a representative of Skyhorse Publishing, said in a separate email.</p> <p>Malloch&#8217;s book, &#8220;The Plot to Destroy Trump: How the Deep State Fabricated the Russian Dossier to Subvert the President,&#8221; is scheduled for publication on May 1.</p> <p>Mueller is investigating possible illegal coordination between Trump and his 2016 campaign and Russia. Trump and Russia have denied any collusion. The FBI and Mueller&#8217;s team had no comment on Malloch or events at the airport in Boston.</p> <p>Malloch said in his email that the FBI presented him with a document authorizing the agents to seize his cellphone. He said he handed it over and later was told the FBI had to send it to Washington for a &#8220;full assessment.&#8221;</p> <p>He also said the FBI questioned him for about an hour about his career, government security clearances, and academic credentials. He said the agents then asked him about his role in the Trump campaign, which he said was informal and unpaid.&amp;#160;</p> <p>He said they also questioned him about his contacts with Trump supporter and political consultant Roger Stone, the WikiLeaks website and Jerome Corsi, a contributor to conspiracy theory websites.</p> <p>In his statement, Malloch said he knew nothing about WikiLeaks, which published emails U.S. intelligence officials concluded last year were hacked from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton&#8217;s presidential campaign by the GRU, Russia&#8217;s military intelligence agency.</p> <p>Sources familiar with Mueller&#8217;s investigation say one avenue of inquiry is how the hacked emails made their way to WikiLeaks from Russia, and whether any Trump allies ever handled them.</p> <p>WikiLeaks did not immediately respond to a request for comment.</p> <p>Reporting by Mark Hosenball; Editing by John Walcott and Bill Rigby</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>ORLANDO, Fla. (Reuters) - The widow of the Pulse nightclub gunman walked free on Friday after a jury cleared her of charges related to the 2016 massacre that killed 49 people in Orlando, stunning survivors who had longed to hold someone accountable.</p> <p>Noor Salman, 31, could have faced up to life in prison had she been convicted of federal charges of obstruction of justice and aiding her husband, Omar Mateen, in providing support to the Islamic State militant group.</p> <p>Instead, the U.S. District Court jury in Orlando acquitted Salman after roughly 12 hours of deliberation that began on Wednesday. Hours later, she walked out of Orange County jail, her head bowed as she held hands with defense lawyer Fritz Scheller.</p> <p>&#8220;We just relived the whole thing all over again,&#8221; said India Godman, who was in the nightclub when shots rang out, killing 14 of her friends.</p> <p>Salman was home with the couple&#8217;s then 3-year-old son at the time of the rampage on June 12, 2016. Mateen died in an exchange of gunfire with police at Pulse, a gay nightspot.</p> <p>The acquittal was an emotional blow for the survivors and families of those killed. The attack stunned and dismayed lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and Latinos who frequented Pulse.</p> <p>Godman was among several survivors and their supporters who gathered on Friday outside Pulse, about 2 miles (3 km) from the courthouse.</p> <p>&#8220;I&#8217;m in shock. I think that she knew that he was up to something,&#8221; said Neema Bahrami, an event manager at the nightclub who survived the shooting while his best friend was killed.</p> <p>Then the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, it has since been surpassed by the Las Vegas attack in which a shooter opened fire on an outdoor concert from his hotel room last year, killing 58 people.</p> <p>When U.S. District Judge Paul Byron announced Friday&#8217;s verdict, Salman broke down in tears and hugged her defense lawyers, according to reporters inside the courtroom. Her relatives gasped while families of the victims sat silently, showing little emotion.</p> FILE PHOTO - Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) officials walk through the parking lot of the Pulse gay night club, the site of a mass shooting days earlier, in Orlando, Florida, U.S., June 15, 2016. REUTERS/Adrees Latif/File Photo <p>&#8220;We knew from day one she was innocent,&#8221; Salman&#8217;s aunt, Susan Adieh, told reporters just after the verdict.</p> <p>Salman, who had been jailed during the trial, will move to California, where she has relatives, a spokeswoman for the family said.&#8221;This was really her opportunity to clear her name and move on with her life,&#8221; spokeswoman Susan Clary said. &#8220;She just really needs to get back to her son.&#8221;</p> <p>Mateen, 29, opened fire shortly after 2 a.m. during Latin night, shooting patrons on the dance floor and spraying bullets at others hiding in bathroom stalls. He then held hostages during a standoff with police, claiming allegiance to a leader of Islamic State before he was shot dead.</p> <p>Prosecutors said Salman cased possible attack sites with her husband and did nothing to stop his plans. They claimed she initially told investigators her husband acted without her knowledge but later said she knew he was watching Islamic State videos, had purchased an assault rifle, and examined three possible attack locations.</p> Slideshow (3 Images) <p>However, the Federal Bureau of Investigation did not record the interrogation and the defense said she was coerced into making statements.</p> <p>The jury appeared to believe the defense portrayal of Salman as a battered spouse kept in the dark, said David Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor and now a partner at Coral Gables, Florida-based Hinshaw &amp;amp; Culbertson.</p> <p>&#8220;The lack of a videotaped confession had to have had an impact on the jury&#8217;s acceptance of her confession. ... It is clear they believed it was coerced,&#8221; Weinstein said in a statement.</p> <p>Reporting by Joey Roulette in Orlando; Writing by Daniel Trotta; editing by David Gregorio and Jonathan Oatis</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>GAZA-ISRAEL BORDER (Reuters) - At least 15 Palestinians were killed and hundreds injured by Israeli security forces confronting one of the largest Palestinian demonstrations along the Israel-Gaza border in recent years, Gaza medical officials said.</p> <p>Tens of thousands of Palestinians, pressing for a right of return for refugees to what is now Israel, gathered at five locations along the fenced 65-km (40-mile) frontier where tents were erected for a planned six-week protest, local officials said. The Israeli military estimate was 30,000.</p> <p>Families brought their children to the encampments just a few hundred meters (yards) from the Israeli security barrier with the Hamas Islamist-run enclave, and football fields were marked in the sand and scout bands played.</p> <p>But as the day wore on, hundreds of Palestinian youths ignored calls from the organizers and the Israeli military to stay away from the frontier, where Israeli soldiers across the border kept watch from dirt mound embankments.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-israel-palestinians-protests-un/u-n-security-council-to-meet-on-gaza-on-friday-diplomats-idUSKBN1H61OC" type="external">U.N. Security Council to meet on Gaza on Friday: diplomats</a> <p>The military said its troops had used &#8220;riot dispersal means and firing towards main instigators.&#8221; Some of the demonstrators were &#8220;rolling burning tires and hurling stones&#8221; at the border fence and at soldiers.</p> <p>Two Palestinians were killed by tank fire, the Gaza Health Ministry said. The Israeli military said the two were militants who had opened fire at troops across the border.</p> <p>Palestinian health officials said Israeli forces used mostly gunfire against the protesters, in addition to tear gas and rubber bullets. Witnesses said the military had deployed a drone over at least one location to drop tear gas.</p> <p>Live fire was used only against people trying to sabotage the border security fence and at least two of the dead were Hamas operatives, an Israeli military official said.</p> <p>Gaza health officials said one of the dead was aged 16 and at least 400 people were wounded by live gunfire, while others were struck by rubber bullets or treated for tear gas inhalation.</p> <p>Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said in a statement that Israel was responsible for the violence and declared Saturday a national day of mourning.</p> <p>The United Nations Security Council was due to meet later on Friday to discuss the situation in Gaza, diplomats said.</p> RIGHT OF RETURN <p>The protest presented a rare show of unity among rival Palestinian factions in the impoverished Gaza Strip, where pressure has been building on Hamas and Abbas&#8217;s Fatah movement to end a decade-old rift. Reconciliation efforts to end the feud have been faltering for months.</p> <p>The demonstration was launched on &#8220;Land Day,&#8221; an annual commemoration of the deaths of six Arab citizens of Israel killed by Israeli security forces during demonstrations over government land confiscations in northern Israel in 1976.</p> A Palestinian runs during clashes with Israeli troops, during a tent city protest along the Israel border with Gaza, demanding the right to return to their homeland, the southern Gaza Strip March 30, 2018. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa <p>But its main focus was a demand that Palestinian refugees be allowed the right of return to towns and villages which their families fled from, or were driven out of, when the state of Israel was created in 1948.</p> <p>In a statement, the Israeli military accused Hamas of &#8220;cynically exploiting women and children, sending them to the security fence and endangering their lives&#8221;.</p> <p>The military said that more than 100 army sharpshooters had been deployed in the area.</p> <p>Hamas, which seeks Israel&#8217;s destruction, had earlier urged protesters to adhere to the &#8220;peaceful nature&#8221; of the protest.</p> Slideshow (23 Images) <p>Israel has long ruled out any right of return, fearing an influx of Arabs that would wipe out its Jewish majority. It argues that refugees should resettle in a future state the Palestinians seek in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza. Peace talks to that end collapsed in 2014.</p> <p>There were also small protests in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and about 65 Palestinians were injured.</p> <p>In Gaza, the protest was dubbed &#8220;The March of Return&#8221; and some of the tents bore names of the refugees&#8217; original villages in what is now Israel, written in Arabic and Hebrew alike.</p> <p>Citing security concerns, Israel, which withdrew troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005, blockades the coastal territory, maintaining tight restrictions on the movement of Palestinians and goods across the frontier. Egypt, battling an Islamist insurgency in neighboring Sinai, keeps its border with Gaza largely closed.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem; Ali Sawafta in Ramallah; Michelle Nichols in New York; Writing by Ori Lewis and Stephen Farrell; Editing by Richard Balmforth and Gareth Jones</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Federer makes light of day shift to ease into last eight Autopsy refutes police account of California shooting of black man: lawyer Trump supporter Malloch says he will testify to Mueller grand jury Widow of Florida nightclub gunman cleared of all charges Israeli forces kill 15 Palestinians in Gaza border protests: Gaza medics

https://reuters.com/article/us-tennis-ausopen-federer/federer-makes-light-of-day-shift-to-ease-into-last-eight-idUSKBN1FB0ME

2018-01-22

2least

MELBOURNE Reuters Roger Federer was a strictly nocturnal beast throughout the first week of the Australian Open but proved just as effective with the sun on his back as he sauntered into the quarterfinals for the 14th time on Monday Tennis Australian Open Rod Laver Arena Melbourne Australia January 22 2018 Roger Federer of Switzerland celebrates winning against Marton Fucsovics of Hungary REUTERSThomas Peter The defending champion did not require his dazzling best against 80thranked Hungarian Marton Fucsovics in his first match scheduled during the day session but still emerged a comfortable 64 763 62 winner Related Coverage Sandgren topples Thiem to keep Melbourne dream alive After his earlierthanusual finish the 36yearold world number two said he might even be able to make the most of a night off and take his wife Mirka out for dinner 8220I was considering sunglasses and a towel for the beach but no the only thing is the racket strings are a bit tighter but it8217s not crazy hot today8221 Federer told former champion Jim Courier in a knockabout postmatch chat on court Tennis Australian Open Rod Laver Arena Melbourne Australia January 22 2018 Roger Federer of Switzerland hits a shot against Marton Fucsovics of Hungary REUTERSThomas Peter 8220It8217s a different rhythm playing in the day and not going to bed at 3 am We might go out for dinner tonight but Mirka has left already 8212 she must have other plans8221 Federer8217s light mood matched the sunny conditions and he was even reduced to giggles during one point late in the second set when he misshit a forehand high into the air then defended three consecutive Fucsovics smashes to win a bizarre rally 8220This one was the biggest joke of a point maybe I have ever played8221 he said later 8220Thankfully it didn8217t decide the outcome of that second set That would have been too much of a joke to be honest8221 Federer is yet to drop a set and did not even face a break point against the 25yearold Fucsovics who arrived in Melbourne without a grand slam main draw victory to his name Slideshow 4 Images Yet his unheralded opponent bidding to become only the third Hungarian man to reach a grand slam quarterfinal in the professional era offered an allround display that belied his record even if it did not surprise Federer 8220I practiced with him for a few days in a row in Switzerland That helped you know knowing his strength and weaknesses a little bit8221 he said 8220He was not completely the unknown opponent that maybe people thought he was 8220He hung with me for a long time So it was a good match8221 Federer was in cruise control in the first set but struck decisively when Fucsovics served at 45 squeezing the throttle enough to earn a set point converted with a smash Fucsovics kept Federer honest in the second set and played his part in some entertaining rallies to extend the 19times grand slam champion to a tiebreak Federer rifled a running forehand pass to earn three set points and again finished the set at the net with a smash The third set was all over in 31 minutes as Federer raced into the 52nd grand slam quarterfinal of his career booking a last eight encounter against 19th seeded Czech Tomas Berdych Reporting by Martyn Herman Editing by Peter RutherfordJohn OBrien Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles SACRAMENTO Calif Reuters An autopsy on an unarmed black man killed by police officers in California8217s capital last week shows that none of the eight bullets hit him in the front contradicting the official version of events a lawyer for the deceased8217s family said on Friday Clark was hit six times in the back once in the side and once in the leg the independent autopsy found Benjamin Crump an attorney for the family of Stephon Clark a 22yearold AfricanAmerican killed in Sacramento on March 18 said the findings refuted police statements that the man had been moving toward officers in a menacing way when they fired 8220This independent autopsy affirms that Stephon was not a threat to police and was slain in another senseless police killing under increasingly questionable circumstances8221 Crump said in a statement Clark8217s death was the most recent in a string of fatal shootings of black men by police that have triggered protests across the United States and fueled a national debate about bias in the American criminal justice system The Sacramento Police Department said in a statement that it would have no further comment on the case until after the release of the findings of an official autopsy by the county coroner and a review by state and local prosecutors Dr Bennet Omalu the forensic pathologist who conducted the independent autopsy said at a briefing that any one of seven bullets that entered the upper half of Clark8217s body could have killed him 8220Each of these bullets independently possessed a fatal capacity meaning all he needed was one of the seven to die8221 said Omalu a Nigerianborn physician best known for his research into chronic traumatic encephalopathy CTE in American football players Clark8217s shooting has sparked largely peaceful demonstrations in Sacramento On several occasions over the last two weeks protesters have marched held demonstrations and twice blocked fans from reaching games played by the Sacramento Kings NBA basketball team at the Golden 1 Center Clark a father of two was gunned down in the backyard of his grandparents8217 house by police responding to a report that someone was breaking windows Police said the officers who shot at Clark 20 times feared he was holding a firearm but that he was later found to have been holding a cellphone A mourner holds up a photo of police shooting victim Stephon Clark during the funeral services for Clark at Bayside Of South Sacramento Church in Sacramento California US March 29 2018 Jeff ChiuPool via Reuters The incident was captured in graphic detail in a body cam video released by the police on Wednesday 8220Prior to the shooting the involved officers saw the suspect facing them advance forward with his arms extended and holding an object in his hands8221 a police statement released on Monday read At the funeral service for Clark on Thursday veteran civil rights leader the Reverend Al Sharpton said 8220We8217re going to make Donald Trump and the whole world deal with the issue of police misconduct8221 referring to the president The service at a church in Sacramento came a day after White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters the shooting was a 8220local matter8221 Slideshow 8 Images California Attorney General Xavier Becerra has said state investigators will oversee the investigation and review the police department8217s procedures and practices Additional reporting by Brendan OBrien in Milwaukee writing by Frank McGurty editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Jonathan Oatis Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters An American academic who supports US President Donald Trump and is a strong advocate of Britain8217s exit from the European Union will testify next month before the federal grand jury considering evidence in the investigation into possible collusion between Trump8217s 2016 election campaign and Russia US President Donald Trump arrives at Palm Beach International Airport Florida US for the Easter weekend at MaraLago in Palm Beach March 29 2018 REUTERSYuri Gripas Theodore Malloch the author of a forthcoming proTrump book and an ally of Nigel Farage a former leader of Britain8217s UK Independence Party said in a statement emailed to Reuters on Friday by the book8217s publisher that he was questioned by FBI agents when he landed at Boston8217s Logan International Airport on Tuesday after a flight from London and served with a subpoena to appear before the grand jury Malloch 8220is scheduled to testify in Washington DC on April 13th under Robert Mueller8217s Grand Jury investigation8221 Hector Carosso a representative of Skyhorse Publishing said in a separate email Malloch8217s book 8220The Plot to Destroy Trump How the Deep State Fabricated the Russian Dossier to Subvert the President8221 is scheduled for publication on May 1 Mueller is investigating possible illegal coordination between Trump and his 2016 campaign and Russia Trump and Russia have denied any collusion The FBI and Mueller8217s team had no comment on Malloch or events at the airport in Boston Malloch said in his email that the FBI presented him with a document authorizing the agents to seize his cellphone He said he handed it over and later was told the FBI had to send it to Washington for a 8220full assessment8221 He also said the FBI questioned him for about an hour about his career government security clearances and academic credentials He said the agents then asked him about his role in the Trump campaign which he said was informal and unpaidamp160 He said they also questioned him about his contacts with Trump supporter and political consultant Roger Stone the WikiLeaks website and Jerome Corsi a contributor to conspiracy theory websites In his statement Malloch said he knew nothing about WikiLeaks which published emails US intelligence officials concluded last year were hacked from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton8217s presidential campaign by the GRU Russia8217s military intelligence agency Sources familiar with Mueller8217s investigation say one avenue of inquiry is how the hacked emails made their way to WikiLeaks from Russia and whether any Trump allies ever handled them WikiLeaks did not immediately respond to a request for comment Reporting by Mark Hosenball Editing by John Walcott and Bill Rigby Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles ORLANDO Fla Reuters The widow of the Pulse nightclub gunman walked free on Friday after a jury cleared her of charges related to the 2016 massacre that killed 49 people in Orlando stunning survivors who had longed to hold someone accountable Noor Salman 31 could have faced up to life in prison had she been convicted of federal charges of obstruction of justice and aiding her husband Omar Mateen in providing support to the Islamic State militant group Instead the US District Court jury in Orlando acquitted Salman after roughly 12 hours of deliberation that began on Wednesday Hours later she walked out of Orange County jail her head bowed as she held hands with defense lawyer Fritz Scheller 8220We just relived the whole thing all over again8221 said India Godman who was in the nightclub when shots rang out killing 14 of her friends Salman was home with the couple8217s then 3yearold son at the time of the rampage on June 12 2016 Mateen died in an exchange of gunfire with police at Pulse a gay nightspot The acquittal was an emotional blow for the survivors and families of those killed The attack stunned and dismayed lesbian gay bisexual and transgender people and Latinos who frequented Pulse Godman was among several survivors and their supporters who gathered on Friday outside Pulse about 2 miles 3 km from the courthouse 8220I8217m in shock I think that she knew that he was up to something8221 said Neema Bahrami an event manager at the nightclub who survived the shooting while his best friend was killed Then the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history it has since been surpassed by the Las Vegas attack in which a shooter opened fire on an outdoor concert from his hotel room last year killing 58 people When US District Judge Paul Byron announced Friday8217s verdict Salman broke down in tears and hugged her defense lawyers according to reporters inside the courtroom Her relatives gasped while families of the victims sat silently showing little emotion FILE PHOTO Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI officials walk through the parking lot of the Pulse gay night club the site of a mass shooting days earlier in Orlando Florida US June 15 2016 REUTERSAdrees LatifFile Photo 8220We knew from day one she was innocent8221 Salman8217s aunt Susan Adieh told reporters just after the verdict Salman who had been jailed during the trial will move to California where she has relatives a spokeswoman for the family said8221This was really her opportunity to clear her name and move on with her life8221 spokeswoman Susan Clary said 8220She just really needs to get back to her son8221 Mateen 29 opened fire shortly after 2 am during Latin night shooting patrons on the dance floor and spraying bullets at others hiding in bathroom stalls He then held hostages during a standoff with police claiming allegiance to a leader of Islamic State before he was shot dead Prosecutors said Salman cased possible attack sites with her husband and did nothing to stop his plans They claimed she initially told investigators her husband acted without her knowledge but later said she knew he was watching Islamic State videos had purchased an assault rifle and examined three possible attack locations Slideshow 3 Images However the Federal Bureau of Investigation did not record the interrogation and the defense said she was coerced into making statements The jury appeared to believe the defense portrayal of Salman as a battered spouse kept in the dark said David Weinstein a former federal prosecutor and now a partner at Coral Gables Floridabased Hinshaw ampamp Culbertson 8220The lack of a videotaped confession had to have had an impact on the jury8217s acceptance of her confession It is clear they believed it was coerced8221 Weinstein said in a statement Reporting by Joey Roulette in Orlando Writing by Daniel Trotta editing by David Gregorio and Jonathan Oatis Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles GAZAISRAEL BORDER Reuters At least 15 Palestinians were killed and hundreds injured by Israeli security forces confronting one of the largest Palestinian demonstrations along the IsraelGaza border in recent years Gaza medical officials said Tens of thousands of Palestinians pressing for a right of return for refugees to what is now Israel gathered at five locations along the fenced 65km 40mile frontier where tents were erected for a planned sixweek protest local officials said The Israeli military estimate was 30000 Families brought their children to the encampments just a few hundred meters yards from the Israeli security barrier with the Hamas Islamistrun enclave and football fields were marked in the sand and scout bands played But as the day wore on hundreds of Palestinian youths ignored calls from the organizers and the Israeli military to stay away from the frontier where Israeli soldiers across the border kept watch from dirt mound embankments Related Coverage UN Security Council to meet on Gaza on Friday diplomats The military said its troops had used 8220riot dispersal means and firing towards main instigators8221 Some of the demonstrators were 8220rolling burning tires and hurling stones8221 at the border fence and at soldiers Two Palestinians were killed by tank fire the Gaza Health Ministry said The Israeli military said the two were militants who had opened fire at troops across the border Palestinian health officials said Israeli forces used mostly gunfire against the protesters in addition to tear gas and rubber bullets Witnesses said the military had deployed a drone over at least one location to drop tear gas Live fire was used only against people trying to sabotage the border security fence and at least two of the dead were Hamas operatives an Israeli military official said Gaza health officials said one of the dead was aged 16 and at least 400 people were wounded by live gunfire while others were struck by rubber bullets or treated for tear gas inhalation Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said in a statement that Israel was responsible for the violence and declared Saturday a national day of mourning The United Nations Security Council was due to meet later on Friday to discuss the situation in Gaza diplomats said RIGHT OF RETURN The protest presented a rare show of unity among rival Palestinian factions in the impoverished Gaza Strip where pressure has been building on Hamas and Abbas8217s Fatah movement to end a decadeold rift Reconciliation efforts to end the feud have been faltering for months The demonstration was launched on 8220Land Day8221 an annual commemoration of the deaths of six Arab citizens of Israel killed by Israeli security forces during demonstrations over government land confiscations in northern Israel in 1976 A Palestinian runs during clashes with Israeli troops during a tent city protest along the Israel border with Gaza demanding the right to return to their homeland the southern Gaza Strip March 30 2018 REUTERSIbraheem Abu Mustafa But its main focus was a demand that Palestinian refugees be allowed the right of return to towns and villages which their families fled from or were driven out of when the state of Israel was created in 1948 In a statement the Israeli military accused Hamas of 8220cynically exploiting women and children sending them to the security fence and endangering their lives8221 The military said that more than 100 army sharpshooters had been deployed in the area Hamas which seeks Israel8217s destruction had earlier urged protesters to adhere to the 8220peaceful nature8221 of the protest Slideshow 23 Images Israel has long ruled out any right of return fearing an influx of Arabs that would wipe out its Jewish majority It argues that refugees should resettle in a future state the Palestinians seek in the Israelioccupied West Bank and Gaza Peace talks to that end collapsed in 2014 There were also small protests in the Israelioccupied West Bank and about 65 Palestinians were injured In Gaza the protest was dubbed 8220The March of Return8221 and some of the tents bore names of the refugees8217 original villages in what is now Israel written in Arabic and Hebrew alike Citing security concerns Israel which withdrew troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005 blockades the coastal territory maintaining tight restrictions on the movement of Palestinians and goods across the frontier Egypt battling an Islamist insurgency in neighboring Sinai keeps its border with Gaza largely closed Additional reporting by Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem Ali Sawafta in Ramallah Michelle Nichols in New York Writing by Ori Lewis and Stephen Farrell Editing by Richard Balmforth and Gareth Jones Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>When people choose life (with freedom) Destiny will respond and take action Darkness will surely fade away And the chains will certainly be broken</p> <p>Tunisian poet Abul Qasim Al-Shabbi (1909-1934)</p> <p>On New Year&#8217;s Eve 1977, former President Jimmy Carter was toasting Shah Reza Pahlavi in Tehran, calling the Western-backed monarchy &#8220;an island of stability&#8221; in the Middle East. But for the next 13 months, Iran was anything but stable. The Iranian people were daily protesting the brutality of their dictator, holding mass demonstrations from one end of the country to the other.</p> <p>Initially, the Shah described the popular protests as part of a conspiracy by communists and Islamic extremists, and employed an iron fist policy relying on the brutal use of force by his security apparatus and secret police. When this did not work, the Shah had to concede some of the popular demands, dismissing some of his generals, and promising to crack down on corruption and allow more freedom, before eventually succumbing to the main demand of the revolution by fleeing the country on Jan. 16, 1979.</p> <p>But days before leaving, he installed a puppet prime minister in the hope that he could quell the protests allowing him to return. As he hopped from country to country, he discovered that he was unwelcome in most parts of the world. Western countries that had hailed his regime for decades were now abandoning him in droves in the face of popular revolution.</p> <p>Fast forward to Tunisia 32 years later.</p> <p>What took 54 weeks to accomplish in Iran was achieved in Tunisia in less than four. The regime of President Zein-al-Abidin Ben Ali represented in the eyes of his people not only the features of a suffocating dictatorship, but also the characteristics of a mafia-controlled society riddled with massive corruption and human rights abuses.</p> <p>On December 17, Mohammed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old unemployed graduate in the central town of Sidi Bouzid, set himself on fire in an attempt to commit suicide. Earlier in the day, police officers took away his stand and confiscated the fruits and vegetables he was selling because he lacked a permit. When he tried to complain to government officials that he was unemployed and that this was his only means of survival, he was mocked, insulted and beaten by the police. He died 19 days later in the midst of the uprising.</p> <p>Bouazizi&#8217;s act of desperation set off the public&#8217;s boiling frustration over living standards, corruption and lack of political freedom and human rights. For the next four weeks, his self-immolation sparked demonstrations in which protesters burned tires and chanted slogans demanding jobs and freedom. Protests soon spread all over the country including its capital, Tunis.</p> <p>The first reaction by the regime was to clamp down and use brutal force including beatings, tear gas, and live ammunition. The more ruthless tactics the security forces employed, the more people got angry and took to the streets. On Dec. 28 the president gave his first speech claiming that the protests were organized by a &#8220;minority of extremists and terrorists&#8221; and that the law would be applied &#8220;in all firmness&#8221; to punish protesters.</p> <p>However, by the start of the New Year tens of thousands of people, joined by labor unions, students, lawyers, professional syndicates, and other opposition groups, were demonstrating in over a dozen cities. By the end of the week, labor unions called for commercial strikes across the country, while 8,000 lawyers went on strike, bringing the entire judiciary system to an immediate halt.</p> <p>Meanwhile, the regime started cracking down on bloggers, journalists, artists and political activists. It restricted all means of dissent, including social media. But following nearly 80 deaths by the security forces, the regime started to back down.</p> <p>On Jan. 13, Ben Ali gave his third televised address, dismissing his interior minister and announcing unprecedented concessions while vowing not to seek re-election in 2014. He also pledged to introduce more freedoms into society, and to investigate the killings of protesters during the demonstrations. When this move only emboldened the protestors, he then addressed his people in desperation, promising fresh legislative elections within six months in an attempt to quell mass dissent.</p> <p>When this ploy also did not work, he imposed a state of emergency, dismissing the entire cabinet and promising to deploy the army on a shoot to kill order. However, as the head of the army Gen. Rachid Ben Ammar refused to order his troops to kill the demonstrators in the streets, Ben Ali found no alternative but to flee the country and the rage of his people.</p> <p>On Jan. 14 his entourage flew in four choppers to the Mediterranean island of Malta. When Malta refused to accept them, he boarded a plane heading to France. While in mid air he was told by the French that he would be denied entry. The plane then turned back to the gulf region until he was finally admitted and welcomed by Saudi Arabia. The Saudi regime has a long history of accepting despots including Idi Amin of Uganda and Parvez Musharraf of Pakistan.</p> <p>But a few days before the deposed president left Tunis, his wife Leila Trabelsi, a former hairdresser known for her compulsive shopping, took over a ton and a half of pure gold from the central bank and left for Dubai along with her children. The first lady and the Trabelsi family are despised by the public for their corrupt lifestyle and financial scandals.</p> <p>As chaos engulfed the political elites, the presidential security apparatus started a campaign of violence and property destruction in a last ditch attempt to saw discord and confusion. But the army, aided by popular committees, moved quickly to arrest them and stop the destruction campaign by imposing a night curfew throughout the country.</p> <p>A handful of high-profile security officials such as the head of presidential security and the former interior minister, as well as business oligarchs including Ben Ali&#8217;s relatives and Trabelsi family members, were either killed by crowds or arrested by the army as they attempted to flee the country.</p> <p>Meanwhile, after initially declaring himself a temporary president, the prime minister had to back down from that decision within 20 hours in order to assure the public that Ben Ali was gone forever. The following day, the speaker of parliament was sworn in as president, promising a national unity government and elections within 60 days.</p> <p>Most Western countries, including the U.S. and France, were slow in recognizing the fast-paced events. President Barack Obama did not say a word as the events were unfolding. But once Ben Ali was deposed, he declared: &#8220;the U.S. stands with the entire international community in bearing witness to this brave and determined struggle for the universal rights that we must all uphold.&#8221; He continued: &#8220;We will long remember the images of the Tunisian people seeking to make their voices heard. I applaud the courage and dignity of the Tunisian people.&#8221;</p> <p>Similarly, the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, not only abandoned his Tunisian ally by refusing to admit him in the country while his flight was en route, but he even ordered Ben Ali&#8217;s relatives staying in expensive apartments and luxury hotels in Paris to leave the country.</p> <p>The following day the French government announced that it would freeze all accounts that belonged to the deposed president, his family, or in-laws, in a direct admission that the French government was already aware that such assets were the product of corruption and ill-gotten money.</p> <p>The nature of Ben Ali&#8217;s regime: Corruption, Repression and Western Backing</p> <p>A recently published report from Global Financial Integrity (GFI), titled: &#8220;Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries: 2000-2009,&#8221; estimates Tunisia was losing billions of dollars to illicit financial activities and official government corruption, in a state budget that is less than $10 billion and GDP less than $40 billion per year.</p> <p>Economist and co-author of the study, Karly Curcio, notes: &#8220;Political unrest is perpetuated, in part, by corrupt and criminal activity in the country. GFI estimates that the amount of illegal money lost from Tunisia due to corruption, bribery, kickbacks, trade mispricing, and criminal activity between 2000 and 2008 was, on average, over one billion dollars per year, specifically $1.16 billion per annum.&#8221;</p> <p>A 2008 Amnesty International study, titled: &#8220;In the Name of Security: Routine Abuses in Tunisia,&#8221; reported that &#8220;serious human rights violations were being committed in connection with the government&#8217;s security and counterterrorism policies.&#8221; Reporters Without Borders also issued a report that stated Ben Ali&#8217;s regime was &#8220;obsessive in its control of news and information. Journalists and human rights activists are the target of bureaucratic harassment, police violence and constant surveillance by the intelligence services.&#8221;</p> <p>The former U.S. Ambassador in Tunis, Robert Godec, has admitted as much. In a cable to his bosses in Washington, dated July 17, 2009, recently made public by Wikileaks, he stated with regard to the political elites: &#8220;they rely on the police for control and focus on preserving power. And, corruption in the inner circle is growing. Even average Tunisians are now keenly aware of it, and the chorus of complaints is rising.&#8221;</p> <p>Even when the U.S. Congress approved millions of dollars in military aid for Tunisia last year, it noted &#8220;restrictions on political freedom, the use of torture, imprisonment of dissidents, and persecution of journalists and human rights defenders.&#8221;</p> <p>Yet, ever since he seized power in 1987, Ben Ali counted on the support of the West to maintain his grip on the country. Indeed, Gen. Ben Ali was the product of the French Military Academy and the U.S. Army School at Ft. Bliss, TX. He also completed his intelligence and military security training at Ft. Holabird, MD.</p> <p>Since he had spent most of his career as a military intelligence and security officer, he developed, over the years, close relationships with western intelligence agencies, especially the CIA, as well as the French and other NATO intelligence services.</p> <p>Based on a European intelligence source, Al-Jazeera recently reported that when Ben Ali served as his country&#8217;s ambassador to Poland between 1980-1984 (a strange post for a military and intelligence officer), he was actually serving NATO&#8217;s interests by acting as the main contact between the CIA and NATO&#8217;s intelligence services and the Polish opposition in order to undermine the Soviet-backed regime.</p> <p>In 1999 Fulvio Martini, former head of Italian military secret service SISMI, declared to a parliamentary committee that &#8220;In 1985-1987, we (in NATO) organized a kind of golpe (i.e. coup d&#8217;etat) in Tunisia, putting president Ben Ali as head of state, replacing Burghuiba,&#8221; in reference to the first president of Tunisia.</p> <p>During his confirmation hearing in July 2009 as U.S. Ambassador to Tunisia, Gordon Gray reiterated the West&#8217;s support for the regime as he told the Senate Foreign Relations committee, &#8220;We&#8217;ve had a long-standing military relationship with the government and with the military. It&#8217;s very positive. Tunisian military equipment is of U.S. origin, so we have a long-standing assistance program there.&#8221;</p> <p>Tunisia&#8217;s strategic importance to the U.S. is also recognized by the fact that its policy is determined by the National Security Council rather than the State Department. Furthermore, since Ben Ali became president, the U.S. military delivered $350 million in military hardware to his regime.</p> <p>As recently as last year, the Obama administration asked Congress to approve a $282 million sale of more military equipment to help the security agencies maintain control over the population. In his letter to Congress, the President said: &#8220;This proposed sale will contribute to the foreign policy and national security of the United States by helping to improve the security of a friendly country.&#8221;</p> <p>During the Bush administration the U.S. defined its relationship with other countries not based on its grandiose rhetoric on freedom and democracy, but rather on how each country would embrace its counter-terrorism campaign and pro-Israel policies in the region. On both accounts Tunisia scored highly.</p> <p>For instance, a Wikileaks cable from Tunis, dated Feb. 28, 2008, reported a meeting between Assistant Secretary of State David Welch and Ben Ali in which the Tunisian president offered his country&#8217;s intelligence cooperation &#8220;without reservation&#8221; including FBI access to &#8220;Tunisian detainees&#8221; inside Tunisian prisons.</p> <p>In his first trip to the region in April 2009, President Obama&#8217;s special envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, stopped first in Tunisia and declared that his talks with its officials &#8220;were excellent.&#8221; He hailed the &#8220;strong ties&#8221; between both governments, as well as Tunisia&#8217;s support of U.S. efforts in the Middle East. He stressed President Obama&#8217;s &#8220;high consideration&#8221; of Ben Ali.</p> <p>Throughout his 23 year rule, hundreds of Tunisian human rights activists and critics such as opposition leaders Sihem Ben Sedrine and Moncef Marzouki, were arrested, detained, and sometimes tortured after they spoke out against the human rights abuses and massive corruption sanctioned by his regime. Meanwhile, thousands of members of the Islamic movement were arrested, tortured and tried in sham trials.</p> <p>In its Aug. 2009 report, titled: &#8220;Tunisia, Continuing Abuses in the Name of Security,&#8221; Amnesty International said: &#8220;The Tunisian authorities continue to carry out arbitrary arrests and detentions, allow torture and use unfair trials, all in the name of the fight against terrorism. This is the harsh reality behind the official rhetoric.&#8221;</p> <p>Western governments were quite aware of the nature of this regime. But they decided to overlook the regime&#8217;s corruption and repression to secure their short-term interests. The State Department&#8217;s own 2008 Human Rights Report detailed many cases of &#8220;torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment&#8221; including rapes of female political prisoners by the regime. Without elaboration or condemnation, the report coldly concluded: &#8220;Police assaulted human rights and opposition activists throughout the year.&#8221;</p> <p>What next?</p> <p>&#8220;The dictator has fallen but not the dictatorship,&#8221; declared Rachid Ghannouchi, the Islamic leader of the opposition party, al-Nahdha or Renaissance, who has been in exile in the U.K. for the past 22 years. During the reign of Ben Ali, his group was banned and thousands of its members were either tortured, imprisoned or exiled. He himself was tried and sentenced to death in absentia. He has announced his return to the country soon.</p> <p>This statement by al-Nahdha&#8217;s leader has reflected the popular sentiment cautioning that both the new president, Fouad Al-Mubazaa&#8217;, and prime minister Mohammad Ghannouchi have been members of Ben Ali&#8217;s party: The Constitutional Democratic Party. And thus their credibility is suspect. They have helped in implementing the deposed dictator&#8217;s policies for over a decade.</p> <p>Nevertheless, the Prime Minister promised, on the day Ben Ali fled the country, a government of national unity. Within days he announced a government that retained most of the former ministers (including the most important posts of defense, foreign , interior and finance), while including three ministers from the opposition and some independents close to the labor and lawyers unions. Many other opposition parties were either ignored or refused to join based on principle protesting the ruling party&#8217;s past.</p> <p>In less than 24 hours, huge demonstrations took place all over the country on Jan. 18 in protest of the inclusion of the ruling party. Immediately four ministers representing the labor union and an opposition party resigned from the new government until a true national unity government is formed. Another opposition party suspended its participation until the ruling party ministers are either dismissed or resign their position.</p> <p>Within hours the president and the prime minister resigned from the ruling party and declared themselves as independents. Still, most opposition parties are demanding their removal and their replacement with reputable and national leaders who are truly &#8220;independent&#8221; and have &#8220;clean hands.&#8221; They question how the same interior minister who organized the fraudulent elections of Ben Ali less than 15 months ago, could supervise free and fair elections now.</p> <p>It&#8217;s not clear if the new government would even survive the rage of the street. But perhaps its most significant announcement was issuing a general amnesty and promising a release of all political prisoners in detentions and in exile. It also established three national commissions.</p> <p>The first commission is headed by one of the most respected constitutional scholars, Prof. &#8216;Ayyadh Ben Ashour, to address political and constitutional reforms. The other two are headed by former human rights advocates; one to investigate official corruption, while the other to investigate the killing of the demonstrators during the popular uprising. All three commissions were appointed in response to the main demands by the demonstrators and opposition parties.</p> <p>January 14, 2011 has indeed become a watershed date in the modern history of the Arab World. Already, about a dozen would-be martyrs have attempted suicide by setting themselves ablaze in public protest of political repression and economic corruption, in Egypt, Algeria and Mauritania. Opposition movements have already led protests praising the Tunisian uprising and protesting their governments&#8217; repressive policies and corruption in many Arab countries, including Egypt, Jordan, Algeria, Libya, Yemen, and the Sudan.</p> <p>The verdict on the ultimate success of the Tunisian revolution is still out. Will it be aborted by either infighting or the introduction of illusory changes to absorb the public&#8217;s anger? Or will real and lasting change be established, enshrined in a new constitution that is based on democratic principles, political freedom, freedoms of press and assembly, independence of the judiciary, respect of human rights, and end of foreign interference?</p> <p>As the answers to these questions unfold in the next few months, the larger question of whether there is a domino effect on the rest of the Arab world will become clearer.</p> <p>But perhaps the ultimate lesson to Western policymakers is this: Real change is the product of popular will and sacrifice, not imposed by foreign interference or invasions.</p> <p>To topple the Iraqi dictator, it cost the U.S. over 4,500 dead soldiers, 32,000 injured, a trillion dollars, a sinking economy, at least 150,000 dead Iraqis, a half-million injured, and the devastation of their country, as well as the enmity of billions of Muslims and other people around the world.</p> <p>Meanwhile, the people of Tunisia toppled another brutal dictator with less than 100 dead who will forever be remembered and honored by their countrymen and women as heroes who paid the ultimate price for freedom.</p> <p>ESAM AL-AMIN can be reached at <a href="mailto:alamin1919@gmail.com" type="external">alamin1919@gmail.com</a></p> <p /> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p />

The Fall of the West’s Little Dictator

https://counterpunch.org/2011/01/19/the-fall-of-the-west-s-little-dictator/

2011-01-19

4left

When people choose life with freedom Destiny will respond and take action Darkness will surely fade away And the chains will certainly be broken Tunisian poet Abul Qasim AlShabbi 19091934 On New Year8217s Eve 1977 former President Jimmy Carter was toasting Shah Reza Pahlavi in Tehran calling the Westernbacked monarchy 8220an island of stability8221 in the Middle East But for the next 13 months Iran was anything but stable The Iranian people were daily protesting the brutality of their dictator holding mass demonstrations from one end of the country to the other Initially the Shah described the popular protests as part of a conspiracy by communists and Islamic extremists and employed an iron fist policy relying on the brutal use of force by his security apparatus and secret police When this did not work the Shah had to concede some of the popular demands dismissing some of his generals and promising to crack down on corruption and allow more freedom before eventually succumbing to the main demand of the revolution by fleeing the country on Jan 16 1979 But days before leaving he installed a puppet prime minister in the hope that he could quell the protests allowing him to return As he hopped from country to country he discovered that he was unwelcome in most parts of the world Western countries that had hailed his regime for decades were now abandoning him in droves in the face of popular revolution Fast forward to Tunisia 32 years later What took 54 weeks to accomplish in Iran was achieved in Tunisia in less than four The regime of President ZeinalAbidin Ben Ali represented in the eyes of his people not only the features of a suffocating dictatorship but also the characteristics of a mafiacontrolled society riddled with massive corruption and human rights abuses On December 17 Mohammed Bouazizi a 26yearold unemployed graduate in the central town of Sidi Bouzid set himself on fire in an attempt to commit suicide Earlier in the day police officers took away his stand and confiscated the fruits and vegetables he was selling because he lacked a permit When he tried to complain to government officials that he was unemployed and that this was his only means of survival he was mocked insulted and beaten by the police He died 19 days later in the midst of the uprising Bouazizi8217s act of desperation set off the public8217s boiling frustration over living standards corruption and lack of political freedom and human rights For the next four weeks his selfimmolation sparked demonstrations in which protesters burned tires and chanted slogans demanding jobs and freedom Protests soon spread all over the country including its capital Tunis The first reaction by the regime was to clamp down and use brutal force including beatings tear gas and live ammunition The more ruthless tactics the security forces employed the more people got angry and took to the streets On Dec 28 the president gave his first speech claiming that the protests were organized by a 8220minority of extremists and terrorists8221 and that the law would be applied 8220in all firmness8221 to punish protesters However by the start of the New Year tens of thousands of people joined by labor unions students lawyers professional syndicates and other opposition groups were demonstrating in over a dozen cities By the end of the week labor unions called for commercial strikes across the country while 8000 lawyers went on strike bringing the entire judiciary system to an immediate halt Meanwhile the regime started cracking down on bloggers journalists artists and political activists It restricted all means of dissent including social media But following nearly 80 deaths by the security forces the regime started to back down On Jan 13 Ben Ali gave his third televised address dismissing his interior minister and announcing unprecedented concessions while vowing not to seek reelection in 2014 He also pledged to introduce more freedoms into society and to investigate the killings of protesters during the demonstrations When this move only emboldened the protestors he then addressed his people in desperation promising fresh legislative elections within six months in an attempt to quell mass dissent When this ploy also did not work he imposed a state of emergency dismissing the entire cabinet and promising to deploy the army on a shoot to kill order However as the head of the army Gen Rachid Ben Ammar refused to order his troops to kill the demonstrators in the streets Ben Ali found no alternative but to flee the country and the rage of his people On Jan 14 his entourage flew in four choppers to the Mediterranean island of Malta When Malta refused to accept them he boarded a plane heading to France While in mid air he was told by the French that he would be denied entry The plane then turned back to the gulf region until he was finally admitted and welcomed by Saudi Arabia The Saudi regime has a long history of accepting despots including Idi Amin of Uganda and Parvez Musharraf of Pakistan But a few days before the deposed president left Tunis his wife Leila Trabelsi a former hairdresser known for her compulsive shopping took over a ton and a half of pure gold from the central bank and left for Dubai along with her children The first lady and the Trabelsi family are despised by the public for their corrupt lifestyle and financial scandals As chaos engulfed the political elites the presidential security apparatus started a campaign of violence and property destruction in a last ditch attempt to saw discord and confusion But the army aided by popular committees moved quickly to arrest them and stop the destruction campaign by imposing a night curfew throughout the country A handful of highprofile security officials such as the head of presidential security and the former interior minister as well as business oligarchs including Ben Ali8217s relatives and Trabelsi family members were either killed by crowds or arrested by the army as they attempted to flee the country Meanwhile after initially declaring himself a temporary president the prime minister had to back down from that decision within 20 hours in order to assure the public that Ben Ali was gone forever The following day the speaker of parliament was sworn in as president promising a national unity government and elections within 60 days Most Western countries including the US and France were slow in recognizing the fastpaced events President Barack Obama did not say a word as the events were unfolding But once Ben Ali was deposed he declared 8220the US stands with the entire international community in bearing witness to this brave and determined struggle for the universal rights that we must all uphold8221 He continued 8220We will long remember the images of the Tunisian people seeking to make their voices heard I applaud the courage and dignity of the Tunisian people8221 Similarly the French President Nicolas Sarkozy not only abandoned his Tunisian ally by refusing to admit him in the country while his flight was en route but he even ordered Ben Ali8217s relatives staying in expensive apartments and luxury hotels in Paris to leave the country The following day the French government announced that it would freeze all accounts that belonged to the deposed president his family or inlaws in a direct admission that the French government was already aware that such assets were the product of corruption and illgotten money The nature of Ben Ali8217s regime Corruption Repression and Western Backing A recently published report from Global Financial Integrity GFI titled 8220Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries 200020098221 estimates Tunisia was losing billions of dollars to illicit financial activities and official government corruption in a state budget that is less than 10 billion and GDP less than 40 billion per year Economist and coauthor of the study Karly Curcio notes 8220Political unrest is perpetuated in part by corrupt and criminal activity in the country GFI estimates that the amount of illegal money lost from Tunisia due to corruption bribery kickbacks trade mispricing and criminal activity between 2000 and 2008 was on average over one billion dollars per year specifically 116 billion per annum8221 A 2008 Amnesty International study titled 8220In the Name of Security Routine Abuses in Tunisia8221 reported that 8220serious human rights violations were being committed in connection with the government8217s security and counterterrorism policies8221 Reporters Without Borders also issued a report that stated Ben Ali8217s regime was 8220obsessive in its control of news and information Journalists and human rights activists are the target of bureaucratic harassment police violence and constant surveillance by the intelligence services8221 The former US Ambassador in Tunis Robert Godec has admitted as much In a cable to his bosses in Washington dated July 17 2009 recently made public by Wikileaks he stated with regard to the political elites 8220they rely on the police for control and focus on preserving power And corruption in the inner circle is growing Even average Tunisians are now keenly aware of it and the chorus of complaints is rising8221 Even when the US Congress approved millions of dollars in military aid for Tunisia last year it noted 8220restrictions on political freedom the use of torture imprisonment of dissidents and persecution of journalists and human rights defenders8221 Yet ever since he seized power in 1987 Ben Ali counted on the support of the West to maintain his grip on the country Indeed Gen Ben Ali was the product of the French Military Academy and the US Army School at Ft Bliss TX He also completed his intelligence and military security training at Ft Holabird MD Since he had spent most of his career as a military intelligence and security officer he developed over the years close relationships with western intelligence agencies especially the CIA as well as the French and other NATO intelligence services Based on a European intelligence source AlJazeera recently reported that when Ben Ali served as his country8217s ambassador to Poland between 19801984 a strange post for a military and intelligence officer he was actually serving NATO8217s interests by acting as the main contact between the CIA and NATO8217s intelligence services and the Polish opposition in order to undermine the Sovietbacked regime In 1999 Fulvio Martini former head of Italian military secret service SISMI declared to a parliamentary committee that 8220In 19851987 we in NATO organized a kind of golpe ie coup d8217etat in Tunisia putting president Ben Ali as head of state replacing Burghuiba8221 in reference to the first president of Tunisia During his confirmation hearing in July 2009 as US Ambassador to Tunisia Gordon Gray reiterated the West8217s support for the regime as he told the Senate Foreign Relations committee 8220We8217ve had a longstanding military relationship with the government and with the military It8217s very positive Tunisian military equipment is of US origin so we have a longstanding assistance program there8221 Tunisia8217s strategic importance to the US is also recognized by the fact that its policy is determined by the National Security Council rather than the State Department Furthermore since Ben Ali became president the US military delivered 350 million in military hardware to his regime As recently as last year the Obama administration asked Congress to approve a 282 million sale of more military equipment to help the security agencies maintain control over the population In his letter to Congress the President said 8220This proposed sale will contribute to the foreign policy and national security of the United States by helping to improve the security of a friendly country8221 During the Bush administration the US defined its relationship with other countries not based on its grandiose rhetoric on freedom and democracy but rather on how each country would embrace its counterterrorism campaign and proIsrael policies in the region On both accounts Tunisia scored highly For instance a Wikileaks cable from Tunis dated Feb 28 2008 reported a meeting between Assistant Secretary of State David Welch and Ben Ali in which the Tunisian president offered his country8217s intelligence cooperation 8220without reservation8221 including FBI access to 8220Tunisian detainees8221 inside Tunisian prisons In his first trip to the region in April 2009 President Obama8217s special envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell stopped first in Tunisia and declared that his talks with its officials 8220were excellent8221 He hailed the 8220strong ties8221 between both governments as well as Tunisia8217s support of US efforts in the Middle East He stressed President Obama8217s 8220high consideration8221 of Ben Ali Throughout his 23 year rule hundreds of Tunisian human rights activists and critics such as opposition leaders Sihem Ben Sedrine and Moncef Marzouki were arrested detained and sometimes tortured after they spoke out against the human rights abuses and massive corruption sanctioned by his regime Meanwhile thousands of members of the Islamic movement were arrested tortured and tried in sham trials In its Aug 2009 report titled 8220Tunisia Continuing Abuses in the Name of Security8221 Amnesty International said 8220The Tunisian authorities continue to carry out arbitrary arrests and detentions allow torture and use unfair trials all in the name of the fight against terrorism This is the harsh reality behind the official rhetoric8221 Western governments were quite aware of the nature of this regime But they decided to overlook the regime8217s corruption and repression to secure their shortterm interests The State Department8217s own 2008 Human Rights Report detailed many cases of 8220torture and other cruel inhuman or degrading treatment8221 including rapes of female political prisoners by the regime Without elaboration or condemnation the report coldly concluded 8220Police assaulted human rights and opposition activists throughout the year8221 What next 8220The dictator has fallen but not the dictatorship8221 declared Rachid Ghannouchi the Islamic leader of the opposition party alNahdha or Renaissance who has been in exile in the UK for the past 22 years During the reign of Ben Ali his group was banned and thousands of its members were either tortured imprisoned or exiled He himself was tried and sentenced to death in absentia He has announced his return to the country soon This statement by alNahdha8217s leader has reflected the popular sentiment cautioning that both the new president Fouad AlMubazaa8217 and prime minister Mohammad Ghannouchi have been members of Ben Ali8217s party The Constitutional Democratic Party And thus their credibility is suspect They have helped in implementing the deposed dictator8217s policies for over a decade Nevertheless the Prime Minister promised on the day Ben Ali fled the country a government of national unity Within days he announced a government that retained most of the former ministers including the most important posts of defense foreign interior and finance while including three ministers from the opposition and some independents close to the labor and lawyers unions Many other opposition parties were either ignored or refused to join based on principle protesting the ruling party8217s past In less than 24 hours huge demonstrations took place all over the country on Jan 18 in protest of the inclusion of the ruling party Immediately four ministers representing the labor union and an opposition party resigned from the new government until a true national unity government is formed Another opposition party suspended its participation until the ruling party ministers are either dismissed or resign their position Within hours the president and the prime minister resigned from the ruling party and declared themselves as independents Still most opposition parties are demanding their removal and their replacement with reputable and national leaders who are truly 8220independent8221 and have 8220clean hands8221 They question how the same interior minister who organized the fraudulent elections of Ben Ali less than 15 months ago could supervise free and fair elections now It8217s not clear if the new government would even survive the rage of the street But perhaps its most significant announcement was issuing a general amnesty and promising a release of all political prisoners in detentions and in exile It also established three national commissions The first commission is headed by one of the most respected constitutional scholars Prof 8216Ayyadh Ben Ashour to address political and constitutional reforms The other two are headed by former human rights advocates one to investigate official corruption while the other to investigate the killing of the demonstrators during the popular uprising All three commissions were appointed in response to the main demands by the demonstrators and opposition parties January 14 2011 has indeed become a watershed date in the modern history of the Arab World Already about a dozen wouldbe martyrs have attempted suicide by setting themselves ablaze in public protest of political repression and economic corruption in Egypt Algeria and Mauritania Opposition movements have already led protests praising the Tunisian uprising and protesting their governments8217 repressive policies and corruption in many Arab countries including Egypt Jordan Algeria Libya Yemen and the Sudan The verdict on the ultimate success of the Tunisian revolution is still out Will it be aborted by either infighting or the introduction of illusory changes to absorb the public8217s anger Or will real and lasting change be established enshrined in a new constitution that is based on democratic principles political freedom freedoms of press and assembly independence of the judiciary respect of human rights and end of foreign interference As the answers to these questions unfold in the next few months the larger question of whether there is a domino effect on the rest of the Arab world will become clearer But perhaps the ultimate lesson to Western policymakers is this Real change is the product of popular will and sacrifice not imposed by foreign interference or invasions To topple the Iraqi dictator it cost the US over 4500 dead soldiers 32000 injured a trillion dollars a sinking economy at least 150000 dead Iraqis a halfmillion injured and the devastation of their country as well as the enmity of billions of Muslims and other people around the world Meanwhile the people of Tunisia toppled another brutal dictator with less than 100 dead who will forever be remembered and honored by their countrymen and women as heroes who paid the ultimate price for freedom ESAM ALAMIN can be reached at alamin1919gmailcom amp160

When/SCONJ people/NOUN choose/VERB life/NOUN with/ADP freedom/NOUN Destiny/PROPN will/AUX respond/VERB and/CCONJ take/VERB action/NOUN Darkness/PROPN will/AUX surely/ADV fade/VERB away/ADV And/CCONJ the/DET chains/NOUN will/AUX certainly/ADV be/AUX broken/VERB Tunisian/ADJ poet/NOUN Abul/PROPN Qasim/PROPN AlShabbi/PROPN 19091934/NUM On/ADP New/PROPN Year8217s/PROPN Eve/PROPN 1977/NUM former/ADJ President/PROPN Jimmy/PROPN Carter/PROPN was/AUX toasting/VERB Shah/PROPN Reza/PROPN Pahlavi/PROPN in/ADP Tehran/PROPN calling/VERB the/DET Westernbacked/VERB monarchy/NOUN 8220an/ADJ island/NOUN of/ADP stability8221/PROPN in/ADP the/DET Middle/PROPN East/PROPN But/CCONJ for/ADP the/DET next/ADJ 13/NUM months/NOUN Iran/PROPN was/AUX anything/PRON but/SCONJ stable/ADJ The/DET Iranian/ADJ people/NOUN were/AUX daily/ADV protesting/VERB the/DET brutality/NOUN of/ADP their/PRON dictator/NOUN holding/VERB mass/NOUN demonstrations/NOUN from/ADP one/NUM end/NOUN of/ADP the/DET country/NOUN to/ADP 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<p>NEW YORK (AP) &#8212; It&#8217;s before dawn when two outreach workers find a homeless man known as Juice near a train station in Harlem. A nurse will be visiting to discuss his heart problems, they tell him.</p> <p>A short time later, in Marcus Garvey Park, the sun has just begun to rise when the caseworkers approach a man zipped inside a sleeping bag. They have encountered him before; they know he&#8217;s teasing when he gives a phony name.</p> <p>Gladys Rivera and Ali Olson are part of a citywide, round-the-clock army of workers for nonprofits contracted by the city. Their aim is to get the homeless into shelter, and so they make the rounds of upper Manhattan, checking on clients, identifying newcomers to the streets and trying to connect them with services. They are often rejected, but they do not give up.</p> <p>&#8220;You never know which one is going to be the one that sticks,&#8221; said Olson.</p> <p>Rivera and Olson are soldiers in the city&#8217;s massive daily effort to get the homeless off the street, and into a system that has the capacity to shelter anyone who needs a place to stay.</p> <p>Gladys Rivera, left, and Ali Olson talk to a man at a Harlem amphitheater. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)</p> <p>The nation&#8217;s most populous city also has the nation&#8217;s largest homeless population, with 75,000, and like other high-rent cities, it has not been able to move the dispossessed to permanent housing nearly as fast as people are becoming homeless. But there is one key difference: The homeless in New York are far less visible on a daily basis than in West Coast cities where the population has exploded over the past couple years, leading several local governments to declare states of emergency.</p> <p>The city had fewer than 4,000 unsheltered homeless in an official count taken in January, a number that might have been deflated somewhat by winter weather. But that amounts to only about 1 in 20 homeless people being unsheltered. That compares with 15 of every 20 homeless people in Los Angeles sleeping on the streets or in tents, vehicles or abandoned buildings. In California, Oregon and Washington combined, 12 out of every 20 homeless people have no shelter at night.</p> <p>New York City has more people in shelters than the three West Coast states combined - and about the same number living on the street as Oakland, a city that has just 5 percent the population of New York.</p> <p>The District of Columbia has a similar right-to-shelter policy in effect during cold-weather months, and Massachusetts has one for families with children. Both places have relatively low numbers of street homeless, or those who do not have shelter on any given night.</p> <p>Some West Coast cities are pushing for permanent affordable housing as a long-term fix for the growing homeless crisis, but officials also are looking for immediate answers. The idea of right-to-shelter programs mimicking New York&#8217;s has popped up in this year&#8217;s mayoral race in Seattle.</p> <p>New York&#8217;s policy grew out of a series of court rulings dating to the 1970s and is rooted in state constitutional provisions adopted in the 1930s to ensure the needy would get government help.</p> <p>Rivera talks to homeless people at a Harlem park. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)</p> <p>Homeless families can get short-term shelter while their cases are investigated and longer-term shelter if they are found to need it. For single adults, there is even easier access to the system. They show up at intake centers and are usually given a place to stay that night.</p> <p>There are ample opportunities to get inside, said Cedric Harden, a 35-year-old formerly homeless man now working as a chef.</p> <p>&#8220;You have to be crazy as hell to be homeless in New York City,&#8221; he said, while visiting old friends on the streets in Harlem.</p> <p>While the effort is expansive, it&#8217;s also not cheap. Last year, New York spent nearly $1.7 billion in city, state and federal money to aid the homeless. And even with that commitment, the sheltering program has its critics among the homeless. Some 4,000 people continue to sleep outside.</p> <p>&#8220;No one wants to be in a shelter ... where all anybody does is fight,&#8221; said Anthony Rainey, who was packing his possessions into a wheelchair when the caseworkers spoke with him during their early morning rounds.</p> <p>Rainey, 63, had slept next to a school but cleared out before students arrived. He said he has been on the streets since 1971, when he got back from his time in Vietnam as a Marine. He&#8217;s stayed out even after being hit by two cars and breaking bones a few years ago.</p> <p>For the people who remain on the streets - many with mental health issues, drug addictions or years of incarceration in their pasts - Rainey&#8217;s complaint is common. They note the police officers who serve as guards, the small lockers and strict curfews.</p> <p>&#8220;A shelter is no different from jail,&#8221; said William Bryant, a 50-year-old who has stayed with a group of a half-dozen others in front of a vacant sushi restaurant near Penn Station since he was released over the summer after a four-month stint in jail for drug possession.</p> <p>William Bryant (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)</p> <p>Steven Banks spent more than 30 years suing the city to help the homeless, and it was his lawsuit that forced New York to shelter homeless families, who now make up most of the sheltered population. Now he&#8217;s working on the inside, after Mayor Bill de Blasio appointed him three years ago to oversee the Department of Homeless Services.</p> <p>Among other things, he wants to phase out the use of hotels to house the homeless. A city comptroller report earlier this year found that nearly 8,000 people were being put up in hotels at a total cost of more than $500,000 a day - a high price for housing that&#8217;s not permanent.</p> <p>Banks also is pushing to improve conditions at shelters. He wants to open 90 new facilities, increase the size of the outreach staff and give them better technology to share information about clients.</p> <p>The overall plan, adopted earlier this year, aims to reduce the shelter population by 2,500 over five years.</p> <p>While that sounds like a modest objective, Banks said the key is reversing the growth of the Department of Homeless Services&#8217; shelter system. The homeless population has nearly doubled since former Mayor Michael Bloomberg took office in 2002.</p> <p>Banks said there are four steps to addressing homelessness: keeping people in housing; getting those who are homeless off the streets; making sure shelters are safe and decent; and moving people from shelters to permanent housing.</p> <p>&#8220;Without a comprehensive approach with each of those four elements,&#8221; Banks said, &#8220;homelessness cannot effectively be addressed.&#8221;</p> <p>The other prominent East Coast cities with right-to-shelter polices, Boston and the District of Columbia, have seen the same success as New York in getting the homeless off the streets on any given night - and like New York, they are searching for long-term answers.</p> <p>Joe Finn, president of the Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance, said it&#8217;s common for people in his state to get stuck in shelters.</p> <p>&#8220;For many, you can&#8217;t even call it an emergency shelter anymore,&#8221; he said. &#8220;What it&#8217;s become is acceptable housing for many of the poorest people in the commonwealth.&#8221;</p> <p>And yet even the temporary shelters are better than the alternative by some measures. One recent study concluded that people who are homeless and living on the streets die at a much higher rate than those without a housing option.</p> <p>&#8220;The provision of shelter is an emergency, life-saving policy that must be in place to meet people&#8217;s needs that can&#8217;t be delayed,&#8221; said Giselle Routhier, policy director at the New York-based Coalition for the Homeless. &#8220;Even for a day.&#8221;</p> <p>Paul Franklin (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)</p> <p>Amid the challenges in trying to get people off the streets, there are many success stories.</p> <p>Paul Franklin is staying in a shelter in the Bronx while he waits for an apartment to be ready for him in a building that provides supportive housing.</p> <p>Franklin was on the streets off and on for about a year after he was released from prison in 2015, having served six years for assault. By the fall of 2016, he was assigned a cot at Delta Manor, a former apartment building that had been transformed from a general shelter to a specialized one that serves 101 men with mental illnesses.</p> <p>The facility has cots and lockers, like the larger shelters. It also has psychiatrists on staff along with nurses who monitor residents&#8217; prescriptions. There&#8217;s a laundry room, a TV room with art by residents on the wall, a cafeteria that serves three meals a day, and a patio where the men doted on kittens born there recently.</p> <p>Franklin said this shelter is far better than the alternative.</p> <p>&#8220;Eating out of garbage cans, sleeping in New York City subways, it&#8217;s not a pretty thing,&#8221; said Franklin, 57. &#8220;It&#8217;s no place I want to be.&#8221;</p> <p>___</p> <p>Follow Mulvihill at <a href="http://www.twitter.com/geoffmulvihill" type="external" /> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/geoffmulvihill" type="external">http://www.twitter.com/geoffmulvihill</a></p> <p>Follow AP&#8217;s complete coverage of the homeless crisis here: <a href="" type="internal">https://apnews.com/tag/HomelessCrisis</a></p> <p>NEW YORK (AP) &#8212; It&#8217;s before dawn when two outreach workers find a homeless man known as Juice near a train station in Harlem. A nurse will be visiting to discuss his heart problems, they tell him.</p> <p>A short time later, in Marcus Garvey Park, the sun has just begun to rise when the caseworkers approach a man zipped inside a sleeping bag. They have encountered him before; they know he&#8217;s teasing when he gives a phony name.</p> <p>Gladys Rivera and Ali Olson are part of a citywide, round-the-clock army of workers for nonprofits contracted by the city. Their aim is to get the homeless into shelter, and so they make the rounds of upper Manhattan, checking on clients, identifying newcomers to the streets and trying to connect them with services. They are often rejected, but they do not give up.</p> <p>&#8220;You never know which one is going to be the one that sticks,&#8221; said Olson.</p> <p>Rivera and Olson are soldiers in the city&#8217;s massive daily effort to get the homeless off the street, and into a system that has the capacity to shelter anyone who needs a place to stay.</p> <p>Gladys Rivera, left, and Ali Olson talk to a man at a Harlem amphitheater. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)</p> <p>The nation&#8217;s most populous city also has the nation&#8217;s largest homeless population, with 75,000, and like other high-rent cities, it has not been able to move the dispossessed to permanent housing nearly as fast as people are becoming homeless. But there is one key difference: The homeless in New York are far less visible on a daily basis than in West Coast cities where the population has exploded over the past couple years, leading several local governments to declare states of emergency.</p> <p>The city had fewer than 4,000 unsheltered homeless in an official count taken in January, a number that might have been deflated somewhat by winter weather. But that amounts to only about 1 in 20 homeless people being unsheltered. That compares with 15 of every 20 homeless people in Los Angeles sleeping on the streets or in tents, vehicles or abandoned buildings. In California, Oregon and Washington combined, 12 out of every 20 homeless people have no shelter at night.</p> <p>New York City has more people in shelters than the three West Coast states combined - and about the same number living on the street as Oakland, a city that has just 5 percent the population of New York.</p> <p>The District of Columbia has a similar right-to-shelter policy in effect during cold-weather months, and Massachusetts has one for families with children. Both places have relatively low numbers of street homeless, or those who do not have shelter on any given night.</p> <p>Some West Coast cities are pushing for permanent affordable housing as a long-term fix for the growing homeless crisis, but officials also are looking for immediate answers. The idea of right-to-shelter programs mimicking New York&#8217;s has popped up in this year&#8217;s mayoral race in Seattle.</p> <p>New York&#8217;s policy grew out of a series of court rulings dating to the 1970s and is rooted in state constitutional provisions adopted in the 1930s to ensure the needy would get government help.</p> <p>Rivera talks to homeless people at a Harlem park. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)</p> <p>Homeless families can get short-term shelter while their cases are investigated and longer-term shelter if they are found to need it. For single adults, there is even easier access to the system. They show up at intake centers and are usually given a place to stay that night.</p> <p>There are ample opportunities to get inside, said Cedric Harden, a 35-year-old formerly homeless man now working as a chef.</p> <p>&#8220;You have to be crazy as hell to be homeless in New York City,&#8221; he said, while visiting old friends on the streets in Harlem.</p> <p>While the effort is expansive, it&#8217;s also not cheap. Last year, New York spent nearly $1.7 billion in city, state and federal money to aid the homeless. And even with that commitment, the sheltering program has its critics among the homeless. Some 4,000 people continue to sleep outside.</p> <p>&#8220;No one wants to be in a shelter ... where all anybody does is fight,&#8221; said Anthony Rainey, who was packing his possessions into a wheelchair when the caseworkers spoke with him during their early morning rounds.</p> <p>Rainey, 63, had slept next to a school but cleared out before students arrived. He said he has been on the streets since 1971, when he got back from his time in Vietnam as a Marine. He&#8217;s stayed out even after being hit by two cars and breaking bones a few years ago.</p> <p>For the people who remain on the streets - many with mental health issues, drug addictions or years of incarceration in their pasts - Rainey&#8217;s complaint is common. They note the police officers who serve as guards, the small lockers and strict curfews.</p> <p>&#8220;A shelter is no different from jail,&#8221; said William Bryant, a 50-year-old who has stayed with a group of a half-dozen others in front of a vacant sushi restaurant near Penn Station since he was released over the summer after a four-month stint in jail for drug possession.</p> <p>William Bryant (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)</p> <p>Steven Banks spent more than 30 years suing the city to help the homeless, and it was his lawsuit that forced New York to shelter homeless families, who now make up most of the sheltered population. Now he&#8217;s working on the inside, after Mayor Bill de Blasio appointed him three years ago to oversee the Department of Homeless Services.</p> <p>Among other things, he wants to phase out the use of hotels to house the homeless. A city comptroller report earlier this year found that nearly 8,000 people were being put up in hotels at a total cost of more than $500,000 a day - a high price for housing that&#8217;s not permanent.</p> <p>Banks also is pushing to improve conditions at shelters. He wants to open 90 new facilities, increase the size of the outreach staff and give them better technology to share information about clients.</p> <p>The overall plan, adopted earlier this year, aims to reduce the shelter population by 2,500 over five years.</p> <p>While that sounds like a modest objective, Banks said the key is reversing the growth of the Department of Homeless Services&#8217; shelter system. The homeless population has nearly doubled since former Mayor Michael Bloomberg took office in 2002.</p> <p>Banks said there are four steps to addressing homelessness: keeping people in housing; getting those who are homeless off the streets; making sure shelters are safe and decent; and moving people from shelters to permanent housing.</p> <p>&#8220;Without a comprehensive approach with each of those four elements,&#8221; Banks said, &#8220;homelessness cannot effectively be addressed.&#8221;</p> <p>The other prominent East Coast cities with right-to-shelter polices, Boston and the District of Columbia, have seen the same success as New York in getting the homeless off the streets on any given night - and like New York, they are searching for long-term answers.</p> <p>Joe Finn, president of the Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance, said it&#8217;s common for people in his state to get stuck in shelters.</p> <p>&#8220;For many, you can&#8217;t even call it an emergency shelter anymore,&#8221; he said. &#8220;What it&#8217;s become is acceptable housing for many of the poorest people in the commonwealth.&#8221;</p> <p>And yet even the temporary shelters are better than the alternative by some measures. One recent study concluded that people who are homeless and living on the streets die at a much higher rate than those without a housing option.</p> <p>&#8220;The provision of shelter is an emergency, life-saving policy that must be in place to meet people&#8217;s needs that can&#8217;t be delayed,&#8221; said Giselle Routhier, policy director at the New York-based Coalition for the Homeless. &#8220;Even for a day.&#8221;</p> <p>Paul Franklin (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)</p> <p>Amid the challenges in trying to get people off the streets, there are many success stories.</p> <p>Paul Franklin is staying in a shelter in the Bronx while he waits for an apartment to be ready for him in a building that provides supportive housing.</p> <p>Franklin was on the streets off and on for about a year after he was released from prison in 2015, having served six years for assault. By the fall of 2016, he was assigned a cot at Delta Manor, a former apartment building that had been transformed from a general shelter to a specialized one that serves 101 men with mental illnesses.</p> <p>The facility has cots and lockers, like the larger shelters. It also has psychiatrists on staff along with nurses who monitor residents&#8217; prescriptions. There&#8217;s a laundry room, a TV room with art by residents on the wall, a cafeteria that serves three meals a day, and a patio where the men doted on kittens born there recently.</p> <p>Franklin said this shelter is far better than the alternative.</p> <p>&#8220;Eating out of garbage cans, sleeping in New York City subways, it&#8217;s not a pretty thing,&#8221; said Franklin, 57. &#8220;It&#8217;s no place I want to be.&#8221;</p> <p>___</p> <p>Follow Mulvihill at <a href="http://www.twitter.com/geoffmulvihill" type="external" /> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/geoffmulvihill" type="external">http://www.twitter.com/geoffmulvihill</a></p> <p>Follow AP&#8217;s complete coverage of the homeless crisis here: <a href="" type="internal">https://apnews.com/tag/HomelessCrisis</a></p>

East Coast offers homeless insights as West Coast struggles

https://apnews.com/145e200283e5431f8218d367bd068931

2017-11-08

2least

NEW YORK AP 8212 It8217s before dawn when two outreach workers find a homeless man known as Juice near a train station in Harlem A nurse will be visiting to discuss his heart problems they tell him A short time later in Marcus Garvey Park the sun has just begun to rise when the caseworkers approach a man zipped inside a sleeping bag They have encountered him before they know he8217s teasing when he gives a phony name Gladys Rivera and Ali Olson are part of a citywide roundtheclock army of workers for nonprofits contracted by the city Their aim is to get the homeless into shelter and so they make the rounds of upper Manhattan checking on clients identifying newcomers to the streets and trying to connect them with services They are often rejected but they do not give up 8220You never know which one is going to be the one that sticks8221 said Olson Rivera and Olson are soldiers in the city8217s massive daily effort to get the homeless off the street and into a system that has the capacity to shelter anyone who needs a place to stay Gladys Rivera left and Ali Olson talk to a man at a Harlem amphitheater AP PhotoSeth Wenig The nation8217s most populous city also has the nation8217s largest homeless population with 75000 and like other highrent cities it has not been able to move the dispossessed to permanent housing nearly as fast as people are becoming homeless But there is one key difference The homeless in New York are far less visible on a daily basis than in West Coast cities where the population has exploded over the past couple years leading several local governments to declare states of emergency The city had fewer than 4000 unsheltered homeless in an official count taken in January a number that might have been deflated somewhat by winter weather But that amounts to only about 1 in 20 homeless people being unsheltered That compares with 15 of every 20 homeless people in Los Angeles sleeping on the streets or in tents vehicles or abandoned buildings In California Oregon and Washington combined 12 out of every 20 homeless people have no shelter at night New York City has more people in shelters than the three West Coast states combined and about the same number living on the street as Oakland a city that has just 5 percent the population of New York The District of Columbia has a similar righttoshelter policy in effect during coldweather months and Massachusetts has one for families with children Both places have relatively low numbers of street homeless or those who do not have shelter on any given night Some West Coast cities are pushing for permanent affordable housing as a longterm fix for the growing homeless crisis but officials also are looking for immediate answers The idea of righttoshelter programs mimicking New York8217s has popped up in this year8217s mayoral race in Seattle New York8217s policy grew out of a series of court rulings dating to the 1970s and is rooted in state constitutional provisions adopted in the 1930s to ensure the needy would get government help Rivera talks to homeless people at a Harlem park AP PhotoSeth Wenig Homeless families can get shortterm shelter while their cases are investigated and longerterm shelter if they are found to need it For single adults there is even easier access to the system They show up at intake centers and are usually given a place to stay that night There are ample opportunities to get inside said Cedric Harden a 35yearold formerly homeless man now working as a chef 8220You have to be crazy as hell to be homeless in New York City8221 he said while visiting old friends on the streets in Harlem While the effort is expansive it8217s also not cheap Last year New York spent nearly 17 billion in city state and federal money to aid the homeless And even with that commitment the sheltering program has its critics among the homeless Some 4000 people continue to sleep outside 8220No one wants to be in a shelter where all anybody does is fight8221 said Anthony Rainey who was packing his possessions into a wheelchair when the caseworkers spoke with him during their early morning rounds Rainey 63 had slept next to a school but cleared out before students arrived He said he has been on the streets since 1971 when he got back from his time in Vietnam as a Marine He8217s stayed out even after being hit by two cars and breaking bones a few years ago For the people who remain on the streets many with mental health issues drug addictions or years of incarceration in their pasts Rainey8217s complaint is common They note the police officers who serve as guards the small lockers and strict curfews 8220A shelter is no different from jail8221 said William Bryant a 50yearold who has stayed with a group of a halfdozen others in front of a vacant sushi restaurant near Penn Station since he was released over the summer after a fourmonth stint in jail for drug possession William Bryant AP PhotoSeth Wenig Steven Banks spent more than 30 years suing the city to help the homeless and it was his lawsuit that forced New York to shelter homeless families who now make up most of the sheltered population Now he8217s working on the inside after Mayor Bill de Blasio appointed him three years ago to oversee the Department of Homeless Services Among other things he wants to phase out the use of hotels to house the homeless A city comptroller report earlier this year found that nearly 8000 people were being put up in hotels at a total cost of more than 500000 a day a high price for housing that8217s not permanent Banks also is pushing to improve conditions at shelters He wants to open 90 new facilities increase the size of the outreach staff and give them better technology to share information about clients The overall plan adopted earlier this year aims to reduce the shelter population by 2500 over five years While that sounds like a modest objective Banks said the key is reversing the growth of the Department of Homeless Services8217 shelter system The homeless population has nearly doubled since former Mayor Michael Bloomberg took office in 2002 Banks said there are four steps to addressing homelessness keeping people in housing getting those who are homeless off the streets making sure shelters are safe and decent and moving people from shelters to permanent housing 8220Without a comprehensive approach with each of those four elements8221 Banks said 8220homelessness cannot effectively be addressed8221 The other prominent East Coast cities with righttoshelter polices Boston and the District of Columbia have seen the same success as New York in getting the homeless off the streets on any given night and like New York they are searching for longterm answers Joe Finn president of the Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance said it8217s common for people in his state to get stuck in shelters 8220For many you can8217t even call it an emergency shelter anymore8221 he said 8220What it8217s become is acceptable housing for many of the poorest people in the commonwealth8221 And yet even the temporary shelters are better than the alternative by some measures One recent study concluded that people who are homeless and living on the streets die at a much higher rate than those without a housing option 8220The provision of shelter is an emergency lifesaving policy that must be in place to meet people8217s needs that can8217t be delayed8221 said Giselle Routhier policy director at the New Yorkbased Coalition for the Homeless 8220Even for a day8221 Paul Franklin AP PhotoSeth Wenig Amid the challenges in trying to get people off the streets there are many success stories Paul Franklin is staying in a shelter in the Bronx while he waits for an apartment to be ready for him in a building that provides supportive housing Franklin was on the streets off and on for about a year after he was released from prison in 2015 having served six years for assault By the fall of 2016 he was assigned a cot at Delta Manor a former apartment building that had been transformed from a general shelter to a specialized one that serves 101 men with mental illnesses The facility has cots and lockers like the larger shelters It also has psychiatrists on staff along with nurses who monitor residents8217 prescriptions There8217s a laundry room a TV room with art by residents on the wall a cafeteria that serves three meals a day and a patio where the men doted on kittens born there recently Franklin said this shelter is far better than the alternative 8220Eating out of garbage cans sleeping in New York City subways it8217s not a pretty thing8221 said Franklin 57 8220It8217s no place I want to be8221 ___ Follow Mulvihill at httpwwwtwittercomgeoffmulvihill Follow AP8217s complete coverage of the homeless crisis here httpsapnewscomtagHomelessCrisis NEW YORK AP 8212 It8217s before dawn when two outreach workers find a homeless man known as Juice near a train station in Harlem A nurse will be visiting to discuss his heart problems they tell him A short time later in Marcus Garvey Park the sun has just begun to rise when the caseworkers approach a man zipped inside a sleeping bag They have encountered him before they know he8217s teasing when he gives a phony name Gladys Rivera and Ali Olson are part of a citywide roundtheclock army of workers for nonprofits contracted by the city Their aim is to get the homeless into shelter and so they make the rounds of upper Manhattan checking on clients identifying newcomers to the streets and trying to connect them with services They are often rejected but they do not give up 8220You never know which one is going to be the one that sticks8221 said Olson Rivera and Olson are soldiers in the city8217s massive daily effort to get the homeless off the street and into a system that has the capacity to shelter anyone who needs a place to stay Gladys Rivera left and Ali Olson talk to a man at a Harlem amphitheater AP PhotoSeth Wenig The nation8217s most populous city also has the nation8217s largest homeless population with 75000 and like other highrent cities it has not been able to move the dispossessed to permanent housing nearly as fast as people are becoming homeless But there is one key difference The homeless in New York are far less visible on a daily basis than in West Coast cities where the population has exploded over the past couple years leading several local governments to declare states of emergency The city had fewer than 4000 unsheltered homeless in an official count taken in January a number that might have been deflated somewhat by winter weather But that amounts to only about 1 in 20 homeless people being unsheltered That compares with 15 of every 20 homeless people in Los Angeles sleeping on the streets or in tents vehicles or abandoned buildings In California Oregon and Washington combined 12 out of every 20 homeless people have no shelter at night New York City has more people in shelters than the three West Coast states combined and about the same number living on the street as Oakland a city that has just 5 percent the population of New York The District of Columbia has a similar righttoshelter policy in effect during coldweather months and Massachusetts has one for families with children Both places have relatively low numbers of street homeless or those who do not have shelter on any given night Some West Coast cities are pushing for permanent affordable housing as a longterm fix for the growing homeless crisis but officials also are looking for immediate answers The idea of righttoshelter programs mimicking New York8217s has popped up in this year8217s mayoral race in Seattle New York8217s policy grew out of a series of court rulings dating to the 1970s and is rooted in state constitutional provisions adopted in the 1930s to ensure the needy would get government help Rivera talks to homeless people at a Harlem park AP PhotoSeth Wenig Homeless families can get shortterm shelter while their cases are investigated and longerterm shelter if they are found to need it For single adults there is even easier access to the system They show up at intake centers and are usually given a place to stay that night There are ample opportunities to get inside said Cedric Harden a 35yearold formerly homeless man now working as a chef 8220You have to be crazy as hell to be homeless in New York City8221 he said while visiting old friends on the streets in Harlem While the effort is expansive it8217s also not cheap Last year New York spent nearly 17 billion in city state and federal money to aid the homeless And even with that commitment the sheltering program has its critics among the homeless Some 4000 people continue to sleep outside 8220No one wants to be in a shelter where all anybody does is fight8221 said Anthony Rainey who was packing his possessions into a wheelchair when the caseworkers spoke with him during their early morning rounds Rainey 63 had slept next to a school but cleared out before students arrived He said he has been on the streets since 1971 when he got back from his time in Vietnam as a Marine He8217s stayed out even after being hit by two cars and breaking bones a few years ago For the people who remain on the streets many with mental health issues drug addictions or years of incarceration in their pasts Rainey8217s complaint is common They note the police officers who serve as guards the small lockers and strict curfews 8220A shelter is no different from jail8221 said William Bryant a 50yearold who has stayed with a group of a halfdozen others in front of a vacant sushi restaurant near Penn Station since he was released over the summer after a fourmonth stint in jail for drug possession William Bryant AP PhotoSeth Wenig Steven Banks spent more than 30 years suing the city to help the homeless and it was his lawsuit that forced New York to shelter homeless families who now make up most of the sheltered population Now he8217s working on the inside after Mayor Bill de Blasio appointed him three years ago to oversee the Department of Homeless Services Among other things he wants to phase out the use of hotels to house the homeless A city comptroller report earlier this year found that nearly 8000 people were being put up in hotels at a total cost of more than 500000 a day a high price for housing that8217s not permanent Banks also is pushing to improve conditions at shelters He wants to open 90 new facilities increase the size of the outreach staff and give them better technology to share information about clients The overall plan adopted earlier this year aims to reduce the shelter population by 2500 over five years While that sounds like a modest objective Banks said the key is reversing the growth of the Department of Homeless Services8217 shelter system The homeless population has nearly doubled since former Mayor Michael Bloomberg took office in 2002 Banks said there are four steps to addressing homelessness keeping people in housing getting those who are homeless off the streets making sure shelters are safe and decent and moving people from shelters to permanent housing 8220Without a comprehensive approach with each of those four elements8221 Banks said 8220homelessness cannot effectively be addressed8221 The other prominent East Coast cities with righttoshelter polices Boston and the District of Columbia have seen the same success as New York in getting the homeless off the streets on any given night and like New York they are searching for longterm answers Joe Finn president of the Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance said it8217s common for people in his state to get stuck in shelters 8220For many you can8217t even call it an emergency shelter anymore8221 he said 8220What it8217s become is acceptable housing for many of the poorest people in the commonwealth8221 And yet even the temporary shelters are better than the alternative by some measures One recent study concluded that people who are homeless and living on the streets die at a much higher rate than those without a housing option 8220The provision of shelter is an emergency lifesaving policy that must be in place to meet people8217s needs that can8217t be delayed8221 said Giselle Routhier policy director at the New Yorkbased Coalition for the Homeless 8220Even for a day8221 Paul Franklin AP PhotoSeth Wenig Amid the challenges in trying to get people off the streets there are many success stories Paul Franklin is staying in a shelter in the Bronx while he waits for an apartment to be ready for him in a building that provides supportive housing Franklin was on the streets off and on for about a year after he was released from prison in 2015 having served six years for assault By the fall of 2016 he was assigned a cot at Delta Manor a former apartment building that had been transformed from a general shelter to a specialized one that serves 101 men with mental illnesses The facility has cots and lockers like the larger shelters It also has psychiatrists on staff along with nurses who monitor residents8217 prescriptions There8217s a laundry room a TV room with art by residents on the wall a cafeteria that serves three meals a day and a patio where the men doted on kittens born there recently Franklin said this shelter is far better than the alternative 8220Eating out of garbage cans sleeping in New York City subways it8217s not a pretty thing8221 said Franklin 57 8220It8217s no place I want to be8221 ___ Follow Mulvihill at httpwwwtwittercomgeoffmulvihill Follow AP8217s complete coverage of the homeless crisis here httpsapnewscomtagHomelessCrisis

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<p>(Repeats to add media slugs with no changes to text)</p> <p>MOSCOW, Jan 23 (Reuters) - The Russian premiere of &#8220;Death of Stalin, a dark, satirical movie from British director Armando Iannucci, was called off on Tuesday after a private pre-release viewing drew ire from government figures, TASS news agency reported.</p> <p>The culture ministry withdrew the license it had previously granted for the movie&#8217;s general release in Russia, the agency quoted the ministry&#8217;s press office as saying.</p> <p>It was not immediately clear if the film could still be shown in Russia at a later date. The culture ministry and the film&#8217;s director could not be reached for comment.</p> <p>The film, which focuses on the back-stabbing and in-fighting of the Soviet leader&#8217;s closest allies as they vie for power immediately after his death, was viewed by culture ministry officials and advisors at the weekend.</p> <p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a despicable film,&#8221; said Nadezhda Usmanova, head of the Russian Military Historical Society&#8217;s department of information. The group was involved in organising the pre-release screening.</p> <p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a bad film, it&#8217;s a boring film, and it&#8217;s vile, repugnant and insulting,&#8221; Usmanova told Reuters.</p> <p>Elena Drapeko, deputy head of the culture committee in the State Duma, the lower house of Parliament, told Reuters she found &#8220;extremism&#8221; in the movie.</p> <p>&#8220;It&#8217;s an effort to breed bad blood into the social harmony that has been reached in Russian society&#8221;, said Drapeko, who earlier in her career was a popular Soviet and Russian actress. (reporting by Denis Pinchuk,; writing by Polina Ivanova; Editing by Christian Lowe)</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BODELWYDDAN, Wales (Reuters) - (This version of the March 21 story was corrected to show the first use of gold from Wales in 1923 was for a wedding ring, not other jewelry; that Clogau Gold of Wales only owns Gwynfynydd mine; that Clogau Gold of Wales did not supply the royals with gold; that the Clogau St David and Gwynfynydd mines are not both in Bontddu; other details)</p> A vintage hallmarking press featuring a Welsh Dragon is seen at the Clogau office in Bodelwyddan, North Wales, Britain, March 12, 2018. Picture taken March 12, 2018. REUTERS/Phil Noble <p>When Britain&#8217;s Prince Harry marries Meghan Markle in May he is expected to follow a royal tradition started nearly 100 years ago of using a wedding band of Welsh gold.</p> <p>His great-grandmother, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, was the first to use gold from Wales in a wedding ring when, as Elizabeth Bowes Lyon, she married the future King George VI in 1923.</p> <p>Her example was followed by the current Queen Elizabeth when she married Prince Philip in 1947 and then by royals through to Prince William&#8217;s wedding to Catherine Middleton in 2011.</p> <p>For Markle&#8217;s wedding, the rare gold ring with the Welsh dragon stamp will probably be made by jeweler Wartski at its London workshop, said Ben Roberts, managing director of Clogau Gold of Wales, which uses gold from the same mines from which gold was gifted to the royals.</p> A wedding ring made from Welsh Gold is seen on display at the Clogau office in Bodelwyddan, North Wales, Britain, March 12, 2018. Picture taken March 12, 2018. REUTERS/Phil Noble <p>Roberts said he thought the ring would be a yellow shade of gold to match Markle&#8217;s engagement ring, which was designed by Prince Harry and features three diamonds.</p> <p>&#8220;Looking at her engagement ring, it will probably have to match, so it will probably be yellow,&#8221; he told Reuters, rather than the distinctive rose-gold commonly used in the company&#8217;s jewelry designs.</p> Slideshow (3 Images) <p>The royals first received Welsh gold from the Clogau St David mine in 1923. In 1986, the queen received a second gift of Welsh gold by the British Legion from Gwynfynydd mine which is now owned by Clogau Gold of Wales.</p> <p>The 24-carat Welsh gold has a higher percentage of pure gold than standard 18-carat gold, giving it a rich, warm color.</p> <p>If Welsh gold is used in Markle&#8217;s ring, Roberts said official confirmation from the palace will only come after the wedding.</p> <p>The Clogau St David and Gwynfynydd mines, both in northwest Wales, are currently closed, having last operated in the 1990s. As finite gold resources are running out, Roberts has plans to reopen Gwynfynydd in the near future and invite the queen&#8217;s son and heir Prince Charles to visit the mine.</p> <p>Editing by Stephen Addison and William Schomberg</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Hundreds of thousands of Americans galvanized by last month&#8217;s Florida school massacre rallied in cities across the country on Saturday to demand tighter gun laws.</p> <p>Carrying signs with slogans such as &#8220;If they choose guns over our kids, vote them out,&#8221; protesters in Washington jammed Pennsylvania Avenue as students from the Parkland, Florida, high school where 17 people were shot to death called on lawmakers and President Donald Trump to confront the issue.</p> <p>The massive March For Our Lives rallies, some led by student survivors from Parkland, aim to break legislative gridlock that has long stymied efforts to increase restrictions on firearms sales in a nation where mass shootings like the one on Feb. 14 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School have become frighteningly common.</p> <p>&#8220;Politicians: either represent the people or get out. Stand with us or beware, the voters are coming,&#8221; Cameron Kasky, a 17-year-old junior at the high school, told the crowd.</p> <p>Another Parkland survivor, David Hogg, said it was a new day. &#8220;You can hear the people in power shaking,&#8221; he said to loud applause.</p> <p>&#8220;We&#8217;re going to make sure the best people get in our elections to run not as politicians, but as Americans. Because this - this - is not cutting it,&#8221; he said, pointing at the white-domed Capitol. &#8220;We can and we will change the world!&#8221;</p> <p>Youthful marchers filled streets in cities nationwide including Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, San Diego and St. Louis.</p> <p>More than 800 demonstrations were scheduled in the United States and abroad, according to coordinators, with events as far afield as London, Mauritius and Stockholm.</p> <p>Underlining sharp differences among the American public over the issue, counter-demonstrators and supporters of gun rights were also in evidence in many cities.</p> <p>&#8220;Guns don&#8217;t kill people. People kill people,&#8221; said Connor Humphrey, 16, of San Luis Obispo, California, who was visiting Washington with his family for spring break.</p> <p>Humphrey, wearing a red &#8220;Make America Great Again&#8221; sweatshirt, said he owns guns for target shooting and hunting and uses them responsibly. His school had a lockdown exercise last week.</p> <p>&#8220;I think teachers should have guns,&#8221; he said, echoing a proposal made by Trump after the Parkland killings.</p> <p>Organizers of the anti-gun rallies want Congress, many of whose members are up for re-election in November, to ban the sale of assault weapons like the one used in the Florida rampage and to tighten background checks for gun buyers.</p> <p>On the other side of the debate, gun rights advocates cite constitutional guarantees of the right to bear arms.</p> <p>&#8220;All they&#8217;re doing is asking the government to take their liberty away from them without due process,&#8221; Brandon Howard, a 42-year-old Trump supporter, said of the protesters in the capital. He had a sign saying: &#8220;Keep your hands off my guns.&#8221;</p> Daisy Hernandez, age 22, joins students and gun control advocates for the "March for Our Lives" event demanding gun control after recent school shootings at a rally in Washington, U.S., March 24, 2018. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst <p>In New York, a handful of counter-demonstrators waved placards with messages such as &#8220;Keep America Armed&#8221; and &#8220;Re-elect Trump 2020.&#8221;</p> &#8216;THIS IS THE NORM FOR US&#8217; <p>Among those marching nearby next to Central Park was pop star Paul McCartney, who said he had a personal stake in the gun control debate.</p> <p>&#8220;One of my best friends was shot not far from here,&#8221; he told CNN, referring to Beatles bandmate John Lennon, who was gunned down near the park in 1980.</p> <p>Taking aim at the National Rifle Association gun lobby, teenagers chanted, &#8220;Hey, hey, NRA, how many kids have you killed today?&#8221;</p> Slideshow (30 Images) <p>So overcome with emotion was one of the Parkland students who was shot and survived, Samantha Fuentes, that she vomited on stage during her speech.</p> <p>&#8220;I just threw up on international television and it feels great,&#8221; she said to loud cheers afterward.</p> <p>The young U.S. organizers have won kudos and cash from dozens of celebrities, with singers Demi Lovato and Ariana Grande, as well as &#8220;Hamilton&#8221; creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, among those performing in Washington.</p> <p>Actor George Clooney and his human rights attorney wife, Amal, donated $500,000 and said they would be at the Washington rally.</p> <p>Democrats and nonpartisan groups hope to register at least 25,000 first-time voters at the rallies, potentially a boost for Democrats, who generally favor stricter gun controls.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-usa-guns-voters/mid-term-battle-at-u-s-anti-gun-marches-thousands-register-to-vote-idUSKBN1H00RY" type="external">Mid-term battle at U.S. anti-gun marches: thousands register to vote</a> <p>On Friday, Trump signed a $1.3 trillion spending bill that includes modest improvements to background checks for gun sales and grants to help schools prevent gun violence.</p> <p>White House deputy press secretary Lindsay Walters said the administration applauded &#8220;the many courageous young Americans&#8221; exercising their free-speech rights on Saturday.</p> <p>&#8220;Keeping our children safe is a top priority of the president&#8217;s,&#8221; said Walters, noting that on Friday the Justice Department proposed rule changes that would effectively ban &#8220;bump stock&#8221; devices that let semi-automatic weapons fire like a machine gun.</p> <p>Former President Barack Obama said on Twitter that he and his wife Michelle were inspired by all the young people who made the marches happen.</p> <p>&#8220;Keep at it. You&#8217;re leading us forward. Nothing can stand in the way of millions of voices calling for change,&#8221; Obama said.</p> <p>Reporting by Ian Simpson, Lacey Johnson, Katanga Johnson and Lauren Young in Washington, Alice Popovici in New York, Phoenix Tso in Los Angeles, Zachary Fagenson in Parkland, Robert Chiarito in Chicago, and Jim Oliphant in West Palm Beach; Editing by Daniel Wallis and James Dalgleish</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Voter registration activists fanned out among throngs of young Americans who marched for tighter gun laws on Saturday, signing up thousands of first-time voters who want to eject lawmakers who oppose gun control.</p> High school students carry a banner during a "March for Our Lives" demonstration demanding gun control in Seattle, Washington, U.S. March 24, 2018. REUTERS/Jason Redmond <p>With mid-term Congressional elections eight months away, the activists flocked to some 800 marches across the country to register young voters likely to back Democratic and independent candidates who tend to favor tougher firearms laws.</p> <p>In Washington, volunteers for the HeadCount voter-registration effort raised their fists and chanted &#8220;demonstration without registration leads to frustration&#8221; before heading out with clipboards to sign up some of the nation&#8217;s newest voters.</p> <p>&#8220;Parkland&#8217;s Emma Gonzalez called for more Americans to vote and that is why Headcount is here today,&#8221; volunteer Aaron Ghitelman, 26, said of the student who along with classmates forged a national, youth gun control movement following the Feb. 14 massacre at her high school in Parkland, Florida.</p> <p>Hugh Williams from Ypsilanti, Michigan, was among many 18-year-olds who answered her call.</p> <p>&#8220;Registering to vote today lifted a weight off of my shoulders. The more I see people marching and standing up for a cause I believe in, I want my voice to matter, too,&#8221; he said at the Washington march, adding that gun violence was a menace in his community.</p> <p>Organizers of the voter registration drive hoped to sign up at least 25,000 people on Saturday, a potential boost for Democrats who back stronger controls on assault-style weapons, bump stocks that let semiautomatic rifles fire like automatic weapons, and tighter access to guns for young people and the mentally ill.</p> <p>At a rally in Chicago, 17-year old Kara Sharp from Island Lake, Illinois, carried a sign reading &#8220;Protect students not guns - 2020 Voter&#8221; after traveling to the event with her father, a 53-year-old machinist.</p> People demonstrate during a "March For Our Lives" demonstration demanding gun control in Seattle, Washington, U.S. March 24, 2018. REUTERS/Jason Redmond <p>Volunteers from a local chapter of lobbying group Indivisible435, which backs progressive political candidates, told her how to register to vote once she got home, as she did not have her driving license with her.</p> <p>&#8220;It&#8217;s time to disarm hate. I&#8217;ll be looking at NRA ratings of politicians and also how they treat LGBQ issues,&#8221; said Sharp, a junior at Wauconda High School, referring to the grade the National Rife Association gives members of Congress for their voting record on gun rights.</p> Slideshow (2 Images) &#8216;TOOLS TO MAKE A CHANGE&#8217; <p>Registration activists are targeting four million Americans turning 18 this year, as well as the many 19- to 21-year-olds who have never voted.</p> <p>Participation in U.S. elections by young voters is often low. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Monday showed 64 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds said they would vote on Nov. 6, while 27 percent said they would not. Nine percent said they were uncertain or declined to answer.</p> <p>In Parkland, Florida, Sari Kaufman was among students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where the mass shooting happened, who urged peers to get involved in politics, register to vote and turf out lawmakers who did not protect them.</p> <p>&#8220;With this movement, we will ensure record-breaking turnout not just in the next presidential election, not in the next midterm election, but in all elections,&#8221; Kaufman told a crowd of thousands at a rally in Parkland.</p> <p>&#8220;We&#8217;re here today to give you the tools to make a change and demand the politicians take action.&#8221;</p> <p>Additional reporting by Robert Chiarito in Chicago and Zachary Fagenson in Parkland, Florida; Writing by Andrew Hay; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Nick Zieminski</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian rebels began pulling out of several towns in their former enclave of eastern Ghouta on Saturday, surrendering them to the government and leaving the besieged city of Douma as their last bastion there.</p> Syrian army soldiers fire tracer bullets into the air to celebrate their victory outside Harasta in eastern Ghouta, in Damascus, Syria March 23, 2018. REUTERS/Omar Sanadiki <p>It comes after a month-long assault that devastated the already battered eastern Ghouta, an area of farmland and towns that was one of the first centers of the uprising in 2011 and the last major rebel stronghold near the capital Damascus.</p> <p>Ten buses carrying fighters along with their families and other civilians started to leave the enclave after dark, the vanguard of a convoy heading into exile in northwestern Syria.</p> <p>It follows the departure of thousands of others on Friday from the town of Harasta in a similar deal for insurgents to depart with light weapons in return for giving up their territory.</p> <p>The buses queued at a crossing point before moving into the enclave along a road on the former front lines that had been cleared of barricades, debris and unexploded ordnance.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-ghouta-civilians/russia-says-over-105000-civilians-have-left-syrias-eastern-ghouta-ria-idUSKBN1H00BQ" type="external">Russia says over 105,000 civilians have left Syria's Eastern Ghouta: RIA</a> <p>Some captives held by the insurgents were released and state television showed them leaving in a minibus.</p> <p>The army was advancing into towns the rebels had retreated from in preparation for their exit, state television said. It broadcast pictures of the massive trenches and other fortifications the rebels were leaving behind.</p> <p>It means only Douma is left of the opposition&#8217;s eastern Ghouta enclave which a month ago the United Nations said was home to 400,000 people.</p> <p>The army offensive to capture it, heralded by one of the heaviest bombardments in the seven-year conflict with warplanes, helicopters and artillery, has killed more than 1,600 people, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor.</p> <p>Residents and rights groups have accused the government of using weapons that kill indiscriminately - inaccurate barrel bombs dropped from helicopters, chlorine gas and incendiary material that sets raging fires.</p> <p>Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his close ally Russia, which has helped his air campaign, have denied using all those weapons and say their offensive was needed to end the rule of Islamist militants over civilians.</p> Buses are seen entering into rebels Harasta area in eastern Ghouta in Damascus, Syria March 23, 2018. REUTERS/ Omar Sanadiki EVACUATION <p>About 7,000 people - fighters along with family members and other civilians who do not wish to come back under Assad&#8217;s rule - were to leave the towns of Zamalka, Arbin, Ein Terma and Jobar starting on Saturday, rebels and state media said.</p> <p>They will go to Idlib province in the northwest - the destination for many such &#8220;evacuations&#8221; after sieges and ground offensives forced numerous rebel enclaves to surrender in the past two years.</p> Slideshow (2 Images) <p>It will not mean an end to their experience of war. Syrian military and Russian air raids on Idlib have increased in the past week, killing dozens of people.</p> <p>Idlib is also unsettled by fighting between the rebel groups. On Saturday, an explosion at a headquarters for al Qaeda&#8217;s former affiliate killed at least seven people and injured 25 others.</p> <p>The Britain-based Observatory said there were also negotiations with the Jaish al-Islam rebel group that controls Douma to release prisoners.</p> <p>Russia will guarantee that civilians who remain in the areas recaptured by Assad will not be prosecuted, rebels said on Friday. However, rights groups have said some men were forcibly conscripted after fleeing the fighting.</p> <p>Wael Alwan, spokesman for the Failaq al-Rahman group that was dominant in Zamalka, Arbin, Ein Terma and Jobar, was quoted by al-Hadath television on Saturday as saying he did not trust Russia&#8217;s guarantees.</p> <p>A Russian military webcam at the al-Wafideen crossing point near Douma showed small groups of civilians continuing to flee the danger of further bombardment into government territory, carrying children and sacks of belongings.</p> <p>Russia&#8217;s military said more than 105,000 people had left eastern Ghouta, including over 700 on Saturday.</p> <p>Tens of thousands have fled their homes in the past week as the bombardment of Douma intensified and refugees from other parts of Ghouta found the basement bomb shelters too full to take them.</p> <p>Reporting by Angus McDowall; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Dale Hudson</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

RPT-Russian premiere of 'Death of Stalin' film called off - TASS Markle's wedding ring expected to follow royal tradition of Welsh gold Huge rallies led by students demand tighter U.S. gun controls Mid-term battle at U.S. anti-gun marches: thousands register to vote As Syrian rebels quit Ghouta, Douma stands alone

https://reuters.com/article/russia-film-stalin/rpt-russian-premiere-of-death-of-stalin-film-called-off-tass-idUSL8N1PI5RO

2018-01-23

2least

Repeats to add media slugs with no changes to text MOSCOW Jan 23 Reuters The Russian premiere of 8220Death of Stalin a dark satirical movie from British director Armando Iannucci was called off on Tuesday after a private prerelease viewing drew ire from government figures TASS news agency reported The culture ministry withdrew the license it had previously granted for the movie8217s general release in Russia the agency quoted the ministry8217s press office as saying It was not immediately clear if the film could still be shown in Russia at a later date The culture ministry and the film8217s director could not be reached for comment The film which focuses on the backstabbing and infighting of the Soviet leader8217s closest allies as they vie for power immediately after his death was viewed by culture ministry officials and advisors at the weekend 8220It8217s a despicable film8221 said Nadezhda Usmanova head of the Russian Military Historical Society8217s department of information The group was involved in organising the prerelease screening 8220It8217s a bad film it8217s a boring film and it8217s vile repugnant and insulting8221 Usmanova told Reuters Elena Drapeko deputy head of the culture committee in the State Duma the lower house of Parliament told Reuters she found 8220extremism8221 in the movie 8220It8217s an effort to breed bad blood into the social harmony that has been reached in Russian society8221 said Drapeko who earlier in her career was a popular Soviet and Russian actress reporting by Denis Pinchuk writing by Polina Ivanova Editing by Christian Lowe Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BODELWYDDAN Wales Reuters This version of the March 21 story was corrected to show the first use of gold from Wales in 1923 was for a wedding ring not other jewelry that Clogau Gold of Wales only owns Gwynfynydd mine that Clogau Gold of Wales did not supply the royals with gold that the Clogau St David and Gwynfynydd mines are not both in Bontddu other details A vintage hallmarking press featuring a Welsh Dragon is seen at the Clogau office in Bodelwyddan North Wales Britain March 12 2018 Picture taken March 12 2018 REUTERSPhil Noble When Britain8217s Prince Harry marries Meghan Markle in May he is expected to follow a royal tradition started nearly 100 years ago of using a wedding band of Welsh gold His greatgrandmother Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother was the first to use gold from Wales in a wedding ring when as Elizabeth Bowes Lyon she married the future King George VI in 1923 Her example was followed by the current Queen Elizabeth when she married Prince Philip in 1947 and then by royals through to Prince William8217s wedding to Catherine Middleton in 2011 For Markle8217s wedding the rare gold ring with the Welsh dragon stamp will probably be made by jeweler Wartski at its London workshop said Ben Roberts managing director of Clogau Gold of Wales which uses gold from the same mines from which gold was gifted to the royals A wedding ring made from Welsh Gold is seen on display at the Clogau office in Bodelwyddan North Wales Britain March 12 2018 Picture taken March 12 2018 REUTERSPhil Noble Roberts said he thought the ring would be a yellow shade of gold to match Markle8217s engagement ring which was designed by Prince Harry and features three diamonds 8220Looking at her engagement ring it will probably have to match so it will probably be yellow8221 he told Reuters rather than the distinctive rosegold commonly used in the company8217s jewelry designs Slideshow 3 Images The royals first received Welsh gold from the Clogau St David mine in 1923 In 1986 the queen received a second gift of Welsh gold by the British Legion from Gwynfynydd mine which is now owned by Clogau Gold of Wales The 24carat Welsh gold has a higher percentage of pure gold than standard 18carat gold giving it a rich warm color If Welsh gold is used in Markle8217s ring Roberts said official confirmation from the palace will only come after the wedding The Clogau St David and Gwynfynydd mines both in northwest Wales are currently closed having last operated in the 1990s As finite gold resources are running out Roberts has plans to reopen Gwynfynydd in the near future and invite the queen8217s son and heir Prince Charles to visit the mine Editing by Stephen Addison and William Schomberg Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters Hundreds of thousands of Americans galvanized by last month8217s Florida school massacre rallied in cities across the country on Saturday to demand tighter gun laws Carrying signs with slogans such as 8220If they choose guns over our kids vote them out8221 protesters in Washington jammed Pennsylvania Avenue as students from the Parkland Florida high school where 17 people were shot to death called on lawmakers and President Donald Trump to confront the issue The massive March For Our Lives rallies some led by student survivors from Parkland aim to break legislative gridlock that has long stymied efforts to increase restrictions on firearms sales in a nation where mass shootings like the one on Feb 14 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School have become frighteningly common 8220Politicians either represent the people or get out Stand with us or beware the voters are coming8221 Cameron Kasky a 17yearold junior at the high school told the crowd Another Parkland survivor David Hogg said it was a new day 8220You can hear the people in power shaking8221 he said to loud applause 8220We8217re going to make sure the best people get in our elections to run not as politicians but as Americans Because this this is not cutting it8221 he said pointing at the whitedomed Capitol 8220We can and we will change the world8221 Youthful marchers filled streets in cities nationwide including Atlanta Baltimore Boston Chicago Los Angeles Miami Minneapolis New York San Diego and St Louis More than 800 demonstrations were scheduled in the United States and abroad according to coordinators with events as far afield as London Mauritius and Stockholm Underlining sharp differences among the American public over the issue counterdemonstrators and supporters of gun rights were also in evidence in many cities 8220Guns don8217t kill people People kill people8221 said Connor Humphrey 16 of San Luis Obispo California who was visiting Washington with his family for spring break Humphrey wearing a red 8220Make America Great Again8221 sweatshirt said he owns guns for target shooting and hunting and uses them responsibly His school had a lockdown exercise last week 8220I think teachers should have guns8221 he said echoing a proposal made by Trump after the Parkland killings Organizers of the antigun rallies want Congress many of whose members are up for reelection in November to ban the sale of assault weapons like the one used in the Florida rampage and to tighten background checks for gun buyers On the other side of the debate gun rights advocates cite constitutional guarantees of the right to bear arms 8220All they8217re doing is asking the government to take their liberty away from them without due process8221 Brandon Howard a 42yearold Trump supporter said of the protesters in the capital He had a sign saying 8220Keep your hands off my guns8221 Daisy Hernandez age 22 joins students and gun control advocates for the March for Our Lives event demanding gun control after recent school shootings at a rally in Washington US March 24 2018 REUTERSJonathan Ernst In New York a handful of counterdemonstrators waved placards with messages such as 8220Keep America Armed8221 and 8220Reelect Trump 20208221 8216THIS IS THE NORM FOR US8217 Among those marching nearby next to Central Park was pop star Paul McCartney who said he had a personal stake in the gun control debate 8220One of my best friends was shot not far from here8221 he told CNN referring to Beatles bandmate John Lennon who was gunned down near the park in 1980 Taking aim at the National Rifle Association gun lobby teenagers chanted 8220Hey hey NRA how many kids have you killed today8221 Slideshow 30 Images So overcome with emotion was one of the Parkland students who was shot and survived Samantha Fuentes that she vomited on stage during her speech 8220I just threw up on international television and it feels great8221 she said to loud cheers afterward The young US organizers have won kudos and cash from dozens of celebrities with singers Demi Lovato and Ariana Grande as well as 8220Hamilton8221 creator LinManuel Miranda among those performing in Washington Actor George Clooney and his human rights attorney wife Amal donated 500000 and said they would be at the Washington rally Democrats and nonpartisan groups hope to register at least 25000 firsttime voters at the rallies potentially a boost for Democrats who generally favor stricter gun controls Related Coverage Midterm battle at US antigun marches thousands register to vote On Friday Trump signed a 13 trillion spending bill that includes modest improvements to background checks for gun sales and grants to help schools prevent gun violence White House deputy press secretary Lindsay Walters said the administration applauded 8220the many courageous young Americans8221 exercising their freespeech rights on Saturday 8220Keeping our children safe is a top priority of the president8217s8221 said Walters noting that on Friday the Justice Department proposed rule changes that would effectively ban 8220bump stock8221 devices that let semiautomatic weapons fire like a machine gun Former President Barack Obama said on Twitter that he and his wife Michelle were inspired by all the young people who made the marches happen 8220Keep at it You8217re leading us forward Nothing can stand in the way of millions of voices calling for change8221 Obama said Reporting by Ian Simpson Lacey Johnson Katanga Johnson and Lauren Young in Washington Alice Popovici in New York Phoenix Tso in Los Angeles Zachary Fagenson in Parkland Robert Chiarito in Chicago and Jim Oliphant in West Palm Beach Editing by Daniel Wallis and James Dalgleish Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters Voter registration activists fanned out among throngs of young Americans who marched for tighter gun laws on Saturday signing up thousands of firsttime voters who want to eject lawmakers who oppose gun control High school students carry a banner during a March for Our Lives demonstration demanding gun control in Seattle Washington US March 24 2018 REUTERSJason Redmond With midterm Congressional elections eight months away the activists flocked to some 800 marches across the country to register young voters likely to back Democratic and independent candidates who tend to favor tougher firearms laws In Washington volunteers for the HeadCount voterregistration effort raised their fists and chanted 8220demonstration without registration leads to frustration8221 before heading out with clipboards to sign up some of the nation8217s newest voters 8220Parkland8217s Emma Gonzalez called for more Americans to vote and that is why Headcount is here today8221 volunteer Aaron Ghitelman 26 said of the student who along with classmates forged a national youth gun control movement following the Feb 14 massacre at her high school in Parkland Florida Hugh Williams from Ypsilanti Michigan was among many 18yearolds who answered her call 8220Registering to vote today lifted a weight off of my shoulders The more I see people marching and standing up for a cause I believe in I want my voice to matter too8221 he said at the Washington march adding that gun violence was a menace in his community Organizers of the voter registration drive hoped to sign up at least 25000 people on Saturday a potential boost for Democrats who back stronger controls on assaultstyle weapons bump stocks that let semiautomatic rifles fire like automatic weapons and tighter access to guns for young people and the mentally ill At a rally in Chicago 17year old Kara Sharp from Island Lake Illinois carried a sign reading 8220Protect students not guns 2020 Voter8221 after traveling to the event with her father a 53yearold machinist People demonstrate during a March For Our Lives demonstration demanding gun control in Seattle Washington US March 24 2018 REUTERSJason Redmond Volunteers from a local chapter of lobbying group Indivisible435 which backs progressive political candidates told her how to register to vote once she got home as she did not have her driving license with her 8220It8217s time to disarm hate I8217ll be looking at NRA ratings of politicians and also how they treat LGBQ issues8221 said Sharp a junior at Wauconda High School referring to the grade the National Rife Association gives members of Congress for their voting record on gun rights Slideshow 2 Images 8216TOOLS TO MAKE A CHANGE8217 Registration activists are targeting four million Americans turning 18 this year as well as the many 19 to 21yearolds who have never voted Participation in US elections by young voters is often low A ReutersIpsos poll released on Monday showed 64 percent of 18 to 29yearolds said they would vote on Nov 6 while 27 percent said they would not Nine percent said they were uncertain or declined to answer In Parkland Florida Sari Kaufman was among students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School where the mass shooting happened who urged peers to get involved in politics register to vote and turf out lawmakers who did not protect them 8220With this movement we will ensure recordbreaking turnout not just in the next presidential election not in the next midterm election but in all elections8221 Kaufman told a crowd of thousands at a rally in Parkland 8220We8217re here today to give you the tools to make a change and demand the politicians take action8221 Additional reporting by Robert Chiarito in Chicago and Zachary Fagenson in Parkland Florida Writing by Andrew Hay Editing by Daniel Wallis and Nick Zieminski Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BEIRUT Reuters Syrian rebels began pulling out of several towns in their former enclave of eastern Ghouta on Saturday surrendering them to the government and leaving the besieged city of Douma as their last bastion there Syrian army soldiers fire tracer bullets into the air to celebrate their victory outside Harasta in eastern Ghouta in Damascus Syria March 23 2018 REUTERSOmar Sanadiki It comes after a monthlong assault that devastated the already battered eastern Ghouta an area of farmland and towns that was one of the first centers of the uprising in 2011 and the last major rebel stronghold near the capital Damascus Ten buses carrying fighters along with their families and other civilians started to leave the enclave after dark the vanguard of a convoy heading into exile in northwestern Syria It follows the departure of thousands of others on Friday from the town of Harasta in a similar deal for insurgents to depart with light weapons in return for giving up their territory The buses queued at a crossing point before moving into the enclave along a road on the former front lines that had been cleared of barricades debris and unexploded ordnance Related Coverage Russia says over 105000 civilians have left Syrias Eastern Ghouta RIA Some captives held by the insurgents were released and state television showed them leaving in a minibus The army was advancing into towns the rebels had retreated from in preparation for their exit state television said It broadcast pictures of the massive trenches and other fortifications the rebels were leaving behind It means only Douma is left of the opposition8217s eastern Ghouta enclave which a month ago the United Nations said was home to 400000 people The army offensive to capture it heralded by one of the heaviest bombardments in the sevenyear conflict with warplanes helicopters and artillery has killed more than 1600 people said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights a war monitor Residents and rights groups have accused the government of using weapons that kill indiscriminately inaccurate barrel bombs dropped from helicopters chlorine gas and incendiary material that sets raging fires Syrian President Bashar alAssad and his close ally Russia which has helped his air campaign have denied using all those weapons and say their offensive was needed to end the rule of Islamist militants over civilians Buses are seen entering into rebels Harasta area in eastern Ghouta in Damascus Syria March 23 2018 REUTERS Omar Sanadiki EVACUATION About 7000 people fighters along with family members and other civilians who do not wish to come back under Assad8217s rule were to leave the towns of Zamalka Arbin Ein Terma and Jobar starting on Saturday rebels and state media said They will go to Idlib province in the northwest the destination for many such 8220evacuations8221 after sieges and ground offensives forced numerous rebel enclaves to surrender in the past two years Slideshow 2 Images It will not mean an end to their experience of war Syrian military and Russian air raids on Idlib have increased in the past week killing dozens of people Idlib is also unsettled by fighting between the rebel groups On Saturday an explosion at a headquarters for al Qaeda8217s former affiliate killed at least seven people and injured 25 others The Britainbased Observatory said there were also negotiations with the Jaish alIslam rebel group that controls Douma to release prisoners Russia will guarantee that civilians who remain in the areas recaptured by Assad will not be prosecuted rebels said on Friday However rights groups have said some men were forcibly conscripted after fleeing the fighting Wael Alwan spokesman for the Failaq alRahman group that was dominant in Zamalka Arbin Ein Terma and Jobar was quoted by alHadath television on Saturday as saying he did not trust Russia8217s guarantees A Russian military webcam at the alWafideen crossing point near Douma showed small groups of civilians continuing to flee the danger of further bombardment into government territory carrying children and sacks of belongings Russia8217s military said more than 105000 people had left eastern Ghouta including over 700 on Saturday Tens of thousands have fled their homes in the past week as the bombardment of Douma intensified and refugees from other parts of Ghouta found the basement bomb shelters too full to take them Reporting by Angus McDowall Editing by Mark Heinrich and Dale Hudson Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>NEW YORK (AP) &#8212; It&#8217;s before dawn when two outreach workers find a homeless man known as Juice near a train station in Harlem. A nurse will be visiting to discuss his heart problems, they tell him.</p> <p>A short time later, in Marcus Garvey Park, the sun has just begun to rise when the caseworkers approach a man zipped inside a sleeping bag. They have encountered him before; they know he&#8217;s teasing when he gives a phony name.</p> <p>Gladys Rivera and Ali Olson are part of a citywide, round-the-clock army of workers for nonprofits contracted by the city. Their aim is to get the homeless into shelter, and so they make the rounds of upper Manhattan, checking on clients, identifying newcomers to the streets and trying to connect them with services. They are often rejected, but they do not give up.</p> <p>&#8220;You never know which one is going to be the one that sticks,&#8221; said Olson.</p> <p>Rivera and Olson are soldiers in the city&#8217;s massive daily effort to get the homeless off the street, and into a system that has the capacity to shelter anyone who needs a place to stay.</p> <p>Gladys Rivera, left, and Ali Olson talk to a man at a Harlem amphitheater. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)</p> <p>The nation&#8217;s most populous city also has the nation&#8217;s largest homeless population, with 75,000, and like other high-rent cities, it has not been able to move the dispossessed to permanent housing nearly as fast as people are becoming homeless. But there is one key difference: The homeless in New York are far less visible on a daily basis than in West Coast cities where the population has exploded over the past couple years, leading several local governments to declare states of emergency.</p> <p>The city had fewer than 4,000 unsheltered homeless in an official count taken in January, a number that might have been deflated somewhat by winter weather. But that amounts to only about 1 in 20 homeless people being unsheltered. That compares with 15 of every 20 homeless people in Los Angeles sleeping on the streets or in tents, vehicles or abandoned buildings. In California, Oregon and Washington combined, 12 out of every 20 homeless people have no shelter at night.</p> <p>New York City has more people in shelters than the three West Coast states combined - and about the same number living on the street as Oakland, a city that has just 5 percent the population of New York.</p> <p>The District of Columbia has a similar right-to-shelter policy in effect during cold-weather months, and Massachusetts has one for families with children. Both places have relatively low numbers of street homeless, or those who do not have shelter on any given night.</p> <p>Some West Coast cities are pushing for permanent affordable housing as a long-term fix for the growing homeless crisis, but officials also are looking for immediate answers. The idea of right-to-shelter programs mimicking New York&#8217;s has popped up in this year&#8217;s mayoral race in Seattle.</p> <p>New York&#8217;s policy grew out of a series of court rulings dating to the 1970s and is rooted in state constitutional provisions adopted in the 1930s to ensure the needy would get government help.</p> <p>Rivera talks to homeless people at a Harlem park. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)</p> <p>Homeless families can get short-term shelter while their cases are investigated and longer-term shelter if they are found to need it. For single adults, there is even easier access to the system. They show up at intake centers and are usually given a place to stay that night.</p> <p>There are ample opportunities to get inside, said Cedric Harden, a 35-year-old formerly homeless man now working as a chef.</p> <p>&#8220;You have to be crazy as hell to be homeless in New York City,&#8221; he said, while visiting old friends on the streets in Harlem.</p> <p>While the effort is expansive, it&#8217;s also not cheap. Last year, New York spent nearly $1.7 billion in city, state and federal money to aid the homeless. And even with that commitment, the sheltering program has its critics among the homeless. Some 4,000 people continue to sleep outside.</p> <p>&#8220;No one wants to be in a shelter ... where all anybody does is fight,&#8221; said Anthony Rainey, who was packing his possessions into a wheelchair when the caseworkers spoke with him during their early morning rounds.</p> <p>Rainey, 63, had slept next to a school but cleared out before students arrived. He said he has been on the streets since 1971, when he got back from his time in Vietnam as a Marine. He&#8217;s stayed out even after being hit by two cars and breaking bones a few years ago.</p> <p>For the people who remain on the streets - many with mental health issues, drug addictions or years of incarceration in their pasts - Rainey&#8217;s complaint is common. They note the police officers who serve as guards, the small lockers and strict curfews.</p> <p>&#8220;A shelter is no different from jail,&#8221; said William Bryant, a 50-year-old who has stayed with a group of a half-dozen others in front of a vacant sushi restaurant near Penn Station since he was released over the summer after a four-month stint in jail for drug possession.</p> <p>William Bryant (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)</p> <p>Steven Banks spent more than 30 years suing the city to help the homeless, and it was his lawsuit that forced New York to shelter homeless families, who now make up most of the sheltered population. Now he&#8217;s working on the inside, after Mayor Bill de Blasio appointed him three years ago to oversee the Department of Homeless Services.</p> <p>Among other things, he wants to phase out the use of hotels to house the homeless. A city comptroller report earlier this year found that nearly 8,000 people were being put up in hotels at a total cost of more than $500,000 a day - a high price for housing that&#8217;s not permanent.</p> <p>Banks also is pushing to improve conditions at shelters. He wants to open 90 new facilities, increase the size of the outreach staff and give them better technology to share information about clients.</p> <p>The overall plan, adopted earlier this year, aims to reduce the shelter population by 2,500 over five years.</p> <p>While that sounds like a modest objective, Banks said the key is reversing the growth of the Department of Homeless Services&#8217; shelter system. The homeless population has nearly doubled since former Mayor Michael Bloomberg took office in 2002.</p> <p>Banks said there are four steps to addressing homelessness: keeping people in housing; getting those who are homeless off the streets; making sure shelters are safe and decent; and moving people from shelters to permanent housing.</p> <p>&#8220;Without a comprehensive approach with each of those four elements,&#8221; Banks said, &#8220;homelessness cannot effectively be addressed.&#8221;</p> <p>The other prominent East Coast cities with right-to-shelter polices, Boston and the District of Columbia, have seen the same success as New York in getting the homeless off the streets on any given night - and like New York, they are searching for long-term answers.</p> <p>Joe Finn, president of the Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance, said it&#8217;s common for people in his state to get stuck in shelters.</p> <p>&#8220;For many, you can&#8217;t even call it an emergency shelter anymore,&#8221; he said. &#8220;What it&#8217;s become is acceptable housing for many of the poorest people in the commonwealth.&#8221;</p> <p>And yet even the temporary shelters are better than the alternative by some measures. One recent study concluded that people who are homeless and living on the streets die at a much higher rate than those without a housing option.</p> <p>&#8220;The provision of shelter is an emergency, life-saving policy that must be in place to meet people&#8217;s needs that can&#8217;t be delayed,&#8221; said Giselle Routhier, policy director at the New York-based Coalition for the Homeless. &#8220;Even for a day.&#8221;</p> <p>Paul Franklin (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)</p> <p>Amid the challenges in trying to get people off the streets, there are many success stories.</p> <p>Paul Franklin is staying in a shelter in the Bronx while he waits for an apartment to be ready for him in a building that provides supportive housing.</p> <p>Franklin was on the streets off and on for about a year after he was released from prison in 2015, having served six years for assault. By the fall of 2016, he was assigned a cot at Delta Manor, a former apartment building that had been transformed from a general shelter to a specialized one that serves 101 men with mental illnesses.</p> <p>The facility has cots and lockers, like the larger shelters. It also has psychiatrists on staff along with nurses who monitor residents&#8217; prescriptions. There&#8217;s a laundry room, a TV room with art by residents on the wall, a cafeteria that serves three meals a day, and a patio where the men doted on kittens born there recently.</p> <p>Franklin said this shelter is far better than the alternative.</p> <p>&#8220;Eating out of garbage cans, sleeping in New York City subways, it&#8217;s not a pretty thing,&#8221; said Franklin, 57. &#8220;It&#8217;s no place I want to be.&#8221;</p> <p>___</p> <p>Follow Mulvihill at <a href="http://www.twitter.com/geoffmulvihill" type="external" /> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/geoffmulvihill" type="external">http://www.twitter.com/geoffmulvihill</a></p> <p>Follow AP&#8217;s complete coverage of the homeless crisis here: <a href="" type="internal">https://apnews.com/tag/HomelessCrisis</a></p> <p>NEW YORK (AP) &#8212; It&#8217;s before dawn when two outreach workers find a homeless man known as Juice near a train station in Harlem. A nurse will be visiting to discuss his heart problems, they tell him.</p> <p>A short time later, in Marcus Garvey Park, the sun has just begun to rise when the caseworkers approach a man zipped inside a sleeping bag. They have encountered him before; they know he&#8217;s teasing when he gives a phony name.</p> <p>Gladys Rivera and Ali Olson are part of a citywide, round-the-clock army of workers for nonprofits contracted by the city. Their aim is to get the homeless into shelter, and so they make the rounds of upper Manhattan, checking on clients, identifying newcomers to the streets and trying to connect them with services. They are often rejected, but they do not give up.</p> <p>&#8220;You never know which one is going to be the one that sticks,&#8221; said Olson.</p> <p>Rivera and Olson are soldiers in the city&#8217;s massive daily effort to get the homeless off the street, and into a system that has the capacity to shelter anyone who needs a place to stay.</p> <p>Gladys Rivera, left, and Ali Olson talk to a man at a Harlem amphitheater. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)</p> <p>The nation&#8217;s most populous city also has the nation&#8217;s largest homeless population, with 75,000, and like other high-rent cities, it has not been able to move the dispossessed to permanent housing nearly as fast as people are becoming homeless. But there is one key difference: The homeless in New York are far less visible on a daily basis than in West Coast cities where the population has exploded over the past couple years, leading several local governments to declare states of emergency.</p> <p>The city had fewer than 4,000 unsheltered homeless in an official count taken in January, a number that might have been deflated somewhat by winter weather. But that amounts to only about 1 in 20 homeless people being unsheltered. That compares with 15 of every 20 homeless people in Los Angeles sleeping on the streets or in tents, vehicles or abandoned buildings. In California, Oregon and Washington combined, 12 out of every 20 homeless people have no shelter at night.</p> <p>New York City has more people in shelters than the three West Coast states combined - and about the same number living on the street as Oakland, a city that has just 5 percent the population of New York.</p> <p>The District of Columbia has a similar right-to-shelter policy in effect during cold-weather months, and Massachusetts has one for families with children. Both places have relatively low numbers of street homeless, or those who do not have shelter on any given night.</p> <p>Some West Coast cities are pushing for permanent affordable housing as a long-term fix for the growing homeless crisis, but officials also are looking for immediate answers. The idea of right-to-shelter programs mimicking New York&#8217;s has popped up in this year&#8217;s mayoral race in Seattle.</p> <p>New York&#8217;s policy grew out of a series of court rulings dating to the 1970s and is rooted in state constitutional provisions adopted in the 1930s to ensure the needy would get government help.</p> <p>Rivera talks to homeless people at a Harlem park. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)</p> <p>Homeless families can get short-term shelter while their cases are investigated and longer-term shelter if they are found to need it. For single adults, there is even easier access to the system. They show up at intake centers and are usually given a place to stay that night.</p> <p>There are ample opportunities to get inside, said Cedric Harden, a 35-year-old formerly homeless man now working as a chef.</p> <p>&#8220;You have to be crazy as hell to be homeless in New York City,&#8221; he said, while visiting old friends on the streets in Harlem.</p> <p>While the effort is expansive, it&#8217;s also not cheap. Last year, New York spent nearly $1.7 billion in city, state and federal money to aid the homeless. And even with that commitment, the sheltering program has its critics among the homeless. Some 4,000 people continue to sleep outside.</p> <p>&#8220;No one wants to be in a shelter ... where all anybody does is fight,&#8221; said Anthony Rainey, who was packing his possessions into a wheelchair when the caseworkers spoke with him during their early morning rounds.</p> <p>Rainey, 63, had slept next to a school but cleared out before students arrived. He said he has been on the streets since 1971, when he got back from his time in Vietnam as a Marine. He&#8217;s stayed out even after being hit by two cars and breaking bones a few years ago.</p> <p>For the people who remain on the streets - many with mental health issues, drug addictions or years of incarceration in their pasts - Rainey&#8217;s complaint is common. They note the police officers who serve as guards, the small lockers and strict curfews.</p> <p>&#8220;A shelter is no different from jail,&#8221; said William Bryant, a 50-year-old who has stayed with a group of a half-dozen others in front of a vacant sushi restaurant near Penn Station since he was released over the summer after a four-month stint in jail for drug possession.</p> <p>William Bryant (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)</p> <p>Steven Banks spent more than 30 years suing the city to help the homeless, and it was his lawsuit that forced New York to shelter homeless families, who now make up most of the sheltered population. Now he&#8217;s working on the inside, after Mayor Bill de Blasio appointed him three years ago to oversee the Department of Homeless Services.</p> <p>Among other things, he wants to phase out the use of hotels to house the homeless. A city comptroller report earlier this year found that nearly 8,000 people were being put up in hotels at a total cost of more than $500,000 a day - a high price for housing that&#8217;s not permanent.</p> <p>Banks also is pushing to improve conditions at shelters. He wants to open 90 new facilities, increase the size of the outreach staff and give them better technology to share information about clients.</p> <p>The overall plan, adopted earlier this year, aims to reduce the shelter population by 2,500 over five years.</p> <p>While that sounds like a modest objective, Banks said the key is reversing the growth of the Department of Homeless Services&#8217; shelter system. The homeless population has nearly doubled since former Mayor Michael Bloomberg took office in 2002.</p> <p>Banks said there are four steps to addressing homelessness: keeping people in housing; getting those who are homeless off the streets; making sure shelters are safe and decent; and moving people from shelters to permanent housing.</p> <p>&#8220;Without a comprehensive approach with each of those four elements,&#8221; Banks said, &#8220;homelessness cannot effectively be addressed.&#8221;</p> <p>The other prominent East Coast cities with right-to-shelter polices, Boston and the District of Columbia, have seen the same success as New York in getting the homeless off the streets on any given night - and like New York, they are searching for long-term answers.</p> <p>Joe Finn, president of the Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance, said it&#8217;s common for people in his state to get stuck in shelters.</p> <p>&#8220;For many, you can&#8217;t even call it an emergency shelter anymore,&#8221; he said. &#8220;What it&#8217;s become is acceptable housing for many of the poorest people in the commonwealth.&#8221;</p> <p>And yet even the temporary shelters are better than the alternative by some measures. One recent study concluded that people who are homeless and living on the streets die at a much higher rate than those without a housing option.</p> <p>&#8220;The provision of shelter is an emergency, life-saving policy that must be in place to meet people&#8217;s needs that can&#8217;t be delayed,&#8221; said Giselle Routhier, policy director at the New York-based Coalition for the Homeless. &#8220;Even for a day.&#8221;</p> <p>Paul Franklin (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)</p> <p>Amid the challenges in trying to get people off the streets, there are many success stories.</p> <p>Paul Franklin is staying in a shelter in the Bronx while he waits for an apartment to be ready for him in a building that provides supportive housing.</p> <p>Franklin was on the streets off and on for about a year after he was released from prison in 2015, having served six years for assault. By the fall of 2016, he was assigned a cot at Delta Manor, a former apartment building that had been transformed from a general shelter to a specialized one that serves 101 men with mental illnesses.</p> <p>The facility has cots and lockers, like the larger shelters. It also has psychiatrists on staff along with nurses who monitor residents&#8217; prescriptions. There&#8217;s a laundry room, a TV room with art by residents on the wall, a cafeteria that serves three meals a day, and a patio where the men doted on kittens born there recently.</p> <p>Franklin said this shelter is far better than the alternative.</p> <p>&#8220;Eating out of garbage cans, sleeping in New York City subways, it&#8217;s not a pretty thing,&#8221; said Franklin, 57. &#8220;It&#8217;s no place I want to be.&#8221;</p> <p>___</p> <p>Follow Mulvihill at <a href="http://www.twitter.com/geoffmulvihill" type="external" /> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/geoffmulvihill" type="external">http://www.twitter.com/geoffmulvihill</a></p> <p>Follow AP&#8217;s complete coverage of the homeless crisis here: <a href="" type="internal">https://apnews.com/tag/HomelessCrisis</a></p>

East Coast offers homeless insights as West Coast struggles

https://apnews.com/145e200283e5431f8218d367bd068931

2017-11-08

2least

NEW YORK AP 8212 It8217s before dawn when two outreach workers find a homeless man known as Juice near a train station in Harlem A nurse will be visiting to discuss his heart problems they tell him A short time later in Marcus Garvey Park the sun has just begun to rise when the caseworkers approach a man zipped inside a sleeping bag They have encountered him before they know he8217s teasing when he gives a phony name Gladys Rivera and Ali Olson are part of a citywide roundtheclock army of workers for nonprofits contracted by the city Their aim is to get the homeless into shelter and so they make the rounds of upper Manhattan checking on clients identifying newcomers to the streets and trying to connect them with services They are often rejected but they do not give up 8220You never know which one is going to be the one that sticks8221 said Olson Rivera and Olson are soldiers in the city8217s massive daily effort to get the homeless off the street and into a system that has the capacity to shelter anyone who needs a place to stay Gladys Rivera left and Ali Olson talk to a man at a Harlem amphitheater AP PhotoSeth Wenig The nation8217s most populous city also has the nation8217s largest homeless population with 75000 and like other highrent cities it has not been able to move the dispossessed to permanent housing nearly as fast as people are becoming homeless But there is one key difference The homeless in New York are far less visible on a daily basis than in West Coast cities where the population has exploded over the past couple years leading several local governments to declare states of emergency The city had fewer than 4000 unsheltered homeless in an official count taken in January a number that might have been deflated somewhat by winter weather But that amounts to only about 1 in 20 homeless people being unsheltered That compares with 15 of every 20 homeless people in Los Angeles sleeping on the streets or in tents vehicles or abandoned buildings In California Oregon and Washington combined 12 out of every 20 homeless people have no shelter at night New York City has more people in shelters than the three West Coast states combined and about the same number living on the street as Oakland a city that has just 5 percent the population of New York The District of Columbia has a similar righttoshelter policy in effect during coldweather months and Massachusetts has one for families with children Both places have relatively low numbers of street homeless or those who do not have shelter on any given night Some West Coast cities are pushing for permanent affordable housing as a longterm fix for the growing homeless crisis but officials also are looking for immediate answers The idea of righttoshelter programs mimicking New York8217s has popped up in this year8217s mayoral race in Seattle New York8217s policy grew out of a series of court rulings dating to the 1970s and is rooted in state constitutional provisions adopted in the 1930s to ensure the needy would get government help Rivera talks to homeless people at a Harlem park AP PhotoSeth Wenig Homeless families can get shortterm shelter while their cases are investigated and longerterm shelter if they are found to need it For single adults there is even easier access to the system They show up at intake centers and are usually given a place to stay that night There are ample opportunities to get inside said Cedric Harden a 35yearold formerly homeless man now working as a chef 8220You have to be crazy as hell to be homeless in New York City8221 he said while visiting old friends on the streets in Harlem While the effort is expansive it8217s also not cheap Last year New York spent nearly 17 billion in city state and federal money to aid the homeless And even with that commitment the sheltering program has its critics among the homeless Some 4000 people continue to sleep outside 8220No one wants to be in a shelter where all anybody does is fight8221 said Anthony Rainey who was packing his possessions into a wheelchair when the caseworkers spoke with him during their early morning rounds Rainey 63 had slept next to a school but cleared out before students arrived He said he has been on the streets since 1971 when he got back from his time in Vietnam as a Marine He8217s stayed out even after being hit by two cars and breaking bones a few years ago For the people who remain on the streets many with mental health issues drug addictions or years of incarceration in their pasts Rainey8217s complaint is common They note the police officers who serve as guards the small lockers and strict curfews 8220A shelter is no different from jail8221 said William Bryant a 50yearold who has stayed with a group of a halfdozen others in front of a vacant sushi restaurant near Penn Station since he was released over the summer after a fourmonth stint in jail for drug possession William Bryant AP PhotoSeth Wenig Steven Banks spent more than 30 years suing the city to help the homeless and it was his lawsuit that forced New York to shelter homeless families who now make up most of the sheltered population Now he8217s working on the inside after Mayor Bill de Blasio appointed him three years ago to oversee the Department of Homeless Services Among other things he wants to phase out the use of hotels to house the homeless A city comptroller report earlier this year found that nearly 8000 people were being put up in hotels at a total cost of more than 500000 a day a high price for housing that8217s not permanent Banks also is pushing to improve conditions at shelters He wants to open 90 new facilities increase the size of the outreach staff and give them better technology to share information about clients The overall plan adopted earlier this year aims to reduce the shelter population by 2500 over five years While that sounds like a modest objective Banks said the key is reversing the growth of the Department of Homeless Services8217 shelter system The homeless population has nearly doubled since former Mayor Michael Bloomberg took office in 2002 Banks said there are four steps to addressing homelessness keeping people in housing getting those who are homeless off the streets making sure shelters are safe and decent and moving people from shelters to permanent housing 8220Without a comprehensive approach with each of those four elements8221 Banks said 8220homelessness cannot effectively be addressed8221 The other prominent East Coast cities with righttoshelter polices Boston and the District of Columbia have seen the same success as New York in getting the homeless off the streets on any given night and like New York they are searching for longterm answers Joe Finn president of the Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance said it8217s common for people in his state to get stuck in shelters 8220For many you can8217t even call it an emergency shelter anymore8221 he said 8220What it8217s become is acceptable housing for many of the poorest people in the commonwealth8221 And yet even the temporary shelters are better than the alternative by some measures One recent study concluded that people who are homeless and living on the streets die at a much higher rate than those without a housing option 8220The provision of shelter is an emergency lifesaving policy that must be in place to meet people8217s needs that can8217t be delayed8221 said Giselle Routhier policy director at the New Yorkbased Coalition for the Homeless 8220Even for a day8221 Paul Franklin AP PhotoSeth Wenig Amid the challenges in trying to get people off the streets there are many success stories Paul Franklin is staying in a shelter in the Bronx while he waits for an apartment to be ready for him in a building that provides supportive housing Franklin was on the streets off and on for about a year after he was released from prison in 2015 having served six years for assault By the fall of 2016 he was assigned a cot at Delta Manor a former apartment building that had been transformed from a general shelter to a specialized one that serves 101 men with mental illnesses The facility has cots and lockers like the larger shelters It also has psychiatrists on staff along with nurses who monitor residents8217 prescriptions There8217s a laundry room a TV room with art by residents on the wall a cafeteria that serves three meals a day and a patio where the men doted on kittens born there recently Franklin said this shelter is far better than the alternative 8220Eating out of garbage cans sleeping in New York City subways it8217s not a pretty thing8221 said Franklin 57 8220It8217s no place I want to be8221 ___ Follow Mulvihill at httpwwwtwittercomgeoffmulvihill Follow AP8217s complete coverage of the homeless crisis here httpsapnewscomtagHomelessCrisis NEW YORK AP 8212 It8217s before dawn when two outreach workers find a homeless man known as Juice near a train station in Harlem A nurse will be visiting to discuss his heart problems they tell him A short time later in Marcus Garvey Park the sun has just begun to rise when the caseworkers approach a man zipped inside a sleeping bag They have encountered him before they know he8217s teasing when he gives a phony name Gladys Rivera and Ali Olson are part of a citywide roundtheclock army of workers for nonprofits contracted by the city Their aim is to get the homeless into shelter and so they make the rounds of upper Manhattan checking on clients identifying newcomers to the streets and trying to connect them with services They are often rejected but they do not give up 8220You never know which one is going to be the one that sticks8221 said Olson Rivera and Olson are soldiers in the city8217s massive daily effort to get the homeless off the street and into a system that has the capacity to shelter anyone who needs a place to stay Gladys Rivera left and Ali Olson talk to a man at a Harlem amphitheater AP PhotoSeth Wenig The nation8217s most populous city also has the nation8217s largest homeless population with 75000 and like other highrent cities it has not been able to move the dispossessed to permanent housing nearly as fast as people are becoming homeless But there is one key difference The homeless in New York are far less visible on a daily basis than in West Coast cities where the population has exploded over the past couple years leading several local governments to declare states of emergency The city had fewer than 4000 unsheltered homeless in an official count taken in January a number that might have been deflated somewhat by winter weather But that amounts to only about 1 in 20 homeless people being unsheltered That compares with 15 of every 20 homeless people in Los Angeles sleeping on the streets or in tents vehicles or abandoned buildings In California Oregon and Washington combined 12 out of every 20 homeless people have no shelter at night New York City has more people in shelters than the three West Coast states combined and about the same number living on the street as Oakland a city that has just 5 percent the population of New York The District of Columbia has a similar righttoshelter policy in effect during coldweather months and Massachusetts has one for families with children Both places have relatively low numbers of street homeless or those who do not have shelter on any given night Some West Coast cities are pushing for permanent affordable housing as a longterm fix for the growing homeless crisis but officials also are looking for immediate answers The idea of righttoshelter programs mimicking New York8217s has popped up in this year8217s mayoral race in Seattle New York8217s policy grew out of a series of court rulings dating to the 1970s and is rooted in state constitutional provisions adopted in the 1930s to ensure the needy would get government help Rivera talks to homeless people at a Harlem park AP PhotoSeth Wenig Homeless families can get shortterm shelter while their cases are investigated and longerterm shelter if they are found to need it For single adults there is even easier access to the system They show up at intake centers and are usually given a place to stay that night There are ample opportunities to get inside said Cedric Harden a 35yearold formerly homeless man now working as a chef 8220You have to be crazy as hell to be homeless in New York City8221 he said while visiting old friends on the streets in Harlem While the effort is expansive it8217s also not cheap Last year New York spent nearly 17 billion in city state and federal money to aid the homeless And even with that commitment the sheltering program has its critics among the homeless Some 4000 people continue to sleep outside 8220No one wants to be in a shelter where all anybody does is fight8221 said Anthony Rainey who was packing his possessions into a wheelchair when the caseworkers spoke with him during their early morning rounds Rainey 63 had slept next to a school but cleared out before students arrived He said he has been on the streets since 1971 when he got back from his time in Vietnam as a Marine He8217s stayed out even after being hit by two cars and breaking bones a few years ago For the people who remain on the streets many with mental health issues drug addictions or years of incarceration in their pasts Rainey8217s complaint is common They note the police officers who serve as guards the small lockers and strict curfews 8220A shelter is no different from jail8221 said William Bryant a 50yearold who has stayed with a group of a halfdozen others in front of a vacant sushi restaurant near Penn Station since he was released over the summer after a fourmonth stint in jail for drug possession William Bryant AP PhotoSeth Wenig Steven Banks spent more than 30 years suing the city to help the homeless and it was his lawsuit that forced New York to shelter homeless families who now make up most of the sheltered population Now he8217s working on the inside after Mayor Bill de Blasio appointed him three years ago to oversee the Department of Homeless Services Among other things he wants to phase out the use of hotels to house the homeless A city comptroller report earlier this year found that nearly 8000 people were being put up in hotels at a total cost of more than 500000 a day a high price for housing that8217s not permanent Banks also is pushing to improve conditions at shelters He wants to open 90 new facilities increase the size of the outreach staff and give them better technology to share information about clients The overall plan adopted earlier this year aims to reduce the shelter population by 2500 over five years While that sounds like a modest objective Banks said the key is reversing the growth of the Department of Homeless Services8217 shelter system The homeless population has nearly doubled since former Mayor Michael Bloomberg took office in 2002 Banks said there are four steps to addressing homelessness keeping people in housing getting those who are homeless off the streets making sure shelters are safe and decent and moving people from shelters to permanent housing 8220Without a comprehensive approach with each of those four elements8221 Banks said 8220homelessness cannot effectively be addressed8221 The other prominent East Coast cities with righttoshelter polices Boston and the District of Columbia have seen the same success as New York in getting the homeless off the streets on any given night and like New York they are searching for longterm answers Joe Finn president of the Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance said it8217s common for people in his state to get stuck in shelters 8220For many you can8217t even call it an emergency shelter anymore8221 he said 8220What it8217s become is acceptable housing for many of the poorest people in the commonwealth8221 And yet even the temporary shelters are better than the alternative by some measures One recent study concluded that people who are homeless and living on the streets die at a much higher rate than those without a housing option 8220The provision of shelter is an emergency lifesaving policy that must be in place to meet people8217s needs that can8217t be delayed8221 said Giselle Routhier policy director at the New Yorkbased Coalition for the Homeless 8220Even for a day8221 Paul Franklin AP PhotoSeth Wenig Amid the challenges in trying to get people off the streets there are many success stories Paul Franklin is staying in a shelter in the Bronx while he waits for an apartment to be ready for him in a building that provides supportive housing Franklin was on the streets off and on for about a year after he was released from prison in 2015 having served six years for assault By the fall of 2016 he was assigned a cot at Delta Manor a former apartment building that had been transformed from a general shelter to a specialized one that serves 101 men with mental illnesses The facility has cots and lockers like the larger shelters It also has psychiatrists on staff along with nurses who monitor residents8217 prescriptions There8217s a laundry room a TV room with art by residents on the wall a cafeteria that serves three meals a day and a patio where the men doted on kittens born there recently Franklin said this shelter is far better than the alternative 8220Eating out of garbage cans sleeping in New York City subways it8217s not a pretty thing8221 said Franklin 57 8220It8217s no place I want to be8221 ___ Follow Mulvihill at httpwwwtwittercomgeoffmulvihill Follow AP8217s complete coverage of the homeless crisis here httpsapnewscomtagHomelessCrisis

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<p /> <p>At a time when talk of a &#8220;clash of civilizations&#8221; looks increasingly like a self-fulfilling prophecy, when bin Laden-ites seek to reshape the world in the image of universal Islam, when our own leaders blithely hive off the good from the evil, us from them, Anthony Appiah issues a call for a more helpful posture toward a world of stubborn difference, an approach he calls, reaching back to the 4th Century Greece, &#8220;cosmopolitanism.&#8221;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>The cosmopolitan ethic starts from the thought that human knowledge is fallible&#8212;that no culture or individual has a lock on truth&#8212;and upholds &#8220;conversation,&#8221; broadly defined as the respectful and candid exchange of views among individuals and cultures&#8212;as a good in its own right; agreement is not its ultimate goal. It understands individuals in the context of their cultures but tends, where the two clash, to give primacy to the former. What cosmopolitanism does not permit, however, is a kind of flaccid relativism; it insists that there are some universals&#8212;basic human rights, for instance&#8212;which are non-negotiable. Otherwise, it says, difference and disagreement are so much grist for mutually enriching dialogue.</p> <p>Cosmopolitanism is a title in the &#8220;Issues of Our Time&#8221; series from W.W. Norton, edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr., in which big-name intellectuals tackle important contemporary themes. (The series launched with, in addition to Appiah&#8217;s, books by Amartya Sen and Alan Dershowitz.)</p> <p>Kwame Anthony Appiah, who was raised in Ghana and educated in England, is professor of philosophy at Princeton University. His books include In My Father&#8217;s House, Thinking It Through, and The Ethics of Identity. He&#8217;s the editor, with Henry Louis Gates Jr., of Africana.</p> <p>Mother Jones: &#8220;Cosmopolitan&#8221; is a word with a certain pedigree, a certain amount of baggage, so let&#8217;s start by defining terms.</p> <p>Kwame Anthony Appiah: Sure. The word comes from a Greek phrase, which means &#8220;citizen of the world.&#8221; The first person we know to have used the word about himself was Diogenes the Cynic in the 4th Century BC. It was a metaphor then and still is. It&#8217;s been attacked from both the left and the right. From the right, as you know, it was used as a term of anti-Semitic abuse, and their point was that people who had a sense of responsibility to the human community as a whole were going to be bad nationalists, bad patriots. The other direction of attack, from the left, was that cosmopolitanism was something very elitist. It came to mean a kind of free-floating attitude of the rich person who can afford to travel all over the world tasting a little bit of this culture and that one and not being very responsible about any of it.</p> <p>I don&#8217;t think that cosmopolitanism has to be either elitist or unpatriotic; I think it&#8217;s perfectly possible to combine a sense of real responsibility for other human beings as human beings with a deeper sense of commitment to a political community. As far as I&#8217;m concerned, the key things in cosmopolitanism are, first, that global concern&#8211;the acceptance that we&#8217;re all responsible for the human community, which is the fundamental idea of morality. What&#8217;s distinctive about the cosmopolitan attitude is that it comes with a recognition that encounters with other people aren&#8217;t about making them like us. Cosmopolitans accept and indeed like the fact that people live in different ways; that free human beings will choose to live in different ways and will choose to express themselves in different ways. And that openness to difference comes, I think, from a kind of toleration combined with a recognition of human fallibility. One of the reasons why we&#8217;re glad there are people out there who aren&#8217;t like us is that we&#8217;re pretty certain that there are a lot of things we&#8217;re wrong about.</p> <p>MJ: So the goal isn&#8217;t to have everybody agree.</p> <p>KAA: Absolutely not. It&#8217;s not evangelical. You enter a conversation, and conversation is about listening as well as talking; it&#8217;s about being open to being changed yourself, but it&#8217;s not about expecting consensus or seeking agreement. You can seek understanding without seeking agreement.</p> <p>MJ: Sounds like a sort of relativism.</p> <p>KAA: Well, there&#8217;s a certain truth to the relativist view, which is that very often when people evaluate other people and other societies they haven&#8217;t the slightest idea what they&#8217;re talking about. You can&#8217;t make a sensible evaluation of, say, the Turkish university regulation about the wearing of headscarves if you haven&#8217;t the faintest idea of the historical context or the meaning of that practice. Blithely wading in and saying whatever you want to say about it without that knowledge is just silly, and it&#8217;s wrong. If you&#8217;re going to have a productive cross-cultural conversation, or, within a society, a cross-identity conversation, you&#8217;ve got to listen and understand what you&#8217;re evaluating.</p> <p>MJ: And not to seek to impose values on others.</p> <p>KAA: Not at all. The world is full of people trying to make everybody else like themselves. Mormons, Catholics, Wahhabi Muslims. I happen to prefer them in this order: Catholicism, Mormonism, Wahhabism; but that&#8217;s not important here. What&#8217;s important is that they share a problem, which is that they&#8217;re not open, in their standard forms, to the second element that cosmopolitanism depends upon, which is that it&#8217;s okay for people to be different. Now, just to be clear, there are forms of Islam, for example, that are open to that form of cosmopolitanism. I&#8217;m not objecting to religion, because I don&#8217;t think religion has to be universalist.</p> <p>There are two strands to cosmpolitanism, and both are essential. The first is universalist: it says everybody matters. But they matter in their specificity, as who they are, not who you want them to be. The problem is that there are people going around who want to reshape the world, want to reshape everybody else, in their own image. That&#8217;s dangerous. Some of them are more violent than others; some aren&#8217;t violent at all. But none of them are cosmopolitan, and in that sense I&#8217;m against them.</p> <p>MJ: But aren&#8217;t there some things that we do want to universalize, right? Like basic human rights.</p> <p>KAA: Yes, and the challenge is to identify those things. I would say the cosmopolitan view about that has to be that nobody can decide that by himself or herself; we have to engage in a global conversation in order to create instruments, like the human rights instruments of the United Nations, that are the product of a dialogue among nations and across civilizations. Now, we might disagree on what those things we want to universalize. I have no objection, for instance, to the Catholic claim to know what the universals are. They&#8217;re entitled to their claim; what they&#8217;re not entitled to do is impose these things without negotiation.</p> <p>MJ: But, again, from the cosmopolitan point of view some things are not negotiable.</p> <p>KAA:That&#8217;s right, because cosmopolitanism starts from the core thought that everybody matters. Each person is entitled, in the context of his or her community, to seek a life of significance and dignity. Well, that sets a boundary on tolerance, because you can&#8217;t tolerate those who actively prevent people from doing that. So cosmopolitans have to be hard-line about that; they can&#8217;t be tolerant of people, say, who think that torture is just fine, or that it doesn&#8217;t matter what a woman wants&#8212;if a male member of her family wants her to marry someone that&#8217;s the way it&#8217;s going to be.</p> <p>You want to converse with anyone who&#8217;s conversible. So the mere fact that somebody has an illiberal thought or idea isn&#8217;t a reason for not talking to them. The liberal tradition is one in which even intolerant speech and thought is permitted until it crosses a boundary to intolerant or dangerous acts, or threatens to. At that point you have to take sides. And in many cases it&#8217;s easy for me to know which side I&#8217;m on.</p> <p>Now, of course there are going to be cases where we differ about whether a boundary is being crossed, but my view is that if you think the boundary is being crossed and you&#8217;ve made a serious effort to understand what the other person is doing then you&#8217;re entitled to stop the conversation and start trying to get something done.</p> <p>MJ: Okay, so let&#8217;s apply this frame to the row over these Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed.</p> <p>KAA: Well, I think that representing the prophet Mohammed in the way that they did is genuinely insulting, and it&#8217;s not the sort of thing that a person who cared about cross-cultural communication would do. It&#8217;s perfectly fine to say that of course people have the right to do this&#8212;of course they do&#8212;but they shouldn&#8217;t be surprised if it upsets people. And the corollary is that the upset people have a right to express their upset&#8212;again, so long as it doesn&#8217;t cross that boundary I mentioned.</p> <p>On the other hand, carefully phrased criticisms of, say, the fact that women aren&#8217;t allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia, seem to me very much on the agenda. And I don&#8217;t think we should be troubled by the fact that some people in Saudi Arabia will say, What business is it of yours? A deep part of cosmopolitanism is an engagement with making the world a place in which everybody has, as a baseline, the resources to live a life of dignity and significance. It seems to me perfectly fair to point out that that standard is not met in Saudi Arabia, not only in respect to gender but in respect to lots of things, as of course it isn&#8217;t fully met in the United States.</p> <p>If we have a cosmopolitan conversation one of the things that will come out of it is, for instance, how many Europeans find it morally astonishing that the United States tolerate the level of racial inequality that it does, and that our prisons fall way below what anyone in Europe would take to be appropriate human rights minimums. The fact that, in the United States, the attitudes of white people and black people toward these questions is so different suggests that there isn&#8217;t an adequate conversation going on. If it&#8217;s a conversation, that&#8217;s part of what we should expect to hear, and I would have thought we would be enriched by it as it will make us think about things we need to think about.</p> <p>MJ: How does the cosmopolitan balance regard for the individual with consideration for the community?</p> <p>KAA: Well, the deeply liberal view&#8212;and this has been the project of much of my recent work&#8212;takes the central question of ethics to be the shaping of the social world in order to give each person the chance to make a life of significance to himself or herself. And it takes things like identities and nations as valuable to the extent that they contribute to that, but not as valuable in themselves.</p> <p>MJ: In light of that, how should we think about identity politics, which put such a high value on membership of a group?</p> <p>KAA: Well, there are limits to identity politics, of course. Identity can be an instrument of individuality, but when it&#8217;s invoked to constrain or resist individuality it&#8217;s usually bad. But you can&#8217;t responsibly talk about identity politics without taking into account that it arose in response to genuine injustices, and that it was helpful, in the first instance, in response to those injustices, around gender, race, sexual orientation, religion. It&#8217;s a way of coming together as a way to establish a sense of self-respect. So, there&#8217;s a good side to it.</p> <p>Also, when people on the right criticize identity politics they tend to forget that one of the most vigorous and effective forms of identity politics by far is nationalism, and many people on the right are nationalist. Now, I&#8217;ve nothing against nationalism as such; I think there&#8217;s good nationalism and bad nationalism. But to object to the very idea of caring about identity as a political matter would rule our nationalism.</p> <p>However, if you&#8217;re a cosmopolitan you understand that it&#8217;s important not to be captured by any one identity and not to feel that because you don&#8217; t have identity as a basis for communicating with other people that you shouldn&#8217;t communicate with them. We have lots to share and gain from one another, whether we have exchanges based on shared identity or based on the fact that we have different identities. Another problem is that often identity politics looks like asking for symbolic acknowledgments when what&#8217;s actually needed is readjustments of power and money. Turns out, it&#8217;s relatively easy to get a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, but much harder to abolish racial discrimination in employment.</p> <p>MJ: You argue in the book that one of the standard criticisms of economic globalization&#8212;that it threatens the survival of &#8220;authentic&#8221; local culture&#8212;is misplaced, precisely because such a view implicitly sets a higher value on the group (the cultural community) than the individual.</p> <p>KAA: Well, first of all, once you start out on the cosmopolitan exploration, one of the things that&#8217;s bound to strike you is that among the most interesting civilizations that the planet has produced, hardly any have produced what&#8217;s interesting about them by themselves. Think of the places we think of historically as great centers of civilization&#8212;Mogul India, Venice in the Renaissance, Greece in the 5th Century BC, London in the 19th Century&#8212;they all borrow; and this is what people do, they borrow, they exchange, that&#8217;s how cultures work. Often when people talk about things that are supposedly &#8220;authentically&#8221; this or that&#8212;what could be more authentically Italian than spaghetti, say; except that the Chinese invented it. What could be more authentically American than jazz, which in fact comes out of a city that was black and Irish and Latin and French? You can go on all day. So the first thing to say about the apostles of purity is&#8212;what are they talking about?</p> <p>Now, the people who make these arguments are responding to a genuine problem, which is that there are places where people who want to go on with certain practices are prevented from doing so by force. Tibet is a perfect contemporary example. A historical example is the eradication the traditional religions of Latin America by the Spanish. That&#8217;s terrible. And yet, if everyone in Latin America had consented to become a Catholic, then who would be against it?</p> <p>The other genuine problem is that there&#8217;s often a kind of crowding out because the things some people would like to continue with become expensive relative to things from other places. The proportion of people in my home town in Ghana who still wear what we call a cloth, which is a sort of toga, has noticeably declined in my lifetime, and it&#8217;s because t-shirts and shorts are cheaper. We&#8217;re not a particularly poor place, so there are people who still wear the cloth, particularly on certain formal occasions, because they can afford it. If they stopped wearing it because they couldn&#8217;t afford it, that would be very sad, because they wouldn&#8217;t be able to do what they wanted to do, not&#8212;again&#8212;because the culture was changing. But even then, the solution isn&#8217;t to force them to wear the cloth no matter what, but to change the world economy so that they can afford to wear it.</p> <p>MJ: Isn&#8217;t another problem that the global cultural exchange is lopsided&#8212;that the rest of the world gets American cultural products, but the US doesn&#8217;t get much of anyone else&#8217;s</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>Well, that&#8217;s a problem for us&#8212;that&#8217;s to say, we miss out. Remember, though, that, if you take the example of movies, while it&#8217;s true that not many movies from elsewhere gain real traction in the United States, especially if they&#8217;re not in English, nevertheless more movies from India, or Turkey, or Hong Kong are watched in much of Asia and Africa than are movies from Hollywood. Nigerian films&#8211;they call it &#8220;Nollywood&#8221;&#8212;are very big in West Africa. Because of new technology it&#8217;s much cheaper than it used to be to make and distribute films. So there are lots of exciting things happening in the world that the United States is depriving itself of, and it does so at its own cost.</p> <p>The cost to other people is that because of the great penetration of especially American culture, they have a little bit better sense of what we&#8217;re like than they do of what we&#8217;re like. That&#8217;s a problem for them, because we&#8217;re busy reshaping the world. And if you&#8217;re doing that the very least you ought to do is know the contours of what you&#8217;re reshaping, and we don&#8217;t. It&#8217;s also a problem for us, because they notice our lack of interest and they resent it, and that&#8217;s the kind of attitude that, at the extreme, turns Osama bin Laden into somebody&#8217;s hero.</p> <p>MJ: You also argue in the book that when people complain about American-led globalization making the world &#8220;homogenous&#8221; they&#8217;re overstating things.</p> <p>KAA: Yes. The world is full of people consuming things we know nothing about here. And anyway, even if they were (God forbid) force-fed a diet of American television they&#8217;d interpret it in their own context. They literally wouldn&#8217;t see what you see. There are famous studies&#8212;I mention two of them in my book&#8212;that show this. People tend to borrow the things they find useful and ignore the rest. They interpret and respond; they&#8217;re not a wax on which you&#8217;re imprinting an image. People even interpret plot in their own cultural context. There are these famous studies of the reception of the American television series Dallas in Israel and Palestine. They talk about a moment when a female character leaves her home and goes to stay with an older man. They saw her going back to her father. In fact he&#8217;s her boyfriend, but in that world that would never be. They saw her doing what they would do in like circumstances. When you send a television series to Ghana or Mexico or South Africa you don&#8217;t send a guy with it to interpret it; people interpret it for themselves.</p> <p />

Cosmopolitanism: How To Be a Citizen of the World

https://motherjones.com/politics/2006/02/cosmopolitanism-how-be-citizen-world/

2006-02-23

4left

At a time when talk of a 8220clash of civilizations8221 looks increasingly like a selffulfilling prophecy when bin Ladenites seek to reshape the world in the image of universal Islam when our own leaders blithely hive off the good from the evil us from them Anthony Appiah issues a call for a more helpful posture toward a world of stubborn difference an approach he calls reaching back to the 4th Century Greece 8220cosmopolitanism8221 amp160 The cosmopolitan ethic starts from the thought that human knowledge is fallible8212that no culture or individual has a lock on truth8212and upholds 8220conversation8221 broadly defined as the respectful and candid exchange of views among individuals and cultures8212as a good in its own right agreement is not its ultimate goal It understands individuals in the context of their cultures but tends where the two clash to give primacy to the former What cosmopolitanism does not permit however is a kind of flaccid relativism it insists that there are some universals8212basic human rights for instance8212which are nonnegotiable Otherwise it says difference and disagreement are so much grist for mutually enriching dialogue Cosmopolitanism is a title in the 8220Issues of Our Time8221 series from WW Norton edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr in which bigname intellectuals tackle important contemporary themes The series launched with in addition to Appiah8217s books by Amartya Sen and Alan Dershowitz Kwame Anthony Appiah who was raised in Ghana and educated in England is professor of philosophy at Princeton University His books include In My Father8217s House Thinking It Through and The Ethics of Identity He8217s the editor with Henry Louis Gates Jr of Africana Mother Jones 8220Cosmopolitan8221 is a word with a certain pedigree a certain amount of baggage so let8217s start by defining terms Kwame Anthony Appiah Sure The word comes from a Greek phrase which means 8220citizen of the world8221 The first person we know to have used the word about himself was Diogenes the Cynic in the 4th Century BC It was a metaphor then and still is It8217s been attacked from both the left and the right From the right as you know it was used as a term of antiSemitic abuse and their point was that people who had a sense of responsibility to the human community as a whole were going to be bad nationalists bad patriots The other direction of attack from the left was that cosmopolitanism was something very elitist It came to mean a kind of freefloating attitude of the rich person who can afford to travel all over the world tasting a little bit of this culture and that one and not being very responsible about any of it I don8217t think that cosmopolitanism has to be either elitist or unpatriotic I think it8217s perfectly possible to combine a sense of real responsibility for other human beings as human beings with a deeper sense of commitment to a political community As far as I8217m concerned the key things in cosmopolitanism are first that global concern8211the acceptance that we8217re all responsible for the human community which is the fundamental idea of morality What8217s distinctive about the cosmopolitan attitude is that it comes with a recognition that encounters with other people aren8217t about making them like us Cosmopolitans accept and indeed like the fact that people live in different ways that free human beings will choose to live in different ways and will choose to express themselves in different ways And that openness to difference comes I think from a kind of toleration combined with a recognition of human fallibility One of the reasons why we8217re glad there are people out there who aren8217t like us is that we8217re pretty certain that there are a lot of things we8217re wrong about MJ So the goal isn8217t to have everybody agree KAA Absolutely not It8217s not evangelical You enter a conversation and conversation is about listening as well as talking it8217s about being open to being changed yourself but it8217s not about expecting consensus or seeking agreement You can seek understanding without seeking agreement MJ Sounds like a sort of relativism KAA Well there8217s a certain truth to the relativist view which is that very often when people evaluate other people and other societies they haven8217t the slightest idea what they8217re talking about You can8217t make a sensible evaluation of say the Turkish university regulation about the wearing of headscarves if you haven8217t the faintest idea of the historical context or the meaning of that practice Blithely wading in and saying whatever you want to say about it without that knowledge is just silly and it8217s wrong If you8217re going to have a productive crosscultural conversation or within a society a crossidentity conversation you8217ve got to listen and understand what you8217re evaluating MJ And not to seek to impose values on others KAA Not at all The world is full of people trying to make everybody else like themselves Mormons Catholics Wahhabi Muslims I happen to prefer them in this order Catholicism Mormonism Wahhabism but that8217s not important here What8217s important is that they share a problem which is that they8217re not open in their standard forms to the second element that cosmopolitanism depends upon which is that it8217s okay for people to be different Now just to be clear there are forms of Islam for example that are open to that form of cosmopolitanism I8217m not objecting to religion because I don8217t think religion has to be universalist There are two strands to cosmpolitanism and both are essential The first is universalist it says everybody matters But they matter in their specificity as who they are not who you want them to be The problem is that there are people going around who want to reshape the world want to reshape everybody else in their own image That8217s dangerous Some of them are more violent than others some aren8217t violent at all But none of them are cosmopolitan and in that sense I8217m against them MJ But aren8217t there some things that we do want to universalize right Like basic human rights KAA Yes and the challenge is to identify those things I would say the cosmopolitan view about that has to be that nobody can decide that by himself or herself we have to engage in a global conversation in order to create instruments like the human rights instruments of the United Nations that are the product of a dialogue among nations and across civilizations Now we might disagree on what those things we want to universalize I have no objection for instance to the Catholic claim to know what the universals are They8217re entitled to their claim what they8217re not entitled to do is impose these things without negotiation MJ But again from the cosmopolitan point of view some things are not negotiable KAAThat8217s right because cosmopolitanism starts from the core thought that everybody matters Each person is entitled in the context of his or her community to seek a life of significance and dignity Well that sets a boundary on tolerance because you can8217t tolerate those who actively prevent people from doing that So cosmopolitans have to be hardline about that they can8217t be tolerant of people say who think that torture is just fine or that it doesn8217t matter what a woman wants8212if a male member of her family wants her to marry someone that8217s the way it8217s going to be You want to converse with anyone who8217s conversible So the mere fact that somebody has an illiberal thought or idea isn8217t a reason for not talking to them The liberal tradition is one in which even intolerant speech and thought is permitted until it crosses a boundary to intolerant or dangerous acts or threatens to At that point you have to take sides And in many cases it8217s easy for me to know which side I8217m on Now of course there are going to be cases where we differ about whether a boundary is being crossed but my view is that if you think the boundary is being crossed and you8217ve made a serious effort to understand what the other person is doing then you8217re entitled to stop the conversation and start trying to get something done MJ Okay so let8217s apply this frame to the row over these Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed KAA Well I think that representing the prophet Mohammed in the way that they did is genuinely insulting and it8217s not the sort of thing that a person who cared about crosscultural communication would do It8217s perfectly fine to say that of course people have the right to do this8212of course they do8212but they shouldn8217t be surprised if it upsets people And the corollary is that the upset people have a right to express their upset8212again so long as it doesn8217t cross that boundary I mentioned On the other hand carefully phrased criticisms of say the fact that women aren8217t allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia seem to me very much on the agenda And I don8217t think we should be troubled by the fact that some people in Saudi Arabia will say What business is it of yours A deep part of cosmopolitanism is an engagement with making the world a place in which everybody has as a baseline the resources to live a life of dignity and significance It seems to me perfectly fair to point out that that standard is not met in Saudi Arabia not only in respect to gender but in respect to lots of things as of course it isn8217t fully met in the United States If we have a cosmopolitan conversation one of the things that will come out of it is for instance how many Europeans find it morally astonishing that the United States tolerate the level of racial inequality that it does and that our prisons fall way below what anyone in Europe would take to be appropriate human rights minimums The fact that in the United States the attitudes of white people and black people toward these questions is so different suggests that there isn8217t an adequate conversation going on If it8217s a conversation that8217s part of what we should expect to hear and I would have thought we would be enriched by it as it will make us think about things we need to think about MJ How does the cosmopolitan balance regard for the individual with consideration for the community KAA Well the deeply liberal view8212and this has been the project of much of my recent work8212takes the central question of ethics to be the shaping of the social world in order to give each person the chance to make a life of significance to himself or herself And it takes things like identities and nations as valuable to the extent that they contribute to that but not as valuable in themselves MJ In light of that how should we think about identity politics which put such a high value on membership of a group KAA Well there are limits to identity politics of course Identity can be an instrument of individuality but when it8217s invoked to constrain or resist individuality it8217s usually bad But you can8217t responsibly talk about identity politics without taking into account that it arose in response to genuine injustices and that it was helpful in the first instance in response to those injustices around gender race sexual orientation religion It8217s a way of coming together as a way to establish a sense of selfrespect So there8217s a good side to it Also when people on the right criticize identity politics they tend to forget that one of the most vigorous and effective forms of identity politics by far is nationalism and many people on the right are nationalist Now I8217ve nothing against nationalism as such I think there8217s good nationalism and bad nationalism But to object to the very idea of caring about identity as a political matter would rule our nationalism However if you8217re a cosmopolitan you understand that it8217s important not to be captured by any one identity and not to feel that because you don8217 t have identity as a basis for communicating with other people that you shouldn8217t communicate with them We have lots to share and gain from one another whether we have exchanges based on shared identity or based on the fact that we have different identities Another problem is that often identity politics looks like asking for symbolic acknowledgments when what8217s actually needed is readjustments of power and money Turns out it8217s relatively easy to get a Martin Luther King Jr holiday but much harder to abolish racial discrimination in employment MJ You argue in the book that one of the standard criticisms of economic globalization8212that it threatens the survival of 8220authentic8221 local culture8212is misplaced precisely because such a view implicitly sets a higher value on the group the cultural community than the individual KAA Well first of all once you start out on the cosmopolitan exploration one of the things that8217s bound to strike you is that among the most interesting civilizations that the planet has produced hardly any have produced what8217s interesting about them by themselves Think of the places we think of historically as great centers of civilization8212Mogul India Venice in the Renaissance Greece in the 5th Century BC London in the 19th Century8212they all borrow and this is what people do they borrow they exchange that8217s how cultures work Often when people talk about things that are supposedly 8220authentically8221 this or that8212what could be more authentically Italian than spaghetti say except that the Chinese invented it What could be more authentically American than jazz which in fact comes out of a city that was black and Irish and Latin and French You can go on all day So the first thing to say about the apostles of purity is8212what are they talking about Now the people who make these arguments are responding to a genuine problem which is that there are places where people who want to go on with certain practices are prevented from doing so by force Tibet is a perfect contemporary example A historical example is the eradication the traditional religions of Latin America by the Spanish That8217s terrible And yet if everyone in Latin America had consented to become a Catholic then who would be against it The other genuine problem is that there8217s often a kind of crowding out because the things some people would like to continue with become expensive relative to things from other places The proportion of people in my home town in Ghana who still wear what we call a cloth which is a sort of toga has noticeably declined in my lifetime and it8217s because tshirts and shorts are cheaper We8217re not a particularly poor place so there are people who still wear the cloth particularly on certain formal occasions because they can afford it If they stopped wearing it because they couldn8217t afford it that would be very sad because they wouldn8217t be able to do what they wanted to do not8212again8212because the culture was changing But even then the solution isn8217t to force them to wear the cloth no matter what but to change the world economy so that they can afford to wear it MJ Isn8217t another problem that the global cultural exchange is lopsided8212that the rest of the world gets American cultural products but the US doesn8217t get much of anyone else8217s amp160 Well that8217s a problem for us8212that8217s to say we miss out Remember though that if you take the example of movies while it8217s true that not many movies from elsewhere gain real traction in the United States especially if they8217re not in English nevertheless more movies from India or Turkey or Hong Kong are watched in much of Asia and Africa than are movies from Hollywood Nigerian films8211they call it 8220Nollywood82218212are very big in West Africa Because of new technology it8217s much cheaper than it used to be to make and distribute films So there are lots of exciting things happening in the world that the United States is depriving itself of and it does so at its own cost The cost to other people is that because of the great penetration of especially American culture they have a little bit better sense of what we8217re like than they do of what we8217re like That8217s a problem for them because we8217re busy reshaping the world And if you8217re doing that the very least you ought to do is know the contours of what you8217re reshaping and we don8217t It8217s also a problem for us because they notice our lack of interest and they resent it and that8217s the kind of attitude that at the extreme turns Osama bin Laden into somebody8217s hero MJ You also argue in the book that when people complain about Americanled globalization making the world 8220homogenous8221 they8217re overstating things KAA Yes The world is full of people consuming things we know nothing about here And anyway even if they were God forbid forcefed a diet of American television they8217d interpret it in their own context They literally wouldn8217t see what you see There are famous studies8212I mention two of them in my book8212that show this People tend to borrow the things they find useful and ignore the rest They interpret and respond they8217re not a wax on which you8217re imprinting an image People even interpret plot in their own cultural context There are these famous studies of the reception of the American television series Dallas in Israel and Palestine They talk about a moment when a female character leaves her home and goes to stay with an older man They saw her going back to her father In fact he8217s her boyfriend but in that world that would never be They saw her doing what they would do in like circumstances When you send a television series to Ghana or Mexico or South Africa you don8217t send a guy with it to interpret it people interpret it for themselves

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<p>Isle Royale in Lake Superior is a national park. Besides its fame as a park, Isle Royale is also famous for its wolf and moose populations. The island provides a unique experimental design of what happens when populations are permitted to grow without restraint.</p> <p>The story begins with the immigration of moose to the island sometime in the late 1800s or early 1900s. &amp;#160;Some speculate that moose swam to the island or crossed on ice in winter. No matter how they got there, they existed on the island for five decades without wolves. By the 1920s the moose population increased to more than 3000 and as a consequence of over browsing, the moose population crashed in the 1930s. The moose population languished for a while, and then began to grow again.</p> <p>Just after World War II, wolves migrated to the island, most likely over the ice in winter. Wolves preyed on moose, and for a few decades, wolves and moose seems to sustain a relative equilibrium. Then in 1980, the wolf population crashed after the introduction of canine parvovirus.</p> <p>Released from wolf predation, the moose population soared to new heights inflicting tremendous damage to the island&#8217;s plant communities. As before the moose population crashed with 2000 moose starving to death in one four month period! The moose population now remains at around 500 animals, far below their original high numbers due to the damage sustained by the island&#8217;s plant community as a consequence of too many moose.</p> <p>ISLAND EARTH</p> <p>There are lessons for human population in the Isle Royale example as well as other tales that could be told. Continuous population growth can lead to habitat degradation, great suffering for the dominant animal, and eventually a lowered carrying capacity due to habitat destruction.</p> <p>Human populations may be like the proverbial moose population. We have been released from predators that might otherwise keep our numbers in check and somewhat sustainable. Mind you I have no wish for a major pandemic, famine, warfare or other factors that once held human numbers in check. But I do think there are plenty of signs, that humans, like the moose of Isle Royale, are degrading the carrying capacity of Planet Earth&#8212;which is, after all, the only habitable island we know of in the Universe.</p> <p>Despite the seriousness of population growth as an agent of planetary damage with serious potential repercussions for human survival, there is a tendency for the majority of people to ignore the issue.</p> <p>There are many on both the left and right ends of the political spectrum who feel human population growth is not a problem or at the very least a manageable problem. Typically the right opposes any discussion of population reduction because of conservative religious views or a business model that requires endless growth to maintain economic prosperity. The left tends to downplay population based on social justice grounds&#8212;that the world&#8217;s poor are blamed for population growth, while the world&#8217;s richest countries enjoy the benefits of excessive consumption.</p> <p>Both support their respective positions often by arguing that as a result of technology we will &amp;#160;rise to the occasion and help us get through any shortages we may face be it energy, food, or space. In a sense the worldviews of the left and right are not appreciably different when it comes to techno optimism.</p> <p>I am inclined to agree that technological advances often change assumptions about limiting factors&#8212;what&#8217;s available to use and at what cost can change dramatically due to technological innovations. At one time salt was more valuable than gold, but technological innovations has made it so common we can buy it for pennies.&amp;#160; So I am loath to discount how technology can rapidly change predictions and assumptions about the availability of critical resources.</p> <p>But the problem is that technology does not come free. There&#8217;s a huge ecological cost to technological fixes. Even if you could grow sufficient food for 10 billion people, one has to consider what&#8217;s driving that food production. The price of food does not reflect the real costs.</p> <p>It&#8217;s the mining that produces the metal to make the plow. It&#8217;s the gas drilling that provides the fertilizer. It&#8217;s the oil drilling that provides the fuel to power the trucks that moves the food to people. It&#8217;s the dams that provide the water storage for irrigation of fields.&amp;#160; And even more so today the computers that calculate the amount of water to spread or the exact percentage of pesticide to apply and so on. Behind that food production is long technology train that is pulling a lot of cars&#8212;each taking a bite out of the Earth&#8217;s biodiversity, land and water to feed a growing human population.</p> <p>Of course, I&#8217;m generalizing here, and there are many shades of gray and degrees of buy-in to the various perspectives. But there are few on either side of the right or left who agree that human population growth poses a grave danger to the Earth&#8217;s ecosystems and biodiversity, much less a threat to humanity as well.</p> <p>The debate over population has largely focused on whether outright population growth&#8212;primarily in the less developed countries is a threat&#8211; and/or whether consumption of natural resources by developed countries is really the problem for sustainability. In reality this debate is not helpful since both are problematic. &amp;#160;Both issues need to be addressed.&amp;#160; Depending on how you define sustainability, we are already likely well past any sustainable society.</p> <p>FINITE EARTH</p> <p>There are physical limits to the Earth and its life support systems. &amp;#160;And though technology can unleash abundance where previously there was scarcity, ultimately this means there are limits to population growth. There is only so much agricultural land, fish in the sea, fresh water to drink, oil and coal to burn, and so forth. Where and when we reach those limits is a matter of debate, and for many of these resources, limits may be more regional in nature. But what can&#8217;t be debated is that all of these are finite.&amp;#160; I don&#8217;t doubt that humans are clever and innovative, and some of these resources will be replaced or used far more efficiently in the future.</p> <p>Nevertheless, &amp;#160;just the physical need for housing, and providing basic needs for an expanding human population will place new demands on Planet Earth whether we impose strict limits or not. What we have in terms of ecological limitations is a planet that is already overtaxed if one uses the appropriate metrics like biodiversity loss.</p> <p>It would be unfortunate to simply try to determine what number of humans could be supported on Earth if we were to completely exploit any of these resources. &amp;#160;I think it misses an important philosophical question.</p> <p>In the simplest terms, some define sustainably only in terms of human population. Can the Earth sustain 10 billion or whatever number one chooses to use? I think it probably can.</p> <p>However that may be the wrong question. &amp;#160;Human sustainability ought to be a question of quality of life. And when that is the objective, we clearly need to reduce our population and consumption. For human impacts on the planet&#8217;s natural capital; its forests, its oceans, its ecosystems, as well as air, water, air, and wildlife are already showing severe degradation and/or loss of resources that are critical to human health and happiness. Impoverishment of ecosystems, loss of biodiversity, loss of beauty and exhaustion of critical minerals, and energy supplies all threatens to jeopardize the continued habitation of humans on the planet.</p> <p>Even if we could succeed in supporting a population of 9 or 10 billion people that doesn&#8217;t mean that number is good for the Earth and good for people. Do you really want to live in a mega city with wall-to-wall apartments much like a packing plant at a CAFO factory (Confined Animal Farming Operation)?&amp;#160; Can anyone argue that this provides a quality of life?</p> <p>If one answers in the negative, and says they would prefer to live in less crowded conditions with abundant clear air, clean water, abundant wildlife, and beautiful surroundings than it really demonstrates that we must do something about population. It is a choice. Inaction is a choice by default.</p> <p>NATURE SUFFERS</p> <p>There are other considerations other than merely whether human population can be sustained in some fashion. We have a moral obligation not only to the overall quality of life for humans, but also a responsibility for other life on Earth. As many have pointed out we are on the verge of a massive new extinction. The world is losing species at a rate that is 100 to 1000 times faster than the natural extinction rate. Studies have shown that biologically diverse ecosystems are more productive, so these losses, if nothing else, have the potential of reducing the ability of the Earth to sustain human population.</p> <p>Habitat loss is the biggest driver of extinction. And much of this habitat loss is a direct consequence of human population growth and the need to support more and more people. For instance, agriculture already claims an astounding 40% of the Earth&#8217;s total land area. This figure is not difficult to doubt if you have ever stared out of a plane window while flying over the Great Plains and Midwest. What you see is mile upon mile&#8212;for thousands of miles&#8212;is croplands that have virtually replaced the native prairie ecosystem.</p> <p>When you consider there are huge areas of permanent ice like Antarctica as well as the boreal forests that cover much of Siberia and Canada, such numbers are shocking. Agriculture, by its definition, is the production of one or a few species of plant and/or animal at the expense of native species. &amp;#160;And the amount of land devoted to agriculture is expanding as a direct result of human population growth. The existing agricultural land use is a major driver of species extinction and biodiversity loss. Increasing agricultural conversion will likely hasten biodiversity losses.</p> <p>No one wants to say to anyone that they have to suffer hunger or even starvation. And it seems sensible to suggest that population reduction is really the only way we can guarantee adequate nutrition for people without continuing to drive more and more species over the brink to extinction.</p> <p>And even when species are not driven to extinction, they may be so reduced that they are functionally extinct. Globally, large predators have been shown to have significant influence upon ecosystem function. Yet large predators are among the most imperiled animals on the Earth. In many parts of the world they are functionally extinct.</p> <p>ETHICAL CONSIDERATION</p> <p>Thus far I&#8217;ve mostly made the argument for population reduction based on how it might improve things for human society. But humans are not the only species on the Planet.&amp;#160; Ethically we have a moral obligation to share the Planet with other life. I recognize that most people will see human life as most important, and that is completely natural. Yet it&#8217;s also an important human trait that we have compassion for other lifeforms. And if one feels that we have a moral obligation to share the Earth with the other millions of species inhabiting the Earth and being an agent of their extinction is morally wrong than we should look again at how population growth is contributing to species extirpation.</p> <p>THE PROBLEM</p> <p>Proponents who discount population growth or suggest that the rising tide of humanity is already self- correcting and that globally population growth is tapering off.&amp;#160; Tapering off isn&#8217;t good enough. While some countries are experiencing reduced fertility and in some places like northern Europe or Japan, population growth is no longer at replacement, globally human population is still growing at an astounding rate.</p> <p>Despite these positive shifts in demographics in some countries, we are still adding 80 million people to the Earth every year!&amp;#160; And some suggest that somewhere on the planet we&#8217;ll be building the equivalent of a city of a million inhabitants every five days from now until 2050. This multiplier effect due to demographic &amp;#160;inertia will cause significant population expansion for decades to come.</p> <p>A good example is the country of Ghana. In 2010 there were 20 million people in this impoverished country.&amp;#160; The average number of children born per woman was 4. Even if the fertility level decreased dramatically to replacement rate of 1.1 children per mother 2020, we would see Ghana&#8217;s population continue to grow for 40 more years before it would stabilize at 40 million.</p> <p>There are additional social issues, particularly concerning pregnancy and women&#8217;s health. An alarming 1400 Afghanistan women per 100,000 die in childbirth or complications from pregnancy, compared to 5 deaths per 100,000 in countries like Denmark. Of course, that is mostly a factor of poverty and lack of good medical care, but it is also a factor of how many children women in each country typically have. The more children you birth, the higher the chances that one of them will be problematic. Maintaining and providing good medical care while your population is exploding is difficult if not impossible as well.</p> <p>As many note, education of women can significantly reduce population growth.&amp;#160; But there is a chicken and egg situation here.&amp;#160; One of the main barriers to education is poverty. In poor countries providing even a minimum education for women is made more difficult by the sheer number of children requiring schooling.</p> <p>Happy pronouncements that we can feed more people through new agricultural techniques and other techno-fixes, ignore the fact that more a billion people already live in extreme poverty. It&#8217;s difficult to see how adding 2-3 billion more people can make it any easier to relieve poverty.</p> <p>There is evidence that overall mortality and absolute poverty are declining, especially for the world&#8217;s poorest people. However, with that decline in mortality and economic growth come new demands upon the Earth.</p> <p>Despite the fact that some parts of the world consume the bulk of natural resources, per capita consumption is increasing even among the poorest people. While this is likely a good thing given the extreme poverty, it does not bode well for the Earth.</p> <p>In addition, most assertions that we can feed, house, cloth, educate, and employ 9 or 10 billion people requires continuing ever deeper into dependency on high tech solutions and massive inputs of energy. Intensive agriculture using genetically modified crops, an abundance of pesticides, irrigation, and the conversion of more and more the Earth&#8217;s surface to growing crops at the expense of native ecosystems.&amp;#160; We are already nearing the limits or perhaps exceeding the limits on what can be captured by nets and trollers from the world&#8217;s oceans. Decline in larger fish across the world has serious implications for ocean ecosystems. And most of the world&#8217;s grazing lands are suffering from livestock induced degradation, soil erosion, and weed invasion.</p> <p>And unless one presumes everyone is going to live a bare existence lifestyle, providing even a reasonable amount of light, heat, and power for production and transportation of &#8220;things&#8221; requires more and more energy production.&amp;#160; Whether this is derived from burning of more fossil fuels or nuclear energy and/or massive wind farms, solar fields, hydroelectric, and other more renewable energy sources, the end result is more and more of the Earth is mined, drilled, and/or converted to energy production.</p> <p>IS POPULATION DECLINE A PROBLEM?</p> <p>Part of the hysteria over population voiced by some is that declining population growth will lead to economic stagnation. As <a href="" type="internal">one commentator</a> said recently &#8220; It&#8217;s an irony that aging doomsayers like Ehrlich and Holdren may not live long enough to behold &amp;#160;come to fruition in their lifetime, but to achieve the very goals they claim to be aiming toward, there may be only one hope for the human species: Bring on the babies. &#8220;</p> <p>The Population Reference Bureau reported that in 2011 US population grew by just 0.7%. Immigration was down, and more people survived than were born. This is causing some to wring their hands over what is sometimes called the demographic decline. They predict that aging population and lack of births will lead to economic decline and a collapse of society. Just look at the aging population of Japan and its slowing economy we are told, ignoring the fact that Germany and a number of other European countries have low reproduction rates as well as strong economies.</p> <p>NATURAL REGULATION OR BRAINS?</p> <p>I&#8217;m generally an advocate of natural regulation&#8212;or letting nature take its course. But when it comes to human population collapse, I&#8217;d rather see alternatives. We are, we are told by those who suffer from too much hubris, (often the same ones saying we don&#8217;t have a population problem) that we are clever and intelligent. Well an intelligent person, and even one that might not believe we have a serious population problem, would at least use the precautionary principle which says in the absence of better information you seek the alternative that has the least potential for long term damage.</p> <p>Certainly advocating population reduction can have few down sides that I am aware of, especially if done with a sense of justice and fairness. Even though I do not want to be viewed as a techno optimist, I have to admit that we have the &#8220;technology&#8221; in the form of birth control, plus education, and access to medical facilities to limit our population. It seems in light of the on-going biodiversity loss as well as other crisis&#8217;s exacerbated by population growth (like global climate change) that we can begin a global effort to bring human population more in line with global carrying capacity. And global carrying capacity in my view means not significantly contributing to accelerated species extinction, excessive pollution, and the rapid consumption&amp;#160; and/or degradation of finite resources.</p> <p>I&#8217;m afraid that if we don&#8217;t use our brains, we&#8217;ll follow a path much like the Isle Royale moose&#8212;a major population crash with a much depressed and infinitely poorer surviving population of humans. But even worse, we may be taking down a lot of the Earth&#8217;s heritage of diversity and landscapes in the process.</p> <p>George Wuerthner&amp;#160;is an ecologist with among others, a degree in wildlife biology, and is a former Montana hunting guide. He has published 35 books.&amp;#160;</p>

The Parable of Isle Royale

https://counterpunch.org/2012/06/05/the-parable-of-isle-royale/

2012-06-05

4left

Isle Royale in Lake Superior is a national park Besides its fame as a park Isle Royale is also famous for its wolf and moose populations The island provides a unique experimental design of what happens when populations are permitted to grow without restraint The story begins with the immigration of moose to the island sometime in the late 1800s or early 1900s amp160Some speculate that moose swam to the island or crossed on ice in winter No matter how they got there they existed on the island for five decades without wolves By the 1920s the moose population increased to more than 3000 and as a consequence of over browsing the moose population crashed in the 1930s The moose population languished for a while and then began to grow again Just after World War II wolves migrated to the island most likely over the ice in winter Wolves preyed on moose and for a few decades wolves and moose seems to sustain a relative equilibrium Then in 1980 the wolf population crashed after the introduction of canine parvovirus Released from wolf predation the moose population soared to new heights inflicting tremendous damage to the island8217s plant communities As before the moose population crashed with 2000 moose starving to death in one four month period The moose population now remains at around 500 animals far below their original high numbers due to the damage sustained by the island8217s plant community as a consequence of too many moose ISLAND EARTH There are lessons for human population in the Isle Royale example as well as other tales that could be told Continuous population growth can lead to habitat degradation great suffering for the dominant animal and eventually a lowered carrying capacity due to habitat destruction Human populations may be like the proverbial moose population We have been released from predators that might otherwise keep our numbers in check and somewhat sustainable Mind you I have no wish for a major pandemic famine warfare or other factors that once held human numbers in check But I do think there are plenty of signs that humans like the moose of Isle Royale are degrading the carrying capacity of Planet Earth8212which is after all the only habitable island we know of in the Universe Despite the seriousness of population growth as an agent of planetary damage with serious potential repercussions for human survival there is a tendency for the majority of people to ignore the issue There are many on both the left and right ends of the political spectrum who feel human population growth is not a problem or at the very least a manageable problem Typically the right opposes any discussion of population reduction because of conservative religious views or a business model that requires endless growth to maintain economic prosperity The left tends to downplay population based on social justice grounds8212that the world8217s poor are blamed for population growth while the world8217s richest countries enjoy the benefits of excessive consumption Both support their respective positions often by arguing that as a result of technology we will amp160rise to the occasion and help us get through any shortages we may face be it energy food or space In a sense the worldviews of the left and right are not appreciably different when it comes to techno optimism I am inclined to agree that technological advances often change assumptions about limiting factors8212what8217s available to use and at what cost can change dramatically due to technological innovations At one time salt was more valuable than gold but technological innovations has made it so common we can buy it for penniesamp160 So I am loath to discount how technology can rapidly change predictions and assumptions about the availability of critical resources But the problem is that technology does not come free There8217s a huge ecological cost to technological fixes Even if you could grow sufficient food for 10 billion people one has to consider what8217s driving that food production The price of food does not reflect the real costs It8217s the mining that produces the metal to make the plow It8217s the gas drilling that provides the fertilizer It8217s the oil drilling that provides the fuel to power the trucks that moves the food to people It8217s the dams that provide the water storage for irrigation of fieldsamp160 And even more so today the computers that calculate the amount of water to spread or the exact percentage of pesticide to apply and so on Behind that food production is long technology train that is pulling a lot of cars8212each taking a bite out of the Earth8217s biodiversity land and water to feed a growing human population Of course I8217m generalizing here and there are many shades of gray and degrees of buyin to the various perspectives But there are few on either side of the right or left who agree that human population growth poses a grave danger to the Earth8217s ecosystems and biodiversity much less a threat to humanity as well The debate over population has largely focused on whether outright population growth8212primarily in the less developed countries is a threat8211 andor whether consumption of natural resources by developed countries is really the problem for sustainability In reality this debate is not helpful since both are problematic amp160Both issues need to be addressedamp160 Depending on how you define sustainability we are already likely well past any sustainable society FINITE EARTH There are physical limits to the Earth and its life support systems amp160And though technology can unleash abundance where previously there was scarcity ultimately this means there are limits to population growth There is only so much agricultural land fish in the sea fresh water to drink oil and coal to burn and so forth Where and when we reach those limits is a matter of debate and for many of these resources limits may be more regional in nature But what can8217t be debated is that all of these are finiteamp160 I don8217t doubt that humans are clever and innovative and some of these resources will be replaced or used far more efficiently in the future Nevertheless amp160just the physical need for housing and providing basic needs for an expanding human population will place new demands on Planet Earth whether we impose strict limits or not What we have in terms of ecological limitations is a planet that is already overtaxed if one uses the appropriate metrics like biodiversity loss It would be unfortunate to simply try to determine what number of humans could be supported on Earth if we were to completely exploit any of these resources amp160I think it misses an important philosophical question In the simplest terms some define sustainably only in terms of human population Can the Earth sustain 10 billion or whatever number one chooses to use I think it probably can However that may be the wrong question amp160Human sustainability ought to be a question of quality of life And when that is the objective we clearly need to reduce our population and consumption For human impacts on the planet8217s natural capital its forests its oceans its ecosystems as well as air water air and wildlife are already showing severe degradation andor loss of resources that are critical to human health and happiness Impoverishment of ecosystems loss of biodiversity loss of beauty and exhaustion of critical minerals and energy supplies all threatens to jeopardize the continued habitation of humans on the planet Even if we could succeed in supporting a population of 9 or 10 billion people that doesn8217t mean that number is good for the Earth and good for people Do you really want to live in a mega city with walltowall apartments much like a packing plant at a CAFO factory Confined Animal Farming Operationamp160 Can anyone argue that this provides a quality of life If one answers in the negative and says they would prefer to live in less crowded conditions with abundant clear air clean water abundant wildlife and beautiful surroundings than it really demonstrates that we must do something about population It is a choice Inaction is a choice by default NATURE SUFFERS There are other considerations other than merely whether human population can be sustained in some fashion We have a moral obligation not only to the overall quality of life for humans but also a responsibility for other life on Earth As many have pointed out we are on the verge of a massive new extinction The world is losing species at a rate that is 100 to 1000 times faster than the natural extinction rate Studies have shown that biologically diverse ecosystems are more productive so these losses if nothing else have the potential of reducing the ability of the Earth to sustain human population Habitat loss is the biggest driver of extinction And much of this habitat loss is a direct consequence of human population growth and the need to support more and more people For instance agriculture already claims an astounding 40 of the Earth8217s total land area This figure is not difficult to doubt if you have ever stared out of a plane window while flying over the Great Plains and Midwest What you see is mile upon mile8212for thousands of miles8212is croplands that have virtually replaced the native prairie ecosystem When you consider there are huge areas of permanent ice like Antarctica as well as the boreal forests that cover much of Siberia and Canada such numbers are shocking Agriculture by its definition is the production of one or a few species of plant andor animal at the expense of native species amp160And the amount of land devoted to agriculture is expanding as a direct result of human population growth The existing agricultural land use is a major driver of species extinction and biodiversity loss Increasing agricultural conversion will likely hasten biodiversity losses No one wants to say to anyone that they have to suffer hunger or even starvation And it seems sensible to suggest that population reduction is really the only way we can guarantee adequate nutrition for people without continuing to drive more and more species over the brink to extinction And even when species are not driven to extinction they may be so reduced that they are functionally extinct Globally large predators have been shown to have significant influence upon ecosystem function Yet large predators are among the most imperiled animals on the Earth In many parts of the world they are functionally extinct ETHICAL CONSIDERATION Thus far I8217ve mostly made the argument for population reduction based on how it might improve things for human society But humans are not the only species on the Planetamp160 Ethically we have a moral obligation to share the Planet with other life I recognize that most people will see human life as most important and that is completely natural Yet it8217s also an important human trait that we have compassion for other lifeforms And if one feels that we have a moral obligation to share the Earth with the other millions of species inhabiting the Earth and being an agent of their extinction is morally wrong than we should look again at how population growth is contributing to species extirpation THE PROBLEM Proponents who discount population growth or suggest that the rising tide of humanity is already self correcting and that globally population growth is tapering offamp160 Tapering off isn8217t good enough While some countries are experiencing reduced fertility and in some places like northern Europe or Japan population growth is no longer at replacement globally human population is still growing at an astounding rate Despite these positive shifts in demographics in some countries we are still adding 80 million people to the Earth every yearamp160 And some suggest that somewhere on the planet we8217ll be building the equivalent of a city of a million inhabitants every five days from now until 2050 This multiplier effect due to demographic amp160inertia will cause significant population expansion for decades to come A good example is the country of Ghana In 2010 there were 20 million people in this impoverished countryamp160 The average number of children born per woman was 4 Even if the fertility level decreased dramatically to replacement rate of 11 children per mother 2020 we would see Ghana8217s population continue to grow for 40 more years before it would stabilize at 40 million There are additional social issues particularly concerning pregnancy and women8217s health An alarming 1400 Afghanistan women per 100000 die in childbirth or complications from pregnancy compared to 5 deaths per 100000 in countries like Denmark Of course that is mostly a factor of poverty and lack of good medical care but it is also a factor of how many children women in each country typically have The more children you birth the higher the chances that one of them will be problematic Maintaining and providing good medical care while your population is exploding is difficult if not impossible as well As many note education of women can significantly reduce population growthamp160 But there is a chicken and egg situation hereamp160 One of the main barriers to education is poverty In poor countries providing even a minimum education for women is made more difficult by the sheer number of children requiring schooling Happy pronouncements that we can feed more people through new agricultural techniques and other technofixes ignore the fact that more a billion people already live in extreme poverty It8217s difficult to see how adding 23 billion more people can make it any easier to relieve poverty There is evidence that overall mortality and absolute poverty are declining especially for the world8217s poorest people However with that decline in mortality and economic growth come new demands upon the Earth Despite the fact that some parts of the world consume the bulk of natural resources per capita consumption is increasing even among the poorest people While this is likely a good thing given the extreme poverty it does not bode well for the Earth In addition most assertions that we can feed house cloth educate and employ 9 or 10 billion people requires continuing ever deeper into dependency on high tech solutions and massive inputs of energy Intensive agriculture using genetically modified crops an abundance of pesticides irrigation and the conversion of more and more the Earth8217s surface to growing crops at the expense of native ecosystemsamp160 We are already nearing the limits or perhaps exceeding the limits on what can be captured by nets and trollers from the world8217s oceans Decline in larger fish across the world has serious implications for ocean ecosystems And most of the world8217s grazing lands are suffering from livestock induced degradation soil erosion and weed invasion And unless one presumes everyone is going to live a bare existence lifestyle providing even a reasonable amount of light heat and power for production and transportation of 8220things8221 requires more and more energy productionamp160 Whether this is derived from burning of more fossil fuels or nuclear energy andor massive wind farms solar fields hydroelectric and other more renewable energy sources the end result is more and more of the Earth is mined drilled andor converted to energy production IS POPULATION DECLINE A PROBLEM Part of the hysteria over population voiced by some is that declining population growth will lead to economic stagnation As one commentator said recently 8220 It8217s an irony that aging doomsayers like Ehrlich and Holdren may not live long enough to behold amp160come to fruition in their lifetime but to achieve the very goals they claim to be aiming toward there may be only one hope for the human species Bring on the babies 8220 The Population Reference Bureau reported that in 2011 US population grew by just 07 Immigration was down and more people survived than were born This is causing some to wring their hands over what is sometimes called the demographic decline They predict that aging population and lack of births will lead to economic decline and a collapse of society Just look at the aging population of Japan and its slowing economy we are told ignoring the fact that Germany and a number of other European countries have low reproduction rates as well as strong economies NATURAL REGULATION OR BRAINS I8217m generally an advocate of natural regulation8212or letting nature take its course But when it comes to human population collapse I8217d rather see alternatives We are we are told by those who suffer from too much hubris often the same ones saying we don8217t have a population problem that we are clever and intelligent Well an intelligent person and even one that might not believe we have a serious population problem would at least use the precautionary principle which says in the absence of better information you seek the alternative that has the least potential for long term damage Certainly advocating population reduction can have few down sides that I am aware of especially if done with a sense of justice and fairness Even though I do not want to be viewed as a techno optimist I have to admit that we have the 8220technology8221 in the form of birth control plus education and access to medical facilities to limit our population It seems in light of the ongoing biodiversity loss as well as other crisis8217s exacerbated by population growth like global climate change that we can begin a global effort to bring human population more in line with global carrying capacity And global carrying capacity in my view means not significantly contributing to accelerated species extinction excessive pollution and the rapid consumptionamp160 andor degradation of finite resources I8217m afraid that if we don8217t use our brains we8217ll follow a path much like the Isle Royale moose8212a major population crash with a much depressed and infinitely poorer surviving population of humans But even worse we may be taking down a lot of the Earth8217s heritage of diversity and landscapes in the process George Wuerthneramp160is an ecologist with among others a degree in wildlife biology and is a former Montana hunting guide He has published 35 booksamp160

Isle/PROPN Royale/PROPN in/ADP Lake/PROPN Superior/PROPN is/AUX a/DET national/ADJ park/NOUN Besides/SCONJ its/PRON fame/NOUN as/ADP a/DET park/NOUN Isle/PROPN Royale/PROPN is/AUX also/ADV famous/ADJ for/ADP its/PRON wolf/NOUN and/CCONJ moose/ADJ populations/NOUN The/DET island/NOUN provides/VERB a/DET unique/ADJ experimental/ADJ design/NOUN of/ADP what/PRON happens/VERB when/SCONJ populations/NOUN are/AUX permitted/VERB to/PART grow/VERB without/ADP restraint/NOUN The/DET story/NOUN begins/VERB with/ADP the/DET immigration/NOUN of/ADP moose/NOUN to/ADP the/DET island/NOUN sometime/ADV in/ADP the/DET late/ADJ 1800s/NOUN or/CCONJ early/ADJ 1900s/NUM amp160Some/PRON speculate/VERB that/DET moose/ADJ swam/NOUN to/ADP the/DET island/NOUN or/CCONJ crossed/VERB on/ADP ice/NOUN in/ADP winter/NOUN No/ADV matter/ADV how/SCONJ they/PRON got/VERB there/ADV they/PRON existed/VERB on/ADP the/DET island/NOUN for/ADP five/NUM decades/NOUN without/ADP wolves/NOUN By/ADP the/DET 1920s/NOUN the/DET 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<p /> <p>Tom Mboya was the hope of the western world. Bright, energetic, popular and inclined to be democratic&#8212;he was a born leader who, Washington hoped, would rise to power in Kenya and help keep Africa safe for United States commerce. In 1969 he was shot down in the streets of Nairobi. An emergency rescue squad was by his side in minutes. They plugged him into the latest gadget in resuscitative technology&#8212;a brand new U.S. export called the Res-Q-Aire. What the rescue team didn&#8217;t know as they watched Tom Mboya&#8217;s life slip away was that this marvelous device had been recalled from the American market by the US government because it was found to be totally ineffective. The patient died.</p> <p>Losing Mboya to the Res-Q-Aire was perhaps a subtle retribution for the US, for to this day we allow our business leaders to sell, mostly to Third World nations, shiploads of defective medical devices, lethal drugs, known carcinogens, toxic pesticides, contaminated foods and other products found unfit for American consumption.</p> <p>Ten years after Mboya&#8217;s assassination, in fact, Kenya itself remains a major market for unsafe, ineffective and contaminated American products. At the 1977 meeting of the United Nations Environmental Program, Kenyan Minister of Water Development Dr. D. J. Kiano warned that developing nations would no longer tolerate being used as &#8220;dumping grounds for products that have not been adequately tested&#8221; and that their people should not be used as &#8220;guinea pigs&#8221; for chemicals.</p> <p>The prevailing sentiment in Washington contrasts considerably with Dr. Kiano&#8217;s. Say the word &#8220;dumping&#8221; in federal government circles and the predominant response will be &#8220;Oh, yes, &#8216;dumping.&#8217; Really must be stopped. It&#8217;s outrageous, not in our economic interests at all&#8230;unscrupulous bastards&#8230;.&#8221;</p> <p>Sounds as if we&#8217;ve solved the problem, doesn&#8217;t it, except what our bureaucrats are talking about, one discovers, is foreign corporations &#8220;dumping&#8221; low-priced goods on the American market &#8212; Japanese cars, Taiwanese televisions, Hong Kong stereos, Australian beef, etc. The export of banned and hazardous products, which Mother Jones calls &#8220;dumping,&#8221; is considered business as usual.</p> <p>As the following articles make painfully clear, dumping is, in fact, big business as usual. It involves not only manufacturers and retailers, a vast array of export brokers, tramp steamers, black marketeers and go-betweens who traffic an estimated $1.2 billion worth of unsafe goods overseas every year, but also the United States Export-Import Bank, which finances large dumps; the Commerce, State and Treasury Departments, which have the statutory authority to stop or control dumping, but won&#8217;t; and a President who, in his quiet way, subverts the efforts of the few progressive members of Congress who seek to pass uniform anti-dumping legislation.</p> <p>Hard evidence of dumping and its tragic consequences has repeatedly been brought to the attention of federal agencies, the Congress and the White House. Here are some examples:</p> <p>Occasionally, a particularly scandalous dump like one of these will come to the attention of conscientious Americans. Most dumps, however, are performed quietly, the product moving unnoticed in the fast flow of normal trade between nations. And dumping is not limited to chemicals and consumer products. When a firm&#8217;s production facilities and industrial equipment are condemned by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the manufacturer often simply closes up shop and moves the factory to Mexico or Jamaica, where occupational health standards are virtually nonexistent. Even entire technologies are dumped. Nuclear power, which seems certain to receive a &#8220;hazardous&#8221; classification before long in the US, is today being dumped on energy-starved nations like the Philippines and India.</p> <p>We are only beginning to discover how toxic and carcinogenic are some of the chemicals we use, chemicals with the potential to affect the entire global environment and human gene pool. Moreover, the number of other consumer products that maim or kill shows no sign of diminishing. The list of banned and hazardous products is, thus, bound to grow, which should making dumping a major international issue for the 1980s.</p> <p>Early in our investigation, however, we discovered that exposing dumpers was more challenging than we thought it would be. &#8220;They&#8217;re really smugglers,&#8221; said one of our team in a story meeting. &#8220;The only difference between drug smugglers and dumpers is that the products are usually moving in opposite directions.&#8221;</p> <p>There is another difference: The government protects dumpers. We talked to countless officials in countless agencies and departments of the government while researching this story&#8212;a few of them outspoken opponents of dumping. They would tell us about contaminated foods, baby pacifiers, pesticides and drugs that were being dumped overseas. They often knew how many of each item were shipped to specific countries, but they would never tell us the brand names, the manufacturers or the names of the export brokers. The answer was always the same. &#8220;I&#8217;m sorry, that&#8217;s proprietary information&#8230;trade secret&#8230;confidential corporate information. And as we shall see, government protection afforded to dumpers goes way beyond this kind of cover.</p> <p>Although the bottom line motive is always profit, hazardous products are dumped to solve different problems. For nonmanufacturers&#8212;wholesalers, retailers, brokers, importers and exporters&#8212;the problem is generally just a matter of inventory. Salvation often comes in the form of a broker, offering to buy the banned goods at a &#8220;close-out&#8221; price for resale in an unnamed (read, Third World) market.</p> <p>It&#8217;s not that simple, however, for manufacturers who have invested capital in tools, dies, assembly plants, personnel, machines and land. When a company like A. H. Robins foresees the withdrawal of a product like the Dalkon Shield intrauterine device, it dumps a million units on foreign countries, voluntarily withdraws the product and closes up shop. The company takes a small loss buying back recalled inventory (which it writes off), and its capital investment is amortized.</p> <p>Carter Dumps Dumping</p> <p>It was Tris that brought dumping into the political arena. And the political arena for dumping is Washington. Tris (2,3-dibromopropyl) phosphate is a fire-retardant chemical used to treat synthetic flammable fabrics. In June of 1977, after Tris was found to cause cancer in animals, millions of pairs of infant pajamas and tons of children&#8217;s sleepwear were suddenly withdrawn from the US market by the CPSC. When some of the manufacturers, stuck with huge repurchased inventories of these carcinogenic garments, threatened to dump them on the overseas markets, the CPSC claimed at first that it had no statutory authority to stop them from doing so. In fact, although the CPSC, the EPA and the FDA together have removed over 500 pesticides, drugs and consumer products from the American market for health, safety or environmental reasons, the patchwork of regulations obfuscates what limited power these agencies have to prohibit the export of dangerous products.</p> <p>When President Carter, who does have the authority to stop dumping with a simple Executive Order, learned of the Tris situation, he authorized the formation of an Interagency Working Group to develop a uniform national policy on dumping. Although such task forces can provide a valuable forum for intra-government communication and often make important policy recommendations, the Interagency Working Group on Hazardous Substances Export Policy (HSEP)&#8212;chaired by Carter&#8217;s Special Assistant for Consumer Affairs, Esther Peterson&#8212;is, in fact, being used to table the issue until our balance of trade improves. Dumping, you see, is exporting; and although banned and hazardous products represent only about one percent of our total trade, every percent seems to count when we are consistently running a trade deficit of over $25 billion a year.</p> <p>To determine why the task force report is still nonexistent, we took our investigation to Washington. In a long series of interviews with task force members and White House staff the reason for the delay became clear. The President, intimidated by Congress, is unwilling to take the issue to the Hill, in the face of growing &#8220;export fever&#8221; and antiregulatory sentiment.</p> <p>Edward Cohen, staff counsel to both the HSEP task force and the White House Office of Consumer Affairs, asked us to turn off our tape recorder as he explained the dilemma. He also told us he was &#8220;one of the good guys in the story.&#8221; We can&#8217;t quote what he told us when the recorder was off, but since we don&#8217;t believe him, it really doesn&#8217;t matter. Cohen refused to tell us the names of any agency representatives on the task force and throughout our investigation went to elaborate lengths to stop any flow of information to our researchers. When we asked him for innocuous background material on the task force, Cohen exercised &#8220;executive privilege&#8221; and gave us nothing, forcing us to file Freedom of Information requests with the 16 agencies and departments in the task force. Despite White House efforts to discourage compliance with our requests, we obtained the material from friendly sources in the agencies. More on the contents later.</p> <p>During the interview, Cohen struggled to remember the correct name of the task force. The records, files and minutes from past meetings were stuffed in a cardboard box under a radiator in his otherwise tidy office. It was clear that dumping and HSEP had slipped a notch or two on the White House agenda. Cohen admitted eventually that it was barely on his own agenda. He persisted, however, in his &#8220;good guy&#8221; stance.</p> <p>When we persisted with our investigation, Cohen realized he had a public relations problem on his hands. In fact, when we called the White House to interview Esther Peterson recently, Cohen turned up unexpectedly on the line to tell us he was working on a fourth policy draft for task force review. But when we talked to representatives from all but three of the agencies involved, most barely remembered the task force and felt that the issue was dead. And Cohen recently told Ralph Nader&#8217;s office that if the fourth draft is not approved, the entire matter will be dropped.</p> <p>The President can place any product he wants on the Commodity Control List, which makes exportation of the product absolutely illegal. There are three statutory justifications for placing a commodity on this list: scarcity, national security and foreign relations.</p> <p>When Tris-treated clothing was found to be a cancer threat to infants and it became clear that President Carter wasn&#8217;t going to do anything to stop its export, an alarmed S. John Byington, chairman of the CPSC, wrote in June 1977 to Secretary of Commerce Juanita Kreps, whose department administers the Commodity Control List. Byington asked her to place the garments on the list, pointing out to her that their export would have &#8220;serious implications for foreign policy.&#8221;</p> <p>On October 7, nearly four months and, as it turns out, many pajama dumps later, Kreps answered Byington. She had taken the time to consult the State Department, which &#8220;has advised me that the controls on Tris and Tris-treated garments are not, in the language of the statute, &#8216;necessary to further significantly the foreign policy of the US to fulfill its international responsibilities.'&#8221; Frustrated by months of bureaucratic waffling, the CPSC finally reversed its position on June 14, 1978 by prohibiting the export of Tris-treated sleepwear.</p> <p>This delay, obfuscation and inactivity are all too typical. Records of Interagency Working Group meetings, which we were able to obtain despite White House efforts to stonewall us, show that Commerce and State Department representatives are doing everything in their power to prevent the adoption of a uniform policy on dumping.</p> <p>Although President Carter has mumbled a word or two about the ethics of exporting, he clearly does not consider the use of safe products a human right for non-Americans. In fact, his actions on this matter have pleased the most conservative pro-dumping forces.</p> <p>On September 26, 1978, the day before the HSEP task force report was due for release, Carter issued a public statement on exports. The wording of the statement so clearly subverted the intent of any reforms the task force might have conceivably proposed that it&#8217;s little wonder not a word has been heard from the group since.</p> <p>Notification Before the Dump</p> <p>The liberal compromise on the dumping issue is notification. Invoking the principles of national sovereignty, self-determination and free trade, government officials and legislators have devised a system whereby foreign governments are notified whenever a product is banned, deregulated, suspended or cancelled by an American regulatory agency. The notification system is handled by the State Department, whose policy statement on the subject reads, in part, &#8220;No country should establish itself as the arbiter of others&#8217; health and safety standards. Individual governments are generally in the best position to establish standards of public health and safety.&#8221;</p> <p>Based on this judgment, an unwieldy and ineffective notification procedure allegedly places announcements in the hands of the proper foreign government officials, telling them a certain drug has been found to be toxic or that babies have strangled in particular brands of cribs.</p> <p>The main problem with notification is the logic behind it. Other governments are generally not in a position to establish safety standards, let alone control imports into their countries. In fact, the countries where most of our banned and hazardous products are dumped lack regulatory agencies, testing laboratories or well-staffed customs departments. In 1978, Nigeria&#8217;s Environmental Protection Ministry was one person. He recently told the US EPA that it didn&#8217;t matter whether or not he was notified when a pesticide was suspended; there was nothing he could do to stop its importation.</p> <p>When our EPA, FDA or CPSC finds a product to be hazardous, they notify our State Department as required or as a matter of protocol. State, which we have found to be no opponent of dumping, is then supposed to send a communiqu&#233; to each American embassy overseas. Each embassy is, in turn, supposed to notify the appropriate foreign officials. However, the Commerce, Consumer and Monetary Affairs Subcommittee of the House Committee on Government Operations discovered in hearings held in July of 1978 that the agencies frequently neglected to inform the State Department when they banned a product. For example, the EPA failed to notify State after suspending such notorious pesticides as kepone, chlordane and heptachlor. The Government Accounting Office (GAO) also discovered and testified to the same subcommittee that even when the agencies did notify State, the communiqu&#233;s rarely went further than the US embassies overseas&#8212;they almost never reached the foreign officials who might have been able to warn foreign buyers or intercept shipments. One embassy official even admitted to the GAO that he &#8220;did not routinely forward notification of chemicals not registered in the host country because it may adversely affect US exporting.&#8221; The GAO would not tell us the name or location of the official they quoted, but said the sentiment was not unusual.</p> <p>Some of the foreign officials who have been notified have complained that the communiqu&#233;s are vague and ambiguous, or else so highly technical that they are incomprehensible.</p> <p>Of course, even if clear notification about a product were to reach officials in an importing nation, there is nothing to stop the exporters from changing a product&#8217;s brand name before they ship.</p> <p>It&#8217;s All Coming Back</p> <p>Perhaps the only aspect of the whole dumping travesty that has kept the issue alive in Washington is reimportation. Congressmembers and bureaucrats who would otherwise ignore or even encourage dumping become irate upon learning that a hazardous product is being reimported (smuggled) into the US for sale, or that an imported fruit or vegetable contains residue of a pesticide long-since suspended for American use. Even Esther Peterson, in a memo to the President, expressed concern about reimportation.</p> <p>Remember, it is perfectly legal to dump hazardous products abroad. There are, however, strict measures to prevent reimportation. The FDA allows manufacturers to export banned drugs, stale-dated drugs and even unapproved new drugs if they are shipped under &#8220;an investigational protocol&#8221; (for experimentation on other people). But one of the stipulations for the export of drugs removed from the American marketplace is that they never be offered for domestic sale again.</p> <p>The CPSC, however, can prohibit the export of goods forced off the American market. It can also stop exports that present &#8220;an unreasonable risk to persons in the US&#8221; (through their reimportation, for example), but the CPSC admits that proving unreasonable risk is &#8220;very difficult.&#8221;</p> <p>How to Stop It</p> <p>The White House Office of Consumer Affairs remains confident that a uniform policy on the export of banned and hazardous products will protect foreign consumers. Our investigations, however, indicate that the corporate dumping urge is rooted in a criminal mentality and that dumpers will, as they already have, find new ways to circumvent whatever legal and regulatory barriers stand between their warehouses and profitable markets for their deadly goods.</p> <p>Global corporations, with their worldwide network of subsidiaries, high technology and marketing systems, far outstrip the puny regulatory efforts of a government that considers corporate crime a minor nuisance at worst. Nothing short of a complete moral transformation of the corporate ethos will stop dumping. Until that unlikely transformation takes place, we recommend the following:</p> <p>Until all of the above are accomplished, the President should use his powers to stop dumping immediately.</p> <p>What Dumping Really Is</p> <p>Executives in major exporting corporations, with the strong support of Commerce Secretary Juanita Kreps, argue that if the export of banned and hazardous products is prohibited by statute or Executive Order, foreign buyers will merely turn to European or other suppliers, as they have in the past for weapons and ammunition. Other developed nations do dump; Germany dumps at least as many toxic pesticides as the US, and no nation on earth can match Switzerland for dumping baby formula. However, the assumption that foreign buyers will import known toxins and recognized lethal products from one country when they can&#8217;t get them from another is patently ridiculous.</p> <p>American business leaders, who tout themselves as the most ethical businesspeople in the world, should lead the way in ending dumping worldwide. It&#8217;s in their best interest to do so, for by dumping toxins on the Third World they are actually poisoning the very markets they seek to develop. Perhaps one day they will even see dumping for what it really is&#8212;a subtle genocide.</p> <p>Research assistance was provided by Carolyn Marshall, Victoria Dompka and the Center for Investigative Reporting.</p> <p />

The Corporate Crime of the Century

https://motherjones.com/politics/1979/11/corporate-crime-century/

2018-11-01

4left

Tom Mboya was the hope of the western world Bright energetic popular and inclined to be democratic8212he was a born leader who Washington hoped would rise to power in Kenya and help keep Africa safe for United States commerce In 1969 he was shot down in the streets of Nairobi An emergency rescue squad was by his side in minutes They plugged him into the latest gadget in resuscitative technology8212a brand new US export called the ResQAire What the rescue team didn8217t know as they watched Tom Mboya8217s life slip away was that this marvelous device had been recalled from the American market by the US government because it was found to be totally ineffective The patient died Losing Mboya to the ResQAire was perhaps a subtle retribution for the US for to this day we allow our business leaders to sell mostly to Third World nations shiploads of defective medical devices lethal drugs known carcinogens toxic pesticides contaminated foods and other products found unfit for American consumption Ten years after Mboya8217s assassination in fact Kenya itself remains a major market for unsafe ineffective and contaminated American products At the 1977 meeting of the United Nations Environmental Program Kenyan Minister of Water Development Dr D J Kiano warned that developing nations would no longer tolerate being used as 8220dumping grounds for products that have not been adequately tested8221 and that their people should not be used as 8220guinea pigs8221 for chemicals The prevailing sentiment in Washington contrasts considerably with Dr Kiano8217s Say the word 8220dumping8221 in federal government circles and the predominant response will be 8220Oh yes 8216dumping8217 Really must be stopped It8217s outrageous not in our economic interests at all8230unscrupulous bastards82308221 Sounds as if we8217ve solved the problem doesn8217t it except what our bureaucrats are talking about one discovers is foreign corporations 8220dumping8221 lowpriced goods on the American market 8212 Japanese cars Taiwanese televisions Hong Kong stereos Australian beef etc The export of banned and hazardous products which Mother Jones calls 8220dumping8221 is considered business as usual As the following articles make painfully clear dumping is in fact big business as usual It involves not only manufacturers and retailers a vast array of export brokers tramp steamers black marketeers and gobetweens who traffic an estimated 12 billion worth of unsafe goods overseas every year but also the United States ExportImport Bank which finances large dumps the Commerce State and Treasury Departments which have the statutory authority to stop or control dumping but won8217t and a President who in his quiet way subverts the efforts of the few progressive members of Congress who seek to pass uniform antidumping legislation Hard evidence of dumping and its tragic consequences has repeatedly been brought to the attention of federal agencies the Congress and the White House Here are some examples Occasionally a particularly scandalous dump like one of these will come to the attention of conscientious Americans Most dumps however are performed quietly the product moving unnoticed in the fast flow of normal trade between nations And dumping is not limited to chemicals and consumer products When a firm8217s production facilities and industrial equipment are condemned by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration the manufacturer often simply closes up shop and moves the factory to Mexico or Jamaica where occupational health standards are virtually nonexistent Even entire technologies are dumped Nuclear power which seems certain to receive a 8220hazardous8221 classification before long in the US is today being dumped on energystarved nations like the Philippines and India We are only beginning to discover how toxic and carcinogenic are some of the chemicals we use chemicals with the potential to affect the entire global environment and human gene pool Moreover the number of other consumer products that maim or kill shows no sign of diminishing The list of banned and hazardous products is thus bound to grow which should making dumping a major international issue for the 1980s Early in our investigation however we discovered that exposing dumpers was more challenging than we thought it would be 8220They8217re really smugglers8221 said one of our team in a story meeting 8220The only difference between drug smugglers and dumpers is that the products are usually moving in opposite directions8221 There is another difference The government protects dumpers We talked to countless officials in countless agencies and departments of the government while researching this story8212a few of them outspoken opponents of dumping They would tell us about contaminated foods baby pacifiers pesticides and drugs that were being dumped overseas They often knew how many of each item were shipped to specific countries but they would never tell us the brand names the manufacturers or the names of the export brokers The answer was always the same 8220I8217m sorry that8217s proprietary information8230trade secret8230confidential corporate information And as we shall see government protection afforded to dumpers goes way beyond this kind of cover Although the bottom line motive is always profit hazardous products are dumped to solve different problems For nonmanufacturers8212wholesalers retailers brokers importers and exporters8212the problem is generally just a matter of inventory Salvation often comes in the form of a broker offering to buy the banned goods at a 8220closeout8221 price for resale in an unnamed read Third World market It8217s not that simple however for manufacturers who have invested capital in tools dies assembly plants personnel machines and land When a company like A H Robins foresees the withdrawal of a product like the Dalkon Shield intrauterine device it dumps a million units on foreign countries voluntarily withdraws the product and closes up shop The company takes a small loss buying back recalled inventory which it writes off and its capital investment is amortized Carter Dumps Dumping It was Tris that brought dumping into the political arena And the political arena for dumping is Washington Tris 23dibromopropyl phosphate is a fireretardant chemical used to treat synthetic flammable fabrics In June of 1977 after Tris was found to cause cancer in animals millions of pairs of infant pajamas and tons of children8217s sleepwear were suddenly withdrawn from the US market by the CPSC When some of the manufacturers stuck with huge repurchased inventories of these carcinogenic garments threatened to dump them on the overseas markets the CPSC claimed at first that it had no statutory authority to stop them from doing so In fact although the CPSC the EPA and the FDA together have removed over 500 pesticides drugs and consumer products from the American market for health safety or environmental reasons the patchwork of regulations obfuscates what limited power these agencies have to prohibit the export of dangerous products When President Carter who does have the authority to stop dumping with a simple Executive Order learned of the Tris situation he authorized the formation of an Interagency Working Group to develop a uniform national policy on dumping Although such task forces can provide a valuable forum for intragovernment communication and often make important policy recommendations the Interagency Working Group on Hazardous Substances Export Policy HSEP8212chaired by Carter8217s Special Assistant for Consumer Affairs Esther Peterson8212is in fact being used to table the issue until our balance of trade improves Dumping you see is exporting and although banned and hazardous products represent only about one percent of our total trade every percent seems to count when we are consistently running a trade deficit of over 25 billion a year To determine why the task force report is still nonexistent we took our investigation to Washington In a long series of interviews with task force members and White House staff the reason for the delay became clear The President intimidated by Congress is unwilling to take the issue to the Hill in the face of growing 8220export fever8221 and antiregulatory sentiment Edward Cohen staff counsel to both the HSEP task force and the White House Office of Consumer Affairs asked us to turn off our tape recorder as he explained the dilemma He also told us he was 8220one of the good guys in the story8221 We can8217t quote what he told us when the recorder was off but since we don8217t believe him it really doesn8217t matter Cohen refused to tell us the names of any agency representatives on the task force and throughout our investigation went to elaborate lengths to stop any flow of information to our researchers When we asked him for innocuous background material on the task force Cohen exercised 8220executive privilege8221 and gave us nothing forcing us to file Freedom of Information requests with the 16 agencies and departments in the task force Despite White House efforts to discourage compliance with our requests we obtained the material from friendly sources in the agencies More on the contents later During the interview Cohen struggled to remember the correct name of the task force The records files and minutes from past meetings were stuffed in a cardboard box under a radiator in his otherwise tidy office It was clear that dumping and HSEP had slipped a notch or two on the White House agenda Cohen admitted eventually that it was barely on his own agenda He persisted however in his 8220good guy8221 stance When we persisted with our investigation Cohen realized he had a public relations problem on his hands In fact when we called the White House to interview Esther Peterson recently Cohen turned up unexpectedly on the line to tell us he was working on a fourth policy draft for task force review But when we talked to representatives from all but three of the agencies involved most barely remembered the task force and felt that the issue was dead And Cohen recently told Ralph Nader8217s office that if the fourth draft is not approved the entire matter will be dropped The President can place any product he wants on the Commodity Control List which makes exportation of the product absolutely illegal There are three statutory justifications for placing a commodity on this list scarcity national security and foreign relations When Tristreated clothing was found to be a cancer threat to infants and it became clear that President Carter wasn8217t going to do anything to stop its export an alarmed S John Byington chairman of the CPSC wrote in June 1977 to Secretary of Commerce Juanita Kreps whose department administers the Commodity Control List Byington asked her to place the garments on the list pointing out to her that their export would have 8220serious implications for foreign policy8221 On October 7 nearly four months and as it turns out many pajama dumps later Kreps answered Byington She had taken the time to consult the State Department which 8220has advised me that the controls on Tris and Tristreated garments are not in the language of the statute 8216necessary to further significantly the foreign policy of the US to fulfill its international responsibilities8221 Frustrated by months of bureaucratic waffling the CPSC finally reversed its position on June 14 1978 by prohibiting the export of Tristreated sleepwear This delay obfuscation and inactivity are all too typical Records of Interagency Working Group meetings which we were able to obtain despite White House efforts to stonewall us show that Commerce and State Department representatives are doing everything in their power to prevent the adoption of a uniform policy on dumping Although President Carter has mumbled a word or two about the ethics of exporting he clearly does not consider the use of safe products a human right for nonAmericans In fact his actions on this matter have pleased the most conservative produmping forces On September 26 1978 the day before the HSEP task force report was due for release Carter issued a public statement on exports The wording of the statement so clearly subverted the intent of any reforms the task force might have conceivably proposed that it8217s little wonder not a word has been heard from the group since Notification Before the Dump The liberal compromise on the dumping issue is notification Invoking the principles of national sovereignty selfdetermination and free trade government officials and legislators have devised a system whereby foreign governments are notified whenever a product is banned deregulated suspended or cancelled by an American regulatory agency The notification system is handled by the State Department whose policy statement on the subject reads in part 8220No country should establish itself as the arbiter of others8217 health and safety standards Individual governments are generally in the best position to establish standards of public health and safety8221 Based on this judgment an unwieldy and ineffective notification procedure allegedly places announcements in the hands of the proper foreign government officials telling them a certain drug has been found to be toxic or that babies have strangled in particular brands of cribs The main problem with notification is the logic behind it Other governments are generally not in a position to establish safety standards let alone control imports into their countries In fact the countries where most of our banned and hazardous products are dumped lack regulatory agencies testing laboratories or wellstaffed customs departments In 1978 Nigeria8217s Environmental Protection Ministry was one person He recently told the US EPA that it didn8217t matter whether or not he was notified when a pesticide was suspended there was nothing he could do to stop its importation When our EPA FDA or CPSC finds a product to be hazardous they notify our State Department as required or as a matter of protocol State which we have found to be no opponent of dumping is then supposed to send a communiqu233 to each American embassy overseas Each embassy is in turn supposed to notify the appropriate foreign officials However the Commerce Consumer and Monetary Affairs Subcommittee of the House Committee on Government Operations discovered in hearings held in July of 1978 that the agencies frequently neglected to inform the State Department when they banned a product For example the EPA failed to notify State after suspending such notorious pesticides as kepone chlordane and heptachlor The Government Accounting Office GAO also discovered and testified to the same subcommittee that even when the agencies did notify State the communiqu233s rarely went further than the US embassies overseas8212they almost never reached the foreign officials who might have been able to warn foreign buyers or intercept shipments One embassy official even admitted to the GAO that he 8220did not routinely forward notification of chemicals not registered in the host country because it may adversely affect US exporting8221 The GAO would not tell us the name or location of the official they quoted but said the sentiment was not unusual Some of the foreign officials who have been notified have complained that the communiqu233s are vague and ambiguous or else so highly technical that they are incomprehensible Of course even if clear notification about a product were to reach officials in an importing nation there is nothing to stop the exporters from changing a product8217s brand name before they ship It8217s All Coming Back Perhaps the only aspect of the whole dumping travesty that has kept the issue alive in Washington is reimportation Congressmembers and bureaucrats who would otherwise ignore or even encourage dumping become irate upon learning that a hazardous product is being reimported smuggled into the US for sale or that an imported fruit or vegetable contains residue of a pesticide longsince suspended for American use Even Esther Peterson in a memo to the President expressed concern about reimportation Remember it is perfectly legal to dump hazardous products abroad There are however strict measures to prevent reimportation The FDA allows manufacturers to export banned drugs staledated drugs and even unapproved new drugs if they are shipped under 8220an investigational protocol8221 for experimentation on other people But one of the stipulations for the export of drugs removed from the American marketplace is that they never be offered for domestic sale again The CPSC however can prohibit the export of goods forced off the American market It can also stop exports that present 8220an unreasonable risk to persons in the US8221 through their reimportation for example but the CPSC admits that proving unreasonable risk is 8220very difficult8221 How to Stop It The White House Office of Consumer Affairs remains confident that a uniform policy on the export of banned and hazardous products will protect foreign consumers Our investigations however indicate that the corporate dumping urge is rooted in a criminal mentality and that dumpers will as they already have find new ways to circumvent whatever legal and regulatory barriers stand between their warehouses and profitable markets for their deadly goods Global corporations with their worldwide network of subsidiaries high technology and marketing systems far outstrip the puny regulatory efforts of a government that considers corporate crime a minor nuisance at worst Nothing short of a complete moral transformation of the corporate ethos will stop dumping Until that unlikely transformation takes place we recommend the following Until all of the above are accomplished the President should use his powers to stop dumping immediately What Dumping Really Is Executives in major exporting corporations with the strong support of Commerce Secretary Juanita Kreps argue that if the export of banned and hazardous products is prohibited by statute or Executive Order foreign buyers will merely turn to European or other suppliers as they have in the past for weapons and ammunition Other developed nations do dump Germany dumps at least as many toxic pesticides as the US and no nation on earth can match Switzerland for dumping baby formula However the assumption that foreign buyers will import known toxins and recognized lethal products from one country when they can8217t get them from another is patently ridiculous American business leaders who tout themselves as the most ethical businesspeople in the world should lead the way in ending dumping worldwide It8217s in their best interest to do so for by dumping toxins on the Third World they are actually poisoning the very markets they seek to develop Perhaps one day they will even see dumping for what it really is8212a subtle genocide Research assistance was provided by Carolyn Marshall Victoria Dompka and the Center for Investigative Reporting

Tom/PROPN Mboya/PROPN was/AUX the/DET hope/NOUN of/ADP the/DET western/ADJ world/NOUN Bright/ADJ energetic/ADJ popular/ADJ and/CCONJ inclined/ADJ to/PART be/AUX democratic8212he/NOUN was/AUX a/DET born/VERB leader/NOUN who/PRON Washington/PROPN hoped/VERB would/AUX rise/VERB to/ADP power/NOUN in/ADP Kenya/PROPN and/CCONJ help/VERB keep/VERB Africa/PROPN safe/ADJ for/ADP United/PROPN States/PROPN commerce/NOUN In/ADP 1969/NUM he/PRON was/AUX shot/VERB down/ADP in/ADP the/DET streets/NOUN of/ADP Nairobi/PROPN An/DET emergency/NOUN rescue/NOUN squad/NOUN was/AUX by/ADP his/PRON side/NOUN in/ADP minutes/NOUN They/PRON plugged/VERB him/PRON into/ADP the/DET latest/ADJ gadget/NOUN in/ADP resuscitative/ADJ technology8212a/ADJ brand/NOUN new/ADJ US/PROPN export/NOUN called/VERB the/DET ResQAire/NOUN What/PRON the/DET rescue/NOUN team/NOUN didn8217/PROPN t/NOUN know/VERB as/SCONJ they/PRON watched/VERB Tom/PROPN Mboya8217s/PROPN life/NOUN slip/VERB away/ADV was/AUX that/SCONJ this/DET 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to/ADP countless/ADJ officials/NOUN in/ADP countless/ADJ agencies/NOUN and/CCONJ departments/NOUN of/ADP the/DET government/NOUN while/SCONJ researching/VERB this/PRON story8212a/NUM few/ADJ of/ADP them/PRON outspoken/ADJ opponents/NOUN of/ADP dumping/VERB They/PRON would/AUX tell/VERB us/PRON about/ADP contaminated/ADJ foods/NOUN baby/NOUN pacifiers/NOUN pesticides/NOUN and/CCONJ drugs/NOUN that/PRON were/AUX being/AUX dumped/VERB overseas/ADV They/PRON often/ADV knew/VERB how/SCONJ many/ADJ of/ADP each/DET item/NOUN were/AUX shipped/VERB to/ADP specific/ADJ countries/NOUN but/CCONJ they/PRON would/AUX never/ADV tell/VERB us/PRON the/DET brand/NOUN names/NOUN the/DET manufacturers/NOUN or/CCONJ the/DET names/NOUN of/ADP the/DET export/NOUN brokers/NOUN The/DET answer/NOUN was/AUX always/ADV the/DET same/ADJ 8220I8217/NOUN m/VERB sorry/ADJ that8217s/PROPN proprietary/ADJ information8230trade/PROPN secret8230confidential/ADJ corporate/ADJ information/NOUN And/CCONJ as/SCONJ we/PRON shall/AUX see/VERB government/NOUN protection/NOUN afforded/VERB to/ADP dumpers/NOUN goes/VERB way/NOUN beyond/ADP this/DET kind/NOUN of/ADP cover/NOUN Although/SCONJ the/DET bottom/ADJ line/NOUN motive/NOUN is/AUX always/ADV profit/VERB hazardous/ADJ products/NOUN are/AUX dumped/VERB to/PART solve/VERB different/ADJ problems/NOUN For/ADP nonmanufacturers8212wholesalers/NOUN retailers/NOUN brokers/NOUN importers/NOUN and/CCONJ exporters8212the/DET problem/NOUN is/AUX generally/ADV just/ADV a/DET matter/NOUN of/ADP inventory/NOUN Salvation/PROPN often/ADV comes/VERB in/ADP the/DET form/NOUN of/ADP a/DET broker/NOUN offering/VERB to/PART buy/VERB the/DET banned/VERB goods/NOUN at/ADP a/DET 8220closeout8221/NUM price/NOUN for/ADP resale/NOUN in/ADP an/DET unnamed/ADJ read/NOUN Third/PROPN World/PROPN market/NOUN It8217s/VERB not/PART that/ADV simple/ADJ however/ADV for/ADP manufacturers/NOUN who/PRON have/AUX invested/VERB capital/NOUN in/ADP tools/NOUN dies/VERB assembly/NOUN plants/NOUN personnel/NOUN machines/NOUN and/CCONJ land/NOUN When/SCONJ a/DET company/NOUN like/ADP A/DET H/PROPN Robins/PROPN foresees/NOUN the/DET withdrawal/NOUN of/ADP a/DET product/NOUN like/ADP the/DET Dalkon/PROPN Shield/PROPN intrauterine/ADJ device/NOUN it/PRON dumps/VERB a/DET million/NUM units/NOUN on/ADP foreign/ADJ countries/NOUN voluntarily/ADV withdraws/VERB the/DET product/NOUN and/CCONJ closes/VERB up/ADP shop/NOUN The/DET company/NOUN takes/VERB a/DET small/ADJ loss/NOUN buying/VERB back/ADV recalled/VERB inventory/NOUN which/PRON it/PRON writes/VERB off/ADP and/CCONJ its/PRON capital/NOUN investment/NOUN is/AUX amortized/VERB Carter/PROPN Dumps/PROPN Dumping/PROPN It/PRON was/AUX Tris/PROPN that/PRON brought/VERB dumping/VERB into/ADP the/DET political/ADJ arena/NOUN And/CCONJ the/DET political/ADJ arena/NOUN for/ADP dumping/VERB is/AUX Washington/PROPN Tris/PROPN 23dibromopropyl/PROPN phosphate/NOUN is/AUX a/DET fireretardant/ADJ chemical/NOUN used/VERB to/PART treat/VERB synthetic/ADJ flammable/ADJ fabrics/NOUN In/ADP June/PROPN of/ADP 1977/NUM after/SCONJ Tris/PROPN was/AUX found/VERB to/PART cause/VERB cancer/NOUN in/ADP animals/NOUN millions/NOUN of/ADP pairs/NOUN of/ADP infant/NOUN pajamas/NOUN and/CCONJ tons/NOUN of/ADP children8217s/PROPN sleepwear/NOUN were/AUX suddenly/ADV withdrawn/VERB from/ADP the/DET US/PROPN market/NOUN by/ADP the/DET CPSC/PROPN When/SCONJ some/PRON of/ADP the/DET manufacturers/NOUN stuck/VERB with/ADP huge/ADJ repurchased/VERB inventories/NOUN of/ADP these/DET carcinogenic/ADJ garments/NOUN threatened/VERB to/PART dump/VERB them/PRON on/ADP the/DET overseas/ADJ markets/NOUN the/DET CPSC/PROPN claimed/VERB at/ADP first/ADV that/SCONJ it/PRON had/VERB no/DET statutory/ADJ authority/NOUN to/PART stop/VERB them/PRON from/ADP doing/VERB so/ADV In/ADP fact/NOUN although/SCONJ the/DET CPSC/PROPN the/DET EPA/PROPN and/CCONJ the/DET FDA/PROPN together/ADV have/AUX removed/VERB over/ADP 500/NUM pesticides/NOUN drugs/NOUN and/CCONJ consumer/NOUN products/NOUN from/ADP the/DET American/ADJ market/NOUN for/ADP health/NOUN safety/NOUN or/CCONJ environmental/ADJ reasons/NOUN the/DET patchwork/NOUN of/ADP regulations/NOUN obfuscates/VERB what/PRON limited/ADJ power/NOUN these/DET agencies/NOUN have/VERB to/PART prohibit/VERB the/DET export/NOUN of/ADP dangerous/ADJ products/NOUN When/SCONJ President/PROPN Carter/PROPN who/PRON does/AUX have/VERB the/DET authority/NOUN to/PART stop/VERB dumping/VERB with/ADP a/DET simple/ADJ Executive/PROPN Order/PROPN learned/VERB of/ADP the/DET Tris/PROPN situation/NOUN he/PRON authorized/VERB the/DET formation/NOUN of/ADP an/DET Interagency/PROPN Working/PROPN Group/PROPN to/PART develop/VERB a/DET uniform/ADJ national/ADJ policy/NOUN on/ADP dumping/VERB Although/SCONJ such/ADJ task/NOUN forces/NOUN can/AUX provide/VERB a/DET valuable/ADJ forum/NOUN for/ADP intragovernment/NOUN communication/NOUN and/CCONJ often/ADV make/VERB important/ADJ policy/NOUN recommendations/NOUN the/DET 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when/SCONJ the/DET recorder/NOUN was/AUX off/ADP but/CCONJ since/SCONJ we/PRON don8217/VERB t/PROPN believe/VERB him/PRON it/PRON really/ADV doesn8217/NOUN t/NOUN matter/NOUN Cohen/PROPN refused/VERB to/PART tell/VERB us/PRON the/DET names/NOUN of/ADP any/DET agency/NOUN representatives/NOUN on/ADP the/DET task/NOUN force/NOUN and/CCONJ throughout/ADP our/PRON investigation/NOUN went/VERB to/PART elaborate/VERB lengths/NOUN to/PART stop/VERB any/DET flow/NOUN of/ADP information/NOUN to/ADP our/PRON researchers/NOUN When/SCONJ we/PRON asked/VERB him/PRON for/ADP innocuous/ADJ background/NOUN material/NOUN on/ADP the/DET task/NOUN force/NOUN Cohen/PROPN exercised/VERB 8220executive/ADJ privilege8221/NOUN and/CCONJ gave/VERB us/PRON nothing/PRON forcing/VERB us/PRON to/PART file/VERB Freedom/PROPN of/ADP Information/PROPN requests/NOUN with/ADP the/DET 16/NUM agencies/NOUN and/CCONJ departments/NOUN in/ADP the/DET task/NOUN force/NOUN Despite/SCONJ White/PROPN House/PROPN efforts/NOUN 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<p>NEW YORK (AP) &#8212; It&#8217;s before dawn when two outreach workers find a homeless man known as Juice near a train station in Harlem. A nurse will be visiting to discuss his heart problems, they tell him.</p> <p>A short time later, in Marcus Garvey Park, the sun has just begun to rise when the caseworkers approach a man zipped inside a sleeping bag. They have encountered him before; they know he&#8217;s teasing when he gives a phony name.</p> <p>Gladys Rivera and Ali Olson are part of a citywide, round-the-clock army of workers for nonprofits contracted by the city. Their aim is to get the homeless into shelter, and so they make the rounds of upper Manhattan, checking on clients, identifying newcomers to the streets and trying to connect them with services. They are often rejected, but they do not give up.</p> <p>&#8220;You never know which one is going to be the one that sticks,&#8221; said Olson.</p> <p>Rivera and Olson are soldiers in the city&#8217;s massive daily effort to get the homeless off the street, and into a system that has the capacity to shelter anyone who needs a place to stay.</p> <p>Gladys Rivera, left, and Ali Olson talk to a man at a Harlem amphitheater. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)</p> <p>The nation&#8217;s most populous city also has the nation&#8217;s largest homeless population, with 75,000, and like other high-rent cities, it has not been able to move the dispossessed to permanent housing nearly as fast as people are becoming homeless. But there is one key difference: The homeless in New York are far less visible on a daily basis than in West Coast cities where the population has exploded over the past couple years, leading several local governments to declare states of emergency.</p> <p>The city had fewer than 4,000 unsheltered homeless in an official count taken in January, a number that might have been deflated somewhat by winter weather. But that amounts to only about 1 in 20 homeless people being unsheltered. That compares with 15 of every 20 homeless people in Los Angeles sleeping on the streets or in tents, vehicles or abandoned buildings. In California, Oregon and Washington combined, 12 out of every 20 homeless people have no shelter at night.</p> <p>New York City has more people in shelters than the three West Coast states combined - and about the same number living on the street as Oakland, a city that has just 5 percent the population of New York.</p> <p>The District of Columbia has a similar right-to-shelter policy in effect during cold-weather months, and Massachusetts has one for families with children. Both places have relatively low numbers of street homeless, or those who do not have shelter on any given night.</p> <p>Some West Coast cities are pushing for permanent affordable housing as a long-term fix for the growing homeless crisis, but officials also are looking for immediate answers. The idea of right-to-shelter programs mimicking New York&#8217;s has popped up in this year&#8217;s mayoral race in Seattle.</p> <p>New York&#8217;s policy grew out of a series of court rulings dating to the 1970s and is rooted in state constitutional provisions adopted in the 1930s to ensure the needy would get government help.</p> <p>Rivera talks to homeless people at a Harlem park. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)</p> <p>Homeless families can get short-term shelter while their cases are investigated and longer-term shelter if they are found to need it. For single adults, there is even easier access to the system. They show up at intake centers and are usually given a place to stay that night.</p> <p>There are ample opportunities to get inside, said Cedric Harden, a 35-year-old formerly homeless man now working as a chef.</p> <p>&#8220;You have to be crazy as hell to be homeless in New York City,&#8221; he said, while visiting old friends on the streets in Harlem.</p> <p>While the effort is expansive, it&#8217;s also not cheap. Last year, New York spent nearly $1.7 billion in city, state and federal money to aid the homeless. And even with that commitment, the sheltering program has its critics among the homeless. Some 4,000 people continue to sleep outside.</p> <p>&#8220;No one wants to be in a shelter ... where all anybody does is fight,&#8221; said Anthony Rainey, who was packing his possessions into a wheelchair when the caseworkers spoke with him during their early morning rounds.</p> <p>Rainey, 63, had slept next to a school but cleared out before students arrived. He said he has been on the streets since 1971, when he got back from his time in Vietnam as a Marine. He&#8217;s stayed out even after being hit by two cars and breaking bones a few years ago.</p> <p>For the people who remain on the streets - many with mental health issues, drug addictions or years of incarceration in their pasts - Rainey&#8217;s complaint is common. They note the police officers who serve as guards, the small lockers and strict curfews.</p> <p>&#8220;A shelter is no different from jail,&#8221; said William Bryant, a 50-year-old who has stayed with a group of a half-dozen others in front of a vacant sushi restaurant near Penn Station since he was released over the summer after a four-month stint in jail for drug possession.</p> <p>William Bryant (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)</p> <p>Steven Banks spent more than 30 years suing the city to help the homeless, and it was his lawsuit that forced New York to shelter homeless families, who now make up most of the sheltered population. Now he&#8217;s working on the inside, after Mayor Bill de Blasio appointed him three years ago to oversee the Department of Homeless Services.</p> <p>Among other things, he wants to phase out the use of hotels to house the homeless. A city comptroller report earlier this year found that nearly 8,000 people were being put up in hotels at a total cost of more than $500,000 a day - a high price for housing that&#8217;s not permanent.</p> <p>Banks also is pushing to improve conditions at shelters. He wants to open 90 new facilities, increase the size of the outreach staff and give them better technology to share information about clients.</p> <p>The overall plan, adopted earlier this year, aims to reduce the shelter population by 2,500 over five years.</p> <p>While that sounds like a modest objective, Banks said the key is reversing the growth of the Department of Homeless Services&#8217; shelter system. The homeless population has nearly doubled since former Mayor Michael Bloomberg took office in 2002.</p> <p>Banks said there are four steps to addressing homelessness: keeping people in housing; getting those who are homeless off the streets; making sure shelters are safe and decent; and moving people from shelters to permanent housing.</p> <p>&#8220;Without a comprehensive approach with each of those four elements,&#8221; Banks said, &#8220;homelessness cannot effectively be addressed.&#8221;</p> <p>The other prominent East Coast cities with right-to-shelter polices, Boston and the District of Columbia, have seen the same success as New York in getting the homeless off the streets on any given night - and like New York, they are searching for long-term answers.</p> <p>Joe Finn, president of the Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance, said it&#8217;s common for people in his state to get stuck in shelters.</p> <p>&#8220;For many, you can&#8217;t even call it an emergency shelter anymore,&#8221; he said. &#8220;What it&#8217;s become is acceptable housing for many of the poorest people in the commonwealth.&#8221;</p> <p>And yet even the temporary shelters are better than the alternative by some measures. One recent study concluded that people who are homeless and living on the streets die at a much higher rate than those without a housing option.</p> <p>&#8220;The provision of shelter is an emergency, life-saving policy that must be in place to meet people&#8217;s needs that can&#8217;t be delayed,&#8221; said Giselle Routhier, policy director at the New York-based Coalition for the Homeless. &#8220;Even for a day.&#8221;</p> <p>Paul Franklin (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)</p> <p>Amid the challenges in trying to get people off the streets, there are many success stories.</p> <p>Paul Franklin is staying in a shelter in the Bronx while he waits for an apartment to be ready for him in a building that provides supportive housing.</p> <p>Franklin was on the streets off and on for about a year after he was released from prison in 2015, having served six years for assault. By the fall of 2016, he was assigned a cot at Delta Manor, a former apartment building that had been transformed from a general shelter to a specialized one that serves 101 men with mental illnesses.</p> <p>The facility has cots and lockers, like the larger shelters. It also has psychiatrists on staff along with nurses who monitor residents&#8217; prescriptions. There&#8217;s a laundry room, a TV room with art by residents on the wall, a cafeteria that serves three meals a day, and a patio where the men doted on kittens born there recently.</p> <p>Franklin said this shelter is far better than the alternative.</p> <p>&#8220;Eating out of garbage cans, sleeping in New York City subways, it&#8217;s not a pretty thing,&#8221; said Franklin, 57. &#8220;It&#8217;s no place I want to be.&#8221;</p> <p>___</p> <p>Follow Mulvihill at <a href="http://www.twitter.com/geoffmulvihill" type="external" /> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/geoffmulvihill" type="external">http://www.twitter.com/geoffmulvihill</a></p> <p>Follow AP&#8217;s complete coverage of the homeless crisis here: <a href="" type="internal">https://apnews.com/tag/HomelessCrisis</a></p> <p>NEW YORK (AP) &#8212; It&#8217;s before dawn when two outreach workers find a homeless man known as Juice near a train station in Harlem. A nurse will be visiting to discuss his heart problems, they tell him.</p> <p>A short time later, in Marcus Garvey Park, the sun has just begun to rise when the caseworkers approach a man zipped inside a sleeping bag. They have encountered him before; they know he&#8217;s teasing when he gives a phony name.</p> <p>Gladys Rivera and Ali Olson are part of a citywide, round-the-clock army of workers for nonprofits contracted by the city. Their aim is to get the homeless into shelter, and so they make the rounds of upper Manhattan, checking on clients, identifying newcomers to the streets and trying to connect them with services. They are often rejected, but they do not give up.</p> <p>&#8220;You never know which one is going to be the one that sticks,&#8221; said Olson.</p> <p>Rivera and Olson are soldiers in the city&#8217;s massive daily effort to get the homeless off the street, and into a system that has the capacity to shelter anyone who needs a place to stay.</p> <p>Gladys Rivera, left, and Ali Olson talk to a man at a Harlem amphitheater. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)</p> <p>The nation&#8217;s most populous city also has the nation&#8217;s largest homeless population, with 75,000, and like other high-rent cities, it has not been able to move the dispossessed to permanent housing nearly as fast as people are becoming homeless. But there is one key difference: The homeless in New York are far less visible on a daily basis than in West Coast cities where the population has exploded over the past couple years, leading several local governments to declare states of emergency.</p> <p>The city had fewer than 4,000 unsheltered homeless in an official count taken in January, a number that might have been deflated somewhat by winter weather. But that amounts to only about 1 in 20 homeless people being unsheltered. That compares with 15 of every 20 homeless people in Los Angeles sleeping on the streets or in tents, vehicles or abandoned buildings. In California, Oregon and Washington combined, 12 out of every 20 homeless people have no shelter at night.</p> <p>New York City has more people in shelters than the three West Coast states combined - and about the same number living on the street as Oakland, a city that has just 5 percent the population of New York.</p> <p>The District of Columbia has a similar right-to-shelter policy in effect during cold-weather months, and Massachusetts has one for families with children. Both places have relatively low numbers of street homeless, or those who do not have shelter on any given night.</p> <p>Some West Coast cities are pushing for permanent affordable housing as a long-term fix for the growing homeless crisis, but officials also are looking for immediate answers. The idea of right-to-shelter programs mimicking New York&#8217;s has popped up in this year&#8217;s mayoral race in Seattle.</p> <p>New York&#8217;s policy grew out of a series of court rulings dating to the 1970s and is rooted in state constitutional provisions adopted in the 1930s to ensure the needy would get government help.</p> <p>Rivera talks to homeless people at a Harlem park. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)</p> <p>Homeless families can get short-term shelter while their cases are investigated and longer-term shelter if they are found to need it. For single adults, there is even easier access to the system. They show up at intake centers and are usually given a place to stay that night.</p> <p>There are ample opportunities to get inside, said Cedric Harden, a 35-year-old formerly homeless man now working as a chef.</p> <p>&#8220;You have to be crazy as hell to be homeless in New York City,&#8221; he said, while visiting old friends on the streets in Harlem.</p> <p>While the effort is expansive, it&#8217;s also not cheap. Last year, New York spent nearly $1.7 billion in city, state and federal money to aid the homeless. And even with that commitment, the sheltering program has its critics among the homeless. Some 4,000 people continue to sleep outside.</p> <p>&#8220;No one wants to be in a shelter ... where all anybody does is fight,&#8221; said Anthony Rainey, who was packing his possessions into a wheelchair when the caseworkers spoke with him during their early morning rounds.</p> <p>Rainey, 63, had slept next to a school but cleared out before students arrived. He said he has been on the streets since 1971, when he got back from his time in Vietnam as a Marine. He&#8217;s stayed out even after being hit by two cars and breaking bones a few years ago.</p> <p>For the people who remain on the streets - many with mental health issues, drug addictions or years of incarceration in their pasts - Rainey&#8217;s complaint is common. They note the police officers who serve as guards, the small lockers and strict curfews.</p> <p>&#8220;A shelter is no different from jail,&#8221; said William Bryant, a 50-year-old who has stayed with a group of a half-dozen others in front of a vacant sushi restaurant near Penn Station since he was released over the summer after a four-month stint in jail for drug possession.</p> <p>William Bryant (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)</p> <p>Steven Banks spent more than 30 years suing the city to help the homeless, and it was his lawsuit that forced New York to shelter homeless families, who now make up most of the sheltered population. Now he&#8217;s working on the inside, after Mayor Bill de Blasio appointed him three years ago to oversee the Department of Homeless Services.</p> <p>Among other things, he wants to phase out the use of hotels to house the homeless. A city comptroller report earlier this year found that nearly 8,000 people were being put up in hotels at a total cost of more than $500,000 a day - a high price for housing that&#8217;s not permanent.</p> <p>Banks also is pushing to improve conditions at shelters. He wants to open 90 new facilities, increase the size of the outreach staff and give them better technology to share information about clients.</p> <p>The overall plan, adopted earlier this year, aims to reduce the shelter population by 2,500 over five years.</p> <p>While that sounds like a modest objective, Banks said the key is reversing the growth of the Department of Homeless Services&#8217; shelter system. The homeless population has nearly doubled since former Mayor Michael Bloomberg took office in 2002.</p> <p>Banks said there are four steps to addressing homelessness: keeping people in housing; getting those who are homeless off the streets; making sure shelters are safe and decent; and moving people from shelters to permanent housing.</p> <p>&#8220;Without a comprehensive approach with each of those four elements,&#8221; Banks said, &#8220;homelessness cannot effectively be addressed.&#8221;</p> <p>The other prominent East Coast cities with right-to-shelter polices, Boston and the District of Columbia, have seen the same success as New York in getting the homeless off the streets on any given night - and like New York, they are searching for long-term answers.</p> <p>Joe Finn, president of the Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance, said it&#8217;s common for people in his state to get stuck in shelters.</p> <p>&#8220;For many, you can&#8217;t even call it an emergency shelter anymore,&#8221; he said. &#8220;What it&#8217;s become is acceptable housing for many of the poorest people in the commonwealth.&#8221;</p> <p>And yet even the temporary shelters are better than the alternative by some measures. One recent study concluded that people who are homeless and living on the streets die at a much higher rate than those without a housing option.</p> <p>&#8220;The provision of shelter is an emergency, life-saving policy that must be in place to meet people&#8217;s needs that can&#8217;t be delayed,&#8221; said Giselle Routhier, policy director at the New York-based Coalition for the Homeless. &#8220;Even for a day.&#8221;</p> <p>Paul Franklin (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)</p> <p>Amid the challenges in trying to get people off the streets, there are many success stories.</p> <p>Paul Franklin is staying in a shelter in the Bronx while he waits for an apartment to be ready for him in a building that provides supportive housing.</p> <p>Franklin was on the streets off and on for about a year after he was released from prison in 2015, having served six years for assault. By the fall of 2016, he was assigned a cot at Delta Manor, a former apartment building that had been transformed from a general shelter to a specialized one that serves 101 men with mental illnesses.</p> <p>The facility has cots and lockers, like the larger shelters. It also has psychiatrists on staff along with nurses who monitor residents&#8217; prescriptions. There&#8217;s a laundry room, a TV room with art by residents on the wall, a cafeteria that serves three meals a day, and a patio where the men doted on kittens born there recently.</p> <p>Franklin said this shelter is far better than the alternative.</p> <p>&#8220;Eating out of garbage cans, sleeping in New York City subways, it&#8217;s not a pretty thing,&#8221; said Franklin, 57. &#8220;It&#8217;s no place I want to be.&#8221;</p> <p>___</p> <p>Follow Mulvihill at <a href="http://www.twitter.com/geoffmulvihill" type="external" /> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/geoffmulvihill" type="external">http://www.twitter.com/geoffmulvihill</a></p> <p>Follow AP&#8217;s complete coverage of the homeless crisis here: <a href="" type="internal">https://apnews.com/tag/HomelessCrisis</a></p>

East Coast offers homeless insights as West Coast struggles

https://apnews.com/145e200283e5431f8218d367bd068931

2017-11-08

2least

NEW YORK AP 8212 It8217s before dawn when two outreach workers find a homeless man known as Juice near a train station in Harlem A nurse will be visiting to discuss his heart problems they tell him A short time later in Marcus Garvey Park the sun has just begun to rise when the caseworkers approach a man zipped inside a sleeping bag They have encountered him before they know he8217s teasing when he gives a phony name Gladys Rivera and Ali Olson are part of a citywide roundtheclock army of workers for nonprofits contracted by the city Their aim is to get the homeless into shelter and so they make the rounds of upper Manhattan checking on clients identifying newcomers to the streets and trying to connect them with services They are often rejected but they do not give up 8220You never know which one is going to be the one that sticks8221 said Olson Rivera and Olson are soldiers in the city8217s massive daily effort to get the homeless off the street and into a system that has the capacity to shelter anyone who needs a place to stay Gladys Rivera left and Ali Olson talk to a man at a Harlem amphitheater AP PhotoSeth Wenig The nation8217s most populous city also has the nation8217s largest homeless population with 75000 and like other highrent cities it has not been able to move the dispossessed to permanent housing nearly as fast as people are becoming homeless But there is one key difference The homeless in New York are far less visible on a daily basis than in West Coast cities where the population has exploded over the past couple years leading several local governments to declare states of emergency The city had fewer than 4000 unsheltered homeless in an official count taken in January a number that might have been deflated somewhat by winter weather But that amounts to only about 1 in 20 homeless people being unsheltered That compares with 15 of every 20 homeless people in Los Angeles sleeping on the streets or in tents vehicles or abandoned buildings In California Oregon and Washington combined 12 out of every 20 homeless people have no shelter at night New York City has more people in shelters than the three West Coast states combined and about the same number living on the street as Oakland a city that has just 5 percent the population of New York The District of Columbia has a similar righttoshelter policy in effect during coldweather months and Massachusetts has one for families with children Both places have relatively low numbers of street homeless or those who do not have shelter on any given night Some West Coast cities are pushing for permanent affordable housing as a longterm fix for the growing homeless crisis but officials also are looking for immediate answers The idea of righttoshelter programs mimicking New York8217s has popped up in this year8217s mayoral race in Seattle New York8217s policy grew out of a series of court rulings dating to the 1970s and is rooted in state constitutional provisions adopted in the 1930s to ensure the needy would get government help Rivera talks to homeless people at a Harlem park AP PhotoSeth Wenig Homeless families can get shortterm shelter while their cases are investigated and longerterm shelter if they are found to need it For single adults there is even easier access to the system They show up at intake centers and are usually given a place to stay that night There are ample opportunities to get inside said Cedric Harden a 35yearold formerly homeless man now working as a chef 8220You have to be crazy as hell to be homeless in New York City8221 he said while visiting old friends on the streets in Harlem While the effort is expansive it8217s also not cheap Last year New York spent nearly 17 billion in city state and federal money to aid the homeless And even with that commitment the sheltering program has its critics among the homeless Some 4000 people continue to sleep outside 8220No one wants to be in a shelter where all anybody does is fight8221 said Anthony Rainey who was packing his possessions into a wheelchair when the caseworkers spoke with him during their early morning rounds Rainey 63 had slept next to a school but cleared out before students arrived He said he has been on the streets since 1971 when he got back from his time in Vietnam as a Marine He8217s stayed out even after being hit by two cars and breaking bones a few years ago For the people who remain on the streets many with mental health issues drug addictions or years of incarceration in their pasts Rainey8217s complaint is common They note the police officers who serve as guards the small lockers and strict curfews 8220A shelter is no different from jail8221 said William Bryant a 50yearold who has stayed with a group of a halfdozen others in front of a vacant sushi restaurant near Penn Station since he was released over the summer after a fourmonth stint in jail for drug possession William Bryant AP PhotoSeth Wenig Steven Banks spent more than 30 years suing the city to help the homeless and it was his lawsuit that forced New York to shelter homeless families who now make up most of the sheltered population Now he8217s working on the inside after Mayor Bill de Blasio appointed him three years ago to oversee the Department of Homeless Services Among other things he wants to phase out the use of hotels to house the homeless A city comptroller report earlier this year found that nearly 8000 people were being put up in hotels at a total cost of more than 500000 a day a high price for housing that8217s not permanent Banks also is pushing to improve conditions at shelters He wants to open 90 new facilities increase the size of the outreach staff and give them better technology to share information about clients The overall plan adopted earlier this year aims to reduce the shelter population by 2500 over five years While that sounds like a modest objective Banks said the key is reversing the growth of the Department of Homeless Services8217 shelter system The homeless population has nearly doubled since former Mayor Michael Bloomberg took office in 2002 Banks said there are four steps to addressing homelessness keeping people in housing getting those who are homeless off the streets making sure shelters are safe and decent and moving people from shelters to permanent housing 8220Without a comprehensive approach with each of those four elements8221 Banks said 8220homelessness cannot effectively be addressed8221 The other prominent East Coast cities with righttoshelter polices Boston and the District of Columbia have seen the same success as New York in getting the homeless off the streets on any given night and like New York they are searching for longterm answers Joe Finn president of the Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance said it8217s common for people in his state to get stuck in shelters 8220For many you can8217t even call it an emergency shelter anymore8221 he said 8220What it8217s become is acceptable housing for many of the poorest people in the commonwealth8221 And yet even the temporary shelters are better than the alternative by some measures One recent study concluded that people who are homeless and living on the streets die at a much higher rate than those without a housing option 8220The provision of shelter is an emergency lifesaving policy that must be in place to meet people8217s needs that can8217t be delayed8221 said Giselle Routhier policy director at the New Yorkbased Coalition for the Homeless 8220Even for a day8221 Paul Franklin AP PhotoSeth Wenig Amid the challenges in trying to get people off the streets there are many success stories Paul Franklin is staying in a shelter in the Bronx while he waits for an apartment to be ready for him in a building that provides supportive housing Franklin was on the streets off and on for about a year after he was released from prison in 2015 having served six years for assault By the fall of 2016 he was assigned a cot at Delta Manor a former apartment building that had been transformed from a general shelter to a specialized one that serves 101 men with mental illnesses The facility has cots and lockers like the larger shelters It also has psychiatrists on staff along with nurses who monitor residents8217 prescriptions There8217s a laundry room a TV room with art by residents on the wall a cafeteria that serves three meals a day and a patio where the men doted on kittens born there recently Franklin said this shelter is far better than the alternative 8220Eating out of garbage cans sleeping in New York City subways it8217s not a pretty thing8221 said Franklin 57 8220It8217s no place I want to be8221 ___ Follow Mulvihill at httpwwwtwittercomgeoffmulvihill Follow AP8217s complete coverage of the homeless crisis here httpsapnewscomtagHomelessCrisis NEW YORK AP 8212 It8217s before dawn when two outreach workers find a homeless man known as Juice near a train station in Harlem A nurse will be visiting to discuss his heart problems they tell him A short time later in Marcus Garvey Park the sun has just begun to rise when the caseworkers approach a man zipped inside a sleeping bag They have encountered him before they know he8217s teasing when he gives a phony name Gladys Rivera and Ali Olson are part of a citywide roundtheclock army of workers for nonprofits contracted by the city Their aim is to get the homeless into shelter and so they make the rounds of upper Manhattan checking on clients identifying newcomers to the streets and trying to connect them with services They are often rejected but they do not give up 8220You never know which one is going to be the one that sticks8221 said Olson Rivera and Olson are soldiers in the city8217s massive daily effort to get the homeless off the street and into a system that has the capacity to shelter anyone who needs a place to stay Gladys Rivera left and Ali Olson talk to a man at a Harlem amphitheater AP PhotoSeth Wenig The nation8217s most populous city also has the nation8217s largest homeless population with 75000 and like other highrent cities it has not been able to move the dispossessed to permanent housing nearly as fast as people are becoming homeless But there is one key difference The homeless in New York are far less visible on a daily basis than in West Coast cities where the population has exploded over the past couple years leading several local governments to declare states of emergency The city had fewer than 4000 unsheltered homeless in an official count taken in January a number that might have been deflated somewhat by winter weather But that amounts to only about 1 in 20 homeless people being unsheltered That compares with 15 of every 20 homeless people in Los Angeles sleeping on the streets or in tents vehicles or abandoned buildings In California Oregon and Washington combined 12 out of every 20 homeless people have no shelter at night New York City has more people in shelters than the three West Coast states combined and about the same number living on the street as Oakland a city that has just 5 percent the population of New York The District of Columbia has a similar righttoshelter policy in effect during coldweather months and Massachusetts has one for families with children Both places have relatively low numbers of street homeless or those who do not have shelter on any given night Some West Coast cities are pushing for permanent affordable housing as a longterm fix for the growing homeless crisis but officials also are looking for immediate answers The idea of righttoshelter programs mimicking New York8217s has popped up in this year8217s mayoral race in Seattle New York8217s policy grew out of a series of court rulings dating to the 1970s and is rooted in state constitutional provisions adopted in the 1930s to ensure the needy would get government help Rivera talks to homeless people at a Harlem park AP PhotoSeth Wenig Homeless families can get shortterm shelter while their cases are investigated and longerterm shelter if they are found to need it For single adults there is even easier access to the system They show up at intake centers and are usually given a place to stay that night There are ample opportunities to get inside said Cedric Harden a 35yearold formerly homeless man now working as a chef 8220You have to be crazy as hell to be homeless in New York City8221 he said while visiting old friends on the streets in Harlem While the effort is expansive it8217s also not cheap Last year New York spent nearly 17 billion in city state and federal money to aid the homeless And even with that commitment the sheltering program has its critics among the homeless Some 4000 people continue to sleep outside 8220No one wants to be in a shelter where all anybody does is fight8221 said Anthony Rainey who was packing his possessions into a wheelchair when the caseworkers spoke with him during their early morning rounds Rainey 63 had slept next to a school but cleared out before students arrived He said he has been on the streets since 1971 when he got back from his time in Vietnam as a Marine He8217s stayed out even after being hit by two cars and breaking bones a few years ago For the people who remain on the streets many with mental health issues drug addictions or years of incarceration in their pasts Rainey8217s complaint is common They note the police officers who serve as guards the small lockers and strict curfews 8220A shelter is no different from jail8221 said William Bryant a 50yearold who has stayed with a group of a halfdozen others in front of a vacant sushi restaurant near Penn Station since he was released over the summer after a fourmonth stint in jail for drug possession William Bryant AP PhotoSeth Wenig Steven Banks spent more than 30 years suing the city to help the homeless and it was his lawsuit that forced New York to shelter homeless families who now make up most of the sheltered population Now he8217s working on the inside after Mayor Bill de Blasio appointed him three years ago to oversee the Department of Homeless Services Among other things he wants to phase out the use of hotels to house the homeless A city comptroller report earlier this year found that nearly 8000 people were being put up in hotels at a total cost of more than 500000 a day a high price for housing that8217s not permanent Banks also is pushing to improve conditions at shelters He wants to open 90 new facilities increase the size of the outreach staff and give them better technology to share information about clients The overall plan adopted earlier this year aims to reduce the shelter population by 2500 over five years While that sounds like a modest objective Banks said the key is reversing the growth of the Department of Homeless Services8217 shelter system The homeless population has nearly doubled since former Mayor Michael Bloomberg took office in 2002 Banks said there are four steps to addressing homelessness keeping people in housing getting those who are homeless off the streets making sure shelters are safe and decent and moving people from shelters to permanent housing 8220Without a comprehensive approach with each of those four elements8221 Banks said 8220homelessness cannot effectively be addressed8221 The other prominent East Coast cities with righttoshelter polices Boston and the District of Columbia have seen the same success as New York in getting the homeless off the streets on any given night and like New York they are searching for longterm answers Joe Finn president of the Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance said it8217s common for people in his state to get stuck in shelters 8220For many you can8217t even call it an emergency shelter anymore8221 he said 8220What it8217s become is acceptable housing for many of the poorest people in the commonwealth8221 And yet even the temporary shelters are better than the alternative by some measures One recent study concluded that people who are homeless and living on the streets die at a much higher rate than those without a housing option 8220The provision of shelter is an emergency lifesaving policy that must be in place to meet people8217s needs that can8217t be delayed8221 said Giselle Routhier policy director at the New Yorkbased Coalition for the Homeless 8220Even for a day8221 Paul Franklin AP PhotoSeth Wenig Amid the challenges in trying to get people off the streets there are many success stories Paul Franklin is staying in a shelter in the Bronx while he waits for an apartment to be ready for him in a building that provides supportive housing Franklin was on the streets off and on for about a year after he was released from prison in 2015 having served six years for assault By the fall of 2016 he was assigned a cot at Delta Manor a former apartment building that had been transformed from a general shelter to a specialized one that serves 101 men with mental illnesses The facility has cots and lockers like the larger shelters It also has psychiatrists on staff along with nurses who monitor residents8217 prescriptions There8217s a laundry room a TV room with art by residents on the wall a cafeteria that serves three meals a day and a patio where the men doted on kittens born there recently Franklin said this shelter is far better than the alternative 8220Eating out of garbage cans sleeping in New York City subways it8217s not a pretty thing8221 said Franklin 57 8220It8217s no place I want to be8221 ___ Follow Mulvihill at httpwwwtwittercomgeoffmulvihill Follow AP8217s complete coverage of the homeless crisis here httpsapnewscomtagHomelessCrisis

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shelter/NOUN system/NOUN The/DET homeless/ADJ population/NOUN has/AUX nearly/ADV doubled/VERB since/SCONJ former/ADJ Mayor/PROPN Michael/PROPN Bloomberg/PROPN took/VERB office/NOUN in/ADP 2002/NUM Banks/NOUN said/VERB there/PRON are/VERB four/NUM steps/NOUN to/ADP addressing/VERB homelessness/NOUN keeping/VERB people/NOUN in/ADP housing/NOUN getting/VERB those/PRON who/PRON are/AUX homeless/ADJ off/ADP the/DET streets/NOUN making/VERB sure/ADJ shelters/NOUN are/AUX safe/ADJ and/CCONJ decent/ADJ and/CCONJ moving/VERB people/NOUN from/ADP shelters/NOUN to/ADP permanent/ADJ housing/NOUN 8220Without/PROPN a/DET comprehensive/ADJ approach/NOUN with/ADP each/PRON of/ADP those/DET four/NUM elements8221/NUM Banks/NOUN said/VERB 8220homelessness/PRON can/AUX not/PART effectively/ADV be/AUX addressed8221/NOUN The/DET other/ADJ prominent/ADJ East/PROPN Coast/PROPN cities/NOUN with/ADP righttoshelter/NOUN polices/NOUN Boston/PROPN and/CCONJ the/DET District/PROPN of/ADP Columbia/PROPN have/AUX 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in/ADP a/DET shelter/NOUN in/ADP the/DET Bronx/PROPN while/SCONJ he/PRON waits/VERB for/ADP an/DET apartment/NOUN to/PART be/AUX ready/ADJ for/ADP him/PRON in/ADP a/DET building/NOUN that/PRON provides/VERB supportive/ADJ housing/NOUN Franklin/PROPN was/AUX on/ADP the/DET streets/NOUN off/ADP and/CCONJ on/ADP for/ADP about/ADV a/PRON year/NOUN after/SCONJ he/PRON was/AUX released/VERB from/ADP prison/NOUN in/ADP 2015/NUM having/AUX served/VERB six/NUM years/NOUN for/ADP assault/NOUN By/ADP the/DET fall/NOUN of/ADP 2016/NUM he/PRON was/AUX assigned/VERB a/DET cot/NOUN at/ADP Delta/PROPN Manor/PROPN a/DET former/ADJ apartment/NOUN building/NOUN that/PRON had/AUX been/AUX transformed/VERB from/ADP a/DET general/ADJ shelter/NOUN to/ADP a/DET specialized/ADJ one/NOUN that/PRON serves/VERB 101/NUM men/NOUN with/ADP mental/ADJ illnesses/NOUN The/DET facility/NOUN has/VERB cots/NOUN and/CCONJ lockers/NOUN like/ADP the/DET larger/ADJ shelters/NOUN It/PRON also/ADV has/VERB psychiatrists/NOUN 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homeless/ADJ crisis/NOUN here/ADV httpsapnewscomtagHomelessCrisis/NOUN

<p /> <p>Tom Mboya was the hope of the western world. Bright, energetic, popular and inclined to be democratic&#8212;he was a born leader who, Washington hoped, would rise to power in Kenya and help keep Africa safe for United States commerce. In 1969 he was shot down in the streets of Nairobi. An emergency rescue squad was by his side in minutes. They plugged him into the latest gadget in resuscitative technology&#8212;a brand new U.S. export called the Res-Q-Aire. What the rescue team didn&#8217;t know as they watched Tom Mboya&#8217;s life slip away was that this marvelous device had been recalled from the American market by the US government because it was found to be totally ineffective. The patient died.</p> <p>Losing Mboya to the Res-Q-Aire was perhaps a subtle retribution for the US, for to this day we allow our business leaders to sell, mostly to Third World nations, shiploads of defective medical devices, lethal drugs, known carcinogens, toxic pesticides, contaminated foods and other products found unfit for American consumption.</p> <p>Ten years after Mboya&#8217;s assassination, in fact, Kenya itself remains a major market for unsafe, ineffective and contaminated American products. At the 1977 meeting of the United Nations Environmental Program, Kenyan Minister of Water Development Dr. D. J. Kiano warned that developing nations would no longer tolerate being used as &#8220;dumping grounds for products that have not been adequately tested&#8221; and that their people should not be used as &#8220;guinea pigs&#8221; for chemicals.</p> <p>The prevailing sentiment in Washington contrasts considerably with Dr. Kiano&#8217;s. Say the word &#8220;dumping&#8221; in federal government circles and the predominant response will be &#8220;Oh, yes, &#8216;dumping.&#8217; Really must be stopped. It&#8217;s outrageous, not in our economic interests at all&#8230;unscrupulous bastards&#8230;.&#8221;</p> <p>Sounds as if we&#8217;ve solved the problem, doesn&#8217;t it, except what our bureaucrats are talking about, one discovers, is foreign corporations &#8220;dumping&#8221; low-priced goods on the American market &#8212; Japanese cars, Taiwanese televisions, Hong Kong stereos, Australian beef, etc. The export of banned and hazardous products, which Mother Jones calls &#8220;dumping,&#8221; is considered business as usual.</p> <p>As the following articles make painfully clear, dumping is, in fact, big business as usual. It involves not only manufacturers and retailers, a vast array of export brokers, tramp steamers, black marketeers and go-betweens who traffic an estimated $1.2 billion worth of unsafe goods overseas every year, but also the United States Export-Import Bank, which finances large dumps; the Commerce, State and Treasury Departments, which have the statutory authority to stop or control dumping, but won&#8217;t; and a President who, in his quiet way, subverts the efforts of the few progressive members of Congress who seek to pass uniform anti-dumping legislation.</p> <p>Hard evidence of dumping and its tragic consequences has repeatedly been brought to the attention of federal agencies, the Congress and the White House. Here are some examples:</p> <p>Occasionally, a particularly scandalous dump like one of these will come to the attention of conscientious Americans. Most dumps, however, are performed quietly, the product moving unnoticed in the fast flow of normal trade between nations. And dumping is not limited to chemicals and consumer products. When a firm&#8217;s production facilities and industrial equipment are condemned by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the manufacturer often simply closes up shop and moves the factory to Mexico or Jamaica, where occupational health standards are virtually nonexistent. Even entire technologies are dumped. Nuclear power, which seems certain to receive a &#8220;hazardous&#8221; classification before long in the US, is today being dumped on energy-starved nations like the Philippines and India.</p> <p>We are only beginning to discover how toxic and carcinogenic are some of the chemicals we use, chemicals with the potential to affect the entire global environment and human gene pool. Moreover, the number of other consumer products that maim or kill shows no sign of diminishing. The list of banned and hazardous products is, thus, bound to grow, which should making dumping a major international issue for the 1980s.</p> <p>Early in our investigation, however, we discovered that exposing dumpers was more challenging than we thought it would be. &#8220;They&#8217;re really smugglers,&#8221; said one of our team in a story meeting. &#8220;The only difference between drug smugglers and dumpers is that the products are usually moving in opposite directions.&#8221;</p> <p>There is another difference: The government protects dumpers. We talked to countless officials in countless agencies and departments of the government while researching this story&#8212;a few of them outspoken opponents of dumping. They would tell us about contaminated foods, baby pacifiers, pesticides and drugs that were being dumped overseas. They often knew how many of each item were shipped to specific countries, but they would never tell us the brand names, the manufacturers or the names of the export brokers. The answer was always the same. &#8220;I&#8217;m sorry, that&#8217;s proprietary information&#8230;trade secret&#8230;confidential corporate information. And as we shall see, government protection afforded to dumpers goes way beyond this kind of cover.</p> <p>Although the bottom line motive is always profit, hazardous products are dumped to solve different problems. For nonmanufacturers&#8212;wholesalers, retailers, brokers, importers and exporters&#8212;the problem is generally just a matter of inventory. Salvation often comes in the form of a broker, offering to buy the banned goods at a &#8220;close-out&#8221; price for resale in an unnamed (read, Third World) market.</p> <p>It&#8217;s not that simple, however, for manufacturers who have invested capital in tools, dies, assembly plants, personnel, machines and land. When a company like A. H. Robins foresees the withdrawal of a product like the Dalkon Shield intrauterine device, it dumps a million units on foreign countries, voluntarily withdraws the product and closes up shop. The company takes a small loss buying back recalled inventory (which it writes off), and its capital investment is amortized.</p> <p>Carter Dumps Dumping</p> <p>It was Tris that brought dumping into the political arena. And the political arena for dumping is Washington. Tris (2,3-dibromopropyl) phosphate is a fire-retardant chemical used to treat synthetic flammable fabrics. In June of 1977, after Tris was found to cause cancer in animals, millions of pairs of infant pajamas and tons of children&#8217;s sleepwear were suddenly withdrawn from the US market by the CPSC. When some of the manufacturers, stuck with huge repurchased inventories of these carcinogenic garments, threatened to dump them on the overseas markets, the CPSC claimed at first that it had no statutory authority to stop them from doing so. In fact, although the CPSC, the EPA and the FDA together have removed over 500 pesticides, drugs and consumer products from the American market for health, safety or environmental reasons, the patchwork of regulations obfuscates what limited power these agencies have to prohibit the export of dangerous products.</p> <p>When President Carter, who does have the authority to stop dumping with a simple Executive Order, learned of the Tris situation, he authorized the formation of an Interagency Working Group to develop a uniform national policy on dumping. Although such task forces can provide a valuable forum for intra-government communication and often make important policy recommendations, the Interagency Working Group on Hazardous Substances Export Policy (HSEP)&#8212;chaired by Carter&#8217;s Special Assistant for Consumer Affairs, Esther Peterson&#8212;is, in fact, being used to table the issue until our balance of trade improves. Dumping, you see, is exporting; and although banned and hazardous products represent only about one percent of our total trade, every percent seems to count when we are consistently running a trade deficit of over $25 billion a year.</p> <p>To determine why the task force report is still nonexistent, we took our investigation to Washington. In a long series of interviews with task force members and White House staff the reason for the delay became clear. The President, intimidated by Congress, is unwilling to take the issue to the Hill, in the face of growing &#8220;export fever&#8221; and antiregulatory sentiment.</p> <p>Edward Cohen, staff counsel to both the HSEP task force and the White House Office of Consumer Affairs, asked us to turn off our tape recorder as he explained the dilemma. He also told us he was &#8220;one of the good guys in the story.&#8221; We can&#8217;t quote what he told us when the recorder was off, but since we don&#8217;t believe him, it really doesn&#8217;t matter. Cohen refused to tell us the names of any agency representatives on the task force and throughout our investigation went to elaborate lengths to stop any flow of information to our researchers. When we asked him for innocuous background material on the task force, Cohen exercised &#8220;executive privilege&#8221; and gave us nothing, forcing us to file Freedom of Information requests with the 16 agencies and departments in the task force. Despite White House efforts to discourage compliance with our requests, we obtained the material from friendly sources in the agencies. More on the contents later.</p> <p>During the interview, Cohen struggled to remember the correct name of the task force. The records, files and minutes from past meetings were stuffed in a cardboard box under a radiator in his otherwise tidy office. It was clear that dumping and HSEP had slipped a notch or two on the White House agenda. Cohen admitted eventually that it was barely on his own agenda. He persisted, however, in his &#8220;good guy&#8221; stance.</p> <p>When we persisted with our investigation, Cohen realized he had a public relations problem on his hands. In fact, when we called the White House to interview Esther Peterson recently, Cohen turned up unexpectedly on the line to tell us he was working on a fourth policy draft for task force review. But when we talked to representatives from all but three of the agencies involved, most barely remembered the task force and felt that the issue was dead. And Cohen recently told Ralph Nader&#8217;s office that if the fourth draft is not approved, the entire matter will be dropped.</p> <p>The President can place any product he wants on the Commodity Control List, which makes exportation of the product absolutely illegal. There are three statutory justifications for placing a commodity on this list: scarcity, national security and foreign relations.</p> <p>When Tris-treated clothing was found to be a cancer threat to infants and it became clear that President Carter wasn&#8217;t going to do anything to stop its export, an alarmed S. John Byington, chairman of the CPSC, wrote in June 1977 to Secretary of Commerce Juanita Kreps, whose department administers the Commodity Control List. Byington asked her to place the garments on the list, pointing out to her that their export would have &#8220;serious implications for foreign policy.&#8221;</p> <p>On October 7, nearly four months and, as it turns out, many pajama dumps later, Kreps answered Byington. She had taken the time to consult the State Department, which &#8220;has advised me that the controls on Tris and Tris-treated garments are not, in the language of the statute, &#8216;necessary to further significantly the foreign policy of the US to fulfill its international responsibilities.'&#8221; Frustrated by months of bureaucratic waffling, the CPSC finally reversed its position on June 14, 1978 by prohibiting the export of Tris-treated sleepwear.</p> <p>This delay, obfuscation and inactivity are all too typical. Records of Interagency Working Group meetings, which we were able to obtain despite White House efforts to stonewall us, show that Commerce and State Department representatives are doing everything in their power to prevent the adoption of a uniform policy on dumping.</p> <p>Although President Carter has mumbled a word or two about the ethics of exporting, he clearly does not consider the use of safe products a human right for non-Americans. In fact, his actions on this matter have pleased the most conservative pro-dumping forces.</p> <p>On September 26, 1978, the day before the HSEP task force report was due for release, Carter issued a public statement on exports. The wording of the statement so clearly subverted the intent of any reforms the task force might have conceivably proposed that it&#8217;s little wonder not a word has been heard from the group since.</p> <p>Notification Before the Dump</p> <p>The liberal compromise on the dumping issue is notification. Invoking the principles of national sovereignty, self-determination and free trade, government officials and legislators have devised a system whereby foreign governments are notified whenever a product is banned, deregulated, suspended or cancelled by an American regulatory agency. The notification system is handled by the State Department, whose policy statement on the subject reads, in part, &#8220;No country should establish itself as the arbiter of others&#8217; health and safety standards. Individual governments are generally in the best position to establish standards of public health and safety.&#8221;</p> <p>Based on this judgment, an unwieldy and ineffective notification procedure allegedly places announcements in the hands of the proper foreign government officials, telling them a certain drug has been found to be toxic or that babies have strangled in particular brands of cribs.</p> <p>The main problem with notification is the logic behind it. Other governments are generally not in a position to establish safety standards, let alone control imports into their countries. In fact, the countries where most of our banned and hazardous products are dumped lack regulatory agencies, testing laboratories or well-staffed customs departments. In 1978, Nigeria&#8217;s Environmental Protection Ministry was one person. He recently told the US EPA that it didn&#8217;t matter whether or not he was notified when a pesticide was suspended; there was nothing he could do to stop its importation.</p> <p>When our EPA, FDA or CPSC finds a product to be hazardous, they notify our State Department as required or as a matter of protocol. State, which we have found to be no opponent of dumping, is then supposed to send a communiqu&#233; to each American embassy overseas. Each embassy is, in turn, supposed to notify the appropriate foreign officials. However, the Commerce, Consumer and Monetary Affairs Subcommittee of the House Committee on Government Operations discovered in hearings held in July of 1978 that the agencies frequently neglected to inform the State Department when they banned a product. For example, the EPA failed to notify State after suspending such notorious pesticides as kepone, chlordane and heptachlor. The Government Accounting Office (GAO) also discovered and testified to the same subcommittee that even when the agencies did notify State, the communiqu&#233;s rarely went further than the US embassies overseas&#8212;they almost never reached the foreign officials who might have been able to warn foreign buyers or intercept shipments. One embassy official even admitted to the GAO that he &#8220;did not routinely forward notification of chemicals not registered in the host country because it may adversely affect US exporting.&#8221; The GAO would not tell us the name or location of the official they quoted, but said the sentiment was not unusual.</p> <p>Some of the foreign officials who have been notified have complained that the communiqu&#233;s are vague and ambiguous, or else so highly technical that they are incomprehensible.</p> <p>Of course, even if clear notification about a product were to reach officials in an importing nation, there is nothing to stop the exporters from changing a product&#8217;s brand name before they ship.</p> <p>It&#8217;s All Coming Back</p> <p>Perhaps the only aspect of the whole dumping travesty that has kept the issue alive in Washington is reimportation. Congressmembers and bureaucrats who would otherwise ignore or even encourage dumping become irate upon learning that a hazardous product is being reimported (smuggled) into the US for sale, or that an imported fruit or vegetable contains residue of a pesticide long-since suspended for American use. Even Esther Peterson, in a memo to the President, expressed concern about reimportation.</p> <p>Remember, it is perfectly legal to dump hazardous products abroad. There are, however, strict measures to prevent reimportation. The FDA allows manufacturers to export banned drugs, stale-dated drugs and even unapproved new drugs if they are shipped under &#8220;an investigational protocol&#8221; (for experimentation on other people). But one of the stipulations for the export of drugs removed from the American marketplace is that they never be offered for domestic sale again.</p> <p>The CPSC, however, can prohibit the export of goods forced off the American market. It can also stop exports that present &#8220;an unreasonable risk to persons in the US&#8221; (through their reimportation, for example), but the CPSC admits that proving unreasonable risk is &#8220;very difficult.&#8221;</p> <p>How to Stop It</p> <p>The White House Office of Consumer Affairs remains confident that a uniform policy on the export of banned and hazardous products will protect foreign consumers. Our investigations, however, indicate that the corporate dumping urge is rooted in a criminal mentality and that dumpers will, as they already have, find new ways to circumvent whatever legal and regulatory barriers stand between their warehouses and profitable markets for their deadly goods.</p> <p>Global corporations, with their worldwide network of subsidiaries, high technology and marketing systems, far outstrip the puny regulatory efforts of a government that considers corporate crime a minor nuisance at worst. Nothing short of a complete moral transformation of the corporate ethos will stop dumping. Until that unlikely transformation takes place, we recommend the following:</p> <p>Until all of the above are accomplished, the President should use his powers to stop dumping immediately.</p> <p>What Dumping Really Is</p> <p>Executives in major exporting corporations, with the strong support of Commerce Secretary Juanita Kreps, argue that if the export of banned and hazardous products is prohibited by statute or Executive Order, foreign buyers will merely turn to European or other suppliers, as they have in the past for weapons and ammunition. Other developed nations do dump; Germany dumps at least as many toxic pesticides as the US, and no nation on earth can match Switzerland for dumping baby formula. However, the assumption that foreign buyers will import known toxins and recognized lethal products from one country when they can&#8217;t get them from another is patently ridiculous.</p> <p>American business leaders, who tout themselves as the most ethical businesspeople in the world, should lead the way in ending dumping worldwide. It&#8217;s in their best interest to do so, for by dumping toxins on the Third World they are actually poisoning the very markets they seek to develop. Perhaps one day they will even see dumping for what it really is&#8212;a subtle genocide.</p> <p>Research assistance was provided by Carolyn Marshall, Victoria Dompka and the Center for Investigative Reporting.</p> <p />

The Corporate Crime of the Century

http://motherjones.com/politics/1979/11/corporate-crime-century

2018-11-01

4left

Tom Mboya was the hope of the western world Bright energetic popular and inclined to be democratic8212he was a born leader who Washington hoped would rise to power in Kenya and help keep Africa safe for United States commerce In 1969 he was shot down in the streets of Nairobi An emergency rescue squad was by his side in minutes They plugged him into the latest gadget in resuscitative technology8212a brand new US export called the ResQAire What the rescue team didn8217t know as they watched Tom Mboya8217s life slip away was that this marvelous device had been recalled from the American market by the US government because it was found to be totally ineffective The patient died Losing Mboya to the ResQAire was perhaps a subtle retribution for the US for to this day we allow our business leaders to sell mostly to Third World nations shiploads of defective medical devices lethal drugs known carcinogens toxic pesticides contaminated foods and other products found unfit for American consumption Ten years after Mboya8217s assassination in fact Kenya itself remains a major market for unsafe ineffective and contaminated American products At the 1977 meeting of the United Nations Environmental Program Kenyan Minister of Water Development Dr D J Kiano warned that developing nations would no longer tolerate being used as 8220dumping grounds for products that have not been adequately tested8221 and that their people should not be used as 8220guinea pigs8221 for chemicals The prevailing sentiment in Washington contrasts considerably with Dr Kiano8217s Say the word 8220dumping8221 in federal government circles and the predominant response will be 8220Oh yes 8216dumping8217 Really must be stopped It8217s outrageous not in our economic interests at all8230unscrupulous bastards82308221 Sounds as if we8217ve solved the problem doesn8217t it except what our bureaucrats are talking about one discovers is foreign corporations 8220dumping8221 lowpriced goods on the American market 8212 Japanese cars Taiwanese televisions Hong Kong stereos Australian beef etc The export of banned and hazardous products which Mother Jones calls 8220dumping8221 is considered business as usual As the following articles make painfully clear dumping is in fact big business as usual It involves not only manufacturers and retailers a vast array of export brokers tramp steamers black marketeers and gobetweens who traffic an estimated 12 billion worth of unsafe goods overseas every year but also the United States ExportImport Bank which finances large dumps the Commerce State and Treasury Departments which have the statutory authority to stop or control dumping but won8217t and a President who in his quiet way subverts the efforts of the few progressive members of Congress who seek to pass uniform antidumping legislation Hard evidence of dumping and its tragic consequences has repeatedly been brought to the attention of federal agencies the Congress and the White House Here are some examples Occasionally a particularly scandalous dump like one of these will come to the attention of conscientious Americans Most dumps however are performed quietly the product moving unnoticed in the fast flow of normal trade between nations And dumping is not limited to chemicals and consumer products When a firm8217s production facilities and industrial equipment are condemned by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration the manufacturer often simply closes up shop and moves the factory to Mexico or Jamaica where occupational health standards are virtually nonexistent Even entire technologies are dumped Nuclear power which seems certain to receive a 8220hazardous8221 classification before long in the US is today being dumped on energystarved nations like the Philippines and India We are only beginning to discover how toxic and carcinogenic are some of the chemicals we use chemicals with the potential to affect the entire global environment and human gene pool Moreover the number of other consumer products that maim or kill shows no sign of diminishing The list of banned and hazardous products is thus bound to grow which should making dumping a major international issue for the 1980s Early in our investigation however we discovered that exposing dumpers was more challenging than we thought it would be 8220They8217re really smugglers8221 said one of our team in a story meeting 8220The only difference between drug smugglers and dumpers is that the products are usually moving in opposite directions8221 There is another difference The government protects dumpers We talked to countless officials in countless agencies and departments of the government while researching this story8212a few of them outspoken opponents of dumping They would tell us about contaminated foods baby pacifiers pesticides and drugs that were being dumped overseas They often knew how many of each item were shipped to specific countries but they would never tell us the brand names the manufacturers or the names of the export brokers The answer was always the same 8220I8217m sorry that8217s proprietary information8230trade secret8230confidential corporate information And as we shall see government protection afforded to dumpers goes way beyond this kind of cover Although the bottom line motive is always profit hazardous products are dumped to solve different problems For nonmanufacturers8212wholesalers retailers brokers importers and exporters8212the problem is generally just a matter of inventory Salvation often comes in the form of a broker offering to buy the banned goods at a 8220closeout8221 price for resale in an unnamed read Third World market It8217s not that simple however for manufacturers who have invested capital in tools dies assembly plants personnel machines and land When a company like A H Robins foresees the withdrawal of a product like the Dalkon Shield intrauterine device it dumps a million units on foreign countries voluntarily withdraws the product and closes up shop The company takes a small loss buying back recalled inventory which it writes off and its capital investment is amortized Carter Dumps Dumping It was Tris that brought dumping into the political arena And the political arena for dumping is Washington Tris 23dibromopropyl phosphate is a fireretardant chemical used to treat synthetic flammable fabrics In June of 1977 after Tris was found to cause cancer in animals millions of pairs of infant pajamas and tons of children8217s sleepwear were suddenly withdrawn from the US market by the CPSC When some of the manufacturers stuck with huge repurchased inventories of these carcinogenic garments threatened to dump them on the overseas markets the CPSC claimed at first that it had no statutory authority to stop them from doing so In fact although the CPSC the EPA and the FDA together have removed over 500 pesticides drugs and consumer products from the American market for health safety or environmental reasons the patchwork of regulations obfuscates what limited power these agencies have to prohibit the export of dangerous products When President Carter who does have the authority to stop dumping with a simple Executive Order learned of the Tris situation he authorized the formation of an Interagency Working Group to develop a uniform national policy on dumping Although such task forces can provide a valuable forum for intragovernment communication and often make important policy recommendations the Interagency Working Group on Hazardous Substances Export Policy HSEP8212chaired by Carter8217s Special Assistant for Consumer Affairs Esther Peterson8212is in fact being used to table the issue until our balance of trade improves Dumping you see is exporting and although banned and hazardous products represent only about one percent of our total trade every percent seems to count when we are consistently running a trade deficit of over 25 billion a year To determine why the task force report is still nonexistent we took our investigation to Washington In a long series of interviews with task force members and White House staff the reason for the delay became clear The President intimidated by Congress is unwilling to take the issue to the Hill in the face of growing 8220export fever8221 and antiregulatory sentiment Edward Cohen staff counsel to both the HSEP task force and the White House Office of Consumer Affairs asked us to turn off our tape recorder as he explained the dilemma He also told us he was 8220one of the good guys in the story8221 We can8217t quote what he told us when the recorder was off but since we don8217t believe him it really doesn8217t matter Cohen refused to tell us the names of any agency representatives on the task force and throughout our investigation went to elaborate lengths to stop any flow of information to our researchers When we asked him for innocuous background material on the task force Cohen exercised 8220executive privilege8221 and gave us nothing forcing us to file Freedom of Information requests with the 16 agencies and departments in the task force Despite White House efforts to discourage compliance with our requests we obtained the material from friendly sources in the agencies More on the contents later During the interview Cohen struggled to remember the correct name of the task force The records files and minutes from past meetings were stuffed in a cardboard box under a radiator in his otherwise tidy office It was clear that dumping and HSEP had slipped a notch or two on the White House agenda Cohen admitted eventually that it was barely on his own agenda He persisted however in his 8220good guy8221 stance When we persisted with our investigation Cohen realized he had a public relations problem on his hands In fact when we called the White House to interview Esther Peterson recently Cohen turned up unexpectedly on the line to tell us he was working on a fourth policy draft for task force review But when we talked to representatives from all but three of the agencies involved most barely remembered the task force and felt that the issue was dead And Cohen recently told Ralph Nader8217s office that if the fourth draft is not approved the entire matter will be dropped The President can place any product he wants on the Commodity Control List which makes exportation of the product absolutely illegal There are three statutory justifications for placing a commodity on this list scarcity national security and foreign relations When Tristreated clothing was found to be a cancer threat to infants and it became clear that President Carter wasn8217t going to do anything to stop its export an alarmed S John Byington chairman of the CPSC wrote in June 1977 to Secretary of Commerce Juanita Kreps whose department administers the Commodity Control List Byington asked her to place the garments on the list pointing out to her that their export would have 8220serious implications for foreign policy8221 On October 7 nearly four months and as it turns out many pajama dumps later Kreps answered Byington She had taken the time to consult the State Department which 8220has advised me that the controls on Tris and Tristreated garments are not in the language of the statute 8216necessary to further significantly the foreign policy of the US to fulfill its international responsibilities8221 Frustrated by months of bureaucratic waffling the CPSC finally reversed its position on June 14 1978 by prohibiting the export of Tristreated sleepwear This delay obfuscation and inactivity are all too typical Records of Interagency Working Group meetings which we were able to obtain despite White House efforts to stonewall us show that Commerce and State Department representatives are doing everything in their power to prevent the adoption of a uniform policy on dumping Although President Carter has mumbled a word or two about the ethics of exporting he clearly does not consider the use of safe products a human right for nonAmericans In fact his actions on this matter have pleased the most conservative produmping forces On September 26 1978 the day before the HSEP task force report was due for release Carter issued a public statement on exports The wording of the statement so clearly subverted the intent of any reforms the task force might have conceivably proposed that it8217s little wonder not a word has been heard from the group since Notification Before the Dump The liberal compromise on the dumping issue is notification Invoking the principles of national sovereignty selfdetermination and free trade government officials and legislators have devised a system whereby foreign governments are notified whenever a product is banned deregulated suspended or cancelled by an American regulatory agency The notification system is handled by the State Department whose policy statement on the subject reads in part 8220No country should establish itself as the arbiter of others8217 health and safety standards Individual governments are generally in the best position to establish standards of public health and safety8221 Based on this judgment an unwieldy and ineffective notification procedure allegedly places announcements in the hands of the proper foreign government officials telling them a certain drug has been found to be toxic or that babies have strangled in particular brands of cribs The main problem with notification is the logic behind it Other governments are generally not in a position to establish safety standards let alone control imports into their countries In fact the countries where most of our banned and hazardous products are dumped lack regulatory agencies testing laboratories or wellstaffed customs departments In 1978 Nigeria8217s Environmental Protection Ministry was one person He recently told the US EPA that it didn8217t matter whether or not he was notified when a pesticide was suspended there was nothing he could do to stop its importation When our EPA FDA or CPSC finds a product to be hazardous they notify our State Department as required or as a matter of protocol State which we have found to be no opponent of dumping is then supposed to send a communiqu233 to each American embassy overseas Each embassy is in turn supposed to notify the appropriate foreign officials However the Commerce Consumer and Monetary Affairs Subcommittee of the House Committee on Government Operations discovered in hearings held in July of 1978 that the agencies frequently neglected to inform the State Department when they banned a product For example the EPA failed to notify State after suspending such notorious pesticides as kepone chlordane and heptachlor The Government Accounting Office GAO also discovered and testified to the same subcommittee that even when the agencies did notify State the communiqu233s rarely went further than the US embassies overseas8212they almost never reached the foreign officials who might have been able to warn foreign buyers or intercept shipments One embassy official even admitted to the GAO that he 8220did not routinely forward notification of chemicals not registered in the host country because it may adversely affect US exporting8221 The GAO would not tell us the name or location of the official they quoted but said the sentiment was not unusual Some of the foreign officials who have been notified have complained that the communiqu233s are vague and ambiguous or else so highly technical that they are incomprehensible Of course even if clear notification about a product were to reach officials in an importing nation there is nothing to stop the exporters from changing a product8217s brand name before they ship It8217s All Coming Back Perhaps the only aspect of the whole dumping travesty that has kept the issue alive in Washington is reimportation Congressmembers and bureaucrats who would otherwise ignore or even encourage dumping become irate upon learning that a hazardous product is being reimported smuggled into the US for sale or that an imported fruit or vegetable contains residue of a pesticide longsince suspended for American use Even Esther Peterson in a memo to the President expressed concern about reimportation Remember it is perfectly legal to dump hazardous products abroad There are however strict measures to prevent reimportation The FDA allows manufacturers to export banned drugs staledated drugs and even unapproved new drugs if they are shipped under 8220an investigational protocol8221 for experimentation on other people But one of the stipulations for the export of drugs removed from the American marketplace is that they never be offered for domestic sale again The CPSC however can prohibit the export of goods forced off the American market It can also stop exports that present 8220an unreasonable risk to persons in the US8221 through their reimportation for example but the CPSC admits that proving unreasonable risk is 8220very difficult8221 How to Stop It The White House Office of Consumer Affairs remains confident that a uniform policy on the export of banned and hazardous products will protect foreign consumers Our investigations however indicate that the corporate dumping urge is rooted in a criminal mentality and that dumpers will as they already have find new ways to circumvent whatever legal and regulatory barriers stand between their warehouses and profitable markets for their deadly goods Global corporations with their worldwide network of subsidiaries high technology and marketing systems far outstrip the puny regulatory efforts of a government that considers corporate crime a minor nuisance at worst Nothing short of a complete moral transformation of the corporate ethos will stop dumping Until that unlikely transformation takes place we recommend the following Until all of the above are accomplished the President should use his powers to stop dumping immediately What Dumping Really Is Executives in major exporting corporations with the strong support of Commerce Secretary Juanita Kreps argue that if the export of banned and hazardous products is prohibited by statute or Executive Order foreign buyers will merely turn to European or other suppliers as they have in the past for weapons and ammunition Other developed nations do dump Germany dumps at least as many toxic pesticides as the US and no nation on earth can match Switzerland for dumping baby formula However the assumption that foreign buyers will import known toxins and recognized lethal products from one country when they can8217t get them from another is patently ridiculous American business leaders who tout themselves as the most ethical businesspeople in the world should lead the way in ending dumping worldwide It8217s in their best interest to do so for by dumping toxins on the Third World they are actually poisoning the very markets they seek to develop Perhaps one day they will even see dumping for what it really is8212a subtle genocide Research assistance was provided by Carolyn Marshall Victoria Dompka and the Center for Investigative Reporting

Tom/PROPN Mboya/PROPN was/AUX the/DET hope/NOUN of/ADP the/DET western/ADJ world/NOUN Bright/ADJ energetic/ADJ popular/ADJ and/CCONJ inclined/ADJ to/PART be/AUX democratic8212he/NOUN was/AUX a/DET born/VERB leader/NOUN who/PRON Washington/PROPN hoped/VERB would/AUX rise/VERB to/ADP power/NOUN in/ADP Kenya/PROPN and/CCONJ help/VERB keep/VERB Africa/PROPN safe/ADJ for/ADP United/PROPN States/PROPN commerce/NOUN In/ADP 1969/NUM he/PRON was/AUX shot/VERB down/ADP in/ADP the/DET streets/NOUN of/ADP Nairobi/PROPN An/DET emergency/NOUN rescue/NOUN squad/NOUN was/AUX by/ADP his/PRON side/NOUN in/ADP minutes/NOUN They/PRON plugged/VERB him/PRON into/ADP the/DET latest/ADJ gadget/NOUN in/ADP resuscitative/ADJ technology8212a/ADJ brand/NOUN new/ADJ US/PROPN export/NOUN called/VERB the/DET ResQAire/NOUN What/PRON the/DET rescue/NOUN team/NOUN didn8217/PROPN t/NOUN know/VERB as/SCONJ they/PRON watched/VERB Tom/PROPN Mboya8217s/PROPN life/NOUN slip/VERB away/ADV was/AUX that/SCONJ this/DET marvelous/ADJ device/NOUN had/AUX been/AUX recalled/VERB from/ADP the/DET American/ADJ market/NOUN by/ADP the/DET US/PROPN government/NOUN because/SCONJ it/PRON was/AUX found/VERB to/PART be/AUX totally/ADV ineffective/ADJ The/DET patient/NOUN died/VERB Losing/PROPN Mboya/PROPN to/ADP the/DET ResQAire/NOUN was/AUX perhaps/ADV a/DET subtle/ADJ retribution/NOUN for/ADP the/DET US/PROPN for/ADP to/ADP this/DET day/NOUN we/PRON allow/VERB our/PRON business/NOUN leaders/NOUN to/PART sell/VERB mostly/ADV to/ADP Third/PROPN World/PROPN nations/NOUN shiploads/NOUN of/ADP defective/ADJ medical/ADJ devices/NOUN lethal/ADJ drugs/NOUN known/VERB carcinogens/NOUN toxic/ADJ pesticides/NOUN contaminated/VERB foods/NOUN and/CCONJ other/ADJ products/NOUN found/VERB unfit/ADJ for/ADP American/ADJ consumption/NOUN Ten/NUM years/NOUN after/ADP Mboya8217s/PROPN assassination/NOUN in/ADP fact/NOUN Kenya/PROPN itself/PRON remains/VERB a/DET major/ADJ market/NOUN for/ADP unsafe/ADJ ineffective/ADJ and/CCONJ contaminated/VERB American/ADJ products/NOUN At/ADP the/DET 1977/NUM meeting/NOUN of/ADP the/DET United/PROPN Nations/PROPN Environmental/PROPN Program/PROPN Kenyan/PROPN Minister/PROPN of/ADP Water/PROPN Development/PROPN Dr/PROPN D/PROPN J/PROPN Kiano/PROPN warned/VERB that/SCONJ developing/VERB nations/NOUN would/AUX no/ADV longer/ADV tolerate/VERB being/AUX used/VERB as/ADP 8220dumping/NOUN grounds/NOUN for/ADP products/NOUN that/PRON have/AUX not/PART been/AUX adequately/ADV tested8221/ADJ and/CCONJ that/SCONJ their/PRON people/NOUN should/AUX not/PART be/AUX used/VERB as/ADP 8220guinea/ADJ pigs8221/NOUN for/ADP chemicals/NOUN The/DET prevailing/VERB sentiment/NOUN in/ADP Washington/PROPN contrasts/VERB considerably/ADV with/ADP Dr/PROPN Kiano8217s/PROPN Say/VERB the/DET word/NOUN 8220dumping8221/NOUN in/ADP federal/ADJ government/NOUN circles/NOUN and/CCONJ the/DET predominant/ADJ response/NOUN will/AUX be/AUX 8220Oh/NUM yes/INTJ 8216dumping8217/NOUN Really/ADV must/AUX be/AUX stopped/VERB It8217s/PROPN outrageous/ADJ not/PART in/ADP our/PRON economic/ADJ interests/NOUN at/ADP all8230unscrupulous/ADJ bastards82308221/PUNCT Sounds/VERB as/SCONJ if/SCONJ we8217ve/PROPN solved/VERB the/DET problem/NOUN doesn8217/PROPN t/VERB it/PRON except/SCONJ what/PRON our/PRON bureaucrats/NOUN are/AUX talking/VERB about/ADP one/NUM discovers/NOUN is/AUX foreign/ADJ corporations/NOUN 8220dumping8221/NOUN lowpriced/VERB goods/NOUN on/ADP the/DET American/ADJ market/NOUN 8212/NUM Japanese/ADJ cars/NOUN Taiwanese/ADJ televisions/NOUN Hong/PROPN Kong/PROPN stereos/VERB Australian/ADJ beef/NOUN etc/X The/DET export/NOUN of/ADP banned/VERB and/CCONJ hazardous/ADJ products/NOUN which/PRON Mother/PROPN Jones/PROPN calls/VERB 8220dumping8221/NOUN is/AUX considered/VERB business/NOUN as/ADP usual/ADJ As/SCONJ the/DET following/VERB articles/NOUN make/VERB painfully/ADV clear/ADJ dumping/NOUN is/AUX in/ADP fact/NOUN big/ADJ business/NOUN as/ADP usual/ADJ It/PRON involves/VERB not/PART only/ADV manufacturers/NOUN and/CCONJ retailers/NOUN a/DET vast/ADJ array/NOUN of/ADP export/NOUN brokers/NOUN tramp/NOUN steamers/NOUN black/ADJ marketeers/NOUN and/CCONJ gobetweens/VERB who/PRON traffic/VERB an/DET estimated/VERB 12/NUM billion/NUM worth/NOUN of/ADP unsafe/ADJ goods/NOUN overseas/ADV every/DET year/NOUN but/CCONJ also/ADV the/DET United/PROPN States/PROPN ExportImport/PROPN Bank/PROPN which/PRON finances/VERB large/ADJ dumps/NOUN the/DET Commerce/PROPN State/PROPN and/CCONJ Treasury/PROPN Departments/PROPN which/PRON have/VERB the/DET statutory/ADJ authority/NOUN to/PART stop/VERB or/CCONJ control/VERB dumping/NOUN but/CCONJ won8217/NOUN t/PROPN and/CCONJ a/DET President/PROPN who/PRON in/ADP his/PRON quiet/ADJ way/NOUN subverts/NOUN the/DET efforts/NOUN of/ADP the/DET few/ADJ progressive/ADJ members/NOUN of/ADP Congress/PROPN who/PRON seek/VERB to/PART pass/VERB uniform/NOUN antidumping/VERB legislation/NOUN Hard/ADJ evidence/NOUN of/ADP dumping/NOUN and/CCONJ its/PRON tragic/ADJ consequences/NOUN has/AUX repeatedly/ADV been/AUX brought/VERB to/ADP the/DET attention/NOUN of/ADP federal/ADJ agencies/NOUN the/DET Congress/PROPN and/CCONJ the/DET White/PROPN House/PROPN Here/ADV are/AUX some/DET examples/NOUN Occasionally/ADV a/DET particularly/ADV scandalous/ADJ dump/NOUN like/ADP one/NUM of/ADP these/PRON will/AUX come/VERB to/ADP the/DET attention/NOUN of/ADP conscientious/ADJ Americans/PROPN Most/ADJ dumps/NOUN however/ADV are/AUX performed/VERB quietly/ADV the/DET product/NOUN moving/VERB unnoticed/ADJ in/ADP the/DET fast/ADJ flow/NOUN of/ADP normal/ADJ trade/NOUN between/ADP nations/NOUN And/CCONJ dumping/NOUN is/AUX not/PART limited/VERB to/ADP chemicals/NOUN and/CCONJ consumer/NOUN products/NOUN When/SCONJ a/DET firm8217s/PROPN production/NOUN facilities/NOUN and/CCONJ industrial/ADJ equipment/NOUN are/AUX condemned/VERB by/ADP the/DET Occupational/PROPN Safety/PROPN and/CCONJ Health/PROPN Administration/PROPN the/DET manufacturer/NOUN often/ADV simply/ADV closes/VERB up/ADP shop/NOUN and/CCONJ moves/VERB the/DET factory/NOUN to/ADP Mexico/PROPN or/CCONJ Jamaica/PROPN where/SCONJ occupational/ADJ health/NOUN standards/NOUN are/AUX virtually/ADV nonexistent/ADJ Even/ADV entire/ADJ technologies/NOUN are/AUX dumped/VERB Nuclear/ADJ power/NOUN which/PRON seems/VERB certain/ADJ to/PART receive/VERB a/DET 8220hazardous8221/NOUN classification/NOUN before/ADP long/ADV in/ADP the/DET US/PROPN is/AUX today/NOUN being/AUX dumped/VERB on/ADP energystarved/ADJ nations/NOUN like/ADP the/DET Philippines/PROPN and/CCONJ India/PROPN We/PRON are/AUX only/ADV beginning/VERB to/PART discover/VERB how/SCONJ toxic/ADJ and/CCONJ carcinogenic/ADJ are/AUX some/PRON of/ADP the/DET chemicals/NOUN we/PRON use/VERB chemicals/NOUN with/ADP the/DET potential/NOUN to/PART affect/VERB the/DET entire/ADJ global/ADJ environment/NOUN and/CCONJ human/ADJ gene/NOUN pool/NOUN Moreover/ADV the/DET number/NOUN of/ADP other/ADJ consumer/NOUN products/NOUN that/PRON maim/VERB or/CCONJ kill/VERB shows/VERB no/DET sign/NOUN of/ADP diminishing/VERB The/DET list/NOUN of/ADP banned/VERB and/CCONJ hazardous/ADJ products/NOUN is/AUX thus/ADV bound/VERB to/PART grow/VERB which/PRON should/AUX making/VERB dumping/VERB a/DET major/ADJ international/ADJ issue/NOUN for/ADP the/DET 1980s/NOUN Early/ADV in/ADP our/PRON investigation/NOUN however/ADV we/PRON discovered/VERB that/SCONJ exposing/VERB dumpers/NOUN was/AUX more/ADV challenging/ADJ than/SCONJ we/PRON thought/VERB it/PRON would/AUX be/AUX 8220They8217re/NUM really/ADV smugglers8221/PROPN said/VERB one/NUM of/ADP our/PRON team/NOUN in/ADP a/DET story/NOUN meeting/NOUN 8220The/NUM only/ADJ difference/NOUN between/ADP drug/NOUN smugglers/NOUN and/CCONJ dumpers/NOUN is/AUX that/SCONJ the/DET products/NOUN are/AUX usually/ADV moving/VERB in/ADP opposite/ADJ directions8221/NOUN There/PRON is/VERB another/DET difference/NOUN The/DET government/NOUN protects/VERB dumpers/NOUN We/PRON talked/VERB to/ADP countless/ADJ officials/NOUN in/ADP countless/ADJ agencies/NOUN and/CCONJ departments/NOUN of/ADP the/DET government/NOUN while/SCONJ researching/VERB this/PRON story8212a/NUM few/ADJ of/ADP them/PRON outspoken/ADJ opponents/NOUN of/ADP dumping/VERB They/PRON would/AUX tell/VERB us/PRON about/ADP contaminated/ADJ foods/NOUN baby/NOUN pacifiers/NOUN pesticides/NOUN and/CCONJ drugs/NOUN that/PRON were/AUX being/AUX dumped/VERB overseas/ADV They/PRON often/ADV knew/VERB how/SCONJ many/ADJ of/ADP each/DET item/NOUN were/AUX shipped/VERB to/ADP specific/ADJ countries/NOUN but/CCONJ they/PRON would/AUX never/ADV tell/VERB us/PRON the/DET brand/NOUN names/NOUN the/DET manufacturers/NOUN or/CCONJ the/DET names/NOUN of/ADP the/DET export/NOUN brokers/NOUN The/DET answer/NOUN was/AUX always/ADV the/DET same/ADJ 8220I8217/NOUN m/VERB sorry/ADJ that8217s/PROPN proprietary/ADJ information8230trade/PROPN secret8230confidential/ADJ corporate/ADJ information/NOUN And/CCONJ as/SCONJ we/PRON shall/AUX see/VERB government/NOUN protection/NOUN afforded/VERB to/ADP dumpers/NOUN goes/VERB way/NOUN beyond/ADP this/DET kind/NOUN of/ADP cover/NOUN Although/SCONJ the/DET bottom/ADJ line/NOUN motive/NOUN is/AUX always/ADV profit/VERB hazardous/ADJ products/NOUN are/AUX dumped/VERB to/PART solve/VERB different/ADJ problems/NOUN For/ADP nonmanufacturers8212wholesalers/NOUN retailers/NOUN brokers/NOUN importers/NOUN and/CCONJ exporters8212the/DET problem/NOUN is/AUX generally/ADV just/ADV a/DET matter/NOUN of/ADP inventory/NOUN Salvation/PROPN often/ADV comes/VERB in/ADP the/DET form/NOUN of/ADP a/DET broker/NOUN offering/VERB to/PART buy/VERB the/DET banned/VERB goods/NOUN at/ADP a/DET 8220closeout8221/NUM price/NOUN for/ADP resale/NOUN in/ADP an/DET unnamed/ADJ read/NOUN Third/PROPN World/PROPN market/NOUN It8217s/VERB not/PART that/ADV simple/ADJ however/ADV for/ADP manufacturers/NOUN who/PRON have/AUX invested/VERB capital/NOUN in/ADP tools/NOUN dies/VERB assembly/NOUN plants/NOUN 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<p>LONDON (Reuters) - Britain will not be &#8220;vassal state&#8221; to the European Union during a transition period after Brexit, minister David Davis said on Wednesday, responding to criticism about plans to remain under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice.</p> <p>&#8220;No, we&#8217;re not,&#8221; Brexit minister Davis said when asked by pro-Brexit lawmaker Jacob Rees-Mogg whether Britain would be a &#8220;vassal state&#8221; because it would temporarily continue to accept ECJ rulings after leaving the bloc.</p> <p>&#8220;If that were to be the case in perpetuity, my answer would probably be yes, but the answer for a short time: no.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Elizabeth Piper. Writing by William James. Editing by Andrew MacAskill</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - A rise in oil prices to a six-week high helped reverse a day-long decline in world equity markets Wednesday ahead of a likely increase in U.S. interest rates and guidance on how many more to expect for this year.</p> <p>Energy stocks .SPNY in the S&amp;amp;P 500 gained 2.5 percent after a surprise decline in U.S. oil inventories and as worries persisted over rising tensions in the Middle East.</p> <p>The Dow Jones Industrial Average <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.DJI" type="external">.DJI</a> rose 92.19 points, or 0.37 percent, to 24,819.46, the S&amp;amp;P 500 <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.SPX" type="external">.SPX</a> gained 9.28 points, or 0.34 percent, to 2,726.22 and the Nasdaq Composite <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.IXIC" type="external">.IXIC</a> added 19.46 points, or 0.26 percent, to 7,383.76.</p> <p>World markets had traded lower earlier after the Wall Street Journal reported that China was planning counter-measures against U.S. trade tariffs. European shares fell and investors scurried for the safety of German government bonds and the Japanese yen.</p> <p>Shares of Facebook Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FB.O" type="external">FB.O</a>) rebounded 2.2 percent after two days of steep losses that had wiped some $50 billion off the value of shares of the social media company. Those declines, caused by uproar over the alleged misuse of user data, filtered through the tech sector, with technology companies .SPLRCT in the benchmark S&amp;amp;P 500 down 2 percent for the week to date.</p> <p>A pan-European equity index was off 0.2 percent after the WSJ report on China. The yen, typically bought during times of stress, rose to the day's high versus the dollar around 106.26 yen <a href="/finance/currencies/quote?srcCurr=JPY&amp;amp;destCurr=USD" type="external">JPY=</a>.</p> <p>&#8220;So far, we have seen low-level (trade) skirmishes, which are not material enough to affect the world economy. But if we see retaliation, and significant trade disruptions, it&#8217;s a different order or magnitude (which) could begin to affect global growth forecasts,&#8221; said Andrew Milligan, head of global strategy at Aberdeen Standard Investments.</p> <p>The tech selloff was a serious setback to markets just as they recovered from an early-February selloff, Milligan said, noting tech had been &#8220;the leading light of U.S. and Asian equity markets for over a year.&#8221;</p> Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange shortly after the opening bell in New York, U.S., March 21, 2018. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson <p>The U.S. central bank has raised borrowing costs five times since late 2015. Markets are pricing in three rate increases this year, but some worry policymakers might squeeze in a fourth, which could trigger a bond and equity selloff.</p> <p>Expectations of further rate hikes sent the dollar to nearly three-week highs on Tuesday, but it eased back a quarter percent against a basket of currencies .DXY on Wednesday, having lost almost half a percent this month.</p> <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.DJI" type="external">Dow Jones &amp;amp; Company Inc</a> 24809.28 .DJI Dow Jones Indexes +82.01 (+0.33%) .DJI .SPX .IXIC FB.O TRADE WAR FEARS <p>The WSJ report on potential Chinese tariffs comes as U.S. President Donald Trump prepares to announce on Friday up to $60 billion in import duties on Chinese goods. He imposed tariffs on imported steel and aluminum earlier this month.</p> <p>This week&#8217;s meeting of finance ministers and central bankers of the world&#8217;s 20 biggest economies failed to defuse tensions, with the G20 saying only that it recognized the need for more &#8220;dialogue and actions.&#8221;</p> <p>Fears of a trade war have also weighed on commodity prices, though tensions in the Middle East supported oil.</p> <p>U.S. crude CLcv1 rose 2.34 percent to $65.03 per barrel and Brent LCOcv1 was at $69.16, up 2.58 percent.</p> <p>Benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury notes US10YT=RR last fell 6/32 in price to yield 2.9014 percent, from 2.881 percent late on Tuesday.</p> <p>Editing by Bernadette Baum and James Dalgleish</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>MOSCOW/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The psychologist at the center of a scandal over the misuse of millions of Facebook users&#8217; personal data worked with Russian researchers on a study of toxic personality traits.</p> FILE PHOTO: The sun rises behind the entrance sign to Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park before the company's IPO launch, May 18, 2012. REUTERS/Beck Diefenbach/File Photo <p>Aleksandr Kogan advised a team at St Petersburg State University that was exploring whether psychopathy, narcissism and machiavellianism - dubbed the &#8216;dark triad&#8217; by psychologists - were linked to abusive online behavior, said Yanina Ledovaya, senior lecturer at the university&#8217;s department of psychology.</p> <p>&#8220;We wanted to detect (internet) trolls in order to improve in some way the lives of people suffering from trolling,&#8221; Ledovaya told Reuters.</p> <p>Kogan, a lecturer at Britain&#8217;s Cambridge University who also goes by the married name of Spectre, has come under fire for passing data culled via a Facebook personality quiz to political consultancy Cambridge Analytica.</p> <p>The test was taken by a few hundred thousand people but the app on which it ran also collected details about all of their Facebook &#8216;friends&#8217; without their knowledge or consent.</p> <p>That data was then used in a targeted digital ad campaign in support of Donald Trump&#8217;s successful run for the U.S. presidency, Cambridge Analytica&#8217;s CEO Alexander Nix told an undercover reporter from Britain&#8217;s Channel Four news.</p> <p>Nix was suspended on Tuesday in a spiraling scandal over how the data came into his company&#8217;s hands, in violation of Facebook&#8217;s own rules. The saga has wiped nearly $50 billion off the social network&#8217;s market value.</p> <p>Kogan did not respond to an emailed request to comment on his work in St Petersburg, but told the BBC on Wednesday he was being made a scapegoat by both Facebook and Cambridge Analytica. The latter firm has no link to the university.</p> NO DATA LEAK <p>Ledovaya said Kogan had advised the St Petersburg team on the project - which was funded by a university grant - between 2015 and 2017, visiting rarely and mainly interacting from abroad.</p> <p>The team built a Facebook app using a 61-question survey for Russian-speaking users that sought to determine to what degree they had the &#8216;dark triad&#8217; traits.</p> <p>The app collected answers, as well as the public data of respondents, after securing their consent. Separately, the researchers analyzed the text of users&#8217; public Facebook posts.</p> <p>Ledovaya said the data gathered was not passed to anyone outside the five-member research team - nor was it shared with Kogan.</p> <p>&#8220;We don&#8217;t have the right to share the data of these 10,000 or so people with anyone - it&#8217;s a matter of ethics and we are sticking to it,&#8221; she said.</p> <p>Research into personality traits viewed as malevolent goes back at least to Sigmund Freud, the Viennese pioneer of psychiatry who identified narcissism - or excessive self-love.</p> <p>Machiavellianism, named after the Italian diplomat and writer of the Renaissance era, represents manipulative behavior, while psychopathy manifests a lack of empathy.</p> <p>Ledovaya said one goal of the project was to ascertain the mental wellbeing of the respondents and, as appropriate, offer free counseling.</p> RUSSIAN CONNECTION <p>The emergence of Kogan&#8217;s St Petersburg connection comes as relations between Moscow and the West plumb new lows. Kogan, a U.S. citizen, was born in the former-Soviet republic of Moldova but moved to the United States as a child, Britain&#8217;s Guardian newspaper said.</p> <p>U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller has indicted 13 Russian individuals and three Russian companies for criminal and espionage conspiracy to tamper with the U.S. presidential campaign.</p> <p>One line of inquiry being pursued by Mueller is the suspected use of targeted Facebook messages by Russian groups - including the St Petersburg-based Internet Research Bureau.</p> <p>The St Petersburg State University research team has nothing to do with the Internet Research Bureau, said Ledovaya.</p> <p>&#8220;I know the people involved in the research project very well - they are the last people I can imagine taking part somehow in such an activity,&#8221; said Vladimir Volkhonsky, who worked at the psychology faculty until 2011.</p> <p>Cambridge University said Kogan had correctly sought the permission of the head of the psychology department to do the work with St Petersburg.</p> <p>&#8220;It was understood that this work and any associated grants would be in a private capacity, separate to his work at the university,&#8221; it said in a statement.</p> <p>Writing by Douglas Busvine; editing by John Stonestreet</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK/LONDON (Reuters) - A U.S. resident has sued Facebook and a British-based political consultancy for obtaining data from millions of the social media site&#8217;s users without their permission, while an academic at the center of the storm accused both firms of scapegoating him.</p> <p>The complaint filed at the U.S. District Court in San Jose, California, marked the first of what may be many lawsuits seeking damages over Facebook&#8217;s ability to protect user data, and exploitation of the information by the Cambridge Analytica consultancy to help President Donald Trump&#8217;s election campaign.</p> <p>Facebook ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FB.O" type="external">FB.O</a>) has been rocked this week by a whistleblower who said Cambridge Analytica, which Trump hired for the 2016 campaign, improperly accessed information on Facebook users to build detailed profiles on American voters.</p> <p>This revelation has knocked nearly $50 billion off Facebook&#8217;s stock market value in two days and hit the shares of Twitter and Snap over fears that a failure by big tech firms to protect personal data could deter advertisers and users and invite tougher regulation.</p> <p>Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook&#8217;s founder and chief executive, who has been quiet on the controversy, is to address the revelations later on Wednesday, a source at the company told Reuters.</p> <p>The proposed class-action complaint was filed late on Tuesday by Lauren Price, a Maryland resident. &#8220;Every Facebook user has an interest in this lawsuit, and the enforcement of their privacy rights,&#8221; John Yanchunis, a lawyer for Price, told Reuters on Wednesday. The complaint seeks unspecified damages, including possible punitive damages.</p> <p>Facebook and Cambridge Analytica did not immediately respond on Wednesday to requests for comment.</p> <p>A former Facebook manager who was responsible for policing the network&#8217;s data handling procedures in 2011-2012 said he had warned senior executives about the issue.</p> <p>The manager, Sandy Parakilas, said he had told them that Facebook&#8217;s failure to police how outside software developers used its data put the company at risk of major data breaches. &#8220;There was very little detection or enforcement,&#8221; he told a British parliamentary committee via videolink.</p> SWING VOTERS <p>The academic who provided the data, psychologist Aleksandr Kogan, told the BBC that Cambridge Analytica had greatly exaggerated its role in Trump&#8217;s victory.</p> <p>Facebook and Cambridge Analytica have both blamed Kogan, who gathered the data by running a survey app on Facebook. Kogan combines the roles of an academic at Cambridge University and a web entrepreneur based in San Francisco.</p> <p>U.S. political campaigns collect large amounts of data, hoping to target swing voters sympathetic to their message. Cambridge Analytica stood out for the scale of claims in its marketing materials to &#8220;collect up to 5,000 data points on over 220 million Americans&#8221; in all its activities.</p> <p>It uses techniques based on personality traits and then applies analytic tools to pinpoint supporters.</p> <p>However, Kogan said the services provided by the consultancy had been greatly exaggerated.</p> <p>&#8220;I think what Cambridge Analytica has tried to sell is magic, and they&#8217;ve made claims that this is incredibly accurate and it tells you everything there is to tell about you. But I think the reality is it&#8217;s not that,&#8221; he said.</p> Slideshow (5 Images) <p>Arron Banks, who campaigned for Britain to leave the European Union in a 2016 referendum, also questioned the value of psychologically-based data.</p> <p>Banks told Reuters that Cambridge Analytica had unsuccessfully pitched for work with his Leave.eu campaign group. &#8220;I think they are nothing more than a company that places Facebook ads and shrouds in a sort of mystery,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>Kogan&#8217;s application, &#8220;thisisyourdigitallife,&#8221; offered a personality prediction and billed itself on Facebook as &#8220;a research app used by psychologists&#8221;.</p> <p>Kogan said he had gathered the data in 2014. He was then approached by Cambridge Analytica who provided the legal advice around its use, he added.</p> <p>Facebook says Kogan then violated its policies by passing the data to Cambridge Analytica for commercial use, saying on Friday he &#8220;lied to us&#8221;. Cambridge Analytica said it destroyed the data once it realized the information did not adhere to data protection rules.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FB.O" type="external">Facebook Inc</a> 171.655 FB.O Nasdaq +3.51 (+2.08%) FB.O <p>&#8220;My view is that I&#8217;m being basically used as a scapegoat by both Facebook and Cambridge Analytica,&#8221; said Kogan. &#8220;We were assured by Cambridge Analytica that everything was perfectly legal and within the limits of the terms of service.&#8221;</p> <p>Cambridge Analytica has denied various allegations made about its business practices in recent media reports.</p> <p>British Prime Minister Theresa May said she backed an investigation into the consultancy, while the German government also expressed its concern.</p> <p>In Europe the tax affairs of tech giants have become a hot political issue. On Wednesday the European Commission proposed rules to make digital companies pay their fair share of tax, with Facebook and its peers set to foot much of the bill.</p> PERSONALITY TEST <p>Alexander Nix, the head of Cambridge Analytica, said in a secretly recorded video broadcast on Tuesday that his company had played a decisive role in Trump&#8217;s election victory. He was suspended by the company shortly before the video was shown on Britain&#8217;s Channel 4 News.</p> <p>Around 270,000 people downloaded the app, Facebook said. The app scored the results of each quiz and gathered up data from test-takers&#8217; Facebook accounts. However, it also pulled down the data of their Facebook friends, vastly increasing the size of the sample.</p> <p>Kogan put the number of app users as closer to 200,000.</p> <p>The researcher said, in total, he passed the data of around 30 million American Facebook users to SCL, a government and military contractor that is the parent of Cambridge Analytica. Media reports have put the total number of Facebook profiles collected at around 50 million users.</p> <p>U.S. and European lawmakers have demanded an explanation of how Cambridge Analytica gained access to user data in 2014 and why Facebook failed to inform its users.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-facebook-cambridge-analytica-leave-eu/what-are-the-links-between-cambridge-analytica-and-a-brexit-campaign-group-idUSKBN1GX2IO" type="external">What are the links between Cambridge Analytica and a Brexit campaign group?</a> <a href="/article/us-facebook-cambridge-analytica-kogan/academic-in-facebook-storm-worked-on-russian-dark-personality-project-idUSKBN1GX2F6" type="external">Academic in Facebook storm worked on Russian 'dark' personality project</a> <a href="/article/us-facebook-cambridge-analytica-britain/uk-had-three-contracts-with-cambridge-analytica-parent-company-idUSKBN1GX2ES" type="external">UK had three contracts with Cambridge Analytica parent company</a> <p>Facebook said it had been told by the Federal Trade Commission, the leading U.S. consumer regulator, that it would receive a letter this week with questions about the data acquired by Cambridge Analytica. It said it had no indication of a formal investigation.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Dustin Volz in Washington; Editing by Guy Faulconbridge, David Stamp and Janet Lawrence</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BRUSSELS (Reuters) - German conglomerate Bayer won EU antitrust approval on Wednesday for its $62.5 billion buy of U.S. peer Monsanto, the latest in a trio of mega mergers that will reshape the agrochemicals industry.</p> <p>The tie-up is set to create a company with control of more than a quarter of the world&#8217;s seed and pesticides market.</p> <p>Driven by shifting weather patterns, competition in grain exports and a faltering global farm economy, Dow and Dupont, and ChemChina [CNNCC.UL] and Syngenta had earlier led a wave of consolidation in the sector.</p> <p>Both deals secured EU approval only after the companies offered substantial asset sales to boost rivals.</p> <p>Environmental and farming groups have opposed all three deals, worried about their power and their advantage in digital farming data, which can tell farmers how and when to till, sow, spray, fertilize and pick crops based on algorithms.</p> <p>The European Commission said Bayer addressed its concerns with its offer to sell a swathe of assets to boost rival BASF, confirming a Reuters story on Feb. 28.</p> <p>&#8220;Our decision ensures that there will be effective competition and innovation in seeds, pesticides and digital agriculture markets also after this merger,&#8221; European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said in a statement.</p> <p>&#8220;In particular, we have made sure that the number of global players actively competing in these markets stays the same.&#8221;</p> European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager holds a news conference at the EU Commission's headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, March 21, 2018. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir <p>Vestager said the Commission, which received more than a million petitions concerning the deal, had been thorough by examining more than 2,000 different product markets and 2.7 million internal documents to produce a 1,285-page ruling.</p> <p>Bayer has already reached a deal to sell certain seed and herbicide assets for 5.9 billion euros ($7.2 billion) to BASF and to give it a license to its global digital farming data. It will also divest its vegetable seeds business to BASF.</p> <p>The Commission is due to rule on the BASF deal by April 16.</p> Slideshow (3 Images) <p>Online campaigns group Avaaz criticized the EU approval.</p> <p>&#8220;This is a marriage made in hell. The Commission ignored a million people who called on them to block this deal, and caved in to lobbying to create a mega-corporation which will dominate our food supply,&#8221; Avaaz legal director Nick Flynn said.</p> <p>U.S.-incorporated Avaaz, funded by its members, is active in climate change, poverty, conflict and corruption issues.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-monsanto-m-a-bayer-usa/u-s-says-it-is-still-reviewing-bayers-planned-monsanto-acquisition-idUSKBN1GX2HZ" type="external">U.S. says it is still reviewing Bayer's planned Monsanto acquisition</a> <p>The Greens grouping in the European Parliament echoed the sentiment, saying smaller players in the agriculture industry needed to be helped too.</p> <p>&#8220;The agriculture industry is already far too concentrated, giving a handful of massive firms a stranglehold on food production. Merging two of the biggest players only makes a bad situation worse,&#8221; Greens spokesman Bart Staes said.</p> <p>China has given conditional approval to the Bayer, Monsanto deal, which has won a green light in Brazil. It is currently being reviewed by U.S. and Russian antitrust authorities.</p> <p>Reporting by Foo Yun Chee, editing by Robin Emmott and David Evans</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Britain will not be 'vassal state' to the EU during transition - minister Energy lifts stocks despite jitters on Fed, trade, tech Academic in Facebook storm worked on Russian 'dark' personality project Facebook and UK political consultancy sued in data storm Bayer wins EU approval for $62.5 billion Monsanto buy

https://reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-davis-vassal/britain-will-not-be-vassal-state-to-the-eu-during-transition-minister-idUSKBN1FD1BU

2018-01-24

2least

LONDON Reuters Britain will not be 8220vassal state8221 to the European Union during a transition period after Brexit minister David Davis said on Wednesday responding to criticism about plans to remain under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice 8220No we8217re not8221 Brexit minister Davis said when asked by proBrexit lawmaker Jacob ReesMogg whether Britain would be a 8220vassal state8221 because it would temporarily continue to accept ECJ rulings after leaving the bloc 8220If that were to be the case in perpetuity my answer would probably be yes but the answer for a short time no8221 Reporting by Elizabeth Piper Writing by William James Editing by Andrew MacAskill Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORK Reuters A rise in oil prices to a sixweek high helped reverse a daylong decline in world equity markets Wednesday ahead of a likely increase in US interest rates and guidance on how many more to expect for this year Energy stocks SPNY in the SampampP 500 gained 25 percent after a surprise decline in US oil inventories and as worries persisted over rising tensions in the Middle East The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJI rose 9219 points or 037 percent to 2481946 the SampampP 500 SPX gained 928 points or 034 percent to 272622 and the Nasdaq Composite IXIC added 1946 points or 026 percent to 738376 World markets had traded lower earlier after the Wall Street Journal reported that China was planning countermeasures against US trade tariffs European shares fell and investors scurried for the safety of German government bonds and the Japanese yen Shares of Facebook Inc FBO rebounded 22 percent after two days of steep losses that had wiped some 50 billion off the value of shares of the social media company Those declines caused by uproar over the alleged misuse of user data filtered through the tech sector with technology companies SPLRCT in the benchmark SampampP 500 down 2 percent for the week to date A panEuropean equity index was off 02 percent after the WSJ report on China The yen typically bought during times of stress rose to the days high versus the dollar around 10626 yen JPY 8220So far we have seen lowlevel trade skirmishes which are not material enough to affect the world economy But if we see retaliation and significant trade disruptions it8217s a different order or magnitude which could begin to affect global growth forecasts8221 said Andrew Milligan head of global strategy at Aberdeen Standard Investments The tech selloff was a serious setback to markets just as they recovered from an earlyFebruary selloff Milligan said noting tech had been 8220the leading light of US and Asian equity markets for over a year8221 Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange shortly after the opening bell in New York US March 21 2018 REUTERSLucas Jackson The US central bank has raised borrowing costs five times since late 2015 Markets are pricing in three rate increases this year but some worry policymakers might squeeze in a fourth which could trigger a bond and equity selloff Expectations of further rate hikes sent the dollar to nearly threeweek highs on Tuesday but it eased back a quarter percent against a basket of currencies DXY on Wednesday having lost almost half a percent this month Dow Jones ampamp Company Inc 2480928 DJI Dow Jones Indexes 8201 033 DJI SPX IXIC FBO TRADE WAR FEARS The WSJ report on potential Chinese tariffs comes as US President Donald Trump prepares to announce on Friday up to 60 billion in import duties on Chinese goods He imposed tariffs on imported steel and aluminum earlier this month This week8217s meeting of finance ministers and central bankers of the world8217s 20 biggest economies failed to defuse tensions with the G20 saying only that it recognized the need for more 8220dialogue and actions8221 Fears of a trade war have also weighed on commodity prices though tensions in the Middle East supported oil US crude CLcv1 rose 234 percent to 6503 per barrel and Brent LCOcv1 was at 6916 up 258 percent Benchmark 10year US Treasury notes US10YTRR last fell 632 in price to yield 29014 percent from 2881 percent late on Tuesday Editing by Bernadette Baum and James Dalgleish Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles MOSCOWFRANKFURT Reuters The psychologist at the center of a scandal over the misuse of millions of Facebook users8217 personal data worked with Russian researchers on a study of toxic personality traits FILE PHOTO The sun rises behind the entrance sign to Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park before the companys IPO launch May 18 2012 REUTERSBeck DiefenbachFile Photo Aleksandr Kogan advised a team at St Petersburg State University that was exploring whether psychopathy narcissism and machiavellianism dubbed the 8216dark triad8217 by psychologists were linked to abusive online behavior said Yanina Ledovaya senior lecturer at the university8217s department of psychology 8220We wanted to detect internet trolls in order to improve in some way the lives of people suffering from trolling8221 Ledovaya told Reuters Kogan a lecturer at Britain8217s Cambridge University who also goes by the married name of Spectre has come under fire for passing data culled via a Facebook personality quiz to political consultancy Cambridge Analytica The test was taken by a few hundred thousand people but the app on which it ran also collected details about all of their Facebook 8216friends8217 without their knowledge or consent That data was then used in a targeted digital ad campaign in support of Donald Trump8217s successful run for the US presidency Cambridge Analytica8217s CEO Alexander Nix told an undercover reporter from Britain8217s Channel Four news Nix was suspended on Tuesday in a spiraling scandal over how the data came into his company8217s hands in violation of Facebook8217s own rules The saga has wiped nearly 50 billion off the social network8217s market value Kogan did not respond to an emailed request to comment on his work in St Petersburg but told the BBC on Wednesday he was being made a scapegoat by both Facebook and Cambridge Analytica The latter firm has no link to the university NO DATA LEAK Ledovaya said Kogan had advised the St Petersburg team on the project which was funded by a university grant between 2015 and 2017 visiting rarely and mainly interacting from abroad The team built a Facebook app using a 61question survey for Russianspeaking users that sought to determine to what degree they had the 8216dark triad8217 traits The app collected answers as well as the public data of respondents after securing their consent Separately the researchers analyzed the text of users8217 public Facebook posts Ledovaya said the data gathered was not passed to anyone outside the fivemember research team nor was it shared with Kogan 8220We don8217t have the right to share the data of these 10000 or so people with anyone it8217s a matter of ethics and we are sticking to it8221 she said Research into personality traits viewed as malevolent goes back at least to Sigmund Freud the Viennese pioneer of psychiatry who identified narcissism or excessive selflove Machiavellianism named after the Italian diplomat and writer of the Renaissance era represents manipulative behavior while psychopathy manifests a lack of empathy Ledovaya said one goal of the project was to ascertain the mental wellbeing of the respondents and as appropriate offer free counseling RUSSIAN CONNECTION The emergence of Kogan8217s St Petersburg connection comes as relations between Moscow and the West plumb new lows Kogan a US citizen was born in the formerSoviet republic of Moldova but moved to the United States as a child Britain8217s Guardian newspaper said US Special Counsel Robert Mueller has indicted 13 Russian individuals and three Russian companies for criminal and espionage conspiracy to tamper with the US presidential campaign One line of inquiry being pursued by Mueller is the suspected use of targeted Facebook messages by Russian groups including the St Petersburgbased Internet Research Bureau The St Petersburg State University research team has nothing to do with the Internet Research Bureau said Ledovaya 8220I know the people involved in the research project very well they are the last people I can imagine taking part somehow in such an activity8221 said Vladimir Volkhonsky who worked at the psychology faculty until 2011 Cambridge University said Kogan had correctly sought the permission of the head of the psychology department to do the work with St Petersburg 8220It was understood that this work and any associated grants would be in a private capacity separate to his work at the university8221 it said in a statement Writing by Douglas Busvine editing by John Stonestreet Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORKLONDON Reuters A US resident has sued Facebook and a Britishbased political consultancy for obtaining data from millions of the social media site8217s users without their permission while an academic at the center of the storm accused both firms of scapegoating him The complaint filed at the US District Court in San Jose California marked the first of what may be many lawsuits seeking damages over Facebook8217s ability to protect user data and exploitation of the information by the Cambridge Analytica consultancy to help President Donald Trump8217s election campaign Facebook FBO has been rocked this week by a whistleblower who said Cambridge Analytica which Trump hired for the 2016 campaign improperly accessed information on Facebook users to build detailed profiles on American voters This revelation has knocked nearly 50 billion off Facebook8217s stock market value in two days and hit the shares of Twitter and Snap over fears that a failure by big tech firms to protect personal data could deter advertisers and users and invite tougher regulation Mark Zuckerberg Facebook8217s founder and chief executive who has been quiet on the controversy is to address the revelations later on Wednesday a source at the company told Reuters The proposed classaction complaint was filed late on Tuesday by Lauren Price a Maryland resident 8220Every Facebook user has an interest in this lawsuit and the enforcement of their privacy rights8221 John Yanchunis a lawyer for Price told Reuters on Wednesday The complaint seeks unspecified damages including possible punitive damages Facebook and Cambridge Analytica did not immediately respond on Wednesday to requests for comment A former Facebook manager who was responsible for policing the network8217s data handling procedures in 20112012 said he had warned senior executives about the issue The manager Sandy Parakilas said he had told them that Facebook8217s failure to police how outside software developers used its data put the company at risk of major data breaches 8220There was very little detection or enforcement8221 he told a British parliamentary committee via videolink SWING VOTERS The academic who provided the data psychologist Aleksandr Kogan told the BBC that Cambridge Analytica had greatly exaggerated its role in Trump8217s victory Facebook and Cambridge Analytica have both blamed Kogan who gathered the data by running a survey app on Facebook Kogan combines the roles of an academic at Cambridge University and a web entrepreneur based in San Francisco US political campaigns collect large amounts of data hoping to target swing voters sympathetic to their message Cambridge Analytica stood out for the scale of claims in its marketing materials to 8220collect up to 5000 data points on over 220 million Americans8221 in all its activities It uses techniques based on personality traits and then applies analytic tools to pinpoint supporters However Kogan said the services provided by the consultancy had been greatly exaggerated 8220I think what Cambridge Analytica has tried to sell is magic and they8217ve made claims that this is incredibly accurate and it tells you everything there is to tell about you But I think the reality is it8217s not that8221 he said Slideshow 5 Images Arron Banks who campaigned for Britain to leave the European Union in a 2016 referendum also questioned the value of psychologicallybased data Banks told Reuters that Cambridge Analytica had unsuccessfully pitched for work with his Leaveeu campaign group 8220I think they are nothing more than a company that places Facebook ads and shrouds in a sort of mystery8221 he said Kogan8217s application 8220thisisyourdigitallife8221 offered a personality prediction and billed itself on Facebook as 8220a research app used by psychologists8221 Kogan said he had gathered the data in 2014 He was then approached by Cambridge Analytica who provided the legal advice around its use he added Facebook says Kogan then violated its policies by passing the data to Cambridge Analytica for commercial use saying on Friday he 8220lied to us8221 Cambridge Analytica said it destroyed the data once it realized the information did not adhere to data protection rules Facebook Inc 171655 FBO Nasdaq 351 208 FBO 8220My view is that I8217m being basically used as a scapegoat by both Facebook and Cambridge Analytica8221 said Kogan 8220We were assured by Cambridge Analytica that everything was perfectly legal and within the limits of the terms of service8221 Cambridge Analytica has denied various allegations made about its business practices in recent media reports British Prime Minister Theresa May said she backed an investigation into the consultancy while the German government also expressed its concern In Europe the tax affairs of tech giants have become a hot political issue On Wednesday the European Commission proposed rules to make digital companies pay their fair share of tax with Facebook and its peers set to foot much of the bill PERSONALITY TEST Alexander Nix the head of Cambridge Analytica said in a secretly recorded video broadcast on Tuesday that his company had played a decisive role in Trump8217s election victory He was suspended by the company shortly before the video was shown on Britain8217s Channel 4 News Around 270000 people downloaded the app Facebook said The app scored the results of each quiz and gathered up data from testtakers8217 Facebook accounts However it also pulled down the data of their Facebook friends vastly increasing the size of the sample Kogan put the number of app users as closer to 200000 The researcher said in total he passed the data of around 30 million American Facebook users to SCL a government and military contractor that is the parent of Cambridge Analytica Media reports have put the total number of Facebook profiles collected at around 50 million users US and European lawmakers have demanded an explanation of how Cambridge Analytica gained access to user data in 2014 and why Facebook failed to inform its users Related Coverage What are the links between Cambridge Analytica and a Brexit campaign group Academic in Facebook storm worked on Russian dark personality project UK had three contracts with Cambridge Analytica parent company Facebook said it had been told by the Federal Trade Commission the leading US consumer regulator that it would receive a letter this week with questions about the data acquired by Cambridge Analytica It said it had no indication of a formal investigation Additional reporting by Dustin Volz in Washington Editing by Guy Faulconbridge David Stamp and Janet Lawrence Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BRUSSELS Reuters German conglomerate Bayer won EU antitrust approval on Wednesday for its 625 billion buy of US peer Monsanto the latest in a trio of mega mergers that will reshape the agrochemicals industry The tieup is set to create a company with control of more than a quarter of the world8217s seed and pesticides market Driven by shifting weather patterns competition in grain exports and a faltering global farm economy Dow and Dupont and ChemChina CNNCCUL and Syngenta had earlier led a wave of consolidation in the sector Both deals secured EU approval only after the companies offered substantial asset sales to boost rivals Environmental and farming groups have opposed all three deals worried about their power and their advantage in digital farming data which can tell farmers how and when to till sow spray fertilize and pick crops based on algorithms The European Commission said Bayer addressed its concerns with its offer to sell a swathe of assets to boost rival BASF confirming a Reuters story on Feb 28 8220Our decision ensures that there will be effective competition and innovation in seeds pesticides and digital agriculture markets also after this merger8221 European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said in a statement 8220In particular we have made sure that the number of global players actively competing in these markets stays the same8221 European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager holds a news conference at the EU Commissions headquarters in Brussels Belgium March 21 2018 REUTERSFrancois Lenoir Vestager said the Commission which received more than a million petitions concerning the deal had been thorough by examining more than 2000 different product markets and 27 million internal documents to produce a 1285page ruling Bayer has already reached a deal to sell certain seed and herbicide assets for 59 billion euros 72 billion to BASF and to give it a license to its global digital farming data It will also divest its vegetable seeds business to BASF The Commission is due to rule on the BASF deal by April 16 Slideshow 3 Images Online campaigns group Avaaz criticized the EU approval 8220This is a marriage made in hell The Commission ignored a million people who called on them to block this deal and caved in to lobbying to create a megacorporation which will dominate our food supply8221 Avaaz legal director Nick Flynn said USincorporated Avaaz funded by its members is active in climate change poverty conflict and corruption issues Related Coverage US says it is still reviewing Bayers planned Monsanto acquisition The Greens grouping in the European Parliament echoed the sentiment saying smaller players in the agriculture industry needed to be helped too 8220The agriculture industry is already far too concentrated giving a handful of massive firms a stranglehold on food production Merging two of the biggest players only makes a bad situation worse8221 Greens spokesman Bart Staes said China has given conditional approval to the Bayer Monsanto deal which has won a green light in Brazil It is currently being reviewed by US and Russian antitrust authorities Reporting by Foo Yun Chee editing by Robin Emmott and David Evans Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p /> <p>The Obamas are going all out for Hillary. Of course, they are; when she is in charge,&amp;#160;Barack will look good in comparison. Even his Nobel Prize won&#8217;t seem quite so ludicrous.</p> <p>Running against Donald Trump, Hillary will win &#8211; or rather Trump will lose &#8212; by a landslide. She will become Queen of the Perpetual War Party.</p> <p>Her victory &#8212; or rather Trump&#8217;s defeat &#8212; will please the liberal imperialists she and Obama empowered. Neoconservatives, in and out of the Obama administration, will be delighted as well.</p> <p>Hillary is no Dick Cheney, but she tries; and the neocons can hardly fault her for not being servile enough to Israel or for not doing her utmost to provoke Russia and China.</p> <p>This is why it is urgent now to mobilize &#8211; not just against austerity and the neoliberal nostrums that benefit &#8220;the one percent&#8221; and that are bringing American workers to ruin, but also for peace.</p> <p>Task Number One therefore is to build a peace movement large enough and militant enough to impose serious costs on Clinton and her co-thinkers, and on their enablers.</p> <p>But with Democrats and their media flacks working overtime to stir up anti-Trump hysteria, even as Trump destroys himself before their eyes, getting people to see this is a hard sell. &amp;#160; Defeat Trump first, they say; then go on about how awful Clinton is, as if everybody doesn&#8217;t already know.</p> <p>This is a grave, but not fatal, mistake. The time and effort now being squandered cannot be recovered, but when Hillary is back in the White House, struggles against Clintonism (neoliberalism, imperialism, and war) are bound to resume with an even greater intensity than in recent years.</p> <p>Any groundwork laid down now will be much appreciated then, but if the terminally anxious want to pile on for Hillary instead, it is pointless, at this late date, to try to talk them out of it.</p> <p>The task now is to find ways to make up for at least some of the time and effort lost.</p> <p>***</p> <p>It will be a lot harder, after November 8, to strike a blow for democracy &#8212; by damaging, and perhaps mortally wounding, the Republican and Democratic Parties, and the duopoly party system they enforce.</p> <p>Trump has already done his part. To his everlasting credit, he has driven a stake through the heart of the GOP.</p> <p>In the years ahead, historians and others will ponder his rise and fall. It has been quite a spectacle.</p> <p>Even without him, presidential elections make for great entertainment. This is why the kinds of historians that corporate media call on for commentary obsess over them; and why serious historians study them too. But Trump&#8217;s show biz flair and uncontrollable vileness have upped the interest level a thousand fold.</p> <p>However, if it turns out that, after Trump, the GOP is beyond repair, he will have done more than just entertain; he will have made history.</p> <p>This doesn&#8217;t happen every four years. For all the attention elections get, they are seldom where the action is. This time could be an exception.</p> <p>If so, the Cunning of Reason, as Hegel called it, will have outdone itself &#8211; transforming a risible tabloid tycoon into a man of destiny.</p> <p>It is too soon to say for sure, but this seems to be what is happening. The Party&#8217;s body and head, its base and leadership, are hanging together by a thread. At this point, it wouldn&#8217;t take much to finish it off.</p> <p>Well-healed, suburban Republicans are defecting in droves. So are many of the Party&#8217;s financial backers and leading figures. Can the lower level apparatchiks be far behind?</p> <p>Even before the video surfaced in which Trump and Billy Bush, first cousin of Jeb and George W., go on about grabbing pussy, the grandees, including Billy&#8217;s Uncle George H.W., supported by the editorial boards of historically Republican newspapers all over the country, were voicing support for anyone but Trump.</p> <p>They are late to the game. Quite a few Republican women were doing that months ago. Trump&#8217;s misogyny is not exactly news.</p> <p>But, if the polls are right, the &#8220;deplorables,&#8221; as Hillary calls them, still have it in mind to vote for the hapless Donald &#8211; some because they identify with what he says when he rants, and some because it is their way of flipping the bird at the Clintons and everything they represent.</p> <p>They detest Hillary and Bill for all the wrong reasons and their faith in Trump is wrong-headed, but their sense of defiance is beyond reproach.</p> <p>And so, the Party of Lincoln has become &#8220;a house divided.&#8221; Its future is uncertain; anything could happen.</p> <p>In the Tea Party days, the fear was that the inmates would take over the asylum. What happened instead, thanks to Trump, is that the staff, having demonstrated how pitifully inadequate it is, bolted &#8211; leaving the inmates to do as they please.</p> <p>Will the old order be restored after the election is over? It isn&#8217;t likely.</p> <p>When there are rifts of comparable depth in political parties in liberal democracies that are unencumbered with a party system like ours, troubled parties are prone to splintering apart. Something like that could happen in this case too; the GOP&#8217;s traditional constituencies could go their separate ways.</p> <p>But our duopoly party system is so deeply institutionalized, and so thoroughly entrenched in the hearts and minds of Americans, that it is still possible that the old cultural and political contradictions will be smoothed over again.</p> <p>Whether they are or not, expect turbulence ahead.</p> <p>Now is therefore a time to think about how to take advantage of the situation that emerges. The Republican Party is destroying itself. There may be no need, and no way, to help it along, but the issue merits serious consideration.</p> <p>The Democratic Party is a house divided too, of course; but its immediate future is more secure.</p> <p>On the principle that the scum rises to the top, genuine progressives who run for office as Democrats are mainly down-ticket.&amp;#160;&amp;#160; At the top, there are Hillary supporters, and little else.</p> <p>However, the base is primed and ready to move. The Sanders campaign demonstrated that beyond a reasonable doubt.</p> <p>But the leadership is not yet seriously threatened.</p> <p>Sanders lost because, as everybody knows, the fix was in. Had he somehow prevailed even so, the Party&#8217;s leaders would have found ways to sabotage or coopt the movement he got going.</p> <p>And had he led his supporters out of the Democratic Party altogether, as he ought to have done, those wretched bigwigs would have let loose all the furies of hell.</p> <p>It didn&#8217;t come to that, however. Using anti-Trump hysteria for an excuse, and &#8220;Our Revolution&#8221; as a fig leaf, Sanders betrayed his supporters instead.</p> <p>Forfeiting his chance to make history, he did the Democratic National Committee&#8217;s work for them. In this one respect, Trump looks good in comparison.</p> <p>For now, the voters Sanders energized and then abandoned are acquiescent. Some of them will follow him, or otherwise find their way, into the Clinton fold. Others will stay home on November 8, or cast protest votes for President. And, fortunately, some will break free from the Democratic Party altogether.</p> <p>If only more would! That rotting hulk is no place for twenty-first century versions of New Deal&#8211;Fair Deal&#8211;Great Society liberals &#8212; Sanders calls them &#8220;democratic socialists.&#8221;</p> <p>Sanders&#8217; democratic socialism, like Roosevelt&#8217;s New Deal, aims to tame capitalism, not replace it; the idea is to save capitalism from the capitalists.&amp;#160;&amp;#160; A truly counter-systemic politics, anti-capitalist (genuinely socialist) or otherwise, would not have been tolerated for a moment within the Democratic fold.</p> <p>This was true even before the Party became Clintonized, but at least, in those days, the Democratic Party would sometimes serve as a kind of gateway drug for political radicals. No longer &#8212; except insofar as Democratic voters learn from the disappointments and betrayals they suffer through.</p> <p>For advancing the political development of people drawn to the Occupy movements and the Sanders insurgency, what goes on within the Democratic Party is, at best, useless. &amp;#160;For moving the center of American politics off its rightward veering track, it is worse than useless.</p> <p>The Democratic Party does have an ostensibly progressive wing that was tolerated under Obama, but never encouraged. Those &#8220;progressives&#8221; &#8211; Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown are among the most egregious examples &#8212; are now, almost without exception, in the Hillary camp. When she takes over from Obama, they will have a harder time seeming to keep the faith, as the situation goes from bad to worse.</p> <p>Unlike the Party&#8217;s rank-and-file, the faux-liberals in the House of Representative&#8217;s Progressive Caucus, and their counterparts in the Senate, are, for the most part, hopeless cases.&amp;#160;&amp;#160; But with the Democrats on the brink of major victories, the base, bereft of leadership, is not about to bolt. And, since Hillary is likely to be cut some slack for weeks or even months after Inauguration Day, this is not going to change once the specter of Trumpian &#8220;fascism&#8221; disappears down the memory hole.</p> <p>In the short run, therefore, the &#8220;lesser evil&#8221; Party, unlike its rival, will emerge from this election season strengthened.</p> <p>Blame Sanders for that. For all the good he accomplished, he has much to answer for.</p> <p>Despite him, though, there is still a chance that the duopoly will take a hit &#8211; not a fatal one, but not an insignificant one either. Its custodians must think so; why else would they expend so much effort vilifying Gary Johnson and Jill Stein?</p> <p>Johnson is getting the lion&#8217;s share of abuse &#8211; in part because he is no fan of empire, but mainly because he is doing well in the polls, especially in New Mexico, where he was once governor, throughout the mountain West, and in a few other states where Clinton&#8217;s lead over Trump seems close.</p> <p>Lately, though, he hasn&#8217;t helped his cause much &#8211; most famously, by revealing that he didn&#8217;t know what Aleppo was; then by being unable to name a foreign leader. Was he channeling Sarah Palin?&amp;#160;&amp;#160; Johnson does not seem to be an all-around, Palin-style dunce, but sometimes he sure acts like one.</p> <p>Corporate media, The Washington Post especially, have made squelching his campaign a hobby. Their degree of condescension is breathtaking, but it is having effects.</p> <p>So are revivals of the decade and a half old nonsense about how George W. Bush was set loose upon the world because Ralph Nader had the temerity to run against him and Al Gore. Substitute Johnson and/or Stein for Nader, Hillary for Gore, Trump for Bush, and voil&#224;. How many times does that argument have to be refuted before defenders of the duopoly system stop carting it out every chance they get?</p> <p>Johnson&#8217;s unfitness for office is no more blatant than Trump&#8217;s, but because he is not a major party candidate and because, unlike Trump, he is not a bully, he is easier for mainstream media to ignore.</p> <p>And so, his campaign has probably reached its upper limit. If anti-Trump Republicans haven&#8217;t already decided en masse to vote Libertarian this year, it is unlikely that they will change their minds in the next few weeks.</p> <p>Stein&#8217;s poll numbers are barely half as good as Johnson&#8217;s, but she is the one Hillary and her people worry about most &#8211; because anyone tinged by the Bern ought to prefer her many times over to Sanders. She is at least as good as Sanders ever was on economic and social policy issues, and better by far on matters of war and empire.</p> <p>And so the word is that she is too friendly towards Russia, and a &#8220;conspiracy theorist&#8221; on vaccinations and drugs.</p> <p>It is not worth dignifying the first charge with a reply; the vilification of Vladimir Putin, and of Putin&#8217;s Russia, has become the latest idiotic bipartisan obsession.</p> <p>Putin is no saint, but, in his dealings with the governments of sovereign nations &#8211; Syria is just the latest example &#8212; he is far more capable and law abiding than Hillary Clinton or the Nobel laureate she will succeed.</p> <p>Unlike them too, he knows when and how to deploy military force, and how diplomacy can render its use unnecessary. If Obama is not grateful for the several ways that he has helped him find ways out of succumbing to the machinations of his first Secretary of State and the other war mongering advisors he foolishly empowered, he ought to be.</p> <p>The sad thing is that the preposterousness of the anti-Putin campaign hardly even stands out, amidst all the other nonsense in general circulation. But none of it is more dangerous &#8211; because souring relations with Russia could sink the world.</p> <p>Hillary is currently leading the anti-Putin charge; for this, she deserves special condemnation. Stein is the only principled opponent of the on-going vilification campaign, but Trump and Johnson are taking heat nevertheless for not being anti-Putin enough. All three deserve praise for that, Stein most of all.</p> <p>Once Hillary takes over from Obama, there will be many things to worry about, but the fact that she seems unable to forbear from Russia baiting whenever an opportunity arises is high on the list. Russia baiting is what redbaiting becomes when there are no Reds around to bait. Apparently, the impulse is wired into Hillary&#8217;s mind, like pain in the phantom limb of an amputee.</p> <p>As for the second charge, <a href="" type="internal">see this</a>.</p> <p>I voted for Stein in 2012, and I will vote for her again this year. In 2012, it was a protest vote. Hillary&#8217;s handlers and their media flacks have nothing good to say about protest votes; they are pushing the line that protest votes this year are votes for Trump, and that anyone who doesn&#8217;t see this is an idiot.</p> <p>Of course, just the opposite is the case. Insofar as protest votes convey a message, they are worthwhile indeed &#8211; especially when the point is to convey the message to a future Commander-in-Chief who is hell bent on provoking wars that could end life on earth &#8220;as we know it,&#8221; as the Clintons boast of having done to America&#8217;s already feeble anti-poverty welfare state programs.</p> <p>And it goes without saying that anyone who looks at standard issue New York Times or Washington Post op-eds, or who reads New Yorker opinion pieces, or who watches CNN or MSNBC, or who listens to NPR, will know in an instant who the idiots are.</p> <p>As a general rule, though, in American presidential elections, protest votes seldom convey messages powerful enough for anyone to heed, since corporate media ignore them, just as they ignore everything else having to do with party politics outside the duopoly&#8217;s ambit.</p> <p>2012 was no exception; 2016 may be different, however &#8211; because after the Sanders debacle, there is a lot of pent up anger in left of center circles, crying out to be expressed.</p> <p>If he stays in the race until then, November 8 will be the last day that the worrywarts will be able to worry about the Donald. It will also be the day when people who ought now to be working to hold the Hillary juggernaut back will finally begin to realize how wrong they were.</p> <p>Before long, events will make today&#8217;s Hillary voters anti-Hillary fighters. Too bad, though, that this won&#8217;t happen in time to do Stein and the Greens much good. But, fortunately, not everyone has fallen for the Stop Trump First hype. That could do the Greens, and American politics generally, a lot of good.</p> <p>Before and during the Democratic Party Convention last summer, it seemed that the Greens were on the threshold of a breakthrough. Democrats have been working assiduously to wipe out all traces of that very salutary development ever since, but with only partial success. The chances are therefore good that too many protest votes will be cast this year to be ignored.</p> <p>It is even possible that the Stein-Baraka ticket will garner enough votes &#8211; the magic number is five percent &#8212; for the Greens not to have to struggle quite so much next time for ballot access and public funding.</p> <p>Thanks to Democratic Party and media opposition, Nader barely got more than half way there sixteen years ago. He was, of course, far better known than Stein will ever be; he still is. He is also more charismatic; and, as General Motors learned decades ago, all but impossible to vilify.</p> <p>To be sure, after they flubbed the Gore v. Bush election, Democrats found a way to vilify him even so &#8211; for the crime of running against them in the 2000 election. But, much as they might have liked to, they couldn&#8217;t red (or Russia) bait him because, back then, Russia, still reeling from its regression to capitalism, didn&#8217;t seem worth deriding; and there was nothing he said, even taken out of context, that any right thinking liberal could find troubling.</p> <p>Even so, he couldn&#8217;t get more than 2.7% of the national vote.</p> <p>This time, however, it could be different. The consciousness is there; the question is whether the appetite for defying the tide is still there too, now that Bernie scuttled the movement he started.</p> <p>There is a chance that it is. After years of Clintonization, the Democratic Party is, by now, nearly as unpopular as its standard bearer.</p> <p>And, ironically, thanks to the Sanders campaign, we now know that, even in the face of Democratic Party resistance and concerted media opposition, an outraged populace can find ways to make itself heard.</p> <p>This time around, the &#8220;vast rightwing conspiracy&#8221; Hillary famously complained of is at last on track for getting swamped by a principled and militant Left Opposition. This will become painfully apparent, even to corporate media&#8217;s talking heads, once the consequences of Commander-in-Chief Hillary&#8217;s Cold War mentality and fondness for military &#8220;solutions&#8221; start to sink in.</p> <p>If she really does impose no-fly zones over Syria, as she says she would, that time will not be far off.</p> <p>Even now, though, there may still be enough unsuppressed outrage out there to make it possible to salvage something worthwhile from Clinton&#8217;s landslide victory &#8211; or rather Trump&#8217;s landslide defeat.</p>

Hillary Regnant: Perpetual War Party Prepares to Coronate Its First Queen

https://counterpunch.org/2016/10/14/hillary-regnant-perpetual-war-party-prepares-to-coronate-its-first-queen/

2016-10-14

4left

The Obamas are going all out for Hillary Of course they are when she is in chargeamp160Barack will look good in comparison Even his Nobel Prize won8217t seem quite so ludicrous Running against Donald Trump Hillary will win 8211 or rather Trump will lose 8212 by a landslide She will become Queen of the Perpetual War Party Her victory 8212 or rather Trump8217s defeat 8212 will please the liberal imperialists she and Obama empowered Neoconservatives in and out of the Obama administration will be delighted as well Hillary is no Dick Cheney but she tries and the neocons can hardly fault her for not being servile enough to Israel or for not doing her utmost to provoke Russia and China This is why it is urgent now to mobilize 8211 not just against austerity and the neoliberal nostrums that benefit 8220the one percent8221 and that are bringing American workers to ruin but also for peace Task Number One therefore is to build a peace movement large enough and militant enough to impose serious costs on Clinton and her cothinkers and on their enablers But with Democrats and their media flacks working overtime to stir up antiTrump hysteria even as Trump destroys himself before their eyes getting people to see this is a hard sell amp160 Defeat Trump first they say then go on about how awful Clinton is as if everybody doesn8217t already know This is a grave but not fatal mistake The time and effort now being squandered cannot be recovered but when Hillary is back in the White House struggles against Clintonism neoliberalism imperialism and war are bound to resume with an even greater intensity than in recent years Any groundwork laid down now will be much appreciated then but if the terminally anxious want to pile on for Hillary instead it is pointless at this late date to try to talk them out of it The task now is to find ways to make up for at least some of the time and effort lost It will be a lot harder after November 8 to strike a blow for democracy 8212 by damaging and perhaps mortally wounding the Republican and Democratic Parties and the duopoly party system they enforce Trump has already done his part To his everlasting credit he has driven a stake through the heart of the GOP In the years ahead historians and others will ponder his rise and fall It has been quite a spectacle Even without him presidential elections make for great entertainment This is why the kinds of historians that corporate media call on for commentary obsess over them and why serious historians study them too But Trump8217s show biz flair and uncontrollable vileness have upped the interest level a thousand fold However if it turns out that after Trump the GOP is beyond repair he will have done more than just entertain he will have made history This doesn8217t happen every four years For all the attention elections get they are seldom where the action is This time could be an exception If so the Cunning of Reason as Hegel called it will have outdone itself 8211 transforming a risible tabloid tycoon into a man of destiny It is too soon to say for sure but this seems to be what is happening The Party8217s body and head its base and leadership are hanging together by a thread At this point it wouldn8217t take much to finish it off Wellhealed suburban Republicans are defecting in droves So are many of the Party8217s financial backers and leading figures Can the lower level apparatchiks be far behind Even before the video surfaced in which Trump and Billy Bush first cousin of Jeb and George W go on about grabbing pussy the grandees including Billy8217s Uncle George HW supported by the editorial boards of historically Republican newspapers all over the country were voicing support for anyone but Trump They are late to the game Quite a few Republican women were doing that months ago Trump8217s misogyny is not exactly news But if the polls are right the 8220deplorables8221 as Hillary calls them still have it in mind to vote for the hapless Donald 8211 some because they identify with what he says when he rants and some because it is their way of flipping the bird at the Clintons and everything they represent They detest Hillary and Bill for all the wrong reasons and their faith in Trump is wrongheaded but their sense of defiance is beyond reproach And so the Party of Lincoln has become 8220a house divided8221 Its future is uncertain anything could happen In the Tea Party days the fear was that the inmates would take over the asylum What happened instead thanks to Trump is that the staff having demonstrated how pitifully inadequate it is bolted 8211 leaving the inmates to do as they please Will the old order be restored after the election is over It isn8217t likely When there are rifts of comparable depth in political parties in liberal democracies that are unencumbered with a party system like ours troubled parties are prone to splintering apart Something like that could happen in this case too the GOP8217s traditional constituencies could go their separate ways But our duopoly party system is so deeply institutionalized and so thoroughly entrenched in the hearts and minds of Americans that it is still possible that the old cultural and political contradictions will be smoothed over again Whether they are or not expect turbulence ahead Now is therefore a time to think about how to take advantage of the situation that emerges The Republican Party is destroying itself There may be no need and no way to help it along but the issue merits serious consideration The Democratic Party is a house divided too of course but its immediate future is more secure On the principle that the scum rises to the top genuine progressives who run for office as Democrats are mainly downticketamp160amp160 At the top there are Hillary supporters and little else However the base is primed and ready to move The Sanders campaign demonstrated that beyond a reasonable doubt But the leadership is not yet seriously threatened Sanders lost because as everybody knows the fix was in Had he somehow prevailed even so the Party8217s leaders would have found ways to sabotage or coopt the movement he got going And had he led his supporters out of the Democratic Party altogether as he ought to have done those wretched bigwigs would have let loose all the furies of hell It didn8217t come to that however Using antiTrump hysteria for an excuse and 8220Our Revolution8221 as a fig leaf Sanders betrayed his supporters instead Forfeiting his chance to make history he did the Democratic National Committee8217s work for them In this one respect Trump looks good in comparison For now the voters Sanders energized and then abandoned are acquiescent Some of them will follow him or otherwise find their way into the Clinton fold Others will stay home on November 8 or cast protest votes for President And fortunately some will break free from the Democratic Party altogether If only more would That rotting hulk is no place for twentyfirst century versions of New Deal8211Fair Deal8211Great Society liberals 8212 Sanders calls them 8220democratic socialists8221 Sanders8217 democratic socialism like Roosevelt8217s New Deal aims to tame capitalism not replace it the idea is to save capitalism from the capitalistsamp160amp160 A truly countersystemic politics anticapitalist genuinely socialist or otherwise would not have been tolerated for a moment within the Democratic fold This was true even before the Party became Clintonized but at least in those days the Democratic Party would sometimes serve as a kind of gateway drug for political radicals No longer 8212 except insofar as Democratic voters learn from the disappointments and betrayals they suffer through For advancing the political development of people drawn to the Occupy movements and the Sanders insurgency what goes on within the Democratic Party is at best useless amp160For moving the center of American politics off its rightward veering track it is worse than useless The Democratic Party does have an ostensibly progressive wing that was tolerated under Obama but never encouraged Those 8220progressives8221 8211 Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown are among the most egregious examples 8212 are now almost without exception in the Hillary camp When she takes over from Obama they will have a harder time seeming to keep the faith as the situation goes from bad to worse Unlike the Party8217s rankandfile the fauxliberals in the House of Representative8217s Progressive Caucus and their counterparts in the Senate are for the most part hopeless casesamp160amp160 But with the Democrats on the brink of major victories the base bereft of leadership is not about to bolt And since Hillary is likely to be cut some slack for weeks or even months after Inauguration Day this is not going to change once the specter of Trumpian 8220fascism8221 disappears down the memory hole In the short run therefore the 8220lesser evil8221 Party unlike its rival will emerge from this election season strengthened Blame Sanders for that For all the good he accomplished he has much to answer for Despite him though there is still a chance that the duopoly will take a hit 8211 not a fatal one but not an insignificant one either Its custodians must think so why else would they expend so much effort vilifying Gary Johnson and Jill Stein Johnson is getting the lion8217s share of abuse 8211 in part because he is no fan of empire but mainly because he is doing well in the polls especially in New Mexico where he was once governor throughout the mountain West and in a few other states where Clinton8217s lead over Trump seems close Lately though he hasn8217t helped his cause much 8211 most famously by revealing that he didn8217t know what Aleppo was then by being unable to name a foreign leader Was he channeling Sarah Palinamp160amp160 Johnson does not seem to be an allaround Palinstyle dunce but sometimes he sure acts like one Corporate media The Washington Post especially have made squelching his campaign a hobby Their degree of condescension is breathtaking but it is having effects So are revivals of the decade and a half old nonsense about how George W Bush was set loose upon the world because Ralph Nader had the temerity to run against him and Al Gore Substitute Johnson andor Stein for Nader Hillary for Gore Trump for Bush and voil224 How many times does that argument have to be refuted before defenders of the duopoly system stop carting it out every chance they get Johnson8217s unfitness for office is no more blatant than Trump8217s but because he is not a major party candidate and because unlike Trump he is not a bully he is easier for mainstream media to ignore And so his campaign has probably reached its upper limit If antiTrump Republicans haven8217t already decided en masse to vote Libertarian this year it is unlikely that they will change their minds in the next few weeks Stein8217s poll numbers are barely half as good as Johnson8217s but she is the one Hillary and her people worry about most 8211 because anyone tinged by the Bern ought to prefer her many times over to Sanders She is at least as good as Sanders ever was on economic and social policy issues and better by far on matters of war and empire And so the word is that she is too friendly towards Russia and a 8220conspiracy theorist8221 on vaccinations and drugs It is not worth dignifying the first charge with a reply the vilification of Vladimir Putin and of Putin8217s Russia has become the latest idiotic bipartisan obsession Putin is no saint but in his dealings with the governments of sovereign nations 8211 Syria is just the latest example 8212 he is far more capable and law abiding than Hillary Clinton or the Nobel laureate she will succeed Unlike them too he knows when and how to deploy military force and how diplomacy can render its use unnecessary If Obama is not grateful for the several ways that he has helped him find ways out of succumbing to the machinations of his first Secretary of State and the other war mongering advisors he foolishly empowered he ought to be The sad thing is that the preposterousness of the antiPutin campaign hardly even stands out amidst all the other nonsense in general circulation But none of it is more dangerous 8211 because souring relations with Russia could sink the world Hillary is currently leading the antiPutin charge for this she deserves special condemnation Stein is the only principled opponent of the ongoing vilification campaign but Trump and Johnson are taking heat nevertheless for not being antiPutin enough All three deserve praise for that Stein most of all Once Hillary takes over from Obama there will be many things to worry about but the fact that she seems unable to forbear from Russia baiting whenever an opportunity arises is high on the list Russia baiting is what redbaiting becomes when there are no Reds around to bait Apparently the impulse is wired into Hillary8217s mind like pain in the phantom limb of an amputee As for the second charge see this I voted for Stein in 2012 and I will vote for her again this year In 2012 it was a protest vote Hillary8217s handlers and their media flacks have nothing good to say about protest votes they are pushing the line that protest votes this year are votes for Trump and that anyone who doesn8217t see this is an idiot Of course just the opposite is the case Insofar as protest votes convey a message they are worthwhile indeed 8211 especially when the point is to convey the message to a future CommanderinChief who is hell bent on provoking wars that could end life on earth 8220as we know it8221 as the Clintons boast of having done to America8217s already feeble antipoverty welfare state programs And it goes without saying that anyone who looks at standard issue New York Times or Washington Post opeds or who reads New Yorker opinion pieces or who watches CNN or MSNBC or who listens to NPR will know in an instant who the idiots are As a general rule though in American presidential elections protest votes seldom convey messages powerful enough for anyone to heed since corporate media ignore them just as they ignore everything else having to do with party politics outside the duopoly8217s ambit 2012 was no exception 2016 may be different however 8211 because after the Sanders debacle there is a lot of pent up anger in left of center circles crying out to be expressed If he stays in the race until then November 8 will be the last day that the worrywarts will be able to worry about the Donald It will also be the day when people who ought now to be working to hold the Hillary juggernaut back will finally begin to realize how wrong they were Before long events will make today8217s Hillary voters antiHillary fighters Too bad though that this won8217t happen in time to do Stein and the Greens much good But fortunately not everyone has fallen for the Stop Trump First hype That could do the Greens and American politics generally a lot of good Before and during the Democratic Party Convention last summer it seemed that the Greens were on the threshold of a breakthrough Democrats have been working assiduously to wipe out all traces of that very salutary development ever since but with only partial success The chances are therefore good that too many protest votes will be cast this year to be ignored It is even possible that the SteinBaraka ticket will garner enough votes 8211 the magic number is five percent 8212 for the Greens not to have to struggle quite so much next time for ballot access and public funding Thanks to Democratic Party and media opposition Nader barely got more than half way there sixteen years ago He was of course far better known than Stein will ever be he still is He is also more charismatic and as General Motors learned decades ago all but impossible to vilify To be sure after they flubbed the Gore v Bush election Democrats found a way to vilify him even so 8211 for the crime of running against them in the 2000 election But much as they might have liked to they couldn8217t red or Russia bait him because back then Russia still reeling from its regression to capitalism didn8217t seem worth deriding and there was nothing he said even taken out of context that any right thinking liberal could find troubling Even so he couldn8217t get more than 27 of the national vote This time however it could be different The consciousness is there the question is whether the appetite for defying the tide is still there too now that Bernie scuttled the movement he started There is a chance that it is After years of Clintonization the Democratic Party is by now nearly as unpopular as its standard bearer And ironically thanks to the Sanders campaign we now know that even in the face of Democratic Party resistance and concerted media opposition an outraged populace can find ways to make itself heard This time around the 8220vast rightwing conspiracy8221 Hillary famously complained of is at last on track for getting swamped by a principled and militant Left Opposition This will become painfully apparent even to corporate media8217s talking heads once the consequences of CommanderinChief Hillary8217s Cold War mentality and fondness for military 8220solutions8221 start to sink in If she really does impose nofly zones over Syria as she says she would that time will not be far off Even now though there may still be enough unsuppressed outrage out there to make it possible to salvage something worthwhile from Clinton8217s landslide victory 8211 or rather Trump8217s landslide defeat

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<p>The travel ban was a test, and not only with regard to the mechanisms of America&#8217;s judicial politics and constitutional law. It was a test of the basic ideological preparedness of a nation that has spent most of its time trying not to imagine a Trump presidency, and must now shape that sentiment, as quickly as possible, into the groundwork of a credible resistance. While our justice system appears to have passed the test, at least for the time being, our first attempts at resistance reveal a nation struggling in thought and action to frame the larger case against Trump. Obviously, such a case does exist, and there should be no question at this point that our feelings of imminent danger are justified. It&#8217;s just that the narrative we&#8217;ve been telling each other to explain and act on those feelings &#8211; the <a href="" type="internal">Love vs. Hate narrative</a> passed down to us by Democratic leadership &#8211; is so grossly simplistic, so troublingly inconsistent, and so profoundly at odds with the reality of this danger, that we become ally to the very forces we are fighting against each time we tell it.</p> <p>That we ever conceded to tell this kind of narrative in the first place is testament to the considerable investment we made this year trying to insert ourselves into the spectacle of the election. NPR&#8217;s Sam Sanders, writing on the intersection of pop culture and politics, gives some <a href="" type="internal">telling examples</a> of the way campaign strategies in 2016 were tailored to the social media experience, to a degree surpassing any previous election cycle. For anybody with a Facebook account, this will not come as a surprise &#8211; nor is it all bad news. There is no doubt that social media allowed Americans to engage with the news like never before, bringing the election to each other&#8217;s attention at all times of day and night, so that we could react immediately to each new development as it unfolded. It&#8217;s just that it wasn&#8217;t always the news we were reacting to, as conversations devolved into more and more heated exchanges directed at one another&#8217;s credibility, privilege, and right to speak.</p> <p>While the American public sphere was originally built, for better or worse, on mechanisms of representation that were meant to continuously renew the link between manifestations of public power and those of public interest, the new hypermedia political experience invites us instead to align our self-interest &#8211; and, at a deeper level, our very <a href="" type="internal" />sense of self &#8211; with this or that candidate, this or that hermetic and complete image of The Good. In effect, the public sphere has ceased operating according to the designs of representative democracy. Instead &#8211; and this is no accident &#8211; it runs on powerful mechanisms of identification borrowed directly from commercial culture (lifestyle advertising, mainstream cinema and television, etc.) that respond to our search for a more complete life by drawing us into more and more complete (because more imaginary) structures of self-and-world.</p> <p>A blessing and a curse, to be sure, especially when it all blew up in our faces. Now that the election is over, the Love vs. Hate narrative has devolved the American left into a singular moral crisis of its own, a crisis of our own making, and one that jeopardizes all efforts to organize our collective agency into something more effective than an irreproachable self-image at the center of a simplified moral universe, where power circulates always beyond the horizon of our faculties of observation and analysis. We must respond to this new crisis head on, by creating a new and more credible account of the events as we know them, a narrative that will come to terms not only with the danger presented by Trump, but with the forces that vaulted him into power, as well as the blinding force of our own shock and dismay. Because they are the same forces.</p> <p>*&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160; *&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160; *</p> <p>Even the discontents went to sleep on November 8th under the impression that they were putting a bizarre and exhausting election season behind them, that, in spite of a few eleventh-hour hiccups, we would all wake up in the morning, look into the mirror, and find the triumphant image of Hillary Clinton smiling back at us. In the cosmic scheme of things, and according to a moral system that has been effectively holding the liberal worldview together since at least the 90s, this was the only acceptable outcome of the 2016 election. Electing our first woman president was more than just a milestone in progressive politics. It was the causa finalis of an American century. It was the finish line.</p> <p>The fact that the candidate was also a committed political realist and Third Way centrist with broad support among educated conservatives, not to mention endorsements from outspoken neocons like Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan &#8211; who co-authored a set of <a href="https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/extending-american-power-strategies-to-expand-u-s-engagement-in-a-competitive-world-order" type="external">policy recommendations</a> with Mich&#232;le Flournoy well in advance of Clinton&#8217;s presumed victory &#8211; just served to make the prize appear more tantalizingly within reach. Would Texas also go blue? Why not? History was on our side. Many mainstream journalists joined the rank-and-file in putting all question of a Clinton win behind them in order to focus on the moral imperative of a landslide victory, as if such an outcome might be the only way to cleanse the American public sphere of dark and noxious forces &#8211; forces so dark and so noxious that we would be foolish to call them by any other name but &#8220;Hate.&#8221;</p> <p>What we awoke to on November 9th was barely comprehensible at first: a face, and at the same time, by virtue of its bright orange impossibility, the complete absence of a face. A gaping hole in the whole logic of the mirror. The shock has been so great that many Democrats are still standing in front of the mirror to this day, raising their fists and vowing with all the rage of Caliban to defy that image forever.</p> <p>To be sure, from a certain point of view, the outcome of the 2016 election makes absolutely no sense. The Rust Belt swinging red? The party of Roosevelt at odds with the working class? A majority of white women voting for Trump? While we are all familiar by now with the story told by <a href="" type="internal">exit polls</a> &#8211; it&#8217;s the working class, stupid! &#8211; this story continues to elude many party elites and rank-and-file Democrats. It simply has no place in a teleological worldview that already sees itself standing just one step away from the end of history. That the discontents of neoliberalism should express themselves in a gesture of such suicidal resolve &#8211; the election of a candidate who is arguably the most dangerous conman in American history &#8211; makes the new political landscape all the more difficult to navigate. And yet it remains obstinately and darkly in place, asserting itself by means of a hundred Facebook posts per day, right smack in the middle of our understanding of the world. In this sense, the ascent of Trump is something much worse than an incomprehensible state of affairs. For many, it is a gaping hole in reality that threatens to bring down all meaning-bearing structures around it. It is the very definition of trauma.</p> <p>What to do now? How to fight this most honest and unflattering portrait of America? Smash the mirror? Blame ze Russians? And then what? More protests? More resistance? More art? Our first reactions to Trump&#8217;s surprise victory have amounted to a form of resistance aimed not at Trump himself, nor anything he represents, but at the precipitous loss of an idealized self-image built on the promise of a Clinton victory. Now, as we come at last to exhaust the resources of our denial and open our eyes to the real stakes of the election, it is evident that the most urgent questions have yet to be asked, perhaps because they are both deceptively simple and brazenly inopportune: What exactly are we fighting against? Who are we fighting for? What is it that we want?</p> <p>By way of example, we can start with the <a href="" type="internal">recent protests</a> at airports nationwide in support of foreign nationals from seven countries banned entry to the United States on the dubious premise that it will make our country more secure against terrorism. In this case we are fighting not only against Trump, not only against an executive order that unconstitutionally targets certain groups on the basis of their nationality. More importantly, we are fighting against Islamophobia and racism in the broader sense, which is to say, against the normalization of all those dark and noxious forces that emerged in 2016 as byproduct of Trump&#8217;s inflammatory campaign rhetoric.</p> <p>But Islamophobia is not the same thing as racism, just as fascism is not the same thing as Hate. Any effective resistance to Trump&#8217;s agenda will have to go much further than the official opposition rhetoric that invites us to conflate these things. We will have to expand our anger to neocons like Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan, for example, who are <a href="" type="internal">largely to blame</a> for creating Islamophobia in the first place as byproduct of their ongoing War on Terror &#8211; a grotesque and never-ending PR extravaganza that aims only to dress up America&#8217;s strategic interests in the Middle East as an asymmetrical freedom-struggle against a culturally backwards enemy.</p> <p>And it doesn&#8217;t stop there. In his 2014 book on the causes of Islamophobia, <a href="" type="internal">Arun Kundnani argues</a> that &#8220;Neoconservatism invented the terror war, but Obama liberalism normalised it, at which point, mainstream journalists stopped asking questions.&#8221; To the extent that we are protesting on behalf of refugees from Syria, Libya, and Iraq &#8211; to the extent that our outrage over the detainment of Muslims at the US border must logically extend to the <a href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/if-americans-truly-cared-about-muslims-they-would-stop-killing-them-by-the-millions/5572392" type="external">4 million civilian casualties</a> of the wars they are fleeing &#8211; our actions against the travel ban will necessarily take us beyond Trump, beyond even the neocon think tank that created this mess. #TheResistance will take us right back where we started, to the doorstep of a hawkish Third Way politics that, while we were busy not asking questions, were doing everything in their power not to stop the expansion of the War on Terror.</p> <p>*&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160; *&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160; *</p> <p>There is something uniquely &#8220;post&#8221; about the rage of Caliban, the refusal to see one&#8217;s own unflattering image in the mirror. No sooner have we raised our fists at Trump than we find them shaking in our own faces. And this means that Trump, swooping in like some sleazy carpetbagger with a bill of goods, can derive political advantage from our very opposition to him. He doesn&#8217;t have to raise a finger. We saw this during the primaries, we saw it during the general election, and we will see it again and again, from the travel ban to the border wall, and from pay-to-play Wall Street cronyism to the Dakota Access Pipeline to James Clapper&#8217;s perennial lapses of intelligence, until we don&#8217;t have the strength to face the punches any more.</p> <p>The solution to this diabolical predicament is not to lower our fists, but to know a little more exactly where we are trying to land our punches &#8211; to name a little more honestly, beyond the provincial opportunism of a carpetbagger like Trump, the juggernaut of neoliberal forces we are actually fighting against. Above all, as The Intercept&#8217;s Glenn Greenwald <a href="" type="internal">recently suggested</a>, we should avoid falling prey to the illusion that Trump&#8217;s right-wing movement enjoys broad support among the American electorate. He is no more and no less than the face of our own cynicism, the truth of our own political realism, struggling to make its way up from dark primordial depths (where we have condemned it) into the blinking neon light of the American consciousness. He is the sum of all the energy we expended this election season trying to protect ourselves from the evidence that Third Way politics has also got it terribly wrong &#8211; and not just with regard to so-called &#8220;liberal interventionsim.&#8221;</p> <p>The problem is that we wanted so badly to be right. We wanted to be right and we wanted the outcome of the 2016 election to prove it for once and for all. Not right with a question mark, not right with a shrug, but self-evidently right, right before there can be any complicated discussion of the things we are right about, right beyond all justifiable cause to challenge our rightness. Right like we used to be right. We have grown so accustomed to being right all the time, so attached to an impossibly ideal liberal self-image beyond all reproach, that we will now sacrifice everything to keep this image intact, starting with our own moral consistency and proceeding all the way down, one sacrifice after the other, to the very lives of the people we claim to be fighting for.</p> <p>It was this overweening desire to be right that made us so vulnerable to the treacly slogans and cynical gamesmanship of the Democratic Party establishment, who believed in the end that it would be easier &#8211; because more consistent with the moneyed interests and global forces that underwrite their power &#8211; to trick us into voting for them, rather than acting as responsible stewards of our political process or faithful representatives of our will.</p> <p>And this brings us back to the most diabolical predicament of all. For the purpose of winning our votes while advancing a neoliberal agenda opposed to our interests, Third Way Democrats have appropriated and transformed identity politics, emptying it of all substantive content and building it back up again as a flashy celebrity-driven PR tool that bears little resemblance to the radical Civil Rights era discourse on which it was founded. Obviously, there is no reason to attack the new discourse at face value. It was designed expressly as a rhetorical system that cannot (and should not) be attacked. Like so many other aspects of the postmodern public sphere, the problem lies elsewhere: in the form and not in the content.</p> <p>What the new identity politics gives us &#8211; or, more aptly, the new way of doing identity politics &#8211; is a medium in which to organize all our political will around the more and more complete expression of our rightness. While this may seem to alleviate the symptoms of post-election trauma &#8211; while the cathartic outpouring of liberal rage may serve momentarily to obliterate the thousand faces of Trump that stare back at us from our Facebook feed &#8211; it does absolutely nothing to change our situation, except perhaps to strengthen Trump&#8217;s position against us. It is a trap, tailor-made for a public sphere dominated everywhere by commercial culture, and conditioned by social media to engage with the world in a way that makes no distinction between the self and external objects. Third Way Democrats, like Trump, discovered this weakness during the 2016 election and built an entire campaign around exploiting it, with the result that we must now build an entire movement from scratch, in a public sphere where the mechanisms of political power have never been farther afield of the public interest that is supposed to underwrite them.</p> <p>But the argument over whether or not it is time for Democrats to abandon identity politics seems rather beside the point. Insofar as we are talking here about identity politics as just another strategy for winning elections, it most certainly should be abandoned, along with every other cheap trick the political establishment may still believe, in their infinite cynicism, can possibly save them from doing their job in good faith. Perhaps a better solution, and one that is imminently within our grasp, is to bring an end to all our discussions regarding what the establishment should or should not do; to act and think only in ways that presume from the beginning that the state and its authority are no more than the formal extension of our own power into the public sphere. In this case, the place for issues faced by the marginalized and dispossessed is absolutely central &#8211; they are our guiding light. Or, to put it more strongly, in a political landscape where politicians routinely exploit issues of social identity to turn the dispossessed against each other, the only way out &#8211; the only way that does not lead us further down the dark road of fascism &#8211; is the return to a Civil Rights era version of social and economic justice that aims at the systematic radicalization of the dispossessed across the entire American electorate against a neoliberal political establishment that has united against us.</p> <p>*&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160; *&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160; *</p> <p>Watching a similar situation unfold in 1930s Germany, cultural theorist Walter Benjamin was struck by the idea that the most visible characteristics of fascism &#8211; race-thinking, personality-worship, anti-intellectualism, nationalism, etc. &#8211; are all just surface phenomena of the final and total transformation of all human life into an instrument for the production of capital. &#8220;Fascism sees its salvation in giving the masses not their right, but instead a chance to express themselves,&#8221; <a href="" type="internal">he writes</a>. &#8220;The masses have a right to change property relations; Fascism seeks to give them an expression while preserving property.&#8221;</p> <p>This sleight of hand is now the defining characteristic of both major parties. What else is the Southern Strategy, in its classic formulation, but the cynical use of conservative social politics to trick the white working class into voting for their own exploitation? Is it really so surprising that the political system that brought us endless war across the Middle East is now seeking political profit in the consequences of those wars?</p> <p>But that&#8217;s all water under the bridge. If Trump turns out to be the most honest portrait of American cynicism, it will not be because 2016 was the year the Southern Strategy spun out of control, but because Democrats, instead of addressing the problem of exploitation, decided smugly that it would be a good idea to come up with a Strategy of their own. The most effective resistance to Trump&#8217;s America &#8211; the only credible resistance &#8211; will be the one that tells this story.</p>

The Rage of Caliban: Identity Politics, the Travel Ban, and the Shifting Ideological Framework of the Resistance

https://counterpunch.org/2017/02/16/the-rage-of-caliban-identity-politics-the-travel-ban-and-the-shifting-ideological-framework-of-the-resistance/

2017-02-16

4left

The travel ban was a test and not only with regard to the mechanisms of America8217s judicial politics and constitutional law It was a test of the basic ideological preparedness of a nation that has spent most of its time trying not to imagine a Trump presidency and must now shape that sentiment as quickly as possible into the groundwork of a credible resistance While our justice system appears to have passed the test at least for the time being our first attempts at resistance reveal a nation struggling in thought and action to frame the larger case against Trump Obviously such a case does exist and there should be no question at this point that our feelings of imminent danger are justified It8217s just that the narrative we8217ve been telling each other to explain and act on those feelings 8211 the Love vs Hate narrative passed down to us by Democratic leadership 8211 is so grossly simplistic so troublingly inconsistent and so profoundly at odds with the reality of this danger that we become ally to the very forces we are fighting against each time we tell it That we ever conceded to tell this kind of narrative in the first place is testament to the considerable investment we made this year trying to insert ourselves into the spectacle of the election NPR8217s Sam Sanders writing on the intersection of pop culture and politics gives some telling examples of the way campaign strategies in 2016 were tailored to the social media experience to a degree surpassing any previous election cycle For anybody with a Facebook account this will not come as a surprise 8211 nor is it all bad news There is no doubt that social media allowed Americans to engage with the news like never before bringing the election to each other8217s attention at all times of day and night so that we could react immediately to each new development as it unfolded It8217s just that it wasn8217t always the news we were reacting to as conversations devolved into more and more heated exchanges directed at one another8217s credibility privilege and right to speak While the American public sphere was originally built for better or worse on mechanisms of representation that were meant to continuously renew the link between manifestations of public power and those of public interest the new hypermedia political experience invites us instead to align our selfinterest 8211 and at a deeper level our very sense of self 8211 with this or that candidate this or that hermetic and complete image of The Good In effect the public sphere has ceased operating according to the designs of representative democracy Instead 8211 and this is no accident 8211 it runs on powerful mechanisms of identification borrowed directly from commercial culture lifestyle advertising mainstream cinema and television etc that respond to our search for a more complete life by drawing us into more and more complete because more imaginary structures of selfandworld A blessing and a curse to be sure especially when it all blew up in our faces Now that the election is over the Love vs Hate narrative has devolved the American left into a singular moral crisis of its own a crisis of our own making and one that jeopardizes all efforts to organize our collective agency into something more effective than an irreproachable selfimage at the center of a simplified moral universe where power circulates always beyond the horizon of our faculties of observation and analysis We must respond to this new crisis head on by creating a new and more credible account of the events as we know them a narrative that will come to terms not only with the danger presented by Trump but with the forces that vaulted him into power as well as the blinding force of our own shock and dismay Because they are the same forces amp160amp160amp160 amp160amp160amp160 Even the discontents went to sleep on November 8th under the impression that they were putting a bizarre and exhausting election season behind them that in spite of a few eleventhhour hiccups we would all wake up in the morning look into the mirror and find the triumphant image of Hillary Clinton smiling back at us In the cosmic scheme of things and according to a moral system that has been effectively holding the liberal worldview together since at least the 90s this was the only acceptable outcome of the 2016 election Electing our first woman president was more than just a milestone in progressive politics It was the causa finalis of an American century It was the finish line The fact that the candidate was also a committed political realist and Third Way centrist with broad support among educated conservatives not to mention endorsements from outspoken neocons like Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan 8211 who coauthored a set of policy recommendations with Mich232le Flournoy well in advance of Clinton8217s presumed victory 8211 just served to make the prize appear more tantalizingly within reach Would Texas also go blue Why not History was on our side Many mainstream journalists joined the rankandfile in putting all question of a Clinton win behind them in order to focus on the moral imperative of a landslide victory as if such an outcome might be the only way to cleanse the American public sphere of dark and noxious forces 8211 forces so dark and so noxious that we would be foolish to call them by any other name but 8220Hate8221 What we awoke to on November 9th was barely comprehensible at first a face and at the same time by virtue of its bright orange impossibility the complete absence of a face A gaping hole in the whole logic of the mirror The shock has been so great that many Democrats are still standing in front of the mirror to this day raising their fists and vowing with all the rage of Caliban to defy that image forever To be sure from a certain point of view the outcome of the 2016 election makes absolutely no sense The Rust Belt swinging red The party of Roosevelt at odds with the working class A majority of white women voting for Trump While we are all familiar by now with the story told by exit polls 8211 it8217s the working class stupid 8211 this story continues to elude many party elites and rankandfile Democrats It simply has no place in a teleological worldview that already sees itself standing just one step away from the end of history That the discontents of neoliberalism should express themselves in a gesture of such suicidal resolve 8211 the election of a candidate who is arguably the most dangerous conman in American history 8211 makes the new political landscape all the more difficult to navigate And yet it remains obstinately and darkly in place asserting itself by means of a hundred Facebook posts per day right smack in the middle of our understanding of the world In this sense the ascent of Trump is something much worse than an incomprehensible state of affairs For many it is a gaping hole in reality that threatens to bring down all meaningbearing structures around it It is the very definition of trauma What to do now How to fight this most honest and unflattering portrait of America Smash the mirror Blame ze Russians And then what More protests More resistance More art Our first reactions to Trump8217s surprise victory have amounted to a form of resistance aimed not at Trump himself nor anything he represents but at the precipitous loss of an idealized selfimage built on the promise of a Clinton victory Now as we come at last to exhaust the resources of our denial and open our eyes to the real stakes of the election it is evident that the most urgent questions have yet to be asked perhaps because they are both deceptively simple and brazenly inopportune What exactly are we fighting against Who are we fighting for What is it that we want By way of example we can start with the recent protests at airports nationwide in support of foreign nationals from seven countries banned entry to the United States on the dubious premise that it will make our country more secure against terrorism In this case we are fighting not only against Trump not only against an executive order that unconstitutionally targets certain groups on the basis of their nationality More importantly we are fighting against Islamophobia and racism in the broader sense which is to say against the normalization of all those dark and noxious forces that emerged in 2016 as byproduct of Trump8217s inflammatory campaign rhetoric But Islamophobia is not the same thing as racism just as fascism is not the same thing as Hate Any effective resistance to Trump8217s agenda will have to go much further than the official opposition rhetoric that invites us to conflate these things We will have to expand our anger to neocons like Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan for example who are largely to blame for creating Islamophobia in the first place as byproduct of their ongoing War on Terror 8211 a grotesque and neverending PR extravaganza that aims only to dress up America8217s strategic interests in the Middle East as an asymmetrical freedomstruggle against a culturally backwards enemy And it doesn8217t stop there In his 2014 book on the causes of Islamophobia Arun Kundnani argues that 8220Neoconservatism invented the terror war but Obama liberalism normalised it at which point mainstream journalists stopped asking questions8221 To the extent that we are protesting on behalf of refugees from Syria Libya and Iraq 8211 to the extent that our outrage over the detainment of Muslims at the US border must logically extend to the 4 million civilian casualties of the wars they are fleeing 8211 our actions against the travel ban will necessarily take us beyond Trump beyond even the neocon think tank that created this mess TheResistance will take us right back where we started to the doorstep of a hawkish Third Way politics that while we were busy not asking questions were doing everything in their power not to stop the expansion of the War on Terror amp160amp160amp160 amp160amp160amp160 There is something uniquely 8220post8221 about the rage of Caliban the refusal to see one8217s own unflattering image in the mirror No sooner have we raised our fists at Trump than we find them shaking in our own faces And this means that Trump swooping in like some sleazy carpetbagger with a bill of goods can derive political advantage from our very opposition to him He doesn8217t have to raise a finger We saw this during the primaries we saw it during the general election and we will see it again and again from the travel ban to the border wall and from paytoplay Wall Street cronyism to the Dakota Access Pipeline to James Clapper8217s perennial lapses of intelligence until we don8217t have the strength to face the punches any more The solution to this diabolical predicament is not to lower our fists but to know a little more exactly where we are trying to land our punches 8211 to name a little more honestly beyond the provincial opportunism of a carpetbagger like Trump the juggernaut of neoliberal forces we are actually fighting against Above all as The Intercept8217s Glenn Greenwald recently suggested we should avoid falling prey to the illusion that Trump8217s rightwing movement enjoys broad support among the American electorate He is no more and no less than the face of our own cynicism the truth of our own political realism struggling to make its way up from dark primordial depths where we have condemned it into the blinking neon light of the American consciousness He is the sum of all the energy we expended this election season trying to protect ourselves from the evidence that Third Way politics has also got it terribly wrong 8211 and not just with regard to socalled 8220liberal interventionsim8221 The problem is that we wanted so badly to be right We wanted to be right and we wanted the outcome of the 2016 election to prove it for once and for all Not right with a question mark not right with a shrug but selfevidently right right before there can be any complicated discussion of the things we are right about right beyond all justifiable cause to challenge our rightness Right like we used to be right We have grown so accustomed to being right all the time so attached to an impossibly ideal liberal selfimage beyond all reproach that we will now sacrifice everything to keep this image intact starting with our own moral consistency and proceeding all the way down one sacrifice after the other to the very lives of the people we claim to be fighting for It was this overweening desire to be right that made us so vulnerable to the treacly slogans and cynical gamesmanship of the Democratic Party establishment who believed in the end that it would be easier 8211 because more consistent with the moneyed interests and global forces that underwrite their power 8211 to trick us into voting for them rather than acting as responsible stewards of our political process or faithful representatives of our will And this brings us back to the most diabolical predicament of all For the purpose of winning our votes while advancing a neoliberal agenda opposed to our interests Third Way Democrats have appropriated and transformed identity politics emptying it of all substantive content and building it back up again as a flashy celebritydriven PR tool that bears little resemblance to the radical Civil Rights era discourse on which it was founded Obviously there is no reason to attack the new discourse at face value It was designed expressly as a rhetorical system that cannot and should not be attacked Like so many other aspects of the postmodern public sphere the problem lies elsewhere in the form and not in the content What the new identity politics gives us 8211 or more aptly the new way of doing identity politics 8211 is a medium in which to organize all our political will around the more and more complete expression of our rightness While this may seem to alleviate the symptoms of postelection trauma 8211 while the cathartic outpouring of liberal rage may serve momentarily to obliterate the thousand faces of Trump that stare back at us from our Facebook feed 8211 it does absolutely nothing to change our situation except perhaps to strengthen Trump8217s position against us It is a trap tailormade for a public sphere dominated everywhere by commercial culture and conditioned by social media to engage with the world in a way that makes no distinction between the self and external objects Third Way Democrats like Trump discovered this weakness during the 2016 election and built an entire campaign around exploiting it with the result that we must now build an entire movement from scratch in a public sphere where the mechanisms of political power have never been farther afield of the public interest that is supposed to underwrite them But the argument over whether or not it is time for Democrats to abandon identity politics seems rather beside the point Insofar as we are talking here about identity politics as just another strategy for winning elections it most certainly should be abandoned along with every other cheap trick the political establishment may still believe in their infinite cynicism can possibly save them from doing their job in good faith Perhaps a better solution and one that is imminently within our grasp is to bring an end to all our discussions regarding what the establishment should or should not do to act and think only in ways that presume from the beginning that the state and its authority are no more than the formal extension of our own power into the public sphere In this case the place for issues faced by the marginalized and dispossessed is absolutely central 8211 they are our guiding light Or to put it more strongly in a political landscape where politicians routinely exploit issues of social identity to turn the dispossessed against each other the only way out 8211 the only way that does not lead us further down the dark road of fascism 8211 is the return to a Civil Rights era version of social and economic justice that aims at the systematic radicalization of the dispossessed across the entire American electorate against a neoliberal political establishment that has united against us amp160amp160amp160 amp160amp160amp160 Watching a similar situation unfold in 1930s Germany cultural theorist Walter Benjamin was struck by the idea that the most visible characteristics of fascism 8211 racethinking personalityworship antiintellectualism nationalism etc 8211 are all just surface phenomena of the final and total transformation of all human life into an instrument for the production of capital 8220Fascism sees its salvation in giving the masses not their right but instead a chance to express themselves8221 he writes 8220The masses have a right to change property relations Fascism seeks to give them an expression while preserving property8221 This sleight of hand is now the defining characteristic of both major parties What else is the Southern Strategy in its classic formulation but the cynical use of conservative social politics to trick the white working class into voting for their own exploitation Is it really so surprising that the political system that brought us endless war across the Middle East is now seeking political profit in the consequences of those wars But that8217s all water under the bridge If Trump turns out to be the most honest portrait of American cynicism it will not be because 2016 was the year the Southern Strategy spun out of control but because Democrats instead of addressing the problem of exploitation decided smugly that it would be a good idea to come up with a Strategy of their own The most effective resistance to Trump8217s America 8211 the only credible resistance 8211 will be the one that tells this story

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<p>A number of structural reasons indicate that the Democratic party will not be able to revive itself soon in the way that liberal activists desire. Neither the Republican nor the Democratic party is likely to gain the decisive upper hand in electoral politics in the visible future. But this means by default that conservative politics will retain ascendancy, even if the Democratic party nominally returns to power. The reports of a Republican party realignment are greatly exaggerated, and so are the fantastic musings about a Democratic party realignment because of emerging demographics. A better case can be made for continued dealignment since the sixties, despite a rise in party identification among the electorate and polarized party line votes in Congress since the seventies. Although roll call voting in Congress in the last two decades suggests rising partisanship, this does not translate into enthusiasm among voters. It has been noted that the Republican party wants to depress voter turnout to keep poor voters out, and the Democratic party does not feel at ease with socially conservative poor voters. The current economic structure works against advocacy of the kind of domestic social initiatives that the Democratic party has long stood for. As the parties have come to a consensus on personal rather than collective democracy, privatization of government services is likely to be the trend of the future. The possibility of radical initiatives mostly in the foreign policy sphere favors conservatives. Continued weak party identification, low voter turnout, and both parties&#8217; emerging consensus on privatization suggest that a commitment to the working-class is highly unlikely to come about.</p> <p>The recent competition for House minority leader between Nancy Pelosi, representing the &#8220;liberal&#8221; side of the Democratic party, and Martin Frost and Harold Ford, speaking for the &#8220;conservative&#8221; side, was overdramatized. Such personalization doesn&#8217;t take into consideration the structural reasons why the Democratic party is compelled to follow a basically conservative line. Pelosi&#8217;s acceptance speech struck all the key New Democrat themes: &#8220;opportunity, community, [and] responsibility,&#8221; seeking &#8220;common ground&#8221; with Republicans on domestic issues, being as forceful as the President on defense and security, and pursuing an aggressive &#8220;economic growth&#8221; agenda. It is not simply a matter of the Democratic party getting its voice back. The progressive instinct within the Democratic party will remain a minority, and mostly unheard, voice. Domestic repression has become a necessity because of the recent transformation of the American economy. Even if the Democrats return to power, a dismantling of the domestic repressive structure &#8211; except at the margins &#8211; seems inconceivable.</p> <p>The first line of reasoning to confront in arguing for a continued conservative ascendancy is the flawed notion of realignment. Both Republican and Democratic claims of a realignment in their favor rest on a theory of critical elections first propounded by V.O. Key, Jr., E. E. Schattschneider, James L. Sundquist, and Walter Dean Burnham. To the extent that this theory is dubious, we have to wonder if there have been any critical, or realigning, elections since 1932, and if there have been any momentous shifts toward either party in the 1968 and 1980, not to mention the 2002, elections. The originators of realignment theory never made the extravagant claims that followers of this genre later propounded in their name. Nonetheless, some version of critical elections theory has become a standard organizational device in American political science and history texts. Typically, three eras are considered realigning ones: the 1850s, the 1890s, and the 1930s. To the extent that we believe in the theory of critical elections, we&#8217;re likely also to give credence to periodicity in American history and major policy changes associated with such elections.</p> <p>David R. Mayhew has recently taken up the fifteen central claims of realignment theory, and systematically discredited each one of them. He questions whether American elections can be neatly sorted between realigning and nonrealigning types, whether there are regular and predictable patterns of periodicity, whether good third party showings tend to be precursors of realignment, whether ideological polarization led by insurgents marks realignment junctures, whether realignments are associated with significant policy changes, whether electoral realignments bring about unified control of government by a single party and whether such unified control is even necessary for significant policy change, and whether American voters only express themselves effectively at realignment junctures. One particularly tricky problem is why there has now been a seventy-year gap between realignments, when the thirty-year-cycle predicts that it is long overdue. Mayhew even questions whether the 1896 election deserves to be kept on its canonical pedestal. These criticisms open the way to thinking not in terms of critical elections marking a before and after of a particular policy regime, but in terms of a permanent campaign. In this view, voters&#8217; interests would be continuously expressed during all elections, thus diminishing the importance of particular elections.</p> <p>Realignment theory serves an important narrative function, letting American history be neatly periodized. But it is important to shift attention away from realignment theory to locate major policy change not in critical elections but in continuous political transformation, determined ultimately by economic change. Secular changes that are unlikely to be affected by the electoral successes of either party include declining voter turnouts, candidate-centered elections, split-ticket voting, declining partisan identification, the rise of independent voters, and political alienation of the young. Crotty and Jacobson have talked about confusing, whimsical patterns in elections. The Democrats won a close contest in 1960, followed by a landslide in 1964. Richard Nixon followed the same pattern in 1972. Ronald Reagan in 1984 and Bill Clinton in 1996 followed suit. But in none of these cases was the victorious party able to consolidate its gains. Beck and Sorauf point out that as issues become nationalized, third parties and regional interests fade in comparison to national consensus. The trend is entirely in the direction of nationalization, particularly since the dominance of electronic communication. It can be argued that this trend too favors conservative politics. American parties have tended to be cadre rather than mass parties, with all that that implies for interest in winning elections rather than taking principled stands on particular issues.</p> <p>Progressive era reforms played a key role in eviscerating the political parties as mass mobilization forces. There can never be a return to the high turnout rates before Progressive reforms. Progressive reforms that weakened parties included the Australian ballot, the direct primary, and nonpartisan elections at the state and local levels. Civil service reform, which weakened the power of patronage, dealt another mortal blow to the parties. When elections become nonpartisan, this typically favors conservatism. The direct primary weakens the national party by taking control away from party officials and activists. In fact, many Progressives were explicitly interested in striking a blow against the power of the parties by democratizing the electoral process. What the Progressives actually succeeded in doing - and this has become more evident since the advent of television - was to weaken national parties at the expense of investing control in the hands of the mass media, and the special interests that feed the mass media and finance political campaigns. The case in favor of presidential primaries rests on disgust with behind-the-scenes manipulations of party insiders, while the case against it lies in its tendency to generate media-oriented rather than ideological campaigns. There is no foreseeable change to this pattern. Both the Progressives and the single issue-oriented activists of the 1960s and 1970s drove machine politicians out of politics when they couldn&#8217;t compete directly with them. Neither party attempts to win elections anymore by mobilizing the millions of citizens who don&#8217;t vote; this simply will not change. On the contrary, neither party supports electoral reforms that might spur voter turnout; this too is unlikely to change.</p> <p>No doubt, in the 1980s and 1990s there has been an increased degree of ideological cohesion in both the Democratic and Republican parties in Congress. Nonetheless, the issues on the plate to begin with are to a great degree consensual. A look back at the 1988 party platforms shows that on every issue except the environment, women, and minorities (that is, primarily cultural issues), there has been a dramatic narrowing of the range of differences between the two parties. Even with unified Republican government in 2002, is it likely that the Republicans will maintain this hold for anywhere as long as a decade? The likely future scenario is the continued dominance of single-issue groups that splinter ideological cohesion around broader class and economic concerns. Campaign finance laws are unlikely to evolve in such a direction as to return stronger party organization. (Recall that it was the 1970s campaign finance reforms that set into motion the explosive growth of PACs.) The seminal 1950 American Political Science Association document on a more &#8220;responsible&#8221; party system called for reforms that seem even more unattainable today: biennial national conventions with greater control over the national committees, binding party platforms with permanent philosophies, elimination of congressional practices that weaken party discipline, and a redesign of American parties into forces of mass mobilization. As Crenson and Ginsberg have pointed out, citizens today tend to be interested in service, not politics; the reformulation of one&#8217;s conception relative to government as customer rather than citizen marks the end of the politics of mass mobilization.</p> <p>A case can be made that in a period of voter disillusionment and apathy, it is conservative issues that hold the spotlight. This is not to say that the electorate is necessarily becoming more conservative, but that when voters don&#8217;t see the political system able to handle large problems they vote conservatively. To the extent that the parties continue to be perceived as ineffective in articulating and solving the larger issues of the day, a conservative agenda &#8211; independent of which party holds power &#8211; will continue to dominate. And there seems no way out of this dilemma, since the political party continues to decline in importance in campaigns. Rather than mass parties that offer coherent ideological platforms to keep coalitions together, single-interest groups capitalize on voters&#8217; disaffection. It has been noted that the executive party steps in to fill the vacuum when the legislative party is not strong or cohesive. Persistent institutional trends, such as the separation between party loyalty in the abstract and individual candidate success, mean that the parties have become &#8220;executive-centered coalitions&#8221; since the late 1960s. Partisanship in Congress increased during the 1980s, but the parties in this same period turned to service-orientation; the resulting influence of PACs weakens the possibility of stable partisanship. The hope in the 1980s and 1990s that parties would be able to reclaim their central role by becoming service-oriented has not borne full fruition because of greater contradicting institutional tendencies. It is possible that a weak realignment, in favor of the Republican party, has already occurred, but it is limited in its capacity to achieve programmatic goals because of a weaker base than used to be the case in the heyday of parties. Weakened party organizational capacities to nominate and elect candidates, and weakened party loyalties among both legislators and the electorate, counter the relative resurgence of partisanship since the 1970s.</p> <p>The traditional argument has been that dealignment, i.e., declining partisanship among the electorate, including such reflections as third party voting and ticket splitting, is a momentary phenomenon to be followed by a new realignment. Yet, despite the mild comeback made by parties since the 1970s, perhaps we have entered an extended period of dealignment. If withdrawal from party loyalty has indeed become a permanent feature of the landscape, then new party loyalties may not develop. Walter Dean Burnham has argued that the American party system has become so weakened by loss of party control over nominations and the scheduling of many state and local elections in off-years, that it may no longer be capable of realignment. As far back as the late seventies, weakened party organizations as factors in the nomination process were said to have resulted in a &#8220;no-party system.&#8221; Another way this has been expressed is to say that the presidency has become its own national party, formed on a plebiscitary leadership model. The ascendancy of the executive as opposed to the legislature reduces members of Congress to playing the &#8220;nonpartisan&#8221; role of &#8220;ombudsmen&#8221; promising constituents an ear with the federal government and bringing home pork-barrel projects. A strong case can be made that the sociological characteristics of large parts of the electorate that led to the building of the New Deal coalition are in permanent eclipse, and that a new party system is not likely to take its place anytime soon. At the same time, too much can be made of Republican strength since the 1980s; the case for realignment in that direction is also exaggerated. The rise of &#8220;pure&#8221; independents has been demythologized by much research; yet such nominal identification by increasing numbers of voters suggests a loss of partisanship among the electorate. Independents tend to be the least informed voters, and it is no good sign of the return of partisanship that among the young perhaps half of all voters consider themselves independent. How lasting will the present Republican coalition be? Will it too succumb, sooner rather than later, to the large-scale dealignment characteristic of recent American politics?</p> <p>In all likelihood, the future of American politics is toward what Ted Halstead and Michael Lind have called the &#8220;radical center.&#8221; It doesn&#8217;t matter that in fact the middle-class is rapidly disappearing, and that the working-class has pressing unmet social service needs; both parties are addressing themselves toward the mythical swing voter, because his putative needs accord best with the economic transformation occurring in America. Acknowledging the severance of the stable employment contract, Halstead and Lind offer as part of a new social compact mandatory private health insurance as the solution to the health care crisis, replacement of the Social Security system by a public pension system based on individual savings, personal development accounts of $20,000 by the age of eighteen for all Americans to meet the challenge of rising inequality, radical change in immigration policy to favor skilled over unskilled workers, ending fixed retirement ages to meet the problem of the underutilized elderly, and regulation of human germ-line enhancement rather than its outright prohibition. It is as safe a bet as any that all or most of these &#8220;pragmatic&#8221; solutions (though intensely conservative, if viewed in the traditional political perspective) are as likely to come about as any other set of policy options. The postindustrial economy - the Information Age economy, to put a positive spin on it - demands &#8220;pragmatic&#8221; solutions along these lines, breaking the compact that was necessary between workers and the state under a different order. Theda Skocpol has recently articulated the need for a new social compact that cuts across classes, but fails to identify the instrument of &#8220;a new popular mobilization by and for ordinary American families.&#8221; Skocpol desires social programs for working families &#8220;in return for contributions to the larger community&#8221; in accord with what she claims is the history of the most successful social programs in America. More likely, however, any new social engineering will take the turn Lind and others in his camp have recently been outlining.</p> <p>The health of the parties in the nineteenth-century can never be recovered. The mass parties of the time aggregated and articulated class interests in a way that&#8217;s not really possible under the new economic conditions. Progressive era reforms fatally weakened national parties, and the thrust of modern reforms (including the newest campaign finance law) is in the same direction. The conservatives have the upper hand, since it is only in foreign policy that great initiatives can be taken; the Democrats have come to a consensus with the Republicans on deficit reduction as priority, making no new large social programs possible. In the new economic order, Social Security and Medicare privatization and some sort of a consumption or flat tax (or at least further scaling back of progressive taxation) are the kinds of policy initiatives likely to get play regardless of the party in power. An alignment of liberals with conservatives on civil liberties might be a fond hope, but the conservative libertarians&#8217; economic agenda puts them so much at odds with liberals that this is not too likely. Since no real realignment seems to have happened since 1932, it is vain to hope that the Democratic party will offer a new social program without the strength of an electoral realignment. Weak party identification should continue to favor the conservative economic and social agenda. Conservative economic forces are really operating without much filtering by either party, Republicans or Democrats, since neither party is strong, or has a mass base of the kind seen in earlier generations. The rise of independent voters is another chimera; in practice, they tend to be weakly affiliated with either party, not ideologically motivated or informed voters who might support strong domestic initiatives of any kind.</p> <p>The decline of the Democratic party is actually associated with the decline of the Republican party &#8211; the party system in general. It may seem that the latter party has dramatically gained at the cost of the former, even to the extent of almost attaining realignment, but in fact abiding institutional factors continue to emasculate both parties. Both parties have in fact moved toward a new consensus on distribution of economic resources. A conservative politics has filled in the vacuum left by the general decline of parties. If neither party gets credit or blame for economic performance to the extent that used to be the case, then character-centered campaigns become all the more important; again, this favors the conservative agenda. The advantage, in the absence of fully resurgent grassroots parties, will remain with highly organized minorities whose interests tend to be conservative (although this is presented as bipartisan pragmatism or the vital center). The return of the disenfranchised as the key component of a resurgent liberal party does not seem to be in the cards.</p> <p>ANIS SHIVANI studied economics at Harvard, and is the author of two novels, The Age of Critics and Memoirs of a Terrorist. He welcomes comments at: <a href="mailto:Anis_Shivani_ab92@post.harvard.edu" type="external">Anis_Shivani_ab92@post.harvard.edu</a></p> <p>&amp;#160;</p>

Bleak Prospects for the Democrats

https://counterpunch.org/2003/01/04/bleak-prospects-for-the-democrats/

2003-01-04

4left

A number of structural reasons indicate that the Democratic party will not be able to revive itself soon in the way that liberal activists desire Neither the Republican nor the Democratic party is likely to gain the decisive upper hand in electoral politics in the visible future But this means by default that conservative politics will retain ascendancy even if the Democratic party nominally returns to power The reports of a Republican party realignment are greatly exaggerated and so are the fantastic musings about a Democratic party realignment because of emerging demographics A better case can be made for continued dealignment since the sixties despite a rise in party identification among the electorate and polarized party line votes in Congress since the seventies Although roll call voting in Congress in the last two decades suggests rising partisanship this does not translate into enthusiasm among voters It has been noted that the Republican party wants to depress voter turnout to keep poor voters out and the Democratic party does not feel at ease with socially conservative poor voters The current economic structure works against advocacy of the kind of domestic social initiatives that the Democratic party has long stood for As the parties have come to a consensus on personal rather than collective democracy privatization of government services is likely to be the trend of the future The possibility of radical initiatives mostly in the foreign policy sphere favors conservatives Continued weak party identification low voter turnout and both parties8217 emerging consensus on privatization suggest that a commitment to the workingclass is highly unlikely to come about The recent competition for House minority leader between Nancy Pelosi representing the 8220liberal8221 side of the Democratic party and Martin Frost and Harold Ford speaking for the 8220conservative8221 side was overdramatized Such personalization doesn8217t take into consideration the structural reasons why the Democratic party is compelled to follow a basically conservative line Pelosi8217s acceptance speech struck all the key New Democrat themes 8220opportunity community and responsibility8221 seeking 8220common ground8221 with Republicans on domestic issues being as forceful as the President on defense and security and pursuing an aggressive 8220economic growth8221 agenda It is not simply a matter of the Democratic party getting its voice back The progressive instinct within the Democratic party will remain a minority and mostly unheard voice Domestic repression has become a necessity because of the recent transformation of the American economy Even if the Democrats return to power a dismantling of the domestic repressive structure 8211 except at the margins 8211 seems inconceivable The first line of reasoning to confront in arguing for a continued conservative ascendancy is the flawed notion of realignment Both Republican and Democratic claims of a realignment in their favor rest on a theory of critical elections first propounded by VO Key Jr E E Schattschneider James L Sundquist and Walter Dean Burnham To the extent that this theory is dubious we have to wonder if there have been any critical or realigning elections since 1932 and if there have been any momentous shifts toward either party in the 1968 and 1980 not to mention the 2002 elections The originators of realignment theory never made the extravagant claims that followers of this genre later propounded in their name Nonetheless some version of critical elections theory has become a standard organizational device in American political science and history texts Typically three eras are considered realigning ones the 1850s the 1890s and the 1930s To the extent that we believe in the theory of critical elections we8217re likely also to give credence to periodicity in American history and major policy changes associated with such elections David R Mayhew has recently taken up the fifteen central claims of realignment theory and systematically discredited each one of them He questions whether American elections can be neatly sorted between realigning and nonrealigning types whether there are regular and predictable patterns of periodicity whether good third party showings tend to be precursors of realignment whether ideological polarization led by insurgents marks realignment junctures whether realignments are associated with significant policy changes whether electoral realignments bring about unified control of government by a single party and whether such unified control is even necessary for significant policy change and whether American voters only express themselves effectively at realignment junctures One particularly tricky problem is why there has now been a seventyyear gap between realignments when the thirtyyearcycle predicts that it is long overdue Mayhew even questions whether the 1896 election deserves to be kept on its canonical pedestal These criticisms open the way to thinking not in terms of critical elections marking a before and after of a particular policy regime but in terms of a permanent campaign In this view voters8217 interests would be continuously expressed during all elections thus diminishing the importance of particular elections Realignment theory serves an important narrative function letting American history be neatly periodized But it is important to shift attention away from realignment theory to locate major policy change not in critical elections but in continuous political transformation determined ultimately by economic change Secular changes that are unlikely to be affected by the electoral successes of either party include declining voter turnouts candidatecentered elections splitticket voting declining partisan identification the rise of independent voters and political alienation of the young Crotty and Jacobson have talked about confusing whimsical patterns in elections The Democrats won a close contest in 1960 followed by a landslide in 1964 Richard Nixon followed the same pattern in 1972 Ronald Reagan in 1984 and Bill Clinton in 1996 followed suit But in none of these cases was the victorious party able to consolidate its gains Beck and Sorauf point out that as issues become nationalized third parties and regional interests fade in comparison to national consensus The trend is entirely in the direction of nationalization particularly since the dominance of electronic communication It can be argued that this trend too favors conservative politics American parties have tended to be cadre rather than mass parties with all that that implies for interest in winning elections rather than taking principled stands on particular issues Progressive era reforms played a key role in eviscerating the political parties as mass mobilization forces There can never be a return to the high turnout rates before Progressive reforms Progressive reforms that weakened parties included the Australian ballot the direct primary and nonpartisan elections at the state and local levels Civil service reform which weakened the power of patronage dealt another mortal blow to the parties When elections become nonpartisan this typically favors conservatism The direct primary weakens the national party by taking control away from party officials and activists In fact many Progressives were explicitly interested in striking a blow against the power of the parties by democratizing the electoral process What the Progressives actually succeeded in doing and this has become more evident since the advent of television was to weaken national parties at the expense of investing control in the hands of the mass media and the special interests that feed the mass media and finance political campaigns The case in favor of presidential primaries rests on disgust with behindthescenes manipulations of party insiders while the case against it lies in its tendency to generate mediaoriented rather than ideological campaigns There is no foreseeable change to this pattern Both the Progressives and the single issueoriented activists of the 1960s and 1970s drove machine politicians out of politics when they couldn8217t compete directly with them Neither party attempts to win elections anymore by mobilizing the millions of citizens who don8217t vote this simply will not change On the contrary neither party supports electoral reforms that might spur voter turnout this too is unlikely to change No doubt in the 1980s and 1990s there has been an increased degree of ideological cohesion in both the Democratic and Republican parties in Congress Nonetheless the issues on the plate to begin with are to a great degree consensual A look back at the 1988 party platforms shows that on every issue except the environment women and minorities that is primarily cultural issues there has been a dramatic narrowing of the range of differences between the two parties Even with unified Republican government in 2002 is it likely that the Republicans will maintain this hold for anywhere as long as a decade The likely future scenario is the continued dominance of singleissue groups that splinter ideological cohesion around broader class and economic concerns Campaign finance laws are unlikely to evolve in such a direction as to return stronger party organization Recall that it was the 1970s campaign finance reforms that set into motion the explosive growth of PACs The seminal 1950 American Political Science Association document on a more 8220responsible8221 party system called for reforms that seem even more unattainable today biennial national conventions with greater control over the national committees binding party platforms with permanent philosophies elimination of congressional practices that weaken party discipline and a redesign of American parties into forces of mass mobilization As Crenson and Ginsberg have pointed out citizens today tend to be interested in service not politics the reformulation of one8217s conception relative to government as customer rather than citizen marks the end of the politics of mass mobilization A case can be made that in a period of voter disillusionment and apathy it is conservative issues that hold the spotlight This is not to say that the electorate is necessarily becoming more conservative but that when voters don8217t see the political system able to handle large problems they vote conservatively To the extent that the parties continue to be perceived as ineffective in articulating and solving the larger issues of the day a conservative agenda 8211 independent of which party holds power 8211 will continue to dominate And there seems no way out of this dilemma since the political party continues to decline in importance in campaigns Rather than mass parties that offer coherent ideological platforms to keep coalitions together singleinterest groups capitalize on voters8217 disaffection It has been noted that the executive party steps in to fill the vacuum when the legislative party is not strong or cohesive Persistent institutional trends such as the separation between party loyalty in the abstract and individual candidate success mean that the parties have become 8220executivecentered coalitions8221 since the late 1960s Partisanship in Congress increased during the 1980s but the parties in this same period turned to serviceorientation the resulting influence of PACs weakens the possibility of stable partisanship The hope in the 1980s and 1990s that parties would be able to reclaim their central role by becoming serviceoriented has not borne full fruition because of greater contradicting institutional tendencies It is possible that a weak realignment in favor of the Republican party has already occurred but it is limited in its capacity to achieve programmatic goals because of a weaker base than used to be the case in the heyday of parties Weakened party organizational capacities to nominate and elect candidates and weakened party loyalties among both legislators and the electorate counter the relative resurgence of partisanship since the 1970s The traditional argument has been that dealignment ie declining partisanship among the electorate including such reflections as third party voting and ticket splitting is a momentary phenomenon to be followed by a new realignment Yet despite the mild comeback made by parties since the 1970s perhaps we have entered an extended period of dealignment If withdrawal from party loyalty has indeed become a permanent feature of the landscape then new party loyalties may not develop Walter Dean Burnham has argued that the American party system has become so weakened by loss of party control over nominations and the scheduling of many state and local elections in offyears that it may no longer be capable of realignment As far back as the late seventies weakened party organizations as factors in the nomination process were said to have resulted in a 8220noparty system8221 Another way this has been expressed is to say that the presidency has become its own national party formed on a plebiscitary leadership model The ascendancy of the executive as opposed to the legislature reduces members of Congress to playing the 8220nonpartisan8221 role of 8220ombudsmen8221 promising constituents an ear with the federal government and bringing home porkbarrel projects A strong case can be made that the sociological characteristics of large parts of the electorate that led to the building of the New Deal coalition are in permanent eclipse and that a new party system is not likely to take its place anytime soon At the same time too much can be made of Republican strength since the 1980s the case for realignment in that direction is also exaggerated The rise of 8220pure8221 independents has been demythologized by much research yet such nominal identification by increasing numbers of voters suggests a loss of partisanship among the electorate Independents tend to be the least informed voters and it is no good sign of the return of partisanship that among the young perhaps half of all voters consider themselves independent How lasting will the present Republican coalition be Will it too succumb sooner rather than later to the largescale dealignment characteristic of recent American politics In all likelihood the future of American politics is toward what Ted Halstead and Michael Lind have called the 8220radical center8221 It doesn8217t matter that in fact the middleclass is rapidly disappearing and that the workingclass has pressing unmet social service needs both parties are addressing themselves toward the mythical swing voter because his putative needs accord best with the economic transformation occurring in America Acknowledging the severance of the stable employment contract Halstead and Lind offer as part of a new social compact mandatory private health insurance as the solution to the health care crisis replacement of the Social Security system by a public pension system based on individual savings personal development accounts of 20000 by the age of eighteen for all Americans to meet the challenge of rising inequality radical change in immigration policy to favor skilled over unskilled workers ending fixed retirement ages to meet the problem of the underutilized elderly and regulation of human germline enhancement rather than its outright prohibition It is as safe a bet as any that all or most of these 8220pragmatic8221 solutions though intensely conservative if viewed in the traditional political perspective are as likely to come about as any other set of policy options The postindustrial economy the Information Age economy to put a positive spin on it demands 8220pragmatic8221 solutions along these lines breaking the compact that was necessary between workers and the state under a different order Theda Skocpol has recently articulated the need for a new social compact that cuts across classes but fails to identify the instrument of 8220a new popular mobilization by and for ordinary American families8221 Skocpol desires social programs for working families 8220in return for contributions to the larger community8221 in accord with what she claims is the history of the most successful social programs in America More likely however any new social engineering will take the turn Lind and others in his camp have recently been outlining The health of the parties in the nineteenthcentury can never be recovered The mass parties of the time aggregated and articulated class interests in a way that8217s not really possible under the new economic conditions Progressive era reforms fatally weakened national parties and the thrust of modern reforms including the newest campaign finance law is in the same direction The conservatives have the upper hand since it is only in foreign policy that great initiatives can be taken the Democrats have come to a consensus with the Republicans on deficit reduction as priority making no new large social programs possible In the new economic order Social Security and Medicare privatization and some sort of a consumption or flat tax or at least further scaling back of progressive taxation are the kinds of policy initiatives likely to get play regardless of the party in power An alignment of liberals with conservatives on civil liberties might be a fond hope but the conservative libertarians8217 economic agenda puts them so much at odds with liberals that this is not too likely Since no real realignment seems to have happened since 1932 it is vain to hope that the Democratic party will offer a new social program without the strength of an electoral realignment Weak party identification should continue to favor the conservative economic and social agenda Conservative economic forces are really operating without much filtering by either party Republicans or Democrats since neither party is strong or has a mass base of the kind seen in earlier generations The rise of independent voters is another chimera in practice they tend to be weakly affiliated with either party not ideologically motivated or informed voters who might support strong domestic initiatives of any kind The decline of the Democratic party is actually associated with the decline of the Republican party 8211 the party system in general It may seem that the latter party has dramatically gained at the cost of the former even to the extent of almost attaining realignment but in fact abiding institutional factors continue to emasculate both parties Both parties have in fact moved toward a new consensus on distribution of economic resources A conservative politics has filled in the vacuum left by the general decline of parties If neither party gets credit or blame for economic performance to the extent that used to be the case then charactercentered campaigns become all the more important again this favors the conservative agenda The advantage in the absence of fully resurgent grassroots parties will remain with highly organized minorities whose interests tend to be conservative although this is presented as bipartisan pragmatism or the vital center The return of the disenfranchised as the key component of a resurgent liberal party does not seem to be in the cards ANIS SHIVANI studied economics at Harvard and is the author of two novels The Age of Critics and Memoirs of a Terrorist He welcomes comments at Anis_Shivani_ab92postharvardedu amp160

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<p>ABU DHABI (Reuters) - The United Arab Emirates&#8217; military have been told not to do anything to worsen a seven-month diplomatic crisis with Qatar, a senior military officer said on Tuesday, a move which may reduce tensions over mutual accusations about military overflights.</p> <p>The new bout of verbal sparring between the Gulf Arab rivals is causing concern among foreign investors that the rift, which also involves Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Egypt, might lead to military confrontation.</p> <p>The four Arab powers imposed travel, diplomatic and trade sanctions on Qatar in June 2017, accusing it of supporting terrorism. Doha denies the charges.</p> <p>&#8220;We got orders not to escalate and to commit to regional safety and security&#8221;, air force Brigadier General Helal Saeed al-Qubaisi told reporters at a news conference in the capital Abu Dhabi.</p> <p>UAE military aircraft would also fly alternative routes over Saudi Arabia to avoid the possibility of interception by Qatari warplanes, al-Qubaisi added.</p> <p>The UAE said on Jan. 15 that Qatari warplanes had twice intercepted its civilian aircraft that day during routine flights to Bahrain, but Qatar called the claim &#8220;completely untrue&#8221;.</p> <p>The UAE also accused Qatari warplanes of harassing three of its military aircraft in international airspace on Dec. 27 and Jan. 12.</p> <p>Qatar said the UAE allegations followed incidents on Dec. 21 and Jan. 3 in which it accused UAE military aircraft of violating its airspace. Abu Dhabi denies the charges.</p> <p>Efforts by fellow Gulf Cooperation Council member Kuwait to end the rift, one of the worst ever in the Gulf region, have failed to produce any results.</p> <p>Writing by Noah Browning; Editing by Richard Balmforth</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>CHISINAU (Reuters) - The former president of Romania Traian Basescu joined more than 10,000 people in the Moldovan capital on Sunday to rally in support of reunification between Romania and Moldova.</p> FILE PHOTO: The Moldova's Government building is seen in central Chisinau, Moldova, October 9, 2016. REUTERS/Gleb Garanich/File Photo <p>Union between European Union member Romania and its smaller neighbor to the northeast looks unlikely but the issue highlights a divide in Moldova between pro-Western and Moscow-backed political factions ahead of elections in November.</p> <p>The country that is now Moldova was part of Tsarist Russia during the 19th century and known as Bessarabia. After World War One it joined what was known as Greater Romania but it was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940. When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, it became independent under the name Moldova.</p> <p>It is now split between a Romanian-speaking majority and the breakaway region Transdniestria, which is propped up by Russia in one of a series of &#8220;frozen conflicts&#8221; that have kept separatist regions in several former Soviet republics under Moscow&#8217;s wing.</p> <p>&#8220;We call upon the deputies of the Moldovan and Romanian parliament to vote in the near future for unification,&#8221; Basescu said at the demonstration, which was timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of Moldova joining Greater Romania.</p> FILE PHOTO: A general view shows a monument to Stefan cel Mare, voivode (or prince) of Moldavia from 1457 to 1504, in central Chisinau, Moldova, October 9, 2016. REUTERS/Gleb Garanich/File Photo <p>There was no official reaction from the Romanian side.</p> <p>The demonstration was peaceful though police said they detained 21 people who wanted to disrupt the rally, seizing gas masks, masks and knives.</p> <p>The Moldovan government, which favors closer ties with the European Union and the United States, often locks horns with the pro-Russian President Igor Dodon, who wants closer ties to Moscow and to join a Moscow-led customs union.</p> <p>If his Socialist party wins elections due in 2018, Dodon has previously suggested passing a law that bans unionist organizations seen to be undermining the integrity of the state because they want to join Romania.</p> Related Video <p>Dodon asked those who oppose reunification not to stage a rival rally on Sunday.</p> <p>&#8220;I urge all patriots and statesmen not to march against the unionists on March 25. We should not give them an additional reason for demonstrations or provocations,&#8221; Dodon said.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Radu Marinas in Bucharest; Editing by Matthias Williams and Matthew Mpoke Bigg</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BARCELONA/BERLIN (Reuters) - Former Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont was detained on Sunday in Germany five months after he went into self-imposed exile from Spain, where he faces up to 25 years in prison for organizing an illegal referendum on secession last year.</p> <p>Puigdemont had entered Germany from Denmark after leaving Finland on Friday when it appeared police would arrest him there and begin an extradition process requested by Spain.</p> <p>The detention threatens to worsen the Catalan crisis which flared last year when the region made a symbolic declaration of independence, prompting Madrid to take direct rule.</p> <p>Pro-independence groups called on Sunday for a protest in Barcelona in support of Puigdemont outside the offices of the delegation of the European Commission and the German consulate.</p> <p>German police said they had arrested Puigdemont in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein on a European arrest warrant issued by Spain.</p> <p>In a statement, police said Puigdemont was detained near a section of the A7 highway which cuts through the state from the city of Flensburg near the Danish border.</p> <p>Police did not say exactly where Puigdemont, who had been living in Brussels since late October, was being held but the Spanish press said he was at a police station in the nearby town of Schuby.</p> <p>German magazine Focus said Spanish intelligence informed the BKA federal police that Puigdemont was on his way from Finland to Germany. It gave no source for its report.</p> <p>He had arrived in Finland on Thursday to meet lawmakers and attend a conference.</p> EXTRADITION ISSUE <p>It is not clear if Puigdemont will be immediately extradited from Germany.</p> People protest after former president Carles Puigdemont was detained in Germany, during a demonstration held by pro-independence associations in Barcelona, Spain March 25, 2018. REUTERS/Albert Gea <p>The Spanish prosecutor&#8217;s office said on Sunday it was working closely with counterparts in Germany and EU agency Eurojust to provide all of the information needed to make the European arrest warrant for Puigdemont effective.</p> <p>The European arrest warrant system in place since 2004 makes it easier for EU countries to demand the extradition from other EU states of people wanted for crimes, and removes political decision-making from the process.</p> <p>EU countries issue thousands of such warrants each year.</p> Slideshow (8 Images) <p>Puidgemont could take his case to Germany&#8217;s highest court, which had in 2005 blocked the extradition to Spain on an EU arrest warrant of a German-Syrian al-Qaeda suspect.</p> <p>The case of Mamoun Darkazanli sparked a judicial row between the two countries after Germany&#8217;s Federal Constitutional court refused to turn over Darkazanli, saying that EU extradition laws designed to speed up the delivery of suspects between member states violated the rights of German citizens.</p> <p>Puigdemont had previously made clear his preference to fight the extradition process from Belgium, where the former Catalan leader was heading at the time of his detention, according to Puigdemont&#8217;s spokesman, Joan Maria Pique.</p> <p>&#8220;The president was going to Belgium to put himself, as always, at the disposal of Belgian justice,&#8221; Pique told Reuters.</p> <p>The Spanish Supreme Court had issued an international arrest warrant against Puigdemont last year but withdrew it in December to avoid the risk of Belgian authorities granting him asylum.</p> <p>Leaving Belgium had exposed him again to the risk of arrest.</p> <p>Spain&#8217;s Supreme Court ruled on Friday that 25 Catalan leaders would be tried for rebellion, embezzlement or disobeying the state.</p> <p>Supreme Court judge Pablo Llarena also sent five separatist leaders to pre-trial jail. Their detention sparked protests across Catalonia.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Andres Gonzalez in Madrid; Writing by Julien Toyer; Editing by Mark Heinrich/Keith Weir</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, his ratings in a slump amid a suspected cronyism scandal and cover-up, apologized again on Sunday for causing anxiety and loss of confidence in his government.</p> Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who is also ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) leader, bows as he delivers a speech during the LDP annual party convention in Tokyo, Japan March 25, 2018. REUTERS/Issei Kato <p>Protesters urged Abe to resign, as riot police kept tight security outside the venue of his ruling party&#8217;s annual convention, at which the premier stressed his intention to revise Japan&#8217;s pacifist post-war, U.S.-drafted constitution.</p> <p>Abe faces his biggest political crisis since taking office in December 2012 as suspicions swirl about a sale of state-owned land at a huge discount to a nationalist school operator with ties to his wife.</p> <p>&#8220;This problem has shaken the people&#8217;s confidence in the administration,&#8221; Abe told the convention. &#8220;As head of the government, I keenly feel my responsibility and would like to deeply apologize to the people.&#8221;</p> <p>He pledged a thorough clarification of the facts and the prevention of a recurrence by pulling the government together, but offered no sign of stepping down.</p> <p>Abe has denied that he or his wife intervened in the sale or that he sought to alter documents related to the deal.</p> <p>His close ally, Finance Minister Taro Aso, has also denied involvement in the alterations made by ministry officials.</p> <p>Public opinion polls last weekend showed support for Abe&#8217;s cabinet sinking as low as 31 percent, with majorities saying he bears some responsibility for the affair.</p> <p>The sliding support rates could dash Abe&#8217;s hopes of winning a third three-year term as ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) leader in a party vote in September, victory in which would set him on track to become Japan&#8217;s longest ruling premier.</p> Protesters hold placards reading "Stop constitution revision and war" and "Abe should go prison" as they shout slogans during a march denouncing Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe over a suspected cover-up of a cronyism scandal and his administration in Tokyo, Japan, March 25, 2018. REUTERS/Issei Kato <p>&#8220;We&#8217;re protesting to defeat Abe&#8217;s government through our voices and the anger of the people,&#8221; said Fumiko Katsuragi, 69, who was among hundreds of protesters gathered in a Tokyo park where cherry blossoms were in full bloom.</p> <p>Some held banners that read &#8220;Go to jail Abe&#8221; and &#8220;No constitutional revision or war,&#8221; while right-wingers gathered nearby amid police security.</p> <p>Also at the party convention, the LDP adopted a proposal to revise the pacifist constitution in line with a plan floated by Abe last year to explicitly refer to the Self-Defense Forces, as Japan&#8217;s military is known.</p> Slideshow (6 Images) <p>&#8220;The time has finally come to tackle constitutional revision, which has been a task since the founding of the party,&#8221; Abe said.</p> <p>&#8220;Let&#8217;s stipulate the Self-Defense Forces and put an end to a controversy about violation of the constitution.&#8221;</p> <p>Abe proposed last May that the first two clauses of Article 9, which renounces the right to wage war and bans maintenance of a standing military, be unchanged but that a reference to the SDF be added to clarify its ambiguous status.</p> <p>Despite its literal ban on a standing army, successive governments have interpreted the charter to allow a military exclusively to defense.</p> <p>Abe wants to make that stance clear in the constitution itself, but says the change will not alter Japan&#8217;s security policies. Critics worry the revision would open the way to a bigger role for the military overseas.</p> <p>Abe&#8217;s weakened support and a wary junior coalition partner could make it hard for the LDP to push for the change, which would spark a divisive debate.</p> <p>Japan&#8217;s constitution has never been amended and any changes require approval by two-thirds of each house of parliament and a majority in a public referendum.</p> <p>Reporting by Tetsushi Kajimoto and Yoshifumi Takemoto; Additional reporting by Issei Kato and Kwiyeon Ha Writing by Linda Sieg; Editing by Clarence Fernandez</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>VATICAN CITY/TAIPEI (Reuters) - Five blocks from the Vatican, on the bustling, tourist-packed street leading to St. Peter&#8217;s Basilica, a Taiwanese flag flutters from the window of a third story suite of offices that house Taipei&#8217;s embassy to the Holy See.</p> A Catholic poses for a photo with a cardboard cutout of Pope Francis at a church in Taipei, Taiwan March 11, 2018. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu <p>These days, the staff inside are anxious. They know that one night they may have to lower that flag - red and blue with a white sun - for the last time.</p> <p>As the Vatican and China move closer to a historic deal on the appointment of bishops, which would signal a warming of once-frigid relations, diplomats and scholars say Taiwan could lose the most from the deal..</p> <p>Under the deal, the Vatican will have a say in negotiations for the appointment of future bishops in China, whose Catholics are divided between an &#8220;underground&#8221; Church loyal to the pope and a government-backed Church.</p> <p>Even a partial resolution of the issue could open the way for eventual diplomatic relations between Beijing and the Vatican. That would give the Church a legal framework to look after all of China&#8217;s estimated 12 million Catholics.</p> <p>It would also leave Taiwan in the diplomatic lurch.</p> <p>The Vatican is one of only 20 states that still recognize Taiwan, officially known as the Republic of China. Beijing insists that if countries want relations with it they must break ties with Taiwan.</p> <p>The Chinese Foreign Ministry said last month that China had always been sincere in its efforts to improve China-Vatican relations.</p> <p>A senior Vatican official said however that the accord on bishops &#8220;is not a political one,&#8221; suggesting that it does not include any formal link to diplomatic relations and that the Vatican will not be the next country to switch relations to China from Taiwan.</p> <p>Catholic leaders in Taipei are also hopeful.</p> <p>&#8220;They (the Vatican and Beijing) won&#8217;t build diplomatic ties. You need to share common values with each other in order to establish diplomatic ties,&#8221; Archbishop John Hung of Taipei told Reuters in an interview in Taipei.</p> <p>&#8220;The values the Vatican holds are different from those of the Chinese Communist Party. Building ties with the Vatican requires values including freedom and democracy.&#8221;</p> <p>Hung said the Church in Taiwan is &#8220;sleeping well at night&#8221;.</p> <p>But for how long?</p> LESSER CHILDREN? <p>Some experts say diplomatic ties between Beijing and the Vatican are inevitable, even if probably not right around the corner.</p> <p>&#8220;The Church does not have preference among its children and it&#8217;s clear that the Vatican does not want to do anything to displease Catholics on Taiwan&#8221; said Agostino Giovagnoli, a history professor at Milan&#8217;s Sacred Heart Catholic University and the author of two books on Catholicism in China.</p> A choir sings during Mass at a Catholic church in Taipei, Taiwan March 11, 2018. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu <p>&#8220;But strategically the Catholics on the mainland are more important because the future of evangelization of China and all Asia passes through China. It is key for the Catholic Church,&#8221; he told Reuters.</p> <p>While Taiwan&#8217;s embassy to the Vatican proudly flies the flag from its window, hosts cultural events and publishes a newsletter, the Vatican&#8217;s counterpart in Taipei is a study in low-key diplomacy.</p> <p>It is located in a quiet residential neighborhood in the city&#8217;s Daan distinct. The only clue of its function is the papal stem of crossed keys and a tiara, or crown. That symbol is not widely known to the general public.</p> <p>The Vatican&#8217;s last diplomat on the mainland was expelled in 1951 and the Holy See mission settled in Taiwan, to where Chiang Kai-shek&#8217;s Nationalist government fled in 1949 after its defeat by the communist armies of Mao Zedong, founder of the People&#8217;s Republic of China (PRC).</p> <p>Since the 1970s, following the United Nations vote to recognize the PRC as the sole legal China, the Vatican has not appointed a nuncio, or ambassador, to Taiwan. It has kept the status of the mission at the lower level of &#8220;charge d&#8217;affaires ad interim&#8221; since.</p> <p>Diplomats say the Vatican&#8217;s low profile in Taiwan for four decades has been aimed at placating Beijing, which still sees Taiwan and its sacred territory.</p> Slideshow (8 Images) DIPLOMATIC SHOCKWAVES <p>In 1999, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, then Secretary of State under Pope John Paul, sent shockwaves through Taiwan&#8217;s diplomatic corps.</p> <p>He said the Vatican was ready to move its embassy from Taipei to China &#8220;not tomorrow, but tonight if the Chinese authorities allow it&#8221;.</p> <p>In Vatican directories and diplomatic lists, the ambassador from Taiwan, currently Matthew Shieh-Ming Lee, is listed under &#8220;China,&#8221; not &#8220;Republic of China,&#8221; which is Taiwan&#8217;s official name now, and was China&#8217;s official name before 1949.</p> <p>The ambiguity is not accidental, diplomats say. By keeping the listing vague and generic, the Vatican has avoided further irritating Beijing as it has tried to seek an agreement about Catholics on the mainland.</p> <p>It also would make it easier for the Vatican to move its embassy to Beijing eventually while claiming that it is not really abandoning Taiwan, where it would likely leave an &#8220;apostolic&#8221; representation to the local Church.</p> <p>&#8220;It is very interesting that both sides are putting the question of diplomatic relations at the very end of the road, on the horizon,&#8221; Giovagnoli, the history professor, said.</p> <p>He said that because China&#8217;s diplomatic and economic strength has grown enormously over the past few decades, it no longer craves the Vatican&#8217;s diplomatic recognition as it did in the past, making a gradual political rapprochement after a deal on bishops is signed more likely than quick recognition.</p> <p>&#8220;Diplomatic recognition is no longer a quid-pro-quo for a deal on the naming of bishops as it once was,&#8221; Giovagnoli said.</p> <p>Those who will likely feel most hurt if the Vatican eventually does realign its political relations with Taiwan are the island&#8217;s 300,000 Catholics.</p> <p>While they make up less than 2 percent of the island&#8217;s population, they are disproportionately influential. Taiwan Vice President Chen Chien-jen is a devout Catholic and visited the Vatican in 2016 for the canonization of Mother Teresa.</p> <p>The Fu Jen Catholic University is considered highly prestigious. The Taiwan Catholic Regional Seminary trains priests from many parts of Asia, including China.</p> <p>Writing by Philip Pullella; Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Beijing; Editing by Giles Elgood</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

UAE military ordered not to escalate Qatar crisis: official More than 10,000 people rally to unify Romania and Moldova Former Catalan leader Puigdemont detained in Germany Japan's Abe apologizes amid cronyism scandal, vows to revise constitution As Vatican and China talk, Taiwan looks on nervously

https://reuters.com/article/us-gulf-qatar-emirates-aviation/uae-military-ordered-not-to-escalate-qatar-crisis-official-idUSKBN1FC13Y

2018-01-23

2least

ABU DHABI Reuters The United Arab Emirates8217 military have been told not to do anything to worsen a sevenmonth diplomatic crisis with Qatar a senior military officer said on Tuesday a move which may reduce tensions over mutual accusations about military overflights The new bout of verbal sparring between the Gulf Arab rivals is causing concern among foreign investors that the rift which also involves Saudi Arabia Bahrain and Egypt might lead to military confrontation The four Arab powers imposed travel diplomatic and trade sanctions on Qatar in June 2017 accusing it of supporting terrorism Doha denies the charges 8220We got orders not to escalate and to commit to regional safety and security8221 air force Brigadier General Helal Saeed alQubaisi told reporters at a news conference in the capital Abu Dhabi UAE military aircraft would also fly alternative routes over Saudi Arabia to avoid the possibility of interception by Qatari warplanes alQubaisi added The UAE said on Jan 15 that Qatari warplanes had twice intercepted its civilian aircraft that day during routine flights to Bahrain but Qatar called the claim 8220completely untrue8221 The UAE also accused Qatari warplanes of harassing three of its military aircraft in international airspace on Dec 27 and Jan 12 Qatar said the UAE allegations followed incidents on Dec 21 and Jan 3 in which it accused UAE military aircraft of violating its airspace Abu Dhabi denies the charges Efforts by fellow Gulf Cooperation Council member Kuwait to end the rift one of the worst ever in the Gulf region have failed to produce any results Writing by Noah Browning Editing by Richard Balmforth Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles CHISINAU Reuters The former president of Romania Traian Basescu joined more than 10000 people in the Moldovan capital on Sunday to rally in support of reunification between Romania and Moldova FILE PHOTO The Moldovas Government building is seen in central Chisinau Moldova October 9 2016 REUTERSGleb GaranichFile Photo Union between European Union member Romania and its smaller neighbor to the northeast looks unlikely but the issue highlights a divide in Moldova between proWestern and Moscowbacked political factions ahead of elections in November The country that is now Moldova was part of Tsarist Russia during the 19th century and known as Bessarabia After World War One it joined what was known as Greater Romania but it was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940 When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991 it became independent under the name Moldova It is now split between a Romanianspeaking majority and the breakaway region Transdniestria which is propped up by Russia in one of a series of 8220frozen conflicts8221 that have kept separatist regions in several former Soviet republics under Moscow8217s wing 8220We call upon the deputies of the Moldovan and Romanian parliament to vote in the near future for unification8221 Basescu said at the demonstration which was timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of Moldova joining Greater Romania FILE PHOTO A general view shows a monument to Stefan cel Mare voivode or prince of Moldavia from 1457 to 1504 in central Chisinau Moldova October 9 2016 REUTERSGleb GaranichFile Photo There was no official reaction from the Romanian side The demonstration was peaceful though police said they detained 21 people who wanted to disrupt the rally seizing gas masks masks and knives The Moldovan government which favors closer ties with the European Union and the United States often locks horns with the proRussian President Igor Dodon who wants closer ties to Moscow and to join a Moscowled customs union If his Socialist party wins elections due in 2018 Dodon has previously suggested passing a law that bans unionist organizations seen to be undermining the integrity of the state because they want to join Romania Related Video Dodon asked those who oppose reunification not to stage a rival rally on Sunday 8220I urge all patriots and statesmen not to march against the unionists on March 25 We should not give them an additional reason for demonstrations or provocations8221 Dodon said Additional reporting by Radu Marinas in Bucharest Editing by Matthias Williams and Matthew Mpoke Bigg Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BARCELONABERLIN Reuters Former Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont was detained on Sunday in Germany five months after he went into selfimposed exile from Spain where he faces up to 25 years in prison for organizing an illegal referendum on secession last year Puigdemont had entered Germany from Denmark after leaving Finland on Friday when it appeared police would arrest him there and begin an extradition process requested by Spain The detention threatens to worsen the Catalan crisis which flared last year when the region made a symbolic declaration of independence prompting Madrid to take direct rule Proindependence groups called on Sunday for a protest in Barcelona in support of Puigdemont outside the offices of the delegation of the European Commission and the German consulate German police said they had arrested Puigdemont in the northern state of SchleswigHolstein on a European arrest warrant issued by Spain In a statement police said Puigdemont was detained near a section of the A7 highway which cuts through the state from the city of Flensburg near the Danish border Police did not say exactly where Puigdemont who had been living in Brussels since late October was being held but the Spanish press said he was at a police station in the nearby town of Schuby German magazine Focus said Spanish intelligence informed the BKA federal police that Puigdemont was on his way from Finland to Germany It gave no source for its report He had arrived in Finland on Thursday to meet lawmakers and attend a conference EXTRADITION ISSUE It is not clear if Puigdemont will be immediately extradited from Germany People protest after former president Carles Puigdemont was detained in Germany during a demonstration held by proindependence associations in Barcelona Spain March 25 2018 REUTERSAlbert Gea The Spanish prosecutor8217s office said on Sunday it was working closely with counterparts in Germany and EU agency Eurojust to provide all of the information needed to make the European arrest warrant for Puigdemont effective The European arrest warrant system in place since 2004 makes it easier for EU countries to demand the extradition from other EU states of people wanted for crimes and removes political decisionmaking from the process EU countries issue thousands of such warrants each year Slideshow 8 Images Puidgemont could take his case to Germany8217s highest court which had in 2005 blocked the extradition to Spain on an EU arrest warrant of a GermanSyrian alQaeda suspect The case of Mamoun Darkazanli sparked a judicial row between the two countries after Germany8217s Federal Constitutional court refused to turn over Darkazanli saying that EU extradition laws designed to speed up the delivery of suspects between member states violated the rights of German citizens Puigdemont had previously made clear his preference to fight the extradition process from Belgium where the former Catalan leader was heading at the time of his detention according to Puigdemont8217s spokesman Joan Maria Pique 8220The president was going to Belgium to put himself as always at the disposal of Belgian justice8221 Pique told Reuters The Spanish Supreme Court had issued an international arrest warrant against Puigdemont last year but withdrew it in December to avoid the risk of Belgian authorities granting him asylum Leaving Belgium had exposed him again to the risk of arrest Spain8217s Supreme Court ruled on Friday that 25 Catalan leaders would be tried for rebellion embezzlement or disobeying the state Supreme Court judge Pablo Llarena also sent five separatist leaders to pretrial jail Their detention sparked protests across Catalonia Additional reporting by Andres Gonzalez in Madrid Writing by Julien Toyer Editing by Mark HeinrichKeith Weir Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles TOKYO Reuters Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe his ratings in a slump amid a suspected cronyism scandal and coverup apologized again on Sunday for causing anxiety and loss of confidence in his government Japans Prime Minister Shinzo Abe who is also ruling Liberal Democratic Party LDP leader bows as he delivers a speech during the LDP annual party convention in Tokyo Japan March 25 2018 REUTERSIssei Kato Protesters urged Abe to resign as riot police kept tight security outside the venue of his ruling party8217s annual convention at which the premier stressed his intention to revise Japan8217s pacifist postwar USdrafted constitution Abe faces his biggest political crisis since taking office in December 2012 as suspicions swirl about a sale of stateowned land at a huge discount to a nationalist school operator with ties to his wife 8220This problem has shaken the people8217s confidence in the administration8221 Abe told the convention 8220As head of the government I keenly feel my responsibility and would like to deeply apologize to the people8221 He pledged a thorough clarification of the facts and the prevention of a recurrence by pulling the government together but offered no sign of stepping down Abe has denied that he or his wife intervened in the sale or that he sought to alter documents related to the deal His close ally Finance Minister Taro Aso has also denied involvement in the alterations made by ministry officials Public opinion polls last weekend showed support for Abe8217s cabinet sinking as low as 31 percent with majorities saying he bears some responsibility for the affair The sliding support rates could dash Abe8217s hopes of winning a third threeyear term as ruling Liberal Democratic Party LDP leader in a party vote in September victory in which would set him on track to become Japan8217s longest ruling premier Protesters hold placards reading Stop constitution revision and war and Abe should go prison as they shout slogans during a march denouncing Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe over a suspected coverup of a cronyism scandal and his administration in Tokyo Japan March 25 2018 REUTERSIssei Kato 8220We8217re protesting to defeat Abe8217s government through our voices and the anger of the people8221 said Fumiko Katsuragi 69 who was among hundreds of protesters gathered in a Tokyo park where cherry blossoms were in full bloom Some held banners that read 8220Go to jail Abe8221 and 8220No constitutional revision or war8221 while rightwingers gathered nearby amid police security Also at the party convention the LDP adopted a proposal to revise the pacifist constitution in line with a plan floated by Abe last year to explicitly refer to the SelfDefense Forces as Japan8217s military is known Slideshow 6 Images 8220The time has finally come to tackle constitutional revision which has been a task since the founding of the party8221 Abe said 8220Let8217s stipulate the SelfDefense Forces and put an end to a controversy about violation of the constitution8221 Abe proposed last May that the first two clauses of Article 9 which renounces the right to wage war and bans maintenance of a standing military be unchanged but that a reference to the SDF be added to clarify its ambiguous status Despite its literal ban on a standing army successive governments have interpreted the charter to allow a military exclusively to defense Abe wants to make that stance clear in the constitution itself but says the change will not alter Japan8217s security policies Critics worry the revision would open the way to a bigger role for the military overseas Abe8217s weakened support and a wary junior coalition partner could make it hard for the LDP to push for the change which would spark a divisive debate Japan8217s constitution has never been amended and any changes require approval by twothirds of each house of parliament and a majority in a public referendum Reporting by Tetsushi Kajimoto and Yoshifumi Takemoto Additional reporting by Issei Kato and Kwiyeon Ha Writing by Linda Sieg Editing by Clarence Fernandez Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles VATICAN CITYTAIPEI Reuters Five blocks from the Vatican on the bustling touristpacked street leading to St Peter8217s Basilica a Taiwanese flag flutters from the window of a third story suite of offices that house Taipei8217s embassy to the Holy See A Catholic poses for a photo with a cardboard cutout of Pope Francis at a church in Taipei Taiwan March 11 2018 REUTERSTyrone Siu These days the staff inside are anxious They know that one night they may have to lower that flag red and blue with a white sun for the last time As the Vatican and China move closer to a historic deal on the appointment of bishops which would signal a warming of oncefrigid relations diplomats and scholars say Taiwan could lose the most from the deal Under the deal the Vatican will have a say in negotiations for the appointment of future bishops in China whose Catholics are divided between an 8220underground8221 Church loyal to the pope and a governmentbacked Church Even a partial resolution of the issue could open the way for eventual diplomatic relations between Beijing and the Vatican That would give the Church a legal framework to look after all of China8217s estimated 12 million Catholics It would also leave Taiwan in the diplomatic lurch The Vatican is one of only 20 states that still recognize Taiwan officially known as the Republic of China Beijing insists that if countries want relations with it they must break ties with Taiwan The Chinese Foreign Ministry said last month that China had always been sincere in its efforts to improve ChinaVatican relations A senior Vatican official said however that the accord on bishops 8220is not a political one8221 suggesting that it does not include any formal link to diplomatic relations and that the Vatican will not be the next country to switch relations to China from Taiwan Catholic leaders in Taipei are also hopeful 8220They the Vatican and Beijing won8217t build diplomatic ties You need to share common values with each other in order to establish diplomatic ties8221 Archbishop John Hung of Taipei told Reuters in an interview in Taipei 8220The values the Vatican holds are different from those of the Chinese Communist Party Building ties with the Vatican requires values including freedom and democracy8221 Hung said the Church in Taiwan is 8220sleeping well at night8221 But for how long LESSER CHILDREN Some experts say diplomatic ties between Beijing and the Vatican are inevitable even if probably not right around the corner 8220The Church does not have preference among its children and it8217s clear that the Vatican does not want to do anything to displease Catholics on Taiwan8221 said Agostino Giovagnoli a history professor at Milan8217s Sacred Heart Catholic University and the author of two books on Catholicism in China A choir sings during Mass at a Catholic church in Taipei Taiwan March 11 2018 REUTERSTyrone Siu 8220But strategically the Catholics on the mainland are more important because the future of evangelization of China and all Asia passes through China It is key for the Catholic Church8221 he told Reuters While Taiwan8217s embassy to the Vatican proudly flies the flag from its window hosts cultural events and publishes a newsletter the Vatican8217s counterpart in Taipei is a study in lowkey diplomacy It is located in a quiet residential neighborhood in the city8217s Daan distinct The only clue of its function is the papal stem of crossed keys and a tiara or crown That symbol is not widely known to the general public The Vatican8217s last diplomat on the mainland was expelled in 1951 and the Holy See mission settled in Taiwan to where Chiang Kaishek8217s Nationalist government fled in 1949 after its defeat by the communist armies of Mao Zedong founder of the People8217s Republic of China PRC Since the 1970s following the United Nations vote to recognize the PRC as the sole legal China the Vatican has not appointed a nuncio or ambassador to Taiwan It has kept the status of the mission at the lower level of 8220charge d8217affaires ad interim8221 since Diplomats say the Vatican8217s low profile in Taiwan for four decades has been aimed at placating Beijing which still sees Taiwan and its sacred territory Slideshow 8 Images DIPLOMATIC SHOCKWAVES In 1999 Cardinal Angelo Sodano then Secretary of State under Pope John Paul sent shockwaves through Taiwan8217s diplomatic corps He said the Vatican was ready to move its embassy from Taipei to China 8220not tomorrow but tonight if the Chinese authorities allow it8221 In Vatican directories and diplomatic lists the ambassador from Taiwan currently Matthew ShiehMing Lee is listed under 8220China8221 not 8220Republic of China8221 which is Taiwan8217s official name now and was China8217s official name before 1949 The ambiguity is not accidental diplomats say By keeping the listing vague and generic the Vatican has avoided further irritating Beijing as it has tried to seek an agreement about Catholics on the mainland It also would make it easier for the Vatican to move its embassy to Beijing eventually while claiming that it is not really abandoning Taiwan where it would likely leave an 8220apostolic8221 representation to the local Church 8220It is very interesting that both sides are putting the question of diplomatic relations at the very end of the road on the horizon8221 Giovagnoli the history professor said He said that because China8217s diplomatic and economic strength has grown enormously over the past few decades it no longer craves the Vatican8217s diplomatic recognition as it did in the past making a gradual political rapprochement after a deal on bishops is signed more likely than quick recognition 8220Diplomatic recognition is no longer a quidproquo for a deal on the naming of bishops as it once was8221 Giovagnoli said Those who will likely feel most hurt if the Vatican eventually does realign its political relations with Taiwan are the island8217s 300000 Catholics While they make up less than 2 percent of the island8217s population they are disproportionately influential Taiwan Vice President Chen Chienjen is a devout Catholic and visited the Vatican in 2016 for the canonization of Mother Teresa The Fu Jen Catholic University is considered highly prestigious The Taiwan Catholic Regional Seminary trains priests from many parts of Asia including China Writing by Philip Pullella Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Beijing Editing by Giles Elgood Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian teenager attacked a group of younger students with an ax, injuring six people, before setting his school on fire, investigators said on Friday.</p> Law enforcement officers stand guard near a local school, after a student with an axe attacked schoolchildren and a teacher in the city of Ulan-Ude, Russia January 19, 2018. REUTERS/Anna Ogorodnik/BMK <p>Russia&#8217;s Investigative Committee said the attacker, a ninth-grader, attacked a group of seventh-grade students with an ax at a school just outside the Siberian city of Ulan-Ude, then set the room ablaze.</p> <p>Five students and one teacher were injured in the attack, the committee said. The attacker was detained and was now hospitalized after a suicide attempt, the committee said.</p> <p>Earlier this week, investigators opened a criminal case into a knife attack that injured 15 people at a school in the city of Perm. The case was initially reported as an assault by two masked men, but authorities later said it grew out of a knife fight between two students.</p> <p>Reporting by Gabrielle T&#233;trault-Farber, editing by Larry King</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department said on Saturday reports of mass casualties from an alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria, were &#8220;horrifying&#8221; and would demand an international response if confirmed.</p> <p>&#8220;These reports, if confirmed, are horrifying and demand an immediate response by the international community,&#8221; State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement.</p> <p>Citing a history of chemical weapons use by the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Nauert said Assad&#8217;s government and its backer Russia needed to be held accountable and &#8220;any further attacks prevented immediately.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;Russia, with its unwavering support for the regime ultimately bears responsibility for these brutal attacks,&#8221; Nauert said.</p> <p>Reporting by Tim Ahmann; Editing by Michael Perry</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>SAO BERNARDO DO CAMPO, Brazil (Reuters) - Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva turned himself in to police on Saturday, ending a day-long standoff to begin serving a 12-year prison sentence for corruption that derails his bid to return to power.</p> Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is carried by supporters in front of the metallurgic trade union in Sao Bernardo do Campo, Brazil, April 7, 2018. REUTERS/Francisco Proer <p>Lula was flown by police to the southern city of Curitiba, where he was tried and convicted late last year, and taken to the federal police headquarters there to serve his sentence. Protesters supporting Lula clashed with police outside the walls of the building. Officers used stun grenades, tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse the crowd.</p> <p>In a fiery speech hours earlier to a crowd of supporters of his Workers Party outside the union building in Sao Paulo, Brazil&#8217;s first working class president insisted on his innocence and called his bribery conviction a political crime, but said he would turn himself in.</p> <p>&#8220;I will comply with the order,&#8221; he told the cheering crowd. &#8220;I&#8217;m not above the law. If I didn&#8217;t believe in the law, I wouldn&#8217;t have started a political party. I would have started a revolution.&#8221;</p> Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva walks to enter a Federal Police plane in Sao Paulo, Brazil, April 7, 2018. REUTERS/Paulo Whitaker <p>Lula, who faces six more trials on corruption charges, finally ended the standoff when he moved out in a convoy of black police SUVs after pushing his way out of the steel workers union headquarters where he had taken refuge. He entered police custody more than 24 hours after a court deadline on Friday afternoon.</p> <p>Lula&#8217;s imprisonment removes Brazil&#8217;s most influential political figure and front-runner from this year&#8217;s presidential campaign, throwing the race wide open and strengthening the odds of a more centrist candidate prevailing, according to analysts and political foes.</p> <p>It also marks the end of an era for Brazil&#8217;s left, which was out in force in the streets outside of the union headquarters in the industrial suburb of Sao Paulo where Lula&#8217;s political career began four decades ago as a union organizer.</p> <p>The throngs of supporters, which began gathering when he arrived late on Thursday night, dissuaded police from trying to take him into custody and heightened concerns about a violent showdown.</p> <p>Supporters blocked Lula&#8217;s first attempt to leave the union building on Saturday afternoon, pushing back against fellow party members trying to open the gate for his car to leave. Workers Party chief Gleisi Hoffmann pleaded with supporters to let him exit.</p> <p>Lula was convicted of taking bribes, including renovation of a three-story seaside apartment that he denies ever owning, from an engineering firm in return for help landing public contracts.</p> Slideshow (15 Images) <p>&#8220;I&#8217;m the only person being prosecuted over an apartment that isn&#8217;t mine,&#8221; insisted Lula, standing on a sound truck alongside his impeached handpicked successor Dilma Rousseff and leaders of other left-wing parties.</p> <p>A Brazilian Supreme Court justice on Saturday rejected the latest plea by Lula&#8217;s legal team, which argued they had not exhausted procedural appeals when a judge issued the order to turn himself in.</p> <p>Under Brazilian electoral law, a candidate is forbidden from running for office for eight years after being found guilty of a crime. Rare exceptions have been made in the past, and the final decision would be made by the top electoral court if and when Lula officially files to be a candidate.</p> <p>The union where Lula, 72, sought refuge was the launch pad for his career in the late 1970s leading nationwide strikes that helped to end Brazil&#8217;s 1964-85 military dictatorship.</p> <p>Lula&#8217;s everyman style and unvarnished speeches electrified masses and eventually won him two terms as president, from 2003 to 2011, when he oversaw robust economic growth and falling inequality amid a commodities boom.</p> <p>&#8220;Those who condemn me without proof know that I am innocent and I governed honestly,&#8221; Lula said in a video message to his supporters. &#8220;Those who persecute me can do what they want to me, but they will never imprison our dreams.&#8221;</p> <p>Additional reporting by Lisandra Paraguass&#250;, Ricardo Brito and Jake Spring in Brasilia, and Brad Brooks in Sao Paulo; Writing by Anthony Boadle and Jake Spring; Editing by Sandra Maler</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BEIRUT (Reuters) - A chemical attack on a rebel-held town in eastern Ghouta killed dozens of people, a medical relief organization and a rescue service said, and Washington said the reports - if confirmed - would demand an immediate international response.</p> <p>Medical relief organization Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) said 41 people had been killed, with other reports putting the death toll much higher. The civil defense rescue service, which operates in rebel-held areas of Syria, put it as high as 150 in a report on one of its Twitter feeds.</p> <p>The Russian-backed Syrian state denied government forces had launched any chemical attack as the reports began circulating on Saturday night and said rebels in the eastern Ghouta town of Douma were in a state of collapse and spreading false news.</p> <p>Reuters could not independently verify the reports.</p> <p>The lifeless bodies of around a dozen children, women and men, some of them with foam at the mouth, were shown in one video circulated by activists. &#8220;Douma city, April 7 ... there is a strong smell here,&#8221; a voice can be heard saying.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-attack-usa/u-s-says-reports-of-chemical-attack-in-syria-horrifying-if-confirmed-calls-for-response-idUSKBN1HF02N" type="external">U.S. says reports of chemical attack in Syria 'horrifying' if confirmed, calls for response</a> <p>The U.S. State Department said reports of mass casualties from an alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma were &#8220;horrifying&#8221; and would, if confirmed, &#8220;demand an immediate response by the international community&#8221;.</p> <p>President Bashar al-Assad has won back control of nearly all of eastern Ghouta in a Russian-backed military campaign that began in February, leaving just Douma in rebel hands. After a lull of days, government forces began bombarding Douma again on Friday.</p> <p>The offensive in Ghouta has been one of the deadliest of the seven-year-long war, killing more than 1,600 civilians according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.</p> <p>The Observatory said it could not confirm if chemical weapons had been used in the attack on Saturday.</p> <p>Observatory Director Rami Abdulrahman said 11 people had died in Douma as a result of suffocation caused by the smoke from conventional weapons being dropped by the government. It said a total of 70 people suffered breathing difficulties.</p> <p>Medical relief organization SAMS said a chlorine bomb hit Douma hospital, killing six people, and a second attack with &#8220;mixed agents&#8221; including nerve agents had hit a nearby building.</p> <p>Basel Termanini, the U.S.-based vice president of SAMS, told Reuters another 35 people had been killed at the nearby apartment building, most of them women and children.</p> <p>SAMS operates 139 medical facilities in Syria where it supports 1,880 medical personnel, according to its website.</p> <p>&#8220;We are contacting the U.N. and the U.S. government and the European governments,&#8221; he said by telephone.</p> <p>Syrian state news agency SANA said the rebel group in Douma, Jaish al-Islam, was making &#8220;chemical attack fabrications in an exposed and failed attempt to obstruct advances by the Syrian Arab army,&#8221; citing an official source.</p> <p>U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauret recalled a 2017 sarin gas attack in northwestern Syria that the West and the United Nations blamed on Assad&#8217;s government.</p> <p>&#8220;The Assad regime and its backers must be held accountable and any further attacks prevented immediately,&#8221; she said.</p> <p>&#8220;The United States calls on Russia to end this unmitigated support immediately and work with the international community to prevent further, barbaric chemical weapons attacks,&#8221; Nauert said in a statement.</p> <p>The Syrian government has repeatedly denied using chemical weapons during the conflict.</p> <p>Reporting by Dahlia Nehme and Mustafa Hashem; Additional reporting by Patrick Rucker and Tim Ahmann in Washington; Editing by Hugh Lawson and Sandra Maler</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>MOSCOW (Reuters) - The United States on Friday imposed major sanctions against 24 Russians, striking at allies of President Vladimir Putin over Moscow&#8217;s alleged meddling in the 2016 U.S. election and other &#8220;malign activity&#8221;.</p> A combination of file photos show prominent Russian businessmen and officials on a U.S. sanctions list released by the U.S. Treasury Department in Washington, D.C. April 6, 2018. (Top, L-R) Oleg Deripaska, Vladimir Bogdanov, Suleiman Kerimov, Kirill Shamalov, Viktor Vekselberg, (middle L-R) Mikhail Fradkov, Sergei Fursenko, Alexei Dyumin, Vladimir Kolokoltsev, Konstantin Kosachev, (bottom, L-R) Andrei Kostin, Alexei Miller, Nikolai Patrushev, Vladimir Ustinov, Viktor Zolotov. REUTERS/Files <p>Below are the most prominent businessmen targeted along with their main assets and connections as well as extracts from the U.S. Treasury statement.</p> DESIGNATED RUSSIAN OLIGARCHS <p>OLEG DERIPASKA, main owner of En+, co-owner of Rusal and Norilsk Nickel</p> <p>Deripaska is ranked by Forbes magazine as Russia&#8217;s 19th richest businessman with a net worth of $6.7 billion. Deripaska holds regular meetings with Putin, invested heavily in Russia&#8217;s 2014 Sochi winter Olympics, and has said his own interests are indivisible from the state&#8217;s.</p> <p>En+ has a 48 percent stake in Rusal, one of the world&#8217;s largest aluminum producers. Rusal is listed in Hong Kong and counts Glencore among its shareholders.</p> <p>Rusal has assets in Italy, Ireland, Sweden, as well as Nigeria, Guyana, Guinea, and a stake in Australian QAL, the world&#8217;s top alumina refinery. Over 10 percent of Rusal&#8217;s total sales go to the United States.</p> FROM U.S. TREASURY STATEMENT: <p>&#8220;Oleg Deripaska is being designated ... for having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, a senior official of the Government of the Russian Federation, as well as ... for operating in the energy sector of the Russian Federation economy.&#8221;</p> <p>VIKTOR VEKSELBERG, key owner of Renova holding group</p> <p>Forbes magazine ranks Vekselberg as Russia&#8217;s ninth richest businessman with a net worth of $14.4 billion. He is famous for bringing back a collection of Faberge eggs to Russia.</p> <p>Apart from Russia, Renova has assets in the United States and Europe, of which the most notable are stakes in the Swiss companies Sulzer, Schmolz+Bickenbach and Oerlikon. They are not under sanctions.</p> <p>Vekselberg and his partners also have a stake in Rusal, which supplies aluminum to the United States and other countries.</p> FROM U.S. TREASURY STATEMENT: <p>&#8220;Viktor Vekselberg is being designated for operating in the energy sector of the Russian Federation economy.&amp;#160;Vekselberg is the founder and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Renova Group.&#8221;</p> <p>KIRILL SHAMALOV, minority shareholder with petrochemical company Sibur</p> <p>Shamalov married Putin&#8217;s youngest daughter Katerina in February 2013, multiple sources who were at the wedding told Reuters. After the marriage, he swiftly grew his wealth through investments in Russia&#8217;s biggest petrochemical company Sibur. Unconfirmed media reports say Shamalov and Putin&#8217;s daughter have since split.</p> <p>Forbes magazine says Shamalov is Russia&#8217;s 72nd richest businessman with a net worth of $1.4 billion. Shamalov now owns 3.9 pct in Sibur. Gennady Timchenko, a close associate of President Vladimir Putin, holds a stake in the company as well. Sibur is not under sanctions.</p> FROM U.S. TREASURY STATEMENT: <p>&#8220;Kirill Shamalov is being designated for operating in the energy sector of the Russian Federation economy.&amp;#160;Shamalov married Putin&#8217;s daughter Katerina Tikhonova in February 2013 and his fortunes drastically improved following the marriage.&#8221;</p> <p>ANDREI SKOCH, a deputy in the Russian State Duma, the lower house of parliament</p> <p>Forbes magazine says Skoch is Russia&#8217;s 23rd wealthiest businessman with a net worth of $4.9 billion. Skoch&#8217;s father, Vladimir, owns a stake in USM holding. Businessman Alisher Usmanov is a key shareholder in USM. Neither Usmanov nor USM are under sanctions.</p> <p>Via USM, Skoch&#8217;s father co-owns Metalloinvest, Russia&#8217;s&amp;#160;largest and the world&#8217;s&amp;#160;second-largest&amp;#160;mining company by&amp;#160;the size of&amp;#160;iron ore reserves, with units in Ireland, Switzerland and Guinea.</p> <p>USM also has stakes in Megafon, Russia&#8217;s second largest mobile operator, in MAIL.RU Group, one of Russia&#8217;s largest internet companies, and in Russian social networks VKontakte and Odnoklassniki.</p> <p>USM also has stakes in Alibaba, JD.com, Xiaomi, Uber, Spotify, Airbnb, Zalando, Flipkart, Ola Cabs, Didi Chuxing, ZocDoc and Klarna.</p> FROM U.S. TREASURY STATEMENT: <p>&#8220;Andrei Skoch is being designated for being an official of the Government of the Russian Federation.&amp;#160;Skoch is a deputy of the Russian Federation&#8217;s State Duma.&#8221;</p> <p>SULEIMAN KERIMOV, member of the Russian upper house of parliament</p> <p>Kerimov is ranked by Forbes magazine as Russia&#8217;s 20th wealthiest businessman, with a net worth of $6.4 billion. Embroiled in a tax fraud investigation in France, the Kremlin has said it will do all it can to help him.</p> <p>Polyus, Russia&#8217;s largest gold producer, is controlled by Kerimov&#8217;s family. Polyus is not under sanctions.</p> FROM U.S. TREASURY STATEMENT: <p>&#8220;Suleiman Kerimov is being designated for being an official of the Government of the Russian Federation.&amp;#160;Kerimov is a member of the Russian Federation Council.&#8221;</p> <p>VLADIMIR BOGDANOV, chief executive of oil company Surgutneftegaz</p> <p>Forbes magazine puts Bogdanov&#8217;s net worth at $1.8 billion, making him Russia&#8217;s 53rd wealthiest businessman.</p> <p>Siberia&#8217;s Surgut sits on Russia&#8217;s biggest corporate cash pile, with bank deposits and cash totaling 2.2 trillion rubles($38 billion) in 2017, according to Reuters calculations based on its regulatory filings.</p> <p>The company is owned by its employees, according to official data. Gennady Timchenko, a friend of Putin who is under U.S. sanctions, said in a 2012 interview with Forbes magazine that Surgut was trading oil through Timchenko&#8217;s trading companies.</p> <p>Surgutneftegaz is already under sanctions.</p> FROM U.S. TREASURY STATEMENT: <p>&#8220;Vladimir Bogdanov is being designated for operating in the energy sector of the Russian Federation economy.&amp;#160;Bogdanov is the Director General and Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors of Surgutneftegaz, a vertically integrated oil company operating in Russia.&#8221;</p> <p>IGOR ROTENBERG, son of Arkady Rotenberg, Putin&#8217;s former judo partner</p> <p>Forbes magazine says Igor Rotenberg is Russia&#8217;s 93rd richest businessman and worth $1.1 billion.</p> <p>Arkady Rotenberg and his brother Boris Rotenberg are already under sanctions due to their close connections to Putin whom they have known since they practiced judo together in St Petersburg in Putin&#8217;s younger days. Arkady Rotenberg is now overseeing the construction of a bridge Putin has championed to Russia-annexed Crimea.</p> FROM U.S. TREASURY STATEMENT: <p>&#8220;Igor Rotenberg is being designated for operating in the energy sector of the Russian Federation economy.&amp;#160;Rotenberg acquired significant assets from his father, Arkady Rotenberg, after OFAC designated the latter in March 2014.&amp;#160;Specifically Arkady Rotenberg sold Igor Rotenberg 79 percent of the Russian oil and gas drilling company Gazprom Burenie.&#8221;</p> <p>DESIGNATED OLIGARCH-OWNED COMPANIES</p> <p>Companies from Deripaska&#8217;s business empire:</p> <p>B-Finance Ltd, Basic Element, EN+ Group, EuroSibEnergo, Rusal, Russian Machines, GAZ Group, Agroholding Kuban</p> <p>Companies from Igor Rotenberg&#8217;s business empire:</p> <p>Gazprom Burenie, which provides oil and gas exploration services in Russia and NPV Engineering</p> <p>Shamalov&#8217;s Ladoga Menedzhment which is engaged in deposit banking</p> <p>Vekselberg&#8217;s Renova Group</p> <p>DESIGNATED RUSSIAN STATE-OWNED FIRMS</p> FILE PHOTO: Red Square, St. Basil's Cathedral (L) and the Spasskaya Tower of the Kremlin are seen through a gate in central Moscow, September 18, 2014. REUTERS/Maxim Zmeyev/File Photo <p>Rosoboroneksport and the Russian Financial Corporation Bank which is owned by Rosoboroneksport</p> DESIGNATED RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS <p>Andrey Akimov, chairman of the board at Gazprombank</p> <p>Andrey Kostin, president of VTB bank</p> <p>*Alexey Miller, chief executive of Gazprom</p> <p>Mikhail Fradkov, president of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies</p> <p>Sergey Fursenko, member of the board of directors of Gazprom Neft</p> <p>Oleg Govorun, head of the Presidential Directorate for Social and Economic Cooperation with the Commonwealth of Independent States Member Countries</p> <p>Alexey Dyumin, the governor of the Tula region</p> <p>Vladimir Kolokoltsev, the minister of internal affairs</p> <p>Konstantin Kosachev, the chairperson of the council of the Federation Committee on Foreign Affairs</p> <p>Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of the Russian Federation Security Council</p> <p>Vladislav Reznik, member of the Russian State Duma</p> <p>Evgeniy Shkolov, an aide to the President Vladimir Putin</p> <p>Alexander Torshin, deputy governor of the central bank</p> <p>Vladimir Ustinov, the plenipotentiary envoy to Russia&#8217;s Southern Federal District</p> <p>Timur Valiulin, the head of the General Administration for Combating Extremism within Russia&#8217;s Interior Ministry</p> <p>Alexander Zharov, the head of Roskomnadzor</p> <p>Viktor Zolotov, the director of the Federal Service of National Guard Troops and Commander of the National Guard Troops</p> <p>*Gazprom&#8217;s key European partners include OMV, Engie, Uniper, Royal Dutch Shell, BASF, E.ON, Eni, Gasunie, as well as Turkey&#8217;s Botas, China&#8217;s CNPC, Japan&#8217;s Mitsui and Mitsubishi, among others.</p> <p>**Data from OFAC, public interviews, companies information</p> <p>Reporting by Katya Golubkova, Gleb Stolyarov, Oksana Kobzeva and Vladimir Soldatkin, editing by Andrew Osborn and Jason Neely</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Russian student injures six in an ax attack at his school U.S. says reports of chemical attack in Syria 'horrifying' if confirmed, calls for response Lula turns himself in to Brazil police, ending standoff Dozens reported killed in suspected Syria gas attack, Damascus denies Russian businessmen, officials on new U.S. sanctions list

https://reuters.com/article/us-russia-attack-school/russian-student-injures-six-in-an-ax-attack-at-his-school-idUSKBN1F811L

2018-01-19

2least

MOSCOW Reuters A Russian teenager attacked a group of younger students with an ax injuring six people before setting his school on fire investigators said on Friday Law enforcement officers stand guard near a local school after a student with an axe attacked schoolchildren and a teacher in the city of UlanUde Russia January 19 2018 REUTERSAnna OgorodnikBMK Russia8217s Investigative Committee said the attacker a ninthgrader attacked a group of seventhgrade students with an ax at a school just outside the Siberian city of UlanUde then set the room ablaze Five students and one teacher were injured in the attack the committee said The attacker was detained and was now hospitalized after a suicide attempt the committee said Earlier this week investigators opened a criminal case into a knife attack that injured 15 people at a school in the city of Perm The case was initially reported as an assault by two masked men but authorities later said it grew out of a knife fight between two students Reporting by Gabrielle T233traultFarber editing by Larry King Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters The US State Department said on Saturday reports of mass casualties from an alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma Syria were 8220horrifying8221 and would demand an international response if confirmed 8220These reports if confirmed are horrifying and demand an immediate response by the international community8221 State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement Citing a history of chemical weapons use by the government of Syrian President Bashar alAssad Nauert said Assad8217s government and its backer Russia needed to be held accountable and 8220any further attacks prevented immediately8221 8220Russia with its unwavering support for the regime ultimately bears responsibility for these brutal attacks8221 Nauert said Reporting by Tim Ahmann Editing by Michael Perry Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles SAO BERNARDO DO CAMPO Brazil Reuters Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva turned himself in to police on Saturday ending a daylong standoff to begin serving a 12year prison sentence for corruption that derails his bid to return to power Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is carried by supporters in front of the metallurgic trade union in Sao Bernardo do Campo Brazil April 7 2018 REUTERSFrancisco Proer Lula was flown by police to the southern city of Curitiba where he was tried and convicted late last year and taken to the federal police headquarters there to serve his sentence Protesters supporting Lula clashed with police outside the walls of the building Officers used stun grenades tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse the crowd In a fiery speech hours earlier to a crowd of supporters of his Workers Party outside the union building in Sao Paulo Brazil8217s first working class president insisted on his innocence and called his bribery conviction a political crime but said he would turn himself in 8220I will comply with the order8221 he told the cheering crowd 8220I8217m not above the law If I didn8217t believe in the law I wouldn8217t have started a political party I would have started a revolution8221 Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva walks to enter a Federal Police plane in Sao Paulo Brazil April 7 2018 REUTERSPaulo Whitaker Lula who faces six more trials on corruption charges finally ended the standoff when he moved out in a convoy of black police SUVs after pushing his way out of the steel workers union headquarters where he had taken refuge He entered police custody more than 24 hours after a court deadline on Friday afternoon Lula8217s imprisonment removes Brazil8217s most influential political figure and frontrunner from this year8217s presidential campaign throwing the race wide open and strengthening the odds of a more centrist candidate prevailing according to analysts and political foes It also marks the end of an era for Brazil8217s left which was out in force in the streets outside of the union headquarters in the industrial suburb of Sao Paulo where Lula8217s political career began four decades ago as a union organizer The throngs of supporters which began gathering when he arrived late on Thursday night dissuaded police from trying to take him into custody and heightened concerns about a violent showdown Supporters blocked Lula8217s first attempt to leave the union building on Saturday afternoon pushing back against fellow party members trying to open the gate for his car to leave Workers Party chief Gleisi Hoffmann pleaded with supporters to let him exit Lula was convicted of taking bribes including renovation of a threestory seaside apartment that he denies ever owning from an engineering firm in return for help landing public contracts Slideshow 15 Images 8220I8217m the only person being prosecuted over an apartment that isn8217t mine8221 insisted Lula standing on a sound truck alongside his impeached handpicked successor Dilma Rousseff and leaders of other leftwing parties A Brazilian Supreme Court justice on Saturday rejected the latest plea by Lula8217s legal team which argued they had not exhausted procedural appeals when a judge issued the order to turn himself in Under Brazilian electoral law a candidate is forbidden from running for office for eight years after being found guilty of a crime Rare exceptions have been made in the past and the final decision would be made by the top electoral court if and when Lula officially files to be a candidate The union where Lula 72 sought refuge was the launch pad for his career in the late 1970s leading nationwide strikes that helped to end Brazil8217s 196485 military dictatorship Lula8217s everyman style and unvarnished speeches electrified masses and eventually won him two terms as president from 2003 to 2011 when he oversaw robust economic growth and falling inequality amid a commodities boom 8220Those who condemn me without proof know that I am innocent and I governed honestly8221 Lula said in a video message to his supporters 8220Those who persecute me can do what they want to me but they will never imprison our dreams8221 Additional reporting by Lisandra Paraguass250 Ricardo Brito and Jake Spring in Brasilia and Brad Brooks in Sao Paulo Writing by Anthony Boadle and Jake Spring Editing by Sandra Maler Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BEIRUT Reuters A chemical attack on a rebelheld town in eastern Ghouta killed dozens of people a medical relief organization and a rescue service said and Washington said the reports if confirmed would demand an immediate international response Medical relief organization Syrian American Medical Society SAMS said 41 people had been killed with other reports putting the death toll much higher The civil defense rescue service which operates in rebelheld areas of Syria put it as high as 150 in a report on one of its Twitter feeds The Russianbacked Syrian state denied government forces had launched any chemical attack as the reports began circulating on Saturday night and said rebels in the eastern Ghouta town of Douma were in a state of collapse and spreading false news Reuters could not independently verify the reports The lifeless bodies of around a dozen children women and men some of them with foam at the mouth were shown in one video circulated by activists 8220Douma city April 7 there is a strong smell here8221 a voice can be heard saying Related Coverage US says reports of chemical attack in Syria horrifying if confirmed calls for response The US State Department said reports of mass casualties from an alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma were 8220horrifying8221 and would if confirmed 8220demand an immediate response by the international community8221 President Bashar alAssad has won back control of nearly all of eastern Ghouta in a Russianbacked military campaign that began in February leaving just Douma in rebel hands After a lull of days government forces began bombarding Douma again on Friday The offensive in Ghouta has been one of the deadliest of the sevenyearlong war killing more than 1600 civilians according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights The Observatory said it could not confirm if chemical weapons had been used in the attack on Saturday Observatory Director Rami Abdulrahman said 11 people had died in Douma as a result of suffocation caused by the smoke from conventional weapons being dropped by the government It said a total of 70 people suffered breathing difficulties Medical relief organization SAMS said a chlorine bomb hit Douma hospital killing six people and a second attack with 8220mixed agents8221 including nerve agents had hit a nearby building Basel Termanini the USbased vice president of SAMS told Reuters another 35 people had been killed at the nearby apartment building most of them women and children SAMS operates 139 medical facilities in Syria where it supports 1880 medical personnel according to its website 8220We are contacting the UN and the US government and the European governments8221 he said by telephone Syrian state news agency SANA said the rebel group in Douma Jaish alIslam was making 8220chemical attack fabrications in an exposed and failed attempt to obstruct advances by the Syrian Arab army8221 citing an official source US State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauret recalled a 2017 sarin gas attack in northwestern Syria that the West and the United Nations blamed on Assad8217s government 8220The Assad regime and its backers must be held accountable and any further attacks prevented immediately8221 she said 8220The United States calls on Russia to end this unmitigated support immediately and work with the international community to prevent further barbaric chemical weapons attacks8221 Nauert said in a statement The Syrian government has repeatedly denied using chemical weapons during the conflict Reporting by Dahlia Nehme and Mustafa Hashem Additional reporting by Patrick Rucker and Tim Ahmann in Washington Editing by Hugh Lawson and Sandra Maler Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles MOSCOW Reuters The United States on Friday imposed major sanctions against 24 Russians striking at allies of President Vladimir Putin over Moscow8217s alleged meddling in the 2016 US election and other 8220malign activity8221 A combination of file photos show prominent Russian businessmen and officials on a US sanctions list released by the US Treasury Department in Washington DC April 6 2018 Top LR Oleg Deripaska Vladimir Bogdanov Suleiman Kerimov Kirill Shamalov Viktor Vekselberg middle LR Mikhail Fradkov Sergei Fursenko Alexei Dyumin Vladimir Kolokoltsev Konstantin Kosachev bottom LR Andrei Kostin Alexei Miller Nikolai Patrushev Vladimir Ustinov Viktor Zolotov REUTERSFiles Below are the most prominent businessmen targeted along with their main assets and connections as well as extracts from the US Treasury statement DESIGNATED RUSSIAN OLIGARCHS OLEG DERIPASKA main owner of En coowner of Rusal and Norilsk Nickel Deripaska is ranked by Forbes magazine as Russia8217s 19th richest businessman with a net worth of 67 billion Deripaska holds regular meetings with Putin invested heavily in Russia8217s 2014 Sochi winter Olympics and has said his own interests are indivisible from the state8217s En has a 48 percent stake in Rusal one of the world8217s largest aluminum producers Rusal is listed in Hong Kong and counts Glencore among its shareholders Rusal has assets in Italy Ireland Sweden as well as Nigeria Guyana Guinea and a stake in Australian QAL the world8217s top alumina refinery Over 10 percent of Rusal8217s total sales go to the United States FROM US TREASURY STATEMENT 8220Oleg Deripaska is being designated for having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of directly or indirectly a senior official of the Government of the Russian Federation as well as for operating in the energy sector of the Russian Federation economy8221 VIKTOR VEKSELBERG key owner of Renova holding group Forbes magazine ranks Vekselberg as Russia8217s ninth richest businessman with a net worth of 144 billion He is famous for bringing back a collection of Faberge eggs to Russia Apart from Russia Renova has assets in the United States and Europe of which the most notable are stakes in the Swiss companies Sulzer SchmolzBickenbach and Oerlikon They are not under sanctions Vekselberg and his partners also have a stake in Rusal which supplies aluminum to the United States and other countries FROM US TREASURY STATEMENT 8220Viktor Vekselberg is being designated for operating in the energy sector of the Russian Federation economyamp160Vekselberg is the founder and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Renova Group8221 KIRILL SHAMALOV minority shareholder with petrochemical company Sibur Shamalov married Putin8217s youngest daughter Katerina in February 2013 multiple sources who were at the wedding told Reuters After the marriage he swiftly grew his wealth through investments in Russia8217s biggest petrochemical company Sibur Unconfirmed media reports say Shamalov and Putin8217s daughter have since split Forbes magazine says Shamalov is Russia8217s 72nd richest businessman with a net worth of 14 billion Shamalov now owns 39 pct in Sibur Gennady Timchenko a close associate of President Vladimir Putin holds a stake in the company as well Sibur is not under sanctions FROM US TREASURY STATEMENT 8220Kirill Shamalov is being designated for operating in the energy sector of the Russian Federation economyamp160Shamalov married Putin8217s daughter Katerina Tikhonova in February 2013 and his fortunes drastically improved following the marriage8221 ANDREI SKOCH a deputy in the Russian State Duma the lower house of parliament Forbes magazine says Skoch is Russia8217s 23rd wealthiest businessman with a net worth of 49 billion Skoch8217s father Vladimir owns a stake in USM holding Businessman Alisher Usmanov is a key shareholder in USM Neither Usmanov nor USM are under sanctions Via USM Skoch8217s father coowns Metalloinvest Russia8217samp160largest and the world8217samp160secondlargestamp160mining company byamp160the size ofamp160iron ore reserves with units in Ireland Switzerland and Guinea USM also has stakes in Megafon Russia8217s second largest mobile operator in MAILRU Group one of Russia8217s largest internet companies and in Russian social networks VKontakte and Odnoklassniki USM also has stakes in Alibaba JDcom Xiaomi Uber Spotify Airbnb Zalando Flipkart Ola Cabs Didi Chuxing ZocDoc and Klarna FROM US TREASURY STATEMENT 8220Andrei Skoch is being designated for being an official of the Government of the Russian Federationamp160Skoch is a deputy of the Russian Federation8217s State Duma8221 SULEIMAN KERIMOV member of the Russian upper house of parliament Kerimov is ranked by Forbes magazine as Russia8217s 20th wealthiest businessman with a net worth of 64 billion Embroiled in a tax fraud investigation in France the Kremlin has said it will do all it can to help him Polyus Russia8217s largest gold producer is controlled by Kerimov8217s family Polyus is not under sanctions FROM US TREASURY STATEMENT 8220Suleiman Kerimov is being designated for being an official of the Government of the Russian Federationamp160Kerimov is a member of the Russian Federation Council8221 VLADIMIR BOGDANOV chief executive of oil company Surgutneftegaz Forbes magazine puts Bogdanov8217s net worth at 18 billion making him Russia8217s 53rd wealthiest businessman Siberia8217s Surgut sits on Russia8217s biggest corporate cash pile with bank deposits and cash totaling 22 trillion rubles38 billion in 2017 according to Reuters calculations based on its regulatory filings The company is owned by its employees according to official data Gennady Timchenko a friend of Putin who is under US sanctions said in a 2012 interview with Forbes magazine that Surgut was trading oil through Timchenko8217s trading companies Surgutneftegaz is already under sanctions FROM US TREASURY STATEMENT 8220Vladimir Bogdanov is being designated for operating in the energy sector of the Russian Federation economyamp160Bogdanov is the Director General and Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors of Surgutneftegaz a vertically integrated oil company operating in Russia8221 IGOR ROTENBERG son of Arkady Rotenberg Putin8217s former judo partner Forbes magazine says Igor Rotenberg is Russia8217s 93rd richest businessman and worth 11 billion Arkady Rotenberg and his brother Boris Rotenberg are already under sanctions due to their close connections to Putin whom they have known since they practiced judo together in St Petersburg in Putin8217s younger days Arkady Rotenberg is now overseeing the construction of a bridge Putin has championed to Russiaannexed Crimea FROM US TREASURY STATEMENT 8220Igor Rotenberg is being designated for operating in the energy sector of the Russian Federation economyamp160Rotenberg acquired significant assets from his father Arkady Rotenberg after OFAC designated the latter in March 2014amp160Specifically Arkady Rotenberg sold Igor Rotenberg 79 percent of the Russian oil and gas drilling company Gazprom Burenie8221 DESIGNATED OLIGARCHOWNED COMPANIES Companies from Deripaska8217s business empire BFinance Ltd Basic Element EN Group EuroSibEnergo Rusal Russian Machines GAZ Group Agroholding Kuban Companies from Igor Rotenberg8217s business empire Gazprom Burenie which provides oil and gas exploration services in Russia and NPV Engineering Shamalov8217s Ladoga Menedzhment which is engaged in deposit banking Vekselberg8217s Renova Group DESIGNATED RUSSIAN STATEOWNED FIRMS FILE PHOTO Red Square St Basils Cathedral L and the Spasskaya Tower of the Kremlin are seen through a gate in central Moscow September 18 2014 REUTERSMaxim ZmeyevFile Photo Rosoboroneksport and the Russian Financial Corporation Bank which is owned by Rosoboroneksport DESIGNATED RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS Andrey Akimov chairman of the board at Gazprombank Andrey Kostin president of VTB bank Alexey Miller chief executive of Gazprom Mikhail Fradkov president of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies Sergey Fursenko member of the board of directors of Gazprom Neft Oleg Govorun head of the Presidential Directorate for Social and Economic Cooperation with the Commonwealth of Independent States Member Countries Alexey Dyumin the governor of the Tula region Vladimir Kolokoltsev the minister of internal affairs Konstantin Kosachev the chairperson of the council of the Federation Committee on Foreign Affairs Nikolai Patrushev secretary of the Russian Federation Security Council Vladislav Reznik member of the Russian State Duma Evgeniy Shkolov an aide to the President Vladimir Putin Alexander Torshin deputy governor of the central bank Vladimir Ustinov the plenipotentiary envoy to Russia8217s Southern Federal District Timur Valiulin the head of the General Administration for Combating Extremism within Russia8217s Interior Ministry Alexander Zharov the head of Roskomnadzor Viktor Zolotov the director of the Federal Service of National Guard Troops and Commander of the National Guard Troops Gazprom8217s key European partners include OMV Engie Uniper Royal Dutch Shell BASF EON Eni Gasunie as well as Turkey8217s Botas China8217s CNPC Japan8217s Mitsui and Mitsubishi among others Data from OFAC public interviews companies information Reporting by Katya Golubkova Gleb Stolyarov Oksana Kobzeva and Vladimir Soldatkin editing by Andrew Osborn and Jason Neely Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>Supposedly, if you put live frogs in a kettle of cold water on the stove, then raise the temperature very slowly, the frogs will eventually boil to death without trying to escape. I don&#8217;t know if that is true, but it does seem the perfect, if sometimes overused, analogy for what we see going on around us in America. My guess is that we frogs are about medium done for. Having never cooked frogs or lived in a fascist state, I am not a practiced judge of these things, but I&#8217;m quite sure the end result of either is in no way desirable for frogs or human beings.</p> <p>I do notice however, that some frogs are turning quite red. Here in the States there is now a trend of wearing red on Fridays in silent protest of the Bush junta. Reportedly, this is modeled after a 1940 practice by citizens of Nazi occupied Norway, though it is hard to imagine why oppressed Norwegians would do anything that might make them stand out to their oppressors. Still, urban legend or not, it&#8217;s all over the Internet and one would suppose quite a few people on the &#8220;left-coast&#8221; are sporting red. By now, it&#8217;s probably old hat out there.</p> <p>Not so here in the Washington D.C. area, where we have always thought twice before expressing dissent with any administration, given that the government dominates employment and many other aspects of our lives, either directly or indirectly. If your employer does not sell something to the government, your spouse may well work in a federal agency, etc. Political views do affect things at work, and it is usually best to keep them to yourself. But these days many of us feel something stranger than normal Washington politics going on&#8212;an unseen, mostly unspoken, but surely felt atmosphere of spooky fear.</p> <p>Is it chilly in here, or is that the leer of a mad man?</p> <p>Still though, the Eastern Seaboard has always been more repressed than the West. So if you mention in polite company how spooky our current political regime seems, most will look at you like you are crazy, or perhaps even explode into a fanatical defense of George W. Bush, in which case you know you have pressed a neo-con&#8217;s button. Only a minority here will openly discuss the chilling parallels that informed people see in the Bush junta with the rise of Nazi Germany. This is partly because the more hysterical liberals have abused that analogy to death since the beginning of the administration, before there was much evidence; so it is has been considered off limits in moderate, intelligent circles.</p> <p>This is slowly changing I believe, because it is now becoming obvious that George W. Bush is not merely dumb&#8212;he may well be nuts. Every day his actions look more like a genuinely disordered and dangerous mind at work. Not exactly news to those of us who long ago read the same observation on the Internet, or in recently published books to that effect. But what is news is that ordinary nonpolitical white collar working puds, the dreary commuter tribes, in the suburbs and outlying towns are starting to whisper it among themselves. So maybe are beginning to more openly address the question of whether our commander in chief is a certifiable loopjob&#8212;and if he is, just what kind of nuts he may be&#8212;and do so in language average literate folks can understand without covering the entire Jungian cosmology or diving into Freud&#8217;s turgid depths. In calling numerous psychiatrist friends, I learned it is considered unethical for licensed psychiatrists to comment publicly on the mental state of an American president, and I can&#8217;t say I disagree with that. But the mind of the guy who now has one finger on the red nuclear button and the other up his nose is a matter that should be talked about and is being talked about and I&#8217;ll be damned if I&#8217;m going to avoid it. So we will have to punt and hope for the best.</p> <p>Let&#8217;s keep it simple: Stupidity alone cannot account for George Bush&#8217;s behavior&#8212;especially when his behavior so well matches known pathologies. For example, if an ordinary citizen believed he was being directed by God to attack &#8220;the governments where the Bible happened,&#8221; as he once described the Middle East, or thought that ordering the execution of a criminal was funny as hell, or saw everyone who disagreed with him as an agent of the Devil, he or she would be put on some heavy meds at the very least. Hell, I&#8217;ve been medicated for a lot less.</p> <p>A fellow named Paul Levy in Florida has circulated an email calling Bush&#8217;s condition &#8220;malignant narcissism.&#8221; As an off-again-on-again enthusiast of Jung and Freud, I was naturally interested in this, and after dredging up what I remember from psychology classes, a few books (and yes, a long stint in therapy myself) his observations seem at least a little insightful. If nothing else, he has given us some terms and contexts in which to consider what is going on. Contexts we will certainly never hear or see in the media.</p> <p>According to Levy, Bush&#8217;s behavior would be normal behavior for a malignant narcissist who finds himself with the kind of power a US president has. The narcissist would conclude that he is divinely inspired by God and see his command of the world&#8217;s mightiest army and its wealthiest nation as proof God blesses his efforts. In some ways that makes him an average American. Thanks to our Puritan beginnings, we have long believed that power and wealth are manifestations of God&#8217;s preference for an individual or a nation, and unfortunately tend to act on to this mystical assumption. Whether we are saving the world from communism by killing Southeast Asians or covertly assassinating the democratically elected leftist president of a Latin American nation, it is viewed as liberating the planet from the evil boogers Americans see everywhere, but which emanate from our own national psyche. The world being imperfect, America&#8217;s quest to make it perfect it by destroying all it considers impure can only lead to much world destruction, of course. It also bears a nasty resemblance to the Nazi obsession with purification.</p> <p>Another characteristic of malign narcissism is said to be a near or absolute lack of compassion. So when George Bush laughed and mocked the last-minute pleading of Carla Faye Tucker, whom he sent to the death chamber in Texas, (&#8220;Ohhh, pleeeeze don&#8217;t kill me!&#8221; he mimicked in a scornful whine on a conservative talk show) he had no idea saner people do not find this funny. I am told it is characteristic of malignant narcissists not to feel any remorse whatsoever. We might also assume that the deaths of American GIs have little effect on him either, though he must pretend so on camera.</p> <p>Ass-scratchers + God = strange times indeed</p> <p>Bush doesn&#8217;t fit our image of the hysterical madman exhorting a nation down a megalomaniacal path toward horror. In fact, most Americans, and quite understandably, would rather have a beer and watch a game with George Bush than, say, with Al Gore. Meaning that George Bush has what campaign strategists call &#8220;ass-scratcher appeal&#8221; with the average guy. He also seems to have a mesmerizing effect on conservative Americans that is totally inexplicable to the rest of us. He can lie, then lie about the lie, then all but admit he lied and they still come running and falling like wheat before the sickle.</p> <p>Personally, I think it is the power of delusion (having deluded some ex-wives, bosses and the IRS a few times myself,) Bush&#8217;s own and our national one. In his personal delusion Bush is so convinced of his own words that he comes off as very convincing to others. He is very seductive to most Americans&#8217; concept of themselves as a nation. To them he looks like the first president in a long time to assert what is &#8220;right about America,&#8221; and especially so following a president who was deemed &#8220;slick&#8221; and kept a woman under his desk (Which strikes some of us coarser types as pretty damned slick if you can get away with it.) Bush has charisma to those who believe the world is a mean place and that subtler considerations only get in the way. Especially fearful conservatives, always operating from the politics of scarcity, fearful of losing what they have gained materially, those being the core operating values of standard conservatism. Neo-conservatives, of course, are willing to kill you to get it in the first place.</p> <p>If Bush has given conservatives cause for joy, he has given fundamentalist Christians an absolute hard-on. With tears of joy and praise, they have embraced him as their long-awaited national savior, and if the concept of malign narcissism is right, about the only thing a narcissist finds more appealing than being president is being the Messiah. So, hand-in-hand Bush and these Christian soldiers, clothed in the infallible rightness of their agenda&#8212;an ultra-fundamentalist Christian America with dominion over a world hammered (bombed if need be) into a likeness of itself, they stomp forward in close hoplite ranks. Bush poses against backdrops that make halos of the presidential seal appearing as Christ-like as possible. The adoring throng does not fail to be properly inspired, despite his congenital close-eyed squint. Even without psychological theories of narcissism, the whole idea of ecstatic Christian masses spotting a halo around Bush&#8217;s head in Newsweek seems a little nuts at face value, though it must make Karl Rove pee his pants with glee in that campaign headquarters known as the White House.</p> <p>Now comes the Hitler analogy, and I&#8217;ll be damned if I am going to apologize for it: Just as Hitler struck a chord deep in the German unconscious, Bush is touching something within the American unconscious. Whether he is a manifestation of our national mental state, or whether we are unwitting agents of his could be argued. It certainly seems symbiotic. We did elect him for a reason, and history will probably record that reason as not being a very pretty one, the similarities in our national behavior being unnervingly similar to those of pre-war Germany. Why do so many assumedly decent, normal Americans support insane actions such as the Iraq War, strange off-shore wire cage prisons in Cuba, the government&#8217;s own admission of a dozen secret prisons around the world, or stubborn opposition to the world tribunal for war criminals and ethnic cleansers? Doesn&#8217;t anyone find these things strange? In fact, doesn&#8217;t anyone find it strange that two Bushes were elected president so closely together, the father being less than gifted, and the son as useless as tits on a boar hog? (Except at escaping his many failed businesses with loads of cash, rather like the gambler who shoots out the lights and grabs the pot.) If that&#8217;s not strange I don&#8217;t know what is. When Fidel Castro offered to monitor the 2000 presidential election count in Florida, we probably could not have done any worse by taking him up on it. Yet most Americans, including their media, did not seem to find all this one bit odd, and pretended that the Brownshirts torching black votes on down in Florida (despite the Brownshirts being orchestrated by yet a third Bush!) was just another zany little election fracas. Since then, the ACLU has won a lawsuit proving that it was indeed a mugging going on in Florida, and the courts have ordered those tens of thousands of black voters restored to the rolls. The Republican dominated state&#8217;s reply has been an unspoken but clear as hell, &#8220;fuck you!&#8221; Those black voters are still off the rolls as I write.</p> <p>I do not have to go as far as the Sunshine State to feel the chill of suspicious eyes upon me. Right here in Northern Virginia, the northernmost point of the American South, I get little moments of fear that make me wonder if I am being singled out. Maybe I&#8217;m just paranoid. The other day when the mailman delivered my subscriber copy of Socialist Worker, he felt perfectly comfortable questioning me rudely as to my national loyalty, as if I were some sort of fair game and not deserving of normal privacy or courtesy. A local rightwing politico, pissed about my liberal activism in housing, tells me she has friends in a government agency from which she retired, and has collected some pretty ugly facts about my past (none of which can be anything close to the alleged horrors in my divorce files.) I received an anonymous phone call regarding the same activism threatening a trumped-up lawsuit: &#8220;We&#8217;ll break you, you liberal sonofabitch. Don&#8217;t make us own your house boy!&#8221; In fact, last week the owner of a local Internet forum announced he had turned me in to the Homeland Security Administration due to the unpatriotic nature of my postings. Small things to be sure, but they add up. If nothing else, they say something about the political climate these days.</p> <p>When push comes to shove</p> <p>Someday historians may be tracking the spread of this malign political virus like we now trace the rise of earlier fascist movements. And I think they will conclude that it began here in the American South, that breeding ground of all things politically dark and deep-fried in hate, which gave us slavery, the Civil War, Orville Faubus, the Klan, Trent Lott, the fanatical Christian right the same sweat-soaked crooked venal South that that had no qualms about fixing a Florida election for George Bush. As a matter of fact, George W. Bush&#8217;s political career started in the South when he was organizing Christian support for his daddy. And it is through deal-making with some of its most scheming slimeballs (i.e., Pat Robertson delivering millions of holy-roller votes in exchange for government concessions worth tens of millions) that he helped get daddy elected. I believe that, like so many of our national carcinomas, the present one began in the South too. It is as if yet another American congenital defect manifests itself from down in that unconscious realm of the national psyche, from the land of the tobacco chawing sheriffs and snake-handling churches, to infect our entire political organism. But that&#8217;s another story.</p> <p>Meanwhile, it is hard not to notice that the administration polarized around Bush displays the same meanness. They see the same spooks, enemies and demons to be eliminated in every corner of the world and at home. The whole crew gives international law, the Geneva Conventions and civil liberties the same sneer. Are they as sick as he is? Or are they just one big happy dysfunctional family in which they play the role of enablers? Or did they simply end up there because of the twisted trajectory of their own career passage through the bowels of the military-industrial-political monolith? But when you stand back, and look at where they all came from, look at the entire interconnected apparatus of the military industrial war machine, the gutless complicity of big corporate media, our numbed, engorged culture of destruction and consumptionit all becomes too much to bear.</p> <p>Too much to bear. Well, if push comes to shove and shove comes to worse, some of us seem not about to bear it at all. One can get a dual passport as a safety precaution, as an escape option. Scarcely a week goes by that I do not meet a person who confides that he or she is considering just that, because of our present political condition (Let&#8217;s be honest here in these lefty communications masquerading as Internet essays. How many readers have considered the idea?) I cannot verify it with immigration application figures, but I would suspect there is at least some increase in the number of Americans seeking to emigrate to places such as Great Britain, or New Zealand or Canada. A New Zealand newspaper recently ran an editorial welcoming liberal Americans, called them asylum seekers and opining that New Zealand should ease its strict immigration standards for them because those fleeing tend to be educated, creative people with high ideals. They must be observing something from down there. Speaking for myself, I cannot decide about emigrating. Is it best to agree with Greg Palast and Gore Vidal that it is safer to shoot at the bastards from across the waters? Fighting from within is beginning to look like a lesser option every day. Or should one take the stance of Marine Corps hero Chesty Puller, who said: &#8220;The enemy is in front of us. The enemy is behind us. He is to our right and to our left. We can&#8217;t miss&#8217;em now, boys!&#8221; That sounds good, but one person never beats a mob.</p> <p>A whiff of hopelessness hangs in the air. After all, we live in a country in which nearly a million citizens marched for women&#8217;s lives last April in Washington D.C., yet barely made the local news, and then only because of the traffic congestion, not the issue. We are talking about a country whose non-elected leader called the largest global demonstrations in human history&#8212;the worldwide demonstrations against the then-impending war in Iraq&#8212;a &#8220;focus group.&#8221; Most Americans do not even know that it took place. Is it truly possible to be heard in such a nation? If it is impossible for sane dissent, (real dissent, not just the corporate-sponsored stage-prop Democratic Party opposition), to have a national voice, then all our frogs are already cooked. In which case it has ceased to matter that we may have another of history&#8217;s full blown wackjobs as our leader.</p> <p>As you can see, at the moment I am in a grim quandary. So are many others, I am sure. But given the vicissitudes of the human spirit, we can take comfort in that tomorrow is yet another summer day, one that can be traversed on the smooth plank of gin and tonic.</p> <p>Pour&#8217;em!</p> <p>JOE BAGEANT is a magazine editor and essayist who writes from Winchester, Virginia. He may be contacted at <a href="mailto:bageantjb@netscape.net" type="external">bageantjb@netscape.net</a>.</p> <p>Copyright 2004, by JOE BAGEANT.</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p>

Is Our President a Whackjob? Does It Matter?

https://counterpunch.org/2004/07/01/is-our-president-a-whackjob-does-it-matter/

2004-07-01

4left

Supposedly if you put live frogs in a kettle of cold water on the stove then raise the temperature very slowly the frogs will eventually boil to death without trying to escape I don8217t know if that is true but it does seem the perfect if sometimes overused analogy for what we see going on around us in America My guess is that we frogs are about medium done for Having never cooked frogs or lived in a fascist state I am not a practiced judge of these things but I8217m quite sure the end result of either is in no way desirable for frogs or human beings I do notice however that some frogs are turning quite red Here in the States there is now a trend of wearing red on Fridays in silent protest of the Bush junta Reportedly this is modeled after a 1940 practice by citizens of Nazi occupied Norway though it is hard to imagine why oppressed Norwegians would do anything that might make them stand out to their oppressors Still urban legend or not it8217s all over the Internet and one would suppose quite a few people on the 8220leftcoast8221 are sporting red By now it8217s probably old hat out there Not so here in the Washington DC area where we have always thought twice before expressing dissent with any administration given that the government dominates employment and many other aspects of our lives either directly or indirectly If your employer does not sell something to the government your spouse may well work in a federal agency etc Political views do affect things at work and it is usually best to keep them to yourself But these days many of us feel something stranger than normal Washington politics going on8212an unseen mostly unspoken but surely felt atmosphere of spooky fear Is it chilly in here or is that the leer of a mad man Still though the Eastern Seaboard has always been more repressed than the West So if you mention in polite company how spooky our current political regime seems most will look at you like you are crazy or perhaps even explode into a fanatical defense of George W Bush in which case you know you have pressed a neocon8217s button Only a minority here will openly discuss the chilling parallels that informed people see in the Bush junta with the rise of Nazi Germany This is partly because the more hysterical liberals have abused that analogy to death since the beginning of the administration before there was much evidence so it is has been considered off limits in moderate intelligent circles This is slowly changing I believe because it is now becoming obvious that George W Bush is not merely dumb8212he may well be nuts Every day his actions look more like a genuinely disordered and dangerous mind at work Not exactly news to those of us who long ago read the same observation on the Internet or in recently published books to that effect But what is news is that ordinary nonpolitical white collar working puds the dreary commuter tribes in the suburbs and outlying towns are starting to whisper it among themselves So maybe are beginning to more openly address the question of whether our commander in chief is a certifiable loopjob8212and if he is just what kind of nuts he may be8212and do so in language average literate folks can understand without covering the entire Jungian cosmology or diving into Freud8217s turgid depths In calling numerous psychiatrist friends I learned it is considered unethical for licensed psychiatrists to comment publicly on the mental state of an American president and I can8217t say I disagree with that But the mind of the guy who now has one finger on the red nuclear button and the other up his nose is a matter that should be talked about and is being talked about and I8217ll be damned if I8217m going to avoid it So we will have to punt and hope for the best Let8217s keep it simple Stupidity alone cannot account for George Bush8217s behavior8212especially when his behavior so well matches known pathologies For example if an ordinary citizen believed he was being directed by God to attack 8220the governments where the Bible happened8221 as he once described the Middle East or thought that ordering the execution of a criminal was funny as hell or saw everyone who disagreed with him as an agent of the Devil he or she would be put on some heavy meds at the very least Hell I8217ve been medicated for a lot less A fellow named Paul Levy in Florida has circulated an email calling Bush8217s condition 8220malignant narcissism8221 As an offagainonagain enthusiast of Jung and Freud I was naturally interested in this and after dredging up what I remember from psychology classes a few books and yes a long stint in therapy myself his observations seem at least a little insightful If nothing else he has given us some terms and contexts in which to consider what is going on Contexts we will certainly never hear or see in the media According to Levy Bush8217s behavior would be normal behavior for a malignant narcissist who finds himself with the kind of power a US president has The narcissist would conclude that he is divinely inspired by God and see his command of the world8217s mightiest army and its wealthiest nation as proof God blesses his efforts In some ways that makes him an average American Thanks to our Puritan beginnings we have long believed that power and wealth are manifestations of God8217s preference for an individual or a nation and unfortunately tend to act on to this mystical assumption Whether we are saving the world from communism by killing Southeast Asians or covertly assassinating the democratically elected leftist president of a Latin American nation it is viewed as liberating the planet from the evil boogers Americans see everywhere but which emanate from our own national psyche The world being imperfect America8217s quest to make it perfect it by destroying all it considers impure can only lead to much world destruction of course It also bears a nasty resemblance to the Nazi obsession with purification Another characteristic of malign narcissism is said to be a near or absolute lack of compassion So when George Bush laughed and mocked the lastminute pleading of Carla Faye Tucker whom he sent to the death chamber in Texas 8220Ohhh pleeeeze don8217t kill me8221 he mimicked in a scornful whine on a conservative talk show he had no idea saner people do not find this funny I am told it is characteristic of malignant narcissists not to feel any remorse whatsoever We might also assume that the deaths of American GIs have little effect on him either though he must pretend so on camera Assscratchers God strange times indeed Bush doesn8217t fit our image of the hysterical madman exhorting a nation down a megalomaniacal path toward horror In fact most Americans and quite understandably would rather have a beer and watch a game with George Bush than say with Al Gore Meaning that George Bush has what campaign strategists call 8220assscratcher appeal8221 with the average guy He also seems to have a mesmerizing effect on conservative Americans that is totally inexplicable to the rest of us He can lie then lie about the lie then all but admit he lied and they still come running and falling like wheat before the sickle Personally I think it is the power of delusion having deluded some exwives bosses and the IRS a few times myself Bush8217s own and our national one In his personal delusion Bush is so convinced of his own words that he comes off as very convincing to others He is very seductive to most Americans8217 concept of themselves as a nation To them he looks like the first president in a long time to assert what is 8220right about America8221 and especially so following a president who was deemed 8220slick8221 and kept a woman under his desk Which strikes some of us coarser types as pretty damned slick if you can get away with it Bush has charisma to those who believe the world is a mean place and that subtler considerations only get in the way Especially fearful conservatives always operating from the politics of scarcity fearful of losing what they have gained materially those being the core operating values of standard conservatism Neoconservatives of course are willing to kill you to get it in the first place If Bush has given conservatives cause for joy he has given fundamentalist Christians an absolute hardon With tears of joy and praise they have embraced him as their longawaited national savior and if the concept of malign narcissism is right about the only thing a narcissist finds more appealing than being president is being the Messiah So handinhand Bush and these Christian soldiers clothed in the infallible rightness of their agenda8212an ultrafundamentalist Christian America with dominion over a world hammered bombed if need be into a likeness of itself they stomp forward in close hoplite ranks Bush poses against backdrops that make halos of the presidential seal appearing as Christlike as possible The adoring throng does not fail to be properly inspired despite his congenital closeeyed squint Even without psychological theories of narcissism the whole idea of ecstatic Christian masses spotting a halo around Bush8217s head in Newsweek seems a little nuts at face value though it must make Karl Rove pee his pants with glee in that campaign headquarters known as the White House Now comes the Hitler analogy and I8217ll be damned if I am going to apologize for it Just as Hitler struck a chord deep in the German unconscious Bush is touching something within the American unconscious Whether he is a manifestation of our national mental state or whether we are unwitting agents of his could be argued It certainly seems symbiotic We did elect him for a reason and history will probably record that reason as not being a very pretty one the similarities in our national behavior being unnervingly similar to those of prewar Germany Why do so many assumedly decent normal Americans support insane actions such as the Iraq War strange offshore wire cage prisons in Cuba the government8217s own admission of a dozen secret prisons around the world or stubborn opposition to the world tribunal for war criminals and ethnic cleansers Doesn8217t anyone find these things strange In fact doesn8217t anyone find it strange that two Bushes were elected president so closely together the father being less than gifted and the son as useless as tits on a boar hog Except at escaping his many failed businesses with loads of cash rather like the gambler who shoots out the lights and grabs the pot If that8217s not strange I don8217t know what is When Fidel Castro offered to monitor the 2000 presidential election count in Florida we probably could not have done any worse by taking him up on it Yet most Americans including their media did not seem to find all this one bit odd and pretended that the Brownshirts torching black votes on down in Florida despite the Brownshirts being orchestrated by yet a third Bush was just another zany little election fracas Since then the ACLU has won a lawsuit proving that it was indeed a mugging going on in Florida and the courts have ordered those tens of thousands of black voters restored to the rolls The Republican dominated state8217s reply has been an unspoken but clear as hell 8220fuck you8221 Those black voters are still off the rolls as I write I do not have to go as far as the Sunshine State to feel the chill of suspicious eyes upon me Right here in Northern Virginia the northernmost point of the American South I get little moments of fear that make me wonder if I am being singled out Maybe I8217m just paranoid The other day when the mailman delivered my subscriber copy of Socialist Worker he felt perfectly comfortable questioning me rudely as to my national loyalty as if I were some sort of fair game and not deserving of normal privacy or courtesy A local rightwing politico pissed about my liberal activism in housing tells me she has friends in a government agency from which she retired and has collected some pretty ugly facts about my past none of which can be anything close to the alleged horrors in my divorce files I received an anonymous phone call regarding the same activism threatening a trumpedup lawsuit 8220We8217ll break you you liberal sonofabitch Don8217t make us own your house boy8221 In fact last week the owner of a local Internet forum announced he had turned me in to the Homeland Security Administration due to the unpatriotic nature of my postings Small things to be sure but they add up If nothing else they say something about the political climate these days When push comes to shove Someday historians may be tracking the spread of this malign political virus like we now trace the rise of earlier fascist movements And I think they will conclude that it began here in the American South that breeding ground of all things politically dark and deepfried in hate which gave us slavery the Civil War Orville Faubus the Klan Trent Lott the fanatical Christian right the same sweatsoaked crooked venal South that that had no qualms about fixing a Florida election for George Bush As a matter of fact George W Bush8217s political career started in the South when he was organizing Christian support for his daddy And it is through dealmaking with some of its most scheming slimeballs ie Pat Robertson delivering millions of holyroller votes in exchange for government concessions worth tens of millions that he helped get daddy elected I believe that like so many of our national carcinomas the present one began in the South too It is as if yet another American congenital defect manifests itself from down in that unconscious realm of the national psyche from the land of the tobacco chawing sheriffs and snakehandling churches to infect our entire political organism But that8217s another story Meanwhile it is hard not to notice that the administration polarized around Bush displays the same meanness They see the same spooks enemies and demons to be eliminated in every corner of the world and at home The whole crew gives international law the Geneva Conventions and civil liberties the same sneer Are they as sick as he is Or are they just one big happy dysfunctional family in which they play the role of enablers Or did they simply end up there because of the twisted trajectory of their own career passage through the bowels of the militaryindustrialpolitical monolith But when you stand back and look at where they all came from look at the entire interconnected apparatus of the military industrial war machine the gutless complicity of big corporate media our numbed engorged culture of destruction and consumptionit all becomes too much to bear Too much to bear Well if push comes to shove and shove comes to worse some of us seem not about to bear it at all One can get a dual passport as a safety precaution as an escape option Scarcely a week goes by that I do not meet a person who confides that he or she is considering just that because of our present political condition Let8217s be honest here in these lefty communications masquerading as Internet essays How many readers have considered the idea I cannot verify it with immigration application figures but I would suspect there is at least some increase in the number of Americans seeking to emigrate to places such as Great Britain or New Zealand or Canada A New Zealand newspaper recently ran an editorial welcoming liberal Americans called them asylum seekers and opining that New Zealand should ease its strict immigration standards for them because those fleeing tend to be educated creative people with high ideals They must be observing something from down there Speaking for myself I cannot decide about emigrating Is it best to agree with Greg Palast and Gore Vidal that it is safer to shoot at the bastards from across the waters Fighting from within is beginning to look like a lesser option every day Or should one take the stance of Marine Corps hero Chesty Puller who said 8220The enemy is in front of us The enemy is behind us He is to our right and to our left We can8217t miss8217em now boys8221 That sounds good but one person never beats a mob A whiff of hopelessness hangs in the air After all we live in a country in which nearly a million citizens marched for women8217s lives last April in Washington DC yet barely made the local news and then only because of the traffic congestion not the issue We are talking about a country whose nonelected leader called the largest global demonstrations in human history8212the worldwide demonstrations against the thenimpending war in Iraq8212a 8220focus group8221 Most Americans do not even know that it took place Is it truly possible to be heard in such a nation If it is impossible for sane dissent real dissent not just the corporatesponsored stageprop Democratic Party opposition to have a national voice then all our frogs are already cooked In which case it has ceased to matter that we may have another of history8217s full blown wackjobs as our leader As you can see at the moment I am in a grim quandary So are many others I am sure But given the vicissitudes of the human spirit we can take comfort in that tomorrow is yet another summer day one that can be traversed on the smooth plank of gin and tonic Pour8217em JOE BAGEANT is a magazine editor and essayist who writes from Winchester Virginia He may be contacted at bageantjbnetscapenet Copyright 2004 by JOE BAGEANT amp160

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<p>You say that you want facts &#8211; facts and more facts, before you can commit. Before you finally decide to become part of something: a political party, a movement or another human being. You already have plenty of them: an avalanche, a tsunami of facts. &#8220;In fact&#8221;, your life is overflowing with facts. Most of them are brought directly to your living room or bedroom, or to your office; they shine from the liquid crystals of your computer monitors, and from increasingly flat and sleek television screens.</p> <p>There is really no need to travel, is there? There is no need to &#8220;get dirty&#8221;. Without leaving your chair or couch, you can even get some basic science of Newton, Einstein or Leonardo da Vinci. You can experience, second-hand of course, but in the safety and comfort of your home, the most extreme misery of Haitian or Jamaican slums. You can be shown a battleground, you can see the most exotic and most &#8216;forbidden&#8217; women being made love to by someone else, and you can get inside royal palaces.</p> <p>It is all there, at your fingertips: formulas and definitions, music and porn, history and even some poetry, if poetry is what you are really searching for.</p> <p>There is no reason to step outside. Of course many people have to go out, at least from Monday to Friday, to attend to their typically monotonous jobs. From time to time they have to buy some groceries, although groceries can be ordered online or using the phone, and some jobs these days do not even require the personal presence of employees.</p> <p>***</p> <p>While individualism (egoism) is what increasingly defines most of the cultures in the West, true individuality (uniqueness) has almost vanished.</p> <p>Although the internet is overflowing with information, data and &#8220;facts&#8221;, although there are now hundreds of channels available from the menus of television cable providers, the living room &#8211; computer or living room &#8211; television set combinations are producing increasingly monotonous results: people are more and more phlegmatic, their way of thinking is uniformed, and they are not willing to take almost any risks: intellectually, emotionally or physically.</p> <p>Passivity is being constantly rationalized, defended. On the surface, reasons given to justify lack of commitment are logical, &#8216;sensible&#8217;, and sometimes even righteous.</p> <p>Passivity has become &#8216;calm&#8217;, and so have despair, desolation and gloom.</p> <p>Instead of encouraging violent rebellious outbursts of anguish as something natural, positive and even essential (should one not be fighting with all his or her might against all the forces which are making life pointless and useless?), almost everything that is defined by society as &#8220;negative emotions&#8221; gets subdued and controlled by medication and therapy. This way, medical &#8220;science&#8221; becomes a culprit, murders many healthy reactions, and in the end, kills life itself.</p> <p>It is rarely pronounced, but it is essential to realize: A person who feels violently sick because he or she is surrounded by a thoroughly unhealthy, even insane environment (political system, family, work, sets of constantly repeated lies) is actually reacting in a vigorous and healthy way. It is like when the body is fighting against severe infection. Only in this case, the battle is mental.</p> <p>People are expected to be &#8220;normal&#8221;, while standards defining &#8220;normalcy&#8221; have roots in mental illnesses from which entire society is clearly suffering. Not only immigrants; now everyone is obliged to &#8220;conform&#8221;. What does it really mean, to conform? Is it: to become atomized, apathetic and therefore alone and vulnerable? Life then flows slowly, calmly, coldly and emotionlessly. A person grows up, matures, ages and dies. Society slowly deteriorates. Planet Earth is getting gradually ruined.</p> <p>Surrounded by uniformed and perpetual misery, passivity and amnesia, one is not aware of his or her suffering. The screen in front of people shines late into the night. Everything is reduced to short barks and uniformed symbols pre-programmed into mobile phones.</p> <p>Something has gone missing. There seems to be an urgent lack of something very essential, a gaping deficit. In such an environment, love cannot thrive, and revolution can never take place. In sterility and surrounded by emotional emptiness, human beings can live a little bit longer, but can such an existence be really called life?</p> <p>***</p> <p>Reality is &#8220;authentic&#8221; only if experienced holistically and first-hand. This is the conclusion at which I arrived, after witnessing hundreds of conflicts all over the world, but also after observing so many glorious moments, so many great human achievements, in virtually all corners of the globe.</p> <p>A computer monitor only offers extremely filtered, even &#8220;censored&#8221; images of reality (no matter how high-definition it might be), as well as some basic sound. Even our imperfect and limited human senses are capable of capturing, registering and processing incomparably much more than that.</p> <p>When relying exclusively on processed and filtered reality (images and sound), a great part of our mind gets dormant, it begins to deteriorate (even degenerate), and eventually the process becomes irreversible. It is as if you only had use of your right hand for almost your entire life, no legs and no left hand: the situation would most definitely lead to the weakening of muscles and to fatal physical deformities. The same happens with the human mind, with the brain, if it is prevented from performing all of its natural functions on a regular basis.</p> <p>I insist that &#8220;knowledge&#8221; and &#8220;understanding of reality&#8221; has to consist of a &#8220;complete approach&#8221;, in which, at least most of our senses, are involved. Practically: to &#8216;truly comprehend&#8217; requires &#8220;being there&#8221;.</p> <p>***</p> <p>Let me give you one example, just one, although there are of course thousands of paradigms that I could provide:</p> <p>You can sit all your life in Berlin, London or Boston, and watch news on your television screen, you can mull over countless &#8220;facts&#8221; provided by your best friends (internet and smart phone) but you would never, ever come close to understanding what has been happening during the last two decades in Latin America, or what is happening in Syria right now.</p> <p>To understand, you&#8217;d have to roll up your sleeves, stop vegetating and begin living. You&#8217;d have to experience, with all your senses, what the dampness coming from the walls in tropical slums some fifteen or twenty years ago felt like, you&#8217;d have to observe from miserable and over-populated hills those obnoxiously expensive condominiums on the horizon, you&#8217;d have to smell bad breath of young women who couldn&#8217;t afford dental care while the country was awash with petrodollars. You&#8217;d have to see young people dance, on Friday nights, so desperately and hopelessly. One evening you&#8217;d have to walk down some narrow alley, alone, and see two men with guns walking straight towards you. You&#8217;d have to smell the cheap perfume of a woman approaching you at two in the morning in a dive frequented by local journalists, grabbing you by the shoulders, beginning to sob, confessing that now she is a prostitute, but just one year ago she was an elementary school teacher and wanted to live in a little house with a neat and colorful garden. You&#8217;d have to know how stale the air used to be in rooms stuffed with bodies in some godforsaken public hospital where poor people were dying from cancer. You&#8217;d have to see and feel and smell more, much more, in order to understand why those of us who were there then, are still where we are now, fully determined and loyal, working and living for the Revolution.</p> <p>Ernesto Che Guevara had to leave his provincial bubble of family, which consisted of doctors enjoying their upper middle-class life; he had to hit the road. In a way, he never returned. Che had to see and smell and feel, in order to get engaged, to take sides, to become committed; he had to understand what misery is, what leprosy is, what hunger and despair are, but also, he had to face all that tremendous glory of his continent, of South America.</p> <p>It all goes hand in hand: in order to fight, to commit, to risk your life, you have to love, or at least you have to know how to love. In order to love, first you have to be alive!</p> <p>During his endless motorcycle journey through the continent, what Che experienced was not necessarily something &#8220;factual&#8221;, or even &#8220;rational&#8221;.</p> <p>What Venezuelan revolutionaries based their actions on a few decades later was mainly deeply emotional. Their feelings eventually got rationalized, leading to the pledge to liberate the continent. The next step was to take several determined actions. Facts were employed, too, but they were harvested strictly for the Cause, for the Revolution. It was not, and it was never meant to be, the other way around.</p> <p>Revolution is an highly emotional event, and so is love, so is life. There is no life and there is no love without rebellion, without &#8220;private revolution&#8221;, without commitment. To live and to love requires courage and personal freedom, but it also requires full dedication and loyalty, self-sacrifice and determination.</p> <p>During the Revolution, as well as when one is in love, all senses are involved. One is fighting for humanity. One is fighting for happiness of his or her other half. No matter what obstacles are blocking the way, no matter how hard the journey is, while loving or struggling, but especially while loving and struggling, a person is fully alive. Then and only then, his or her life gains meaning.</p> <p>Revolution can be totally stripped of religion; it could be, and it often is, completely secular. But it always relies, significantly, on three brilliant Muses, three sisters, that are never far away from anything great that is moving our human race forward. Their names are Faith, Love and Hope.</p> <p>Faith can be never based on facts. Love can be never based on facts. Hope is not based on facts.</p> <p>The three sisters cannot be &#8216;studied&#8217;, and not much can be learned about them from the internet.</p> <p>They could never be fully understood with logic. All three of them simply represent Life.</p> <p>Life that is increasingly absent from societies that are controlling the world; societies which are more and more limiting the natural range of human senses, while herding men and women into dark and narrow pre-fabricated tunnels that lead only into perverse meaninglessness.</p> <p>Such societies have already managed to create a new horrible religion, a new breed of extreme fanaticism, based on cold, emotionless, and nonsensical &#8220;rationalism&#8221;, on dehumanized &#8220;science&#8221;, and on a pre-selected medley of &#8220;facts&#8221;. Such societies have already choked to death both poetry and the human ability to dream. They have ended up raping the world, inseminating it with passivity and depression, forcing humanity to reject faith, love, and hope, to spit at commitments, at loyalty, at courage, at constructive and positive actions, at Life itself.</p> <p>***</p> <p>&#8220;Fact-based&#8221; virtual analyses of the world lead mostly to dark pessimism and negativism. It is not only because the prolonged staring at computer and television screens is depressing and unhealthy, but also since such analyses are to a great extent, &#8220;unreal&#8221; and deceiving.</p> <p>The analogy to &#8216;&#8220;facts&#8221;-based virtual experience&#8217; versus &#8216;beneficial human knowledge&#8217; would be: &#8216;pornography&#8217; versus &#8216;love&#8217;.</p> <p>To a poet, to a revolutionary, to a dreamer, to a humanist, such knowledge that consists exclusively of &#8216;hard facts&#8217; (spiced with countless formulas and test results) would appear as cold, absurd and as empty as &#8216;hard porn&#8217;.</p> <p>Love is not just the physical friction of two sexual organs, but also of great tenderness, compassion, honesty, and the disappearance of all fears accumulated throughout one&#8217;s entire life. It is genuine liberation and great adventure, a &#8220;private revolution&#8221;, a process through which the entire world, in fact the entire universe is re-discovered and re-defined, thoroughly and from the beginning, by two people, together.</p> <p>True and big loves, like those loves that people used to experience and then write about in the past, (but so rarely now), were never easy, as people are not some simple beings, and two of them can hardly ever &#8220;perfectly match&#8221;. There were almost always some big dramas and temporary breakouts, then passionate reunions; there were misunderstandings and even severe pain. It always required great determination and willpower for two strong individuals to remain together, to survive as a couple, as one unit.</p> <p>It is always easier to give up, to leave, as is done these days.</p> <p>It is all down to those &#8220;facts&#8221; stripped of passion, depth and courage, isn&#8217;t it?</p> <p>Take a woman you think you fell in love with, and look at the facts &#8211; analyze her. Go ahead &#8211; try. Do it the way everything is done these days: coldly and rationally. Is she &#8220;good for you&#8221;? Is living with her going to &#8220;improve your life&#8221;? Aren&#8217;t her buttocks too wide or legs bit too short? Isn&#8217;t she a bit &#8220;complicated&#8221;, in fact, &#8220;isn&#8217;t she too complicated?&#8221; And, &#8220;doesn&#8217;t she come with too much baggage?&#8221; Isn&#8217;t being with her going to &#8220;jeopardize your career?&#8221; &#8220;Is it going to strain the relationship with your family?&#8221;</p> <p>Such thoughts would have been considered grotesque in the past. But they are acceptable, even normal, now. And the conclusions are usually predictable: &#8220;if it is not easy, leave! Just go&#8230;&#8221;</p> <p>Do you remember the greatest novel written by Hemingway: &#8220;For Whom The Bell Tolls&#8221;?</p> <p>A man, a middle-class American teacher goes to Spain. He volunteers; he wants to fight on the side of socialism, on the side of Republican Spain, against fascism. His name is Robert Jordan. He meets a girl; her name is Maria. Maria&#8217;s head was shaved, before she was brutally raped by fascist troops. From the beginning, it appears to be an absolutely impossible love, but to hell with it: it is love, and both Robert Jordan and Maria know it, they feel it, and they don&#8217;t even attempt to be rational about it. Against all odds, suddenly but fully, two people from two faraway countries do give their lives to each other, and then they make love, and &#8216;the earth moves&#8217;, as it moves only once in a lifetime. And Maria dies, and Robert Jordan does not leave; he stays by the side of the road, in a futile but heroic gesture, waiting for a fascist column to approach, so he could do what he pledged to do, to her and to himself: to fight and most likely to die in this foreign land, to die honestly, for Maria&#8217;s country.</p> <p>Well, this is how people used to write, and this is how they use to live&#8230; and this is how they used to love.</p> <p>This is what used to be normal, and what used to be admired and treasured.</p> <p>And this is still how I write and live and love, and I don&#8217;t give a damn whether it is in vogue or not. I know when I write well, no matter what others say. I know when I fight bravely and honestly, even if, at the end, I lose. One knows these things, as one perhaps also knows when he or she lives like a coward, or when he or she betrays. I also know when &#8216;the earth moves&#8217;, and if it does, even if the other one does something insane and &#8216;unforgiveable&#8217;, no matter what I declare, I will stay.</p> <p>In today&#8217;s world, Maria and women like Maria would be seen as very &#8216;bad match&#8217;. An injured, traumatized woman with &#8216;terrible baggage&#8217; carried on her shoulders. No &#8216;sane man&#8217; would take her hand. No one would embrace her; no one would fight and die for her. (Although somewhere deep inside I know: I would&#8230; I am&#8230; even now.)</p> <p>Pornography, or some secret encounter with a bimbo in a love hotel, would be much &#8216;safer&#8217;, much &#8216;simpler&#8217; for today&#8217;s &#8216;sensible&#8217; Western men.</p> <p>That is why, I&#8217;m convinced, in such an environment, with such a state of mind, no true revolution is possible anymore!</p> <p>***</p> <p>Every great love is confusing and often painful. True revolutions are never tidy, never easy, and never faultless. It is because both human love and human passion for progress and change consists of a set of complex emotions and instincts, sometimes clashing, often co-existing somehow inharmoniously, but always creating great whirlpool of passions, which actually makes life worth living.</p> <p>By definition, love can never be &#8216;sterile&#8217;, and the same can be said about true revolution. True love and true revolution are always raw, full of fluids, of boiling blood, of tears. They consist of hope, of pain, but also of great joy.</p> <p>Pornography is totally sterile, and sterile is that self-righteous universe of detachment, of cold &#8216;impartial&#8217; observation of the world, as well as electronically transmitted &#8220;facts&#8221;. Sterile is also the refusal to get &#8216;engaged&#8217;, to get &#8216;dirty&#8217;, to get involved, and to take sides. Sterile is not to fight and not to be ready to die for one&#8217;s ideals.</p> <p>Sterile is when one is desiring absolute purity: &#8220;I cannot get involved, because I&#8217;m not ready to fully support this ideal, this ideology, this revolution.&#8221;</p> <p>When I hear this, I immediately imagine those bodies of women, created by fashion and advertisement agencies: &#8220;perfect&#8221;, smooth, slim, and tall&#8230; but absolutely lacking life and individuality.</p> <p>I&#8217;m not attracted to such bodies, and I&#8217;m not attracted to &#8216;perfect&#8217;, tidy and &#8216;inoffensive&#8217;, &#8216;harmless&#8217; ideologies. I&#8217;d never want to be with a woman whom I wouldn&#8217;t want to murder, at least once. I&#8217;d never fight for perfection, only for human beings, and those are never thoroughly (and luckily) faultless.</p> <p>During a revolution and also when one loves and is loved madly, one can easily burn to ashes, but that&#8217;s life and it is better to go this way, than vanishing from influenza, old age or in a car accident.</p> <p>One can also fall, disappear, while searching for true knowledge, because knowledge is often hidden in the most peculiar, dangerous and unsavory places. You have to come close, damn close, if you want to truly comprehend.</p> <p>Sometimes, if you come too close, you die. But that is life, too. That&#8217;s how it is and that&#8217;s how it should be. Without tremendous effort, without true courage, stamina, passion, without taking risks, life is never worth living.</p>

Revolution Vs Passivity

https://counterpunch.org/2017/05/19/revolution-vs-passivity/

2017-05-19

4left

You say that you want facts 8211 facts and more facts before you can commit Before you finally decide to become part of something a political party a movement or another human being You already have plenty of them an avalanche a tsunami of facts 8220In fact8221 your life is overflowing with facts Most of them are brought directly to your living room or bedroom or to your office they shine from the liquid crystals of your computer monitors and from increasingly flat and sleek television screens There is really no need to travel is there There is no need to 8220get dirty8221 Without leaving your chair or couch you can even get some basic science of Newton Einstein or Leonardo da Vinci You can experience secondhand of course but in the safety and comfort of your home the most extreme misery of Haitian or Jamaican slums You can be shown a battleground you can see the most exotic and most 8216forbidden8217 women being made love to by someone else and you can get inside royal palaces It is all there at your fingertips formulas and definitions music and porn history and even some poetry if poetry is what you are really searching for There is no reason to step outside Of course many people have to go out at least from Monday to Friday to attend to their typically monotonous jobs From time to time they have to buy some groceries although groceries can be ordered online or using the phone and some jobs these days do not even require the personal presence of employees While individualism egoism is what increasingly defines most of the cultures in the West true individuality uniqueness has almost vanished Although the internet is overflowing with information data and 8220facts8221 although there are now hundreds of channels available from the menus of television cable providers the living room 8211 computer or living room 8211 television set combinations are producing increasingly monotonous results people are more and more phlegmatic their way of thinking is uniformed and they are not willing to take almost any risks intellectually emotionally or physically Passivity is being constantly rationalized defended On the surface reasons given to justify lack of commitment are logical 8216sensible8217 and sometimes even righteous Passivity has become 8216calm8217 and so have despair desolation and gloom Instead of encouraging violent rebellious outbursts of anguish as something natural positive and even essential should one not be fighting with all his or her might against all the forces which are making life pointless and useless almost everything that is defined by society as 8220negative emotions8221 gets subdued and controlled by medication and therapy This way medical 8220science8221 becomes a culprit murders many healthy reactions and in the end kills life itself It is rarely pronounced but it is essential to realize A person who feels violently sick because he or she is surrounded by a thoroughly unhealthy even insane environment political system family work sets of constantly repeated lies is actually reacting in a vigorous and healthy way It is like when the body is fighting against severe infection Only in this case the battle is mental People are expected to be 8220normal8221 while standards defining 8220normalcy8221 have roots in mental illnesses from which entire society is clearly suffering Not only immigrants now everyone is obliged to 8220conform8221 What does it really mean to conform Is it to become atomized apathetic and therefore alone and vulnerable Life then flows slowly calmly coldly and emotionlessly A person grows up matures ages and dies Society slowly deteriorates Planet Earth is getting gradually ruined Surrounded by uniformed and perpetual misery passivity and amnesia one is not aware of his or her suffering The screen in front of people shines late into the night Everything is reduced to short barks and uniformed symbols preprogrammed into mobile phones Something has gone missing There seems to be an urgent lack of something very essential a gaping deficit In such an environment love cannot thrive and revolution can never take place In sterility and surrounded by emotional emptiness human beings can live a little bit longer but can such an existence be really called life Reality is 8220authentic8221 only if experienced holistically and firsthand This is the conclusion at which I arrived after witnessing hundreds of conflicts all over the world but also after observing so many glorious moments so many great human achievements in virtually all corners of the globe A computer monitor only offers extremely filtered even 8220censored8221 images of reality no matter how highdefinition it might be as well as some basic sound Even our imperfect and limited human senses are capable of capturing registering and processing incomparably much more than that When relying exclusively on processed and filtered reality images and sound a great part of our mind gets dormant it begins to deteriorate even degenerate and eventually the process becomes irreversible It is as if you only had use of your right hand for almost your entire life no legs and no left hand the situation would most definitely lead to the weakening of muscles and to fatal physical deformities The same happens with the human mind with the brain if it is prevented from performing all of its natural functions on a regular basis I insist that 8220knowledge8221 and 8220understanding of reality8221 has to consist of a 8220complete approach8221 in which at least most of our senses are involved Practically to 8216truly comprehend8217 requires 8220being there8221 Let me give you one example just one although there are of course thousands of paradigms that I could provide You can sit all your life in Berlin London or Boston and watch news on your television screen you can mull over countless 8220facts8221 provided by your best friends internet and smart phone but you would never ever come close to understanding what has been happening during the last two decades in Latin America or what is happening in Syria right now To understand you8217d have to roll up your sleeves stop vegetating and begin living You8217d have to experience with all your senses what the dampness coming from the walls in tropical slums some fifteen or twenty years ago felt like you8217d have to observe from miserable and overpopulated hills those obnoxiously expensive condominiums on the horizon you8217d have to smell bad breath of young women who couldn8217t afford dental care while the country was awash with petrodollars You8217d have to see young people dance on Friday nights so desperately and hopelessly One evening you8217d have to walk down some narrow alley alone and see two men with guns walking straight towards you You8217d have to smell the cheap perfume of a woman approaching you at two in the morning in a dive frequented by local journalists grabbing you by the shoulders beginning to sob confessing that now she is a prostitute but just one year ago she was an elementary school teacher and wanted to live in a little house with a neat and colorful garden You8217d have to know how stale the air used to be in rooms stuffed with bodies in some godforsaken public hospital where poor people were dying from cancer You8217d have to see and feel and smell more much more in order to understand why those of us who were there then are still where we are now fully determined and loyal working and living for the Revolution Ernesto Che Guevara had to leave his provincial bubble of family which consisted of doctors enjoying their upper middleclass life he had to hit the road In a way he never returned Che had to see and smell and feel in order to get engaged to take sides to become committed he had to understand what misery is what leprosy is what hunger and despair are but also he had to face all that tremendous glory of his continent of South America It all goes hand in hand in order to fight to commit to risk your life you have to love or at least you have to know how to love In order to love first you have to be alive During his endless motorcycle journey through the continent what Che experienced was not necessarily something 8220factual8221 or even 8220rational8221 What Venezuelan revolutionaries based their actions on a few decades later was mainly deeply emotional Their feelings eventually got rationalized leading to the pledge to liberate the continent The next step was to take several determined actions Facts were employed too but they were harvested strictly for the Cause for the Revolution It was not and it was never meant to be the other way around Revolution is an highly emotional event and so is love so is life There is no life and there is no love without rebellion without 8220private revolution8221 without commitment To live and to love requires courage and personal freedom but it also requires full dedication and loyalty selfsacrifice and determination During the Revolution as well as when one is in love all senses are involved One is fighting for humanity One is fighting for happiness of his or her other half No matter what obstacles are blocking the way no matter how hard the journey is while loving or struggling but especially while loving and struggling a person is fully alive Then and only then his or her life gains meaning Revolution can be totally stripped of religion it could be and it often is completely secular But it always relies significantly on three brilliant Muses three sisters that are never far away from anything great that is moving our human race forward Their names are Faith Love and Hope Faith can be never based on facts Love can be never based on facts Hope is not based on facts The three sisters cannot be 8216studied8217 and not much can be learned about them from the internet They could never be fully understood with logic All three of them simply represent Life Life that is increasingly absent from societies that are controlling the world societies which are more and more limiting the natural range of human senses while herding men and women into dark and narrow prefabricated tunnels that lead only into perverse meaninglessness Such societies have already managed to create a new horrible religion a new breed of extreme fanaticism based on cold emotionless and nonsensical 8220rationalism8221 on dehumanized 8220science8221 and on a preselected medley of 8220facts8221 Such societies have already choked to death both poetry and the human ability to dream They have ended up raping the world inseminating it with passivity and depression forcing humanity to reject faith love and hope to spit at commitments at loyalty at courage at constructive and positive actions at Life itself 8220Factbased8221 virtual analyses of the world lead mostly to dark pessimism and negativism It is not only because the prolonged staring at computer and television screens is depressing and unhealthy but also since such analyses are to a great extent 8220unreal8221 and deceiving The analogy to 82168220facts8221based virtual experience8217 versus 8216beneficial human knowledge8217 would be 8216pornography8217 versus 8216love8217 To a poet to a revolutionary to a dreamer to a humanist such knowledge that consists exclusively of 8216hard facts8217 spiced with countless formulas and test results would appear as cold absurd and as empty as 8216hard porn8217 Love is not just the physical friction of two sexual organs but also of great tenderness compassion honesty and the disappearance of all fears accumulated throughout one8217s entire life It is genuine liberation and great adventure a 8220private revolution8221 a process through which the entire world in fact the entire universe is rediscovered and redefined thoroughly and from the beginning by two people together True and big loves like those loves that people used to experience and then write about in the past but so rarely now were never easy as people are not some simple beings and two of them can hardly ever 8220perfectly match8221 There were almost always some big dramas and temporary breakouts then passionate reunions there were misunderstandings and even severe pain It always required great determination and willpower for two strong individuals to remain together to survive as a couple as one unit It is always easier to give up to leave as is done these days It is all down to those 8220facts8221 stripped of passion depth and courage isn8217t it Take a woman you think you fell in love with and look at the facts 8211 analyze her Go ahead 8211 try Do it the way everything is done these days coldly and rationally Is she 8220good for you8221 Is living with her going to 8220improve your life8221 Aren8217t her buttocks too wide or legs bit too short Isn8217t she a bit 8220complicated8221 in fact 8220isn8217t she too complicated8221 And 8220doesn8217t she come with too much baggage8221 Isn8217t being with her going to 8220jeopardize your career8221 8220Is it going to strain the relationship with your family8221 Such thoughts would have been considered grotesque in the past But they are acceptable even normal now And the conclusions are usually predictable 8220if it is not easy leave Just go82308221 Do you remember the greatest novel written by Hemingway 8220For Whom The Bell Tolls8221 A man a middleclass American teacher goes to Spain He volunteers he wants to fight on the side of socialism on the side of Republican Spain against fascism His name is Robert Jordan He meets a girl her name is Maria Maria8217s head was shaved before she was brutally raped by fascist troops From the beginning it appears to be an absolutely impossible love but to hell with it it is love and both Robert Jordan and Maria know it they feel it and they don8217t even attempt to be rational about it Against all odds suddenly but fully two people from two faraway countries do give their lives to each other and then they make love and 8216the earth moves8217 as it moves only once in a lifetime And Maria dies and Robert Jordan does not leave he stays by the side of the road in a futile but heroic gesture waiting for a fascist column to approach so he could do what he pledged to do to her and to himself to fight and most likely to die in this foreign land to die honestly for Maria8217s country Well this is how people used to write and this is how they use to live8230 and this is how they used to love This is what used to be normal and what used to be admired and treasured And this is still how I write and live and love and I don8217t give a damn whether it is in vogue or not I know when I write well no matter what others say I know when I fight bravely and honestly even if at the end I lose One knows these things as one perhaps also knows when he or she lives like a coward or when he or she betrays I also know when 8216the earth moves8217 and if it does even if the other one does something insane and 8216unforgiveable8217 no matter what I declare I will stay In today8217s world Maria and women like Maria would be seen as very 8216bad match8217 An injured traumatized woman with 8216terrible baggage8217 carried on her shoulders No 8216sane man8217 would take her hand No one would embrace her no one would fight and die for her Although somewhere deep inside I know I would8230 I am8230 even now Pornography or some secret encounter with a bimbo in a love hotel would be much 8216safer8217 much 8216simpler8217 for today8217s 8216sensible8217 Western men That is why I8217m convinced in such an environment with such a state of mind no true revolution is possible anymore Every great love is confusing and often painful True revolutions are never tidy never easy and never faultless It is because both human love and human passion for progress and change consists of a set of complex emotions and instincts sometimes clashing often coexisting somehow inharmoniously but always creating great whirlpool of passions which actually makes life worth living By definition love can never be 8216sterile8217 and the same can be said about true revolution True love and true revolution are always raw full of fluids of boiling blood of tears They consist of hope of pain but also of great joy Pornography is totally sterile and sterile is that selfrighteous universe of detachment of cold 8216impartial8217 observation of the world as well as electronically transmitted 8220facts8221 Sterile is also the refusal to get 8216engaged8217 to get 8216dirty8217 to get involved and to take sides Sterile is not to fight and not to be ready to die for one8217s ideals Sterile is when one is desiring absolute purity 8220I cannot get involved because I8217m not ready to fully support this ideal this ideology this revolution8221 When I hear this I immediately imagine those bodies of women created by fashion and advertisement agencies 8220perfect8221 smooth slim and tall8230 but absolutely lacking life and individuality I8217m not attracted to such bodies and I8217m not attracted to 8216perfect8217 tidy and 8216inoffensive8217 8216harmless8217 ideologies I8217d never want to be with a woman whom I wouldn8217t want to murder at least once I8217d never fight for perfection only for human beings and those are never thoroughly and luckily faultless During a revolution and also when one loves and is loved madly one can easily burn to ashes but that8217s life and it is better to go this way than vanishing from influenza old age or in a car accident One can also fall disappear while searching for true knowledge because knowledge is often hidden in the most peculiar dangerous and unsavory places You have to come close damn close if you want to truly comprehend Sometimes if you come too close you die But that is life too That8217s how it is and that8217s how it should be Without tremendous effort without true courage stamina passion without taking risks life is never worth living

You/PRON say/VERB that/SCONJ you/PRON want/VERB facts/NOUN 8211/NUM facts/NOUN and/CCONJ more/ADJ facts/NOUN before/SCONJ you/PRON can/AUX commit/VERB Before/SCONJ you/PRON finally/ADV decide/VERB to/PART become/VERB part/NOUN of/ADP something/PRON a/DET political/ADJ party/NOUN a/DET movement/NOUN or/CCONJ another/DET human/NOUN being/NOUN You/PRON already/ADV have/VERB plenty/NOUN of/ADP them/PRON an/DET avalanche/NOUN a/DET tsunami/NOUN of/ADP facts/NOUN 8220In/NUM fact8221/NOUN your/PRON life/NOUN is/AUX overflowing/VERB with/ADP facts/NOUN Most/ADJ of/ADP them/PRON are/AUX brought/VERB directly/ADV to/ADP your/PRON living/NOUN room/NOUN or/CCONJ bedroom/NOUN or/CCONJ to/ADP your/PRON office/NOUN they/PRON shine/VERB from/ADP the/DET liquid/ADJ crystals/NOUN of/ADP your/PRON computer/NOUN monitors/NOUN and/CCONJ from/ADP increasingly/ADV flat/ADJ and/CCONJ sleek/ADJ television/NOUN screens/NOUN There/PRON is/VERB really/ADV no/DET need/NOUN to/PART travel/VERB is/AUX there/PRON 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<p>Being wrapped in an Israeli flag this past week has caused Madonna, our Lady of Miracles, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and AIPAC some flak. First, the simple case. Strutting underdressed across the concert stage in Tel Aviv wrapped in an Israel flag on 9/2/09, as her partner, the Brazilian model &#8216;Jesus&#8217; shouted &#8216;Viva! Viva!&#8217; off stage was probably just the Material Girl doing her material thing. And anyhow, the late Michael Jackson could have been mistaken when he made his snide remark a while back, &#8220;She can&#8217;t sing.&amp;#160; She can&#8217;t dance.&amp;#160; I don&#8217;t understand her success!&#8221;</p> <p>On her quick trip north to the Palestinian village of Safad near the Lebanese border to view a Kabbalah shrine, Esther/Madonna may not have been advised that most of Safad&#8217;s population was ethnically cleansed in 1948 and with their offspring most now live in 12 Refugee Camps in Lebanon and 10 in Syria.&amp;#160; Reading deep politics into her flag-wearing event may be unwarranted since Esther/Madonna has now apparently offered to don the Palestinian flag or even Hamas&#8217; or Hezbollah&#8217;s just to make amends and dampen the flap from her flag wrap.</p> <p>Abe Foxman, President of ADL and AIPAC&amp;#160; on the other hand, knew exactly what they were doing four days earlier as both offered to send an Israeli flag to&amp;#160; Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica in Boston&#8217;s Mission Hill section. The plan was to wrap Ted Kennedy&#8217;s casket, side by side with the American flag, each flag to cover roughly half of Ted&#8217;s casket during Kennedy&#8217;s internationally broadcast funeral, which was even watched live in Dahiyeh, Beirut&#8217;s southern suburbs. Only since the lobby&#8217;s continuing exploitation of the Holocaust and ADL&#8217;s use of the image of Yasser Arafat to demonize him and raise millions to fund illegal settlement expansion, did Foxman see such a terrific chance to hype brand Zionism, this time by linking it in perpetuity to the Kennedy mystique and the Arlington Cemetery eternal flame.</p> <p>Wrapping Kennedy in the Israeli flag for history would no doubt give a boost to Israel&#8217;s preferred historical narrative and the Israeli flag which has increasingly come to represent virulent Zionism and its crimes.</p> <p>AIPAC claims the well-intentioned project to wrap Kennedy in the Star of David was no more than another gesture for the memory of a friend of the Jewish people. Perhaps Abe saw his initiative as a return tribute for Ted&#8217;s thoughtfulness during the November 6, 1995 funeral for Yitzak Rabin on Mount Herzl (renamed for the founder of modern Zionism, Hungarian Binyamin Ze&#8217;ev (Theodore)&amp;#160; Herzl, who had never set foot in Palestine, from its ancient&amp;#160; expunged Arabic name &#8220;Jabal Assalam&#8221; meaning &#8216;Peace Mountain&#8221;) On that day Senator Kennedy sprinkled a cup of soil from his two brothers, John and Robert&#8217;s, gravesites at Arlington Cemetery on Rabin&#8217;s, as a gesture of respect.</p> <p>Despite some intense lobbying, the Kennedy family graciously declined the Foxman-AIPAC offer and Ted&#8217;s coffin carried only the American flag.</p> <p>Quite appropriately, the late senator did draw well earned encomia from a broad range of Jewish organizations, spanning the spectrum from the Orthodox Union to the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. Israeli officials praised Kennedy, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calling the senator &#8220;a great friend of Israel,&#8221; and Israeli President Shimon Peres declaring Kennedy&#8217;s death was &#8220;a very big loss for Israel and thinking people the world over. Kennedy was a clear friend of Israel the whole way, and in every place that he could help us he did help. During his more than four decades in the US Senate, Sen. Kennedy consistently supported American assistance to Israel.&#8221;</p> <p>Israel&#8217;s Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, praised Kennedy as &#8220;a great friend to me and to Israel and to the Jewish people. He was one of ours.&#8221;&amp;#160; The anti-Palestinian American Jewish Committee Executive Director David Harris added that &#8220;Kennedy was in his hearts of heart an Israeli who could always be relied upon. His support for the well-being of the State of Israel faced with Arab threats, was always firm, as was his solidarity with vulnerable Jewish communities&#8221;, Harris noted.&amp;#160; Kennedy was kind of like &#8220;Joe Biden the Zionist&#8221; Harris would have us believe.</p> <p>AIPAC wanted more</p> <p>Before Kennedy&#8217;s body had cooled, AIPAC Executive Director Howard Kohr issued a declaration to its Campus Allies Mission that Kennedy belonged to Israel and vice versa and implied that to suggest otherwise was, well probably yet another&amp;#160; anti-Semitic &#8216;blood libel&#8217; of some sort. He insinuated that Kennedy&#8217;s function in death should be to help keep U.S. critics of Israeli actions at bay lest they exposed themselves as un-American.</p> <p>Like many American students interested in politics, this observer followed Ted Kennedy&#8217;s career, the good and the bad.&amp;#160; On my second day at Boston University, I walked across Boston Common to his Tremont Street campaign office and saw a large sign above the entrance. I recall&amp;#160; that it read: &#8220;Ever since those immortal words of Thomas Jefferson, &#8216;Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness&#8217; the Democratic party has stood for the right of men and women to dignity, freedom, and to move ahead.&#8221; I found the sign inspiring and joined his Campaign for the U.S. Senate.&amp;#160; Odd how one remembers a sign from some many years ago when often one is not sure what day of the week it is.</p> <p>I always felt a sort of vague connection with Ted Kennedy.&amp;#160; We were both the youngest of a large loving family.&amp;#160; He had five sisters and three brothers and I have five brothers (one died in infancy) and three sisters. I knew what it was like to try to keep up with older idolized active, sometimes wild, siblings and get regularly shunted aside.&amp;#160; We were both raised by devout Catholic Mothers, he Roman, me Anglican. Admittedly Milwaukie, Oregon was not Hyannis Port&amp;#160; on Cape Cod, Massachusetts,&amp;#160; but&amp;#160; it was just as good, and I am sure we had as much fun growing up with family sports, camping in the woods, picking strawberries for pocket money and swimming nearly every day in Oregon&#8217;s creeks, rivers, streams, or lakes.</p> <p>I did not know Ted Kennedy well personally, but from two stints on his staff, in Boston and on his campaign Issues Staff including during his ill-fated 1980 Presidential bid&amp;#160; at the 22nd and Q St, NW National HQ&amp;#160; in Washington, DC, we had some conversations and once,&amp;#160; he actually saved me from the wrath of the Israeli lobby who wanted me fired when as a Member of the Democratic National Committee from Oregon, I addressed the 1980 Democratic Convention Platform Committee and advocated that the Party support a Palestinian State. I made clear my advocacy was my own view and not those of the Kennedy Campaign.&amp;#160;&amp;#160; Kennedy would not let Paul Kirk, our campaign chairman fire me as Kirk yelled, &#8220;For Christ&#8217;s sake Lamb, the Carter campaign in New York will beat us over the head with this!&#8221;&amp;#160; Kennedy told me and Kirk with a hearty laugh &#8220;They (the Lobby) will get over it.&#8221;</p> <p>My issues &#8216;specialty&#8217; was supposedly US-Soviet Relations (we did not have a middle east issues desk only one called &#8216;Israel&#8217;) but most of&amp;#160;my days and nights (sometimes, past midnight,&amp;#160; the&amp;#160; increasingly cash strapped campaign would spring for a feast&amp;#160; at Blackie&#8217;s House of Beef up the block)&amp;#160; were spent in a windowless room frantically calling around the country compiling &#8216;day books&#8217; filled with the latest statistics on such compelling subjects as the current price Maine farmers were getting for potatoes, or the &#8216;hot issues&#8217; in Keene, New Hampshire or how&#8221; Carter&#8217;s Interest Rates&#8221; (sometimes around 18 per cent) were ruining every community in Iowa&amp;#160; the EMK &#8217;80 Campaign Bus rolled into.&amp;#160; We tried to impress journalists like Alexander Cockburn, then working for the Village Voice and also covering the Kennedy campaign for Rolling Stone, with our erudition. Alas, as CounterPunchers <a href="" type="internal">learned recently</a>. Alexander was apparently not much impressed by our statistical work or the whole EMK &#8217;80 campaign for that matter.</p> <p>Our campaigns problem was that we failed to convince Democratic Party voters that there were real differences between Kennedy and Carter.&amp;#160; Historian Theodore H. White noted that Ted&#8217;s main problem with Carter was competence with the legislative process.&amp;#160; White quoted Ted in 1982: &#8220;Even on issues we agree on, he doesn&#8217;t know how to do it,&#8221; White, likened Ted&#8217;s attitude toward Carter as &#8220;the contempt of a master machinist for a plumber&#8217;s assistant&#8221; but the voters did not get it and we took body blows week after week as the primaries, unmercifully,&amp;#160; seemed never to end. I puzzled, as many did, over what I considered Kennedy&#8217;s PEP problem (Progressive Except Palestine).&amp;#160; How could a fellow turn a blind eye to Israel&#8217;s crimes in Palestine when he exhibited such a passion to fight for what he called the most &#8220;humble members of society.&#8221; I acknowledge his actions that weakened America&#8217;s labor movement and his votes on GATT and NAFTA and his much criticized role in setting up the World Trade Organization, but even his detractors acknowledge&amp;#160; his considerable legislative skills to help enact Medicare and the Americans with Disabilities Act, Title IX, a woman&#8217;s right to choose,&amp;#160; AmericaCorps, No Child Left Behind and the Ryan White AIDS Act, mental health parity, the State-Children&#8217;s Health Insurance Program, raising the minimum wage, the government program that extends health insurance for the unemployed,&amp;#160; the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act and who did more than perhaps any senator in modern memory to advance the cause of civil rights &#8212; he was one of the few senators to oppose the Defense of Marriage Act, and called health care the &#8220;greatest cause&#8221; of his life.</p> <p>How could Ted Kennedy, in many ways, such a compassionate person, and a staunch critic of the war against Iraq suspend his independence of judgment, his moral compass, avert his eyes and cast so many votes funding Israel&#8217;s brutal occupation.&amp;#160; This has troubled me and many on his regular office staff over the years.&amp;#160; I suspect it also came back to trouble him as he appeared to back pedal from some of his earlier pro-Israel rhetoric.</p> <p>Kennedy was never as gross in his proclaimed fealty to Israel as many members of Congress and occasionally he raised eyebrows when he declined some of the &#8216;raw meat&#8217; language ever offered by AIPAC &#8216;advisors&#8217; for inclusion in his speeches. But he regularly used the Israel card when it served him politically.</p> <p>I was present at one campaign event when Kennedy spoke before the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations on January 28, 1980, in the run-up to the New York Primary.&amp;#160; He attacked Jimmy Carter in every borough of New York City, accusing him of an &#8220;on again, off again flirtation&#8221; with the PLO and of holding &#8220;pro-Palestinian positions.&#8221;&amp;#160; He told the audience,&amp;#160; &#8220;I know that in advocating Israel&#8217;s cause, I am inevitably advancing the cause of America,&#8221; and he asked, rhetorically, &#8220;what sort of a settlement can Israel expect from this president electorally unfettered in his second term? How often have threats and pressures, veiled and explicit, been used by this Administration in attempting to coerce Israel?&#8221;</p> <p>The presidential primary polls indicated that Carter would beat Kennedy in the New York Democratic primary by a margin of 54 to 28 percent. But on March 1, Carter&#8217;s UN Ambassador, Donald F. McHenry, voted for a resolution in the UN Security Council condemning Israeli settlement activity in Jerusalem an issue still with us. Three weeks later, Kennedy beat Carter in New York by 59 percent to 41 percent.&amp;#160; Ted knew that the Israel lobby had come through for him. Paul Kirk smiled at me.</p> <p>The brilliant Boston University Government Professor Murry B. Levin&#8217;s lectures, between 1955 and 1989 when he retired, often drew 1000 students into BU&#8217;s crammed Hayden Hall.&amp;#160; Levin was author of the Alienated Voter, the Compleat Politician and several books on Kennedy.&amp;#160; He would tell his spell-bound students, including this one, that Ted followed House Speaker Tip O&#8217;Neil&#8217;s creed that all politics are local and for years Kennedy showed little interest in foreign affairs and focused on domestic issues and local constituencies.&amp;#160; This helped the Israel lobby secure Kennedy&#8217;s seemingly blind support according to Levin.</p> <p>Few on the issues staff at EMK &#8216;80 HQ thought that Ted&#8217;s comments on Israel/Palestine were extreme. Out of&amp;#160;more than&amp;#160; a dozen in our cramped &#8220;issues office&#8221; 10 were fairly hard core Zionists with Ted&#8217;s niece Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and her husband David, who worked on education issues,&amp;#160; and this observer&amp;#160; the exceptions and only non-Jews.&amp;#160; Rabbi Alexander Schindler, a friend, told us that the Kennedy pledge to Israel was the most unequivocal he had ever heard from any Presidential candidate.That was nearly 30 years ago.&amp;#160; By today&#8217;s debased standards, Kennedy&#8217;s words now appear less strident. Kennedy supported Obama&#8217;s current efforts in Palestine and was, according to some on his foreign policy staff, getting ready to go toe to toe with the Israeli lobby if necessary &#8220;to settle this mess&#8221;.&amp;#160; Who doubts that Obama needed Kennedy to weigh in with the Israeli lobby to salvage Middle East initiatives?&amp;#160; But would he have done so?</p> <p>Was Kennedy breaking with Israel&#8217;s Apartheid?</p> <p>Following September 11, Senator Kennedy felt strongly that it was important to establish positive ties with more people of the Muslim world. To support that goal, he and colleagues established a program to provide scholarships for secondary school students from countries with significant Muslim populations to spend up to one academic year in the United States. These students live with American host families, attend high school, and engage in activities to learn about American society and values, acquire leadership skills, and help educate Americans about their countries and cultures. Since the program began in the fall of 2002, approximately 3,000 students from more than 30 countries have participated.&amp;#160; Meanwhile, Kennedy&amp;#160; &amp;#160;started regularly calling a number of Muslim and Arab opinion leaders to assure them that 9/11 would not be allowed to bring division among Americans.</p> <p>Kennedy also recently defended Judge Richard Goldstone&#8217;s UN-mandated investigation of both sides of the Gaza conflict. He met with human rights groups that have been the target of a disinformation campaign launched by the Israeli government. Kennedy recognized the problem of the Israeli military killing mainly civilians. He argued to his staff that Israel&#8217;s military campaign in Gaza should not be lamely excused or covered up but should be seen for what is was and must not happen again.</p> <p>Kennedy staffers attest to the fact that he read Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and other reports that showed, through detailed, on-the-ground investigations for example, that Israeli forces fired white phosphorous munitions indiscriminately over civilian areas, shot and killed Palestinian civilians waving white flags, attacked children playing on rooftops with precision missiles fired from aerial drones and needlessly destroyed civilian property.</p> <p>Kennedy&#8217;s Senate staff provided him with the proof of Israeli air attacks on Gaza &#8211; the buildings blown to rubble, the children killed on their way to school, the long rows of mutilated corpses, the wailing mothers and wives, the crowds of terrified Palestinians not knowing where to flee, the hospitals so overburdened and out of supplies they cannot treat the wounded, and our studied, callous indifference to this widespread human suffering.</p> <p>Staffers noted that their boss winced when he read reports or received briefing like the recent one study from the UN about 10,000 Gazans having no access to a water network &#8211; while about 60 per cent of the nearly 1.5 million population receive water only intermittently while water consumption in the Gaza Strip is less than a third of that of Israelis living just a few miles away.</p> <p>Kennedy,&amp;#160; a long term backer of recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel recently changed his views and&amp;#160; came to favor a shared Holy City for all faiths along the lines&amp;#160; long advocated by the Papacy, and&amp;#160; in principal he did not oppose having Jerusalem&amp;#160; the Capitol of both Palestine and Israel. He was also said to be studying and reconsidering the requirements of UNSCR 194 and the Right of Return.&amp;#160; How he ultimately would have reconciled its requirements, and those of the more than two dozen UN Security Council Resolutions which Israel continues to ignore, shielded by US political cover, with his own civil and human rights legacy while continuing to vote funds for an expansionist Israel is unclear.</p> <p>One hopes that had Ted Kennedy lived he would&amp;#160; have accelerated his reconsideration&amp;#160; of blind&amp;#160; support for Israel&#8217;s&amp;#160; brutal occupation and, come to oppose, as he did in South Africa, a renegade Apartheid regime. Some Kennedy staffers claim to have seen a change in Ted&#8217;s views on the Question of Palestine following his 1992 marriage to Victoria Araiji Boustany Reggie, whose family on her Mother&#8217;s side is Lebanese.&amp;#160; One current Kennedy staffer explained:&amp;#160; &#8220;Vicki never forgets her Arab origins and in her own way works for justice. Probably Ted learned a lot about Israel&#8217;s attacks on Lebanon from her. A number of Boustanys in Lebanon actually support Hezbollah and the Resistance, but I doubt Vicki does&#8221;.</p> <p>Some who know him well believe that Kennedy was in the process of evolving from toeing the Zionist line designed to buy peace for his domestic agenda through a Faustian bargain with the Israeli lobby. Unlike perhaps a majority in Congress who consider Israel a rogue expansionist state, but who want to keep their jobs.</p> <p>&#8220;It may have been that Ted was trying to reconcile his background, his pedigree, his principals and all he believed in and he may have even concluded that Israel was a mistake and had become a militarist pariah that was the antipathy of all that the Kennedy mystique stood for.&amp;#160;&amp;#160; Or maybe Ted was not there yet and maybe never would have dropped Israel completely&amp;#160;but his views were changing&#8221;, explained a current staff member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.</p> <p>The Senior Senator from Massachusetts was appropriately laid to rest under the Stars and Stripes forever.&amp;#160; Not the Star of David.</p> <p>FRANKLIN LAMB is doing research in Lebanon.&amp;#160; He is Interim Director of the Sabra-Shatila Foundation and can be reached at <a href="mailto:fplamb@sabrashatila.org" type="external">fplamb@sabrashatila.org</a></p>

Ted Kennedy’s Changing Take on Israel

https://counterpunch.org/2009/09/11/ted-kennedy-s-changing-take-on-israel/

2009-09-11

4left

Being wrapped in an Israeli flag this past week has caused Madonna our Lady of Miracles the AntiDefamation League ADL and AIPAC some flak First the simple case Strutting underdressed across the concert stage in Tel Aviv wrapped in an Israel flag on 9209 as her partner the Brazilian model 8216Jesus8217 shouted 8216Viva Viva8217 off stage was probably just the Material Girl doing her material thing And anyhow the late Michael Jackson could have been mistaken when he made his snide remark a while back 8220She can8217t singamp160 She can8217t danceamp160 I don8217t understand her success8221 On her quick trip north to the Palestinian village of Safad near the Lebanese border to view a Kabbalah shrine EstherMadonna may not have been advised that most of Safad8217s population was ethnically cleansed in 1948 and with their offspring most now live in 12 Refugee Camps in Lebanon and 10 in Syriaamp160 Reading deep politics into her flagwearing event may be unwarranted since EstherMadonna has now apparently offered to don the Palestinian flag or even Hamas8217 or Hezbollah8217s just to make amends and dampen the flap from her flag wrap Abe Foxman President of ADL and AIPACamp160 on the other hand knew exactly what they were doing four days earlier as both offered to send an Israeli flag toamp160 Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica in Boston8217s Mission Hill section The plan was to wrap Ted Kennedy8217s casket side by side with the American flag each flag to cover roughly half of Ted8217s casket during Kennedy8217s internationally broadcast funeral which was even watched live in Dahiyeh Beirut8217s southern suburbs Only since the lobby8217s continuing exploitation of the Holocaust and ADL8217s use of the image of Yasser Arafat to demonize him and raise millions to fund illegal settlement expansion did Foxman see such a terrific chance to hype brand Zionism this time by linking it in perpetuity to the Kennedy mystique and the Arlington Cemetery eternal flame Wrapping Kennedy in the Israeli flag for history would no doubt give a boost to Israel8217s preferred historical narrative and the Israeli flag which has increasingly come to represent virulent Zionism and its crimes AIPAC claims the wellintentioned project to wrap Kennedy in the Star of David was no more than another gesture for the memory of a friend of the Jewish people Perhaps Abe saw his initiative as a return tribute for Ted8217s thoughtfulness during the November 6 1995 funeral for Yitzak Rabin on Mount Herzl renamed for the founder of modern Zionism Hungarian Binyamin Ze8217ev Theodoreamp160 Herzl who had never set foot in Palestine from its ancientamp160 expunged Arabic name 8220Jabal Assalam8221 meaning 8216Peace Mountain8221 On that day Senator Kennedy sprinkled a cup of soil from his two brothers John and Robert8217s gravesites at Arlington Cemetery on Rabin8217s as a gesture of respect Despite some intense lobbying the Kennedy family graciously declined the FoxmanAIPAC offer and Ted8217s coffin carried only the American flag Quite appropriately the late senator did draw well earned encomia from a broad range of Jewish organizations spanning the spectrum from the Orthodox Union to the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism Israeli officials praised Kennedy with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calling the senator 8220a great friend of Israel8221 and Israeli President Shimon Peres declaring Kennedy8217s death was 8220a very big loss for Israel and thinking people the world over Kennedy was a clear friend of Israel the whole way and in every place that he could help us he did help During his more than four decades in the US Senate Sen Kennedy consistently supported American assistance to Israel8221 Israel8217s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman praised Kennedy as 8220a great friend to me and to Israel and to the Jewish people He was one of ours8221amp160 The antiPalestinian American Jewish Committee Executive Director David Harris added that 8220Kennedy was in his hearts of heart an Israeli who could always be relied upon His support for the wellbeing of the State of Israel faced with Arab threats was always firm as was his solidarity with vulnerable Jewish communities8221 Harris notedamp160 Kennedy was kind of like 8220Joe Biden the Zionist8221 Harris would have us believe AIPAC wanted more Before Kennedy8217s body had cooled AIPAC Executive Director Howard Kohr issued a declaration to its Campus Allies Mission that Kennedy belonged to Israel and vice versa and implied that to suggest otherwise was well probably yet anotheramp160 antiSemitic 8216blood libel8217 of some sort He insinuated that Kennedy8217s function in death should be to help keep US critics of Israeli actions at bay lest they exposed themselves as unAmerican Like many American students interested in politics this observer followed Ted Kennedy8217s career the good and the badamp160 On my second day at Boston University I walked across Boston Common to his Tremont Street campaign office and saw a large sign above the entrance I recallamp160 that it read 8220Ever since those immortal words of Thomas Jefferson 8216Life Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness8217 the Democratic party has stood for the right of men and women to dignity freedom and to move ahead8221 I found the sign inspiring and joined his Campaign for the US Senateamp160 Odd how one remembers a sign from some many years ago when often one is not sure what day of the week it is I always felt a sort of vague connection with Ted Kennedyamp160 We were both the youngest of a large loving familyamp160 He had five sisters and three brothers and I have five brothers one died in infancy and three sisters I knew what it was like to try to keep up with older idolized active sometimes wild siblings and get regularly shunted asideamp160 We were both raised by devout Catholic Mothers he Roman me Anglican Admittedly Milwaukie Oregon was not Hyannis Portamp160 on Cape Cod Massachusettsamp160 butamp160 it was just as good and I am sure we had as much fun growing up with family sports camping in the woods picking strawberries for pocket money and swimming nearly every day in Oregon8217s creeks rivers streams or lakes I did not know Ted Kennedy well personally but from two stints on his staff in Boston and on his campaign Issues Staff including during his illfated 1980 Presidential bidamp160 at the 22nd and Q St NW National HQamp160 in Washington DC we had some conversations and onceamp160 he actually saved me from the wrath of the Israeli lobby who wanted me fired when as a Member of the Democratic National Committee from Oregon I addressed the 1980 Democratic Convention Platform Committee and advocated that the Party support a Palestinian State I made clear my advocacy was my own view and not those of the Kennedy Campaignamp160amp160 Kennedy would not let Paul Kirk our campaign chairman fire me as Kirk yelled 8220For Christ8217s sake Lamb the Carter campaign in New York will beat us over the head with this8221amp160 Kennedy told me and Kirk with a hearty laugh 8220They the Lobby will get over it8221 My issues 8216specialty8217 was supposedly USSoviet Relations we did not have a middle east issues desk only one called 8216Israel8217 but most ofamp160my days and nights sometimes past midnightamp160 theamp160 increasingly cash strapped campaign would spring for a feastamp160 at Blackie8217s House of Beef up the blockamp160 were spent in a windowless room frantically calling around the country compiling 8216day books8217 filled with the latest statistics on such compelling subjects as the current price Maine farmers were getting for potatoes or the 8216hot issues8217 in Keene New Hampshire or how8221 Carter8217s Interest Rates8221 sometimes around 18 per cent were ruining every community in Iowaamp160 the EMK 821780 Campaign Bus rolled intoamp160 We tried to impress journalists like Alexander Cockburn then working for the Village Voice and also covering the Kennedy campaign for Rolling Stone with our erudition Alas as CounterPunchers learned recently Alexander was apparently not much impressed by our statistical work or the whole EMK 821780 campaign for that matter Our campaigns problem was that we failed to convince Democratic Party voters that there were real differences between Kennedy and Carteramp160 Historian Theodore H White noted that Ted8217s main problem with Carter was competence with the legislative processamp160 White quoted Ted in 1982 8220Even on issues we agree on he doesn8217t know how to do it8221 White likened Ted8217s attitude toward Carter as 8220the contempt of a master machinist for a plumber8217s assistant8221 but the voters did not get it and we took body blows week after week as the primaries unmercifullyamp160 seemed never to end I puzzled as many did over what I considered Kennedy8217s PEP problem Progressive Except Palestineamp160 How could a fellow turn a blind eye to Israel8217s crimes in Palestine when he exhibited such a passion to fight for what he called the most 8220humble members of society8221 I acknowledge his actions that weakened America8217s labor movement and his votes on GATT and NAFTA and his much criticized role in setting up the World Trade Organization but even his detractors acknowledgeamp160 his considerable legislative skills to help enact Medicare and the Americans with Disabilities Act Title IX a woman8217s right to chooseamp160 AmericaCorps No Child Left Behind and the Ryan White AIDS Act mental health parity the StateChildren8217s Health Insurance Program raising the minimum wage the government program that extends health insurance for the unemployedamp160 the Employment NonDiscrimination Act the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act and who did more than perhaps any senator in modern memory to advance the cause of civil rights 8212 he was one of the few senators to oppose the Defense of Marriage Act and called health care the 8220greatest cause8221 of his life How could Ted Kennedy in many ways such a compassionate person and a staunch critic of the war against Iraq suspend his independence of judgment his moral compass avert his eyes and cast so many votes funding Israel8217s brutal occupationamp160 This has troubled me and many on his regular office staff over the yearsamp160 I suspect it also came back to trouble him as he appeared to back pedal from some of his earlier proIsrael rhetoric Kennedy was never as gross in his proclaimed fealty to Israel as many members of Congress and occasionally he raised eyebrows when he declined some of the 8216raw meat8217 language ever offered by AIPAC 8216advisors8217 for inclusion in his speeches But he regularly used the Israel card when it served him politically I was present at one campaign event when Kennedy spoke before the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations on January 28 1980 in the runup to the New York Primaryamp160 He attacked Jimmy Carter in every borough of New York City accusing him of an 8220on again off again flirtation8221 with the PLO and of holding 8220proPalestinian positions8221amp160 He told the audienceamp160 8220I know that in advocating Israel8217s cause I am inevitably advancing the cause of America8221 and he asked rhetorically 8220what sort of a settlement can Israel expect from this president electorally unfettered in his second term How often have threats and pressures veiled and explicit been used by this Administration in attempting to coerce Israel8221 The presidential primary polls indicated that Carter would beat Kennedy in the New York Democratic primary by a margin of 54 to 28 percent But on March 1 Carter8217s UN Ambassador Donald F McHenry voted for a resolution in the UN Security Council condemning Israeli settlement activity in Jerusalem an issue still with us Three weeks later Kennedy beat Carter in New York by 59 percent to 41 percentamp160 Ted knew that the Israel lobby had come through for him Paul Kirk smiled at me The brilliant Boston University Government Professor Murry B Levin8217s lectures between 1955 and 1989 when he retired often drew 1000 students into BU8217s crammed Hayden Hallamp160 Levin was author of the Alienated Voter the Compleat Politician and several books on Kennedyamp160 He would tell his spellbound students including this one that Ted followed House Speaker Tip O8217Neil8217s creed that all politics are local and for years Kennedy showed little interest in foreign affairs and focused on domestic issues and local constituenciesamp160 This helped the Israel lobby secure Kennedy8217s seemingly blind support according to Levin Few on the issues staff at EMK 821680 HQ thought that Ted8217s comments on IsraelPalestine were extreme Out ofamp160more thanamp160 a dozen in our cramped 8220issues office8221 10 were fairly hard core Zionists with Ted8217s niece Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and her husband David who worked on education issuesamp160 and this observeramp160 the exceptions and only nonJewsamp160 Rabbi Alexander Schindler a friend told us that the Kennedy pledge to Israel was the most unequivocal he had ever heard from any Presidential candidateThat was nearly 30 years agoamp160 By today8217s debased standards Kennedy8217s words now appear less strident Kennedy supported Obama8217s current efforts in Palestine and was according to some on his foreign policy staff getting ready to go toe to toe with the Israeli lobby if necessary 8220to settle this mess8221amp160 Who doubts that Obama needed Kennedy to weigh in with the Israeli lobby to salvage Middle East initiativesamp160 But would he have done so Was Kennedy breaking with Israel8217s Apartheid Following September 11 Senator Kennedy felt strongly that it was important to establish positive ties with more people of the Muslim world To support that goal he and colleagues established a program to provide scholarships for secondary school students from countries with significant Muslim populations to spend up to one academic year in the United States These students live with American host families attend high school and engage in activities to learn about American society and values acquire leadership skills and help educate Americans about their countries and cultures Since the program began in the fall of 2002 approximately 3000 students from more than 30 countries have participatedamp160 Meanwhile Kennedyamp160 amp160started regularly calling a number of Muslim and Arab opinion leaders to assure them that 911 would not be allowed to bring division among Americans Kennedy also recently defended Judge Richard Goldstone8217s UNmandated investigation of both sides of the Gaza conflict He met with human rights groups that have been the target of a disinformation campaign launched by the Israeli government Kennedy recognized the problem of the Israeli military killing mainly civilians He argued to his staff that Israel8217s military campaign in Gaza should not be lamely excused or covered up but should be seen for what is was and must not happen again Kennedy staffers attest to the fact that he read Human Rights Watch Amnesty International and other reports that showed through detailed ontheground investigations for example that Israeli forces fired white phosphorous munitions indiscriminately over civilian areas shot and killed Palestinian civilians waving white flags attacked children playing on rooftops with precision missiles fired from aerial drones and needlessly destroyed civilian property Kennedy8217s Senate staff provided him with the proof of Israeli air attacks on Gaza 8211 the buildings blown to rubble the children killed on their way to school the long rows of mutilated corpses the wailing mothers and wives the crowds of terrified Palestinians not knowing where to flee the hospitals so overburdened and out of supplies they cannot treat the wounded and our studied callous indifference to this widespread human suffering Staffers noted that their boss winced when he read reports or received briefing like the recent one study from the UN about 10000 Gazans having no access to a water network 8211 while about 60 per cent of the nearly 15 million population receive water only intermittently while water consumption in the Gaza Strip is less than a third of that of Israelis living just a few miles away Kennedyamp160 a long term backer of recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel recently changed his views andamp160 came to favor a shared Holy City for all faiths along the linesamp160 long advocated by the Papacy andamp160 in principal he did not oppose having Jerusalemamp160 the Capitol of both Palestine and Israel He was also said to be studying and reconsidering the requirements of UNSCR 194 and the Right of Returnamp160 How he ultimately would have reconciled its requirements and those of the more than two dozen UN Security Council Resolutions which Israel continues to ignore shielded by US political cover with his own civil and human rights legacy while continuing to vote funds for an expansionist Israel is unclear One hopes that had Ted Kennedy lived he wouldamp160 have accelerated his reconsiderationamp160 of blindamp160 support for Israel8217samp160 brutal occupation and come to oppose as he did in South Africa a renegade Apartheid regime Some Kennedy staffers claim to have seen a change in Ted8217s views on the Question of Palestine following his 1992 marriage to Victoria Araiji Boustany Reggie whose family on her Mother8217s side is Lebaneseamp160 One current Kennedy staffer explainedamp160 8220Vicki never forgets her Arab origins and in her own way works for justice Probably Ted learned a lot about Israel8217s attacks on Lebanon from her A number of Boustanys in Lebanon actually support Hezbollah and the Resistance but I doubt Vicki does8221 Some who know him well believe that Kennedy was in the process of evolving from toeing the Zionist line designed to buy peace for his domestic agenda through a Faustian bargain with the Israeli lobby Unlike perhaps a majority in Congress who consider Israel a rogue expansionist state but who want to keep their jobs 8220It may have been that Ted was trying to reconcile his background his pedigree his principals and all he believed in and he may have even concluded that Israel was a mistake and had become a militarist pariah that was the antipathy of all that the Kennedy mystique stood foramp160amp160 Or maybe Ted was not there yet and maybe never would have dropped Israel completelyamp160but his views were changing8221 explained a current staff member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee The Senior Senator from Massachusetts was appropriately laid to rest under the Stars and Stripes foreveramp160 Not the Star of David FRANKLIN LAMB is doing research in Lebanonamp160 He is Interim Director of the SabraShatila Foundation and can be reached at fplambsabrashatilaorg

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dampen/VERB the/DET flap/NOUN from/ADP her/PRON flag/NOUN wrap/NOUN Abe/PROPN Foxman/PROPN President/PROPN of/ADP ADL/PROPN and/CCONJ AIPACamp160/PROPN on/ADP the/DET other/ADJ hand/NOUN knew/VERB exactly/ADV what/PRON they/PRON were/AUX doing/VERB four/NUM days/NOUN earlier/ADV as/SCONJ both/PRON offered/VERB to/PART send/VERB an/DET Israeli/ADJ flag/NOUN toamp160/NUM Our/PRON Lady/PROPN of/ADP Perpetual/PROPN Help/PROPN Basilica/PROPN in/ADP Boston8217s/PROPN Mission/PROPN Hill/PROPN section/NOUN The/DET plan/NOUN was/AUX to/PART wrap/VERB Ted/PROPN Kennedy8217s/PROPN casket/NOUN side/NOUN by/ADP side/NOUN with/ADP the/DET American/ADJ flag/NOUN each/DET flag/NOUN to/PART cover/VERB roughly/ADV half/NOUN of/ADP Ted8217s/PROPN casket/NOUN during/ADP Kennedy8217s/PROPN internationally/ADV broadcast/VERB funeral/NOUN which/PRON was/AUX even/ADV watched/VERB live/ADV in/ADP Dahiyeh/PROPN Beirut8217s/PROPN southern/ADJ suburbs/NOUN Only/ADV since/SCONJ the/DET lobby8217s/PROPN continuing/VERB exploitation/NOUN of/ADP the/DET Holocaust/PROPN and/CCONJ ADL8217s/PUNCT use/NOUN of/ADP the/DET image/NOUN of/ADP Yasser/PROPN Arafat/PROPN to/PART demonize/VERB him/PRON and/CCONJ raise/VERB millions/NOUN to/PART fund/VERB illegal/ADJ settlement/NOUN expansion/NOUN did/AUX Foxman/PROPN see/VERB such/DET a/DET terrific/ADJ chance/NOUN to/PART hype/VERB brand/NOUN Zionism/PROPN this/DET time/NOUN by/ADP linking/VERB it/PRON in/ADP perpetuity/NOUN to/ADP the/DET Kennedy/PROPN mystique/NOUN and/CCONJ the/DET Arlington/PROPN Cemetery/PROPN eternal/ADJ flame/NOUN Wrapping/PROPN Kennedy/PROPN in/ADP the/DET Israeli/ADJ flag/NOUN for/ADP history/NOUN would/AUX no/ADV doubt/ADV give/VERB a/DET boost/NOUN to/ADP Israel8217s/PRON preferred/ADJ historical/ADJ narrative/NOUN and/CCONJ the/DET Israeli/ADJ flag/NOUN which/PRON has/AUX increasingly/ADV come/VERB to/PART represent/VERB virulent/NOUN Zionism/PROPN and/CCONJ its/PRON crimes/NOUN AIPAC/PROPN claims/VERB the/DET wellintentioned/VERB project/NOUN to/PART wrap/VERB Kennedy/PROPN in/ADP the/DET Star/PROPN of/ADP David/PROPN was/AUX no/ADV more/ADJ than/ADP another/DET gesture/NOUN for/ADP the/DET memory/NOUN of/ADP a/DET friend/NOUN of/ADP the/DET Jewish/ADJ people/NOUN Perhaps/ADV Abe/PROPN saw/VERB his/PRON initiative/NOUN as/ADP a/DET return/NOUN tribute/NOUN for/ADP Ted8217s/PROPN thoughtfulness/NOUN during/ADP the/DET November/PROPN 6/NUM 1995/NUM funeral/NOUN for/ADP Yitzak/PROPN Rabin/PROPN on/ADP Mount/PROPN Herzl/PROPN renamed/VERB for/ADP the/DET founder/NOUN of/ADP modern/ADJ Zionism/PROPN Hungarian/PROPN Binyamin/PROPN Ze8217ev/NOUN Theodoreamp160/PROPN Herzl/PROPN who/PRON had/AUX never/ADV set/VERB foot/NOUN in/ADP Palestine/PROPN from/ADP its/PRON ancientamp160/NUM expunged/ADJ Arabic/ADJ name/NOUN 8220Jabal/NUM Assalam8221/PROPN meaning/VERB 8216Peace/NUM Mountain8221/PROPN On/ADP that/DET day/NOUN Senator/PROPN Kennedy/PROPN sprinkled/VERB a/DET cup/NOUN of/ADP soil/NOUN from/ADP 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<p>LOS ANGELES (AP) &#8212; The Latest on deadly storms in California (all times local):</p> <p>4:50 p.m.</p> <p>Flooding and mudslides from a deadly storm has shut down some 30 miles of a major coastal freeway between Northern and Southern California.</p> <p>The California Highway Patrol says Interstate 101 was closed Tuesday between Ventura and Santa Barbara as water, mud and debris inundated the road.</p> <p>Capt. Cindy Pontes says crews are working &#8220;feverishly&#8221; to clear the road but it will take 48 hours or longer to reopen it.</p> <p>Runoff from heavy rain has washed mud, branches and debris from the foothill and coastal mountain area burned by the Thomas fire. Pontes says a broken water main spilled even more water.</p> <p>The CHP says at one point early Tuesday, the entire freeway was inundated and the mud was 3 feet deep at the top of a rise.</p> <p>___</p> <p>4:10 p.m.</p> <p>The death toll from flash flooding and debris flows in Southern California has risen to 13.</p> <p>Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown announced the new number of dead at a news conference on Tuesday afternoon. Officials had previously announced eight deaths.</p> <p>A powerful storm hit the region early Tuesday, deluging hills and mountains burned bare last month by the largest wildfire in recorded California history.</p> <p>Torrents roared down through neighborhoods in Montecito near Santa Barbara, sweeping some homes away entirely in what officials called a catastrophic debris flow.</p> <p>Rescues in the area are continuing. At least 50 people have been rescued so far, and about 300 are stranded in one neighborhood.</p> <p>___</p> <p>2:27 p.m.</p> <p>The death toll from flash flooding and debris flows in Southern California has risen to eight.</p> <p>Santa Barbara County spokesman David Villalobos says all of the deaths are believed to have occurred in Montecito, a community neighboring the city of Santa Barbara.</p> <p>A powerful storm hit the region early Tuesday, deluging hills and mountains burned bare last month by the largest wildfire in recorded California history.</p> <p>Torrents roared down through Montecito neighborhoods, sweeping some homes away entirely and leaving behind tangled, smashed debris and massive boulders.</p> <p>In addition to the deaths, at least 25 people were injured. Searches are continuing.</p> <p>___</p> <p>2:10 p.m.</p> <p>One of the six people killed in a mudslide caused by a flash flood in Southern California was the founder a Catholic school who dedicated his life to helping others.</p> <p>Michael Van Hecke, the headmaster of the St. Augustine Academy in Ventura, tells The Associated Press that the school&#8217;s founder, Roy Rohter, was killed in Monday&#8217;s storm.</p> <p>He says Rohter&#8217;s wife, Theresa, was injured and remained hospitalized Monday afternoon.</p> <p>Van Hecke says he was told of the death by the Rohters&#8217; daughter.</p> <p>He says Roy Rohter was raised in Chicago and was a real estate broker for several years before he founded the Catholic academy in Ventura, California.</p> <p>Van Hecke says Rohter, who is survived by three children and several grandchildren, believed strongly in Catholic education.</p> <p>___</p> <p>1:02 p.m.</p> <p>A fire department spokesman says there are now six confirmed deaths in the aftermath of Southern California flash floods during a powerful storm.</p> <p>Santa Barbara County fire Capt. Dave Zaniboni confirms the additional death that raised the toll from an earlier tally of five.</p> <p>Several homes were swept away before dawn Tuesday when mud and debris roared into Montecito neighborhoods from hillsides stripped of vegetation during a recent wildfire.</p> <p>Authorities say a small percentage of people heeded evacuation warnings as the storm approached.</p> <p>___</p> <p>12 p.m.</p> <p>Santa Barbara County officials estimate that just 10 to 15 percent of residents ordered to evacuate heeded the warning ahead of a dangerous storm that has killed five people.</p> <p>Several homes were swept away before dawn Tuesday when mud and debris roared into neighborhoods in Montecito from hillsides stripped of vegetation during a recent wildfire.</p> <p>About 21,000 people were under mandatory evacuation orders by mid-Monday. County spokeswoman Amber Anderson says only 200 of the 1,200 residents contacted in person had left by the evening.</p> <p>There is a backlog of calls for rescue or evacuation from the area, where roads are blocked by mud and downed power poles.</p> <p>___</p> <p>9:53 a.m.</p> <p>Firefighters have rescued a 14-year-old girl from the rubble of a home devastated by a mudslide in the Montecito area of Southern California after a powerful storm hit an area ravaged by a December wildfire.</p> <p>Santa Barbara County authorities say there have been five confirmed fatalities as of Tuesday morning and there is a backlog of 75 calls for rescue or evacuation from the area.</p> <p>The storm hit hard in the early morning hours, sweeping a number of homes off their foundations.</p> <p>___</p> <p>9:30 a.m.</p> <p>A fire official says five people have been killed by mudslides that swept Southern California homes from their foundations as a powerful storm drenched recent wildfire burn areas.</p> <p>Santa Barbara County Fire Department Capt. Dave Zaniboni says the bodies were found in mud and debris during rescue operations Tuesday in Montecito northwest of Los Angeles.</p> <p>KEYT-TV showed a body being loaded into a military-style truck on a mud-covered street.</p> <p>Zaniboni says &#8220;multiple&#8221; homes were destroyed and residents are unaccounted for in neighborhoods below hillsides scarred by recent fires.</p> <p>Crews are clearing debris that closed a section of U.S. 101 along the border of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.</p> <p>___</p> <p>8:45 a.m.</p> <p>Authorities say two people have been killed by a mudslide that has destroyed homes during a powerful Southern California storm.</p> <p>Santa Barbara County Fire Department Capt. Dave Zaniboni says the bodies were found in mud and debris during rescue operations Tuesday in Montecito northwest of Los Angeles.</p> <p>Zaniboni says several homes were swept from their foundations and residents are unaccounted for in neighborhoods below hillsides scarred by recent wildfires.</p> <p>Crews are working to clear debris from a key stretch of U.S. 101 that was shut down along the border of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.</p> <p>__</p> <p>7:20 a.m.</p> <p>Several homes have swept from their foundations and residents are unaccounted for as mud flows into Southern California neighborhoods below hillsides scarred by recent wildfires.</p> <p>Santa Barbara County Fire Department Capt. Dave Zaniboni says crews are making rescues across the foothill enclave of Montecito northwest of Los Angeles.</p> <p>He says some of those rescued were buried in mud and debris. Active searches are underway as rain continues to fall from a huge winter storm that has soaked much of the state.</p> <p>Crews are working to clear debris from roads across greater Los Angeles, including a key stretch of U.S. 101 that was shut down along the border of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.</p> <p>___</p> <p>6:50 a.m.</p> <p>The wettest rainstorm of the winter dumped steady rain in fire-ravaged Northern California communities but only some fallen trees and minor rockslides were reported overnight.</p> <p>Santa Rosa Assistant Fire Marshal Paul Lowenthal says no major problems have been reported in the hillsides communities hardest hit by wildfires in October where heavy rain brought the risk of mudslides.</p> <p>Lingering showers are expected Tuesday, but forecasters say the storm would exit the region by the evening.</p> <p>The Santa Rosa Press Democrat reported rockslides in the lower Russian River and Sonoma Coast temporarily blocked roads and that about 50 people in the Cazadero area were without power after a tree fell into power lines</p> <p>The National Weather Service says that more than 2 inches (5centimeters) of rain fell at Sonoma County Airport&#8217;s and that up to 1 1/2 additional inches were expected by Tuesday morning. Similar amounts were reported across that county.</p> <p>___</p> <p>6:30 a.m.</p> <p>Crews are rescuing residents from homes as mud and debris from wildfire-scarred hillsides inundate Southern California neighborhoods during a powerful winter storm.</p> <p>Santa Barbara County spokeswoman Amber Anderson says helicopters are being used early Tuesday because roads are blocked by downed trees and power lines.</p> <p>Anderson says there are reports of injuries, but she didn&#8217;t immediately know how many or the extent. She says &#8220;multiple&#8221; residents have been rescued and more are calling for help in Montecito and Carpinteria. Evacuations were ordered in those foothill neighborhoods Monday because of mudslide fears.</p> <p>Thousands are without power in and around Santa Barbara, northwest of Los Angeles.</p> <p>The first significant storm of the season has soaked much of the state. A record 3.15 inches (8 centimeters) of rain fell in downtown San Francisco on Monday.</p> <p>___</p> <p>5:10 a.m.</p> <p>Heavy rains pounding Southern California for a second day are causing floods and loosening hillsides as officials in fire-ravaged communities warn people to stay off roads over fears of mud and debris flows.</p> <p>Traffic accidents have slowed the Tuesday morning commute to a crawl across the region, including along coastal U.S. 101 in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. That&#8217;s where thousands of residents evacuated Monday over fears of destructive mudslides in areas where the state&#8217;s largest-ever fire raged last month.</p> <p>Forecasters issued flash flood warnings and predicted the cold front with powerful winds could bring several inches of rain.</p> <p>A winter weather advisory is in place for mountain areas, where officials warned motorists to prepare for difficult travel conditions, including gusty winds, low visibility and snow-covered roads.</p> <p>LOS ANGELES (AP) &#8212; The Latest on deadly storms in California (all times local):</p> <p>4:50 p.m.</p> <p>Flooding and mudslides from a deadly storm has shut down some 30 miles of a major coastal freeway between Northern and Southern California.</p> <p>The California Highway Patrol says Interstate 101 was closed Tuesday between Ventura and Santa Barbara as water, mud and debris inundated the road.</p> <p>Capt. Cindy Pontes says crews are working &#8220;feverishly&#8221; to clear the road but it will take 48 hours or longer to reopen it.</p> <p>Runoff from heavy rain has washed mud, branches and debris from the foothill and coastal mountain area burned by the Thomas fire. Pontes says a broken water main spilled even more water.</p> <p>The CHP says at one point early Tuesday, the entire freeway was inundated and the mud was 3 feet deep at the top of a rise.</p> <p>___</p> <p>4:10 p.m.</p> <p>The death toll from flash flooding and debris flows in Southern California has risen to 13.</p> <p>Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown announced the new number of dead at a news conference on Tuesday afternoon. Officials had previously announced eight deaths.</p> <p>A powerful storm hit the region early Tuesday, deluging hills and mountains burned bare last month by the largest wildfire in recorded California history.</p> <p>Torrents roared down through neighborhoods in Montecito near Santa Barbara, sweeping some homes away entirely in what officials called a catastrophic debris flow.</p> <p>Rescues in the area are continuing. At least 50 people have been rescued so far, and about 300 are stranded in one neighborhood.</p> <p>___</p> <p>2:27 p.m.</p> <p>The death toll from flash flooding and debris flows in Southern California has risen to eight.</p> <p>Santa Barbara County spokesman David Villalobos says all of the deaths are believed to have occurred in Montecito, a community neighboring the city of Santa Barbara.</p> <p>A powerful storm hit the region early Tuesday, deluging hills and mountains burned bare last month by the largest wildfire in recorded California history.</p> <p>Torrents roared down through Montecito neighborhoods, sweeping some homes away entirely and leaving behind tangled, smashed debris and massive boulders.</p> <p>In addition to the deaths, at least 25 people were injured. Searches are continuing.</p> <p>___</p> <p>2:10 p.m.</p> <p>One of the six people killed in a mudslide caused by a flash flood in Southern California was the founder a Catholic school who dedicated his life to helping others.</p> <p>Michael Van Hecke, the headmaster of the St. Augustine Academy in Ventura, tells The Associated Press that the school&#8217;s founder, Roy Rohter, was killed in Monday&#8217;s storm.</p> <p>He says Rohter&#8217;s wife, Theresa, was injured and remained hospitalized Monday afternoon.</p> <p>Van Hecke says he was told of the death by the Rohters&#8217; daughter.</p> <p>He says Roy Rohter was raised in Chicago and was a real estate broker for several years before he founded the Catholic academy in Ventura, California.</p> <p>Van Hecke says Rohter, who is survived by three children and several grandchildren, believed strongly in Catholic education.</p> <p>___</p> <p>1:02 p.m.</p> <p>A fire department spokesman says there are now six confirmed deaths in the aftermath of Southern California flash floods during a powerful storm.</p> <p>Santa Barbara County fire Capt. Dave Zaniboni confirms the additional death that raised the toll from an earlier tally of five.</p> <p>Several homes were swept away before dawn Tuesday when mud and debris roared into Montecito neighborhoods from hillsides stripped of vegetation during a recent wildfire.</p> <p>Authorities say a small percentage of people heeded evacuation warnings as the storm approached.</p> <p>___</p> <p>12 p.m.</p> <p>Santa Barbara County officials estimate that just 10 to 15 percent of residents ordered to evacuate heeded the warning ahead of a dangerous storm that has killed five people.</p> <p>Several homes were swept away before dawn Tuesday when mud and debris roared into neighborhoods in Montecito from hillsides stripped of vegetation during a recent wildfire.</p> <p>About 21,000 people were under mandatory evacuation orders by mid-Monday. County spokeswoman Amber Anderson says only 200 of the 1,200 residents contacted in person had left by the evening.</p> <p>There is a backlog of calls for rescue or evacuation from the area, where roads are blocked by mud and downed power poles.</p> <p>___</p> <p>9:53 a.m.</p> <p>Firefighters have rescued a 14-year-old girl from the rubble of a home devastated by a mudslide in the Montecito area of Southern California after a powerful storm hit an area ravaged by a December wildfire.</p> <p>Santa Barbara County authorities say there have been five confirmed fatalities as of Tuesday morning and there is a backlog of 75 calls for rescue or evacuation from the area.</p> <p>The storm hit hard in the early morning hours, sweeping a number of homes off their foundations.</p> <p>___</p> <p>9:30 a.m.</p> <p>A fire official says five people have been killed by mudslides that swept Southern California homes from their foundations as a powerful storm drenched recent wildfire burn areas.</p> <p>Santa Barbara County Fire Department Capt. Dave Zaniboni says the bodies were found in mud and debris during rescue operations Tuesday in Montecito northwest of Los Angeles.</p> <p>KEYT-TV showed a body being loaded into a military-style truck on a mud-covered street.</p> <p>Zaniboni says &#8220;multiple&#8221; homes were destroyed and residents are unaccounted for in neighborhoods below hillsides scarred by recent fires.</p> <p>Crews are clearing debris that closed a section of U.S. 101 along the border of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.</p> <p>___</p> <p>8:45 a.m.</p> <p>Authorities say two people have been killed by a mudslide that has destroyed homes during a powerful Southern California storm.</p> <p>Santa Barbara County Fire Department Capt. Dave Zaniboni says the bodies were found in mud and debris during rescue operations Tuesday in Montecito northwest of Los Angeles.</p> <p>Zaniboni says several homes were swept from their foundations and residents are unaccounted for in neighborhoods below hillsides scarred by recent wildfires.</p> <p>Crews are working to clear debris from a key stretch of U.S. 101 that was shut down along the border of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.</p> <p>__</p> <p>7:20 a.m.</p> <p>Several homes have swept from their foundations and residents are unaccounted for as mud flows into Southern California neighborhoods below hillsides scarred by recent wildfires.</p> <p>Santa Barbara County Fire Department Capt. Dave Zaniboni says crews are making rescues across the foothill enclave of Montecito northwest of Los Angeles.</p> <p>He says some of those rescued were buried in mud and debris. Active searches are underway as rain continues to fall from a huge winter storm that has soaked much of the state.</p> <p>Crews are working to clear debris from roads across greater Los Angeles, including a key stretch of U.S. 101 that was shut down along the border of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.</p> <p>___</p> <p>6:50 a.m.</p> <p>The wettest rainstorm of the winter dumped steady rain in fire-ravaged Northern California communities but only some fallen trees and minor rockslides were reported overnight.</p> <p>Santa Rosa Assistant Fire Marshal Paul Lowenthal says no major problems have been reported in the hillsides communities hardest hit by wildfires in October where heavy rain brought the risk of mudslides.</p> <p>Lingering showers are expected Tuesday, but forecasters say the storm would exit the region by the evening.</p> <p>The Santa Rosa Press Democrat reported rockslides in the lower Russian River and Sonoma Coast temporarily blocked roads and that about 50 people in the Cazadero area were without power after a tree fell into power lines</p> <p>The National Weather Service says that more than 2 inches (5centimeters) of rain fell at Sonoma County Airport&#8217;s and that up to 1 1/2 additional inches were expected by Tuesday morning. Similar amounts were reported across that county.</p> <p>___</p> <p>6:30 a.m.</p> <p>Crews are rescuing residents from homes as mud and debris from wildfire-scarred hillsides inundate Southern California neighborhoods during a powerful winter storm.</p> <p>Santa Barbara County spokeswoman Amber Anderson says helicopters are being used early Tuesday because roads are blocked by downed trees and power lines.</p> <p>Anderson says there are reports of injuries, but she didn&#8217;t immediately know how many or the extent. She says &#8220;multiple&#8221; residents have been rescued and more are calling for help in Montecito and Carpinteria. Evacuations were ordered in those foothill neighborhoods Monday because of mudslide fears.</p> <p>Thousands are without power in and around Santa Barbara, northwest of Los Angeles.</p> <p>The first significant storm of the season has soaked much of the state. A record 3.15 inches (8 centimeters) of rain fell in downtown San Francisco on Monday.</p> <p>___</p> <p>5:10 a.m.</p> <p>Heavy rains pounding Southern California for a second day are causing floods and loosening hillsides as officials in fire-ravaged communities warn people to stay off roads over fears of mud and debris flows.</p> <p>Traffic accidents have slowed the Tuesday morning commute to a crawl across the region, including along coastal U.S. 101 in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. That&#8217;s where thousands of residents evacuated Monday over fears of destructive mudslides in areas where the state&#8217;s largest-ever fire raged last month.</p> <p>Forecasters issued flash flood warnings and predicted the cold front with powerful winds could bring several inches of rain.</p> <p>A winter weather advisory is in place for mountain areas, where officials warned motorists to prepare for difficult travel conditions, including gusty winds, low visibility and snow-covered roads.</p>

The Latest: Flooding blocks coastal California freeway

https://apnews.com/f529fa65502a459ea0a7964b7c2d3d66

2018-01-10

2least

LOS ANGELES AP 8212 The Latest on deadly storms in California all times local 450 pm Flooding and mudslides from a deadly storm has shut down some 30 miles of a major coastal freeway between Northern and Southern California The California Highway Patrol says Interstate 101 was closed Tuesday between Ventura and Santa Barbara as water mud and debris inundated the road Capt Cindy Pontes says crews are working 8220feverishly8221 to clear the road but it will take 48 hours or longer to reopen it Runoff from heavy rain has washed mud branches and debris from the foothill and coastal mountain area burned by the Thomas fire Pontes says a broken water main spilled even more water The CHP says at one point early Tuesday the entire freeway was inundated and the mud was 3 feet deep at the top of a rise ___ 410 pm The death toll from flash flooding and debris flows in Southern California has risen to 13 Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown announced the new number of dead at a news conference on Tuesday afternoon Officials had previously announced eight deaths A powerful storm hit the region early Tuesday deluging hills and mountains burned bare last month by the largest wildfire in recorded California history Torrents roared down through neighborhoods in Montecito near Santa Barbara sweeping some homes away entirely in what officials called a catastrophic debris flow Rescues in the area are continuing At least 50 people have been rescued so far and about 300 are stranded in one neighborhood ___ 227 pm The death toll from flash flooding and debris flows in Southern California has risen to eight Santa Barbara County spokesman David Villalobos says all of the deaths are believed to have occurred in Montecito a community neighboring the city of Santa Barbara A powerful storm hit the region early Tuesday deluging hills and mountains burned bare last month by the largest wildfire in recorded California history Torrents roared down through Montecito neighborhoods sweeping some homes away entirely and leaving behind tangled smashed debris and massive boulders In addition to the deaths at least 25 people were injured Searches are continuing ___ 210 pm One of the six people killed in a mudslide caused by a flash flood in Southern California was the founder a Catholic school who dedicated his life to helping others Michael Van Hecke the headmaster of the St Augustine Academy in Ventura tells The Associated Press that the school8217s founder Roy Rohter was killed in Monday8217s storm He says Rohter8217s wife Theresa was injured and remained hospitalized Monday afternoon Van Hecke says he was told of the death by the Rohters8217 daughter He says Roy Rohter was raised in Chicago and was a real estate broker for several years before he founded the Catholic academy in Ventura California Van Hecke says Rohter who is survived by three children and several grandchildren believed strongly in Catholic education ___ 102 pm A fire department spokesman says there are now six confirmed deaths in the aftermath of Southern California flash floods during a powerful storm Santa Barbara County fire Capt Dave Zaniboni confirms the additional death that raised the toll from an earlier tally of five Several homes were swept away before dawn Tuesday when mud and debris roared into Montecito neighborhoods from hillsides stripped of vegetation during a recent wildfire Authorities say a small percentage of people heeded evacuation warnings as the storm approached ___ 12 pm Santa Barbara County officials estimate that just 10 to 15 percent of residents ordered to evacuate heeded the warning ahead of a dangerous storm that has killed five people Several homes were swept away before dawn Tuesday when mud and debris roared into neighborhoods in Montecito from hillsides stripped of vegetation during a recent wildfire About 21000 people were under mandatory evacuation orders by midMonday County spokeswoman Amber Anderson says only 200 of the 1200 residents contacted in person had left by the evening There is a backlog of calls for rescue or evacuation from the area where roads are blocked by mud and downed power poles ___ 953 am Firefighters have rescued a 14yearold girl from the rubble of a home devastated by a mudslide in the Montecito area of Southern California after a powerful storm hit an area ravaged by a December wildfire Santa Barbara County authorities say there have been five confirmed fatalities as of Tuesday morning and there is a backlog of 75 calls for rescue or evacuation from the area The storm hit hard in the early morning hours sweeping a number of homes off their foundations ___ 930 am A fire official says five people have been killed by mudslides that swept Southern California homes from their foundations as a powerful storm drenched recent wildfire burn areas Santa Barbara County Fire Department Capt Dave Zaniboni says the bodies were found in mud and debris during rescue operations Tuesday in Montecito northwest of Los Angeles KEYTTV showed a body being loaded into a militarystyle truck on a mudcovered street Zaniboni says 8220multiple8221 homes were destroyed and residents are unaccounted for in neighborhoods below hillsides scarred by recent fires Crews are clearing debris that closed a section of US 101 along the border of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties ___ 845 am Authorities say two people have been killed by a mudslide that has destroyed homes during a powerful Southern California storm Santa Barbara County Fire Department Capt Dave Zaniboni says the bodies were found in mud and debris during rescue operations Tuesday in Montecito northwest of Los Angeles Zaniboni says several homes were swept from their foundations and residents are unaccounted for in neighborhoods below hillsides scarred by recent wildfires Crews are working to clear debris from a key stretch of US 101 that was shut down along the border of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties __ 720 am Several homes have swept from their foundations and residents are unaccounted for as mud flows into Southern California neighborhoods below hillsides scarred by recent wildfires Santa Barbara County Fire Department Capt Dave Zaniboni says crews are making rescues across the foothill enclave of Montecito northwest of Los Angeles He says some of those rescued were buried in mud and debris Active searches are underway as rain continues to fall from a huge winter storm that has soaked much of the state Crews are working to clear debris from roads across greater Los Angeles including a key stretch of US 101 that was shut down along the border of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties ___ 650 am The wettest rainstorm of the winter dumped steady rain in fireravaged Northern California communities but only some fallen trees and minor rockslides were reported overnight Santa Rosa Assistant Fire Marshal Paul Lowenthal says no major problems have been reported in the hillsides communities hardest hit by wildfires in October where heavy rain brought the risk of mudslides Lingering showers are expected Tuesday but forecasters say the storm would exit the region by the evening The Santa Rosa Press Democrat reported rockslides in the lower Russian River and Sonoma Coast temporarily blocked roads and that about 50 people in the Cazadero area were without power after a tree fell into power lines The National Weather Service says that more than 2 inches 5centimeters of rain fell at Sonoma County Airport8217s and that up to 1 12 additional inches were expected by Tuesday morning Similar amounts were reported across that county ___ 630 am Crews are rescuing residents from homes as mud and debris from wildfirescarred hillsides inundate Southern California neighborhoods during a powerful winter storm Santa Barbara County spokeswoman Amber Anderson says helicopters are being used early Tuesday because roads are blocked by downed trees and power lines Anderson says there are reports of injuries but she didn8217t immediately know how many or the extent She says 8220multiple8221 residents have been rescued and more are calling for help in Montecito and Carpinteria Evacuations were ordered in those foothill neighborhoods Monday because of mudslide fears Thousands are without power in and around Santa Barbara northwest of Los Angeles The first significant storm of the season has soaked much of the state A record 315 inches 8 centimeters of rain fell in downtown San Francisco on Monday ___ 510 am Heavy rains pounding Southern California for a second day are causing floods and loosening hillsides as officials in fireravaged communities warn people to stay off roads over fears of mud and debris flows Traffic accidents have slowed the Tuesday morning commute to a crawl across the region including along coastal US 101 in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties That8217s where thousands of residents evacuated Monday over fears of destructive mudslides in areas where the state8217s largestever fire raged last month Forecasters issued flash flood warnings and predicted the cold front with powerful winds could bring several inches of rain A winter weather advisory is in place for mountain areas where officials warned motorists to prepare for difficult travel conditions including gusty winds low visibility and snowcovered roads LOS ANGELES AP 8212 The Latest on deadly storms in California all times local 450 pm Flooding and mudslides from a deadly storm has shut down some 30 miles of a major coastal freeway between Northern and Southern California The California Highway Patrol says Interstate 101 was closed Tuesday between Ventura and Santa Barbara as water mud and debris inundated the road Capt Cindy Pontes says crews are working 8220feverishly8221 to clear the road but it will take 48 hours or longer to reopen it Runoff from heavy rain has washed mud branches and debris from the foothill and coastal mountain area burned by the Thomas fire Pontes says a broken water main spilled even more water The CHP says at one point early Tuesday the entire freeway was inundated and the mud was 3 feet deep at the top of a rise ___ 410 pm The death toll from flash flooding and debris flows in Southern California has risen to 13 Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown announced the new number of dead at a news conference on Tuesday afternoon Officials had previously announced eight deaths A powerful storm hit the region early Tuesday deluging hills and mountains burned bare last month by the largest wildfire in recorded California history Torrents roared down through neighborhoods in Montecito near Santa Barbara sweeping some homes away entirely in what officials called a catastrophic debris flow Rescues in the area are continuing At least 50 people have been rescued so far and about 300 are stranded in one neighborhood ___ 227 pm The death toll from flash flooding and debris flows in Southern California has risen to eight Santa Barbara County spokesman David Villalobos says all of the deaths are believed to have occurred in Montecito a community neighboring the city of Santa Barbara A powerful storm hit the region early Tuesday deluging hills and mountains burned bare last month by the largest wildfire in recorded California history Torrents roared down through Montecito neighborhoods sweeping some homes away entirely and leaving behind tangled smashed debris and massive boulders In addition to the deaths at least 25 people were injured Searches are continuing ___ 210 pm One of the six people killed in a mudslide caused by a flash flood in Southern California was the founder a Catholic school who dedicated his life to helping others Michael Van Hecke the headmaster of the St Augustine Academy in Ventura tells The Associated Press that the school8217s founder Roy Rohter was killed in Monday8217s storm He says Rohter8217s wife Theresa was injured and remained hospitalized Monday afternoon Van Hecke says he was told of the death by the Rohters8217 daughter He says Roy Rohter was raised in Chicago and was a real estate broker for several years before he founded the Catholic academy in Ventura California Van Hecke says Rohter who is survived by three children and several grandchildren believed strongly in Catholic education ___ 102 pm A fire department spokesman says there are now six confirmed deaths in the aftermath of Southern California flash floods during a powerful storm Santa Barbara County fire Capt Dave Zaniboni confirms the additional death that raised the toll from an earlier tally of five Several homes were swept away before dawn Tuesday when mud and debris roared into Montecito neighborhoods from hillsides stripped of vegetation during a recent wildfire Authorities say a small percentage of people heeded evacuation warnings as the storm approached ___ 12 pm Santa Barbara County officials estimate that just 10 to 15 percent of residents ordered to evacuate heeded the warning ahead of a dangerous storm that has killed five people Several homes were swept away before dawn Tuesday when mud and debris roared into neighborhoods in Montecito from hillsides stripped of vegetation during a recent wildfire About 21000 people were under mandatory evacuation orders by midMonday County spokeswoman Amber Anderson says only 200 of the 1200 residents contacted in person had left by the evening There is a backlog of calls for rescue or evacuation from the area where roads are blocked by mud and downed power poles ___ 953 am Firefighters have rescued a 14yearold girl from the rubble of a home devastated by a mudslide in the Montecito area of Southern California after a powerful storm hit an area ravaged by a December wildfire Santa Barbara County authorities say there have been five confirmed fatalities as of Tuesday morning and there is a backlog of 75 calls for rescue or evacuation from the area The storm hit hard in the early morning hours sweeping a number of homes off their foundations ___ 930 am A fire official says five people have been killed by mudslides that swept Southern California homes from their foundations as a powerful storm drenched recent wildfire burn areas Santa Barbara County Fire Department Capt Dave Zaniboni says the bodies were found in mud and debris during rescue operations Tuesday in Montecito northwest of Los Angeles KEYTTV showed a body being loaded into a militarystyle truck on a mudcovered street Zaniboni says 8220multiple8221 homes were destroyed and residents are unaccounted for in neighborhoods below hillsides scarred by recent fires Crews are clearing debris that closed a section of US 101 along the border of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties ___ 845 am Authorities say two people have been killed by a mudslide that has destroyed homes during a powerful Southern California storm Santa Barbara County Fire Department Capt Dave Zaniboni says the bodies were found in mud and debris during rescue operations Tuesday in Montecito northwest of Los Angeles Zaniboni says several homes were swept from their foundations and residents are unaccounted for in neighborhoods below hillsides scarred by recent wildfires Crews are working to clear debris from a key stretch of US 101 that was shut down along the border of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties __ 720 am Several homes have swept from their foundations and residents are unaccounted for as mud flows into Southern California neighborhoods below hillsides scarred by recent wildfires Santa Barbara County Fire Department Capt Dave Zaniboni says crews are making rescues across the foothill enclave of Montecito northwest of Los Angeles He says some of those rescued were buried in mud and debris Active searches are underway as rain continues to fall from a huge winter storm that has soaked much of the state Crews are working to clear debris from roads across greater Los Angeles including a key stretch of US 101 that was shut down along the border of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties ___ 650 am The wettest rainstorm of the winter dumped steady rain in fireravaged Northern California communities but only some fallen trees and minor rockslides were reported overnight Santa Rosa Assistant Fire Marshal Paul Lowenthal says no major problems have been reported in the hillsides communities hardest hit by wildfires in October where heavy rain brought the risk of mudslides Lingering showers are expected Tuesday but forecasters say the storm would exit the region by the evening The Santa Rosa Press Democrat reported rockslides in the lower Russian River and Sonoma Coast temporarily blocked roads and that about 50 people in the Cazadero area were without power after a tree fell into power lines The National Weather Service says that more than 2 inches 5centimeters of rain fell at Sonoma County Airport8217s and that up to 1 12 additional inches were expected by Tuesday morning Similar amounts were reported across that county ___ 630 am Crews are rescuing residents from homes as mud and debris from wildfirescarred hillsides inundate Southern California neighborhoods during a powerful winter storm Santa Barbara County spokeswoman Amber Anderson says helicopters are being used early Tuesday because roads are blocked by downed trees and power lines Anderson says there are reports of injuries but she didn8217t immediately know how many or the extent She says 8220multiple8221 residents have been rescued and more are calling for help in Montecito and Carpinteria Evacuations were ordered in those foothill neighborhoods Monday because of mudslide fears Thousands are without power in and around Santa Barbara northwest of Los Angeles The first significant storm of the season has soaked much of the state A record 315 inches 8 centimeters of rain fell in downtown San Francisco on Monday ___ 510 am Heavy rains pounding Southern California for a second day are causing floods and loosening hillsides as officials in fireravaged communities warn people to stay off roads over fears of mud and debris flows Traffic accidents have slowed the Tuesday morning commute to a crawl across the region including along coastal US 101 in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties That8217s where thousands of residents evacuated Monday over fears of destructive mudslides in areas where the state8217s largestever fire raged last month Forecasters issued flash flood warnings and predicted the cold front with powerful winds could bring several inches of rain A winter weather advisory is in place for mountain areas where officials warned motorists to prepare for difficult travel conditions including gusty winds low visibility and snowcovered roads

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<p /> <p>Here&#8217;s one obvious lesson of the Tunisian Revolution of 2011: paranoia about Muslim fundamentalist movements and terrorism is causing Washington to make bad choices that will ultimately harm American interests and standing abroad. State Department cable traffic from capitals throughout the Greater Middle East, made public thanks to WikiLeaks, shows that U.S. policy-makers have a detailed and profound picture of the depths of corruption and nepotism that prevail among some &#8220;allies&#8221; in the region.</p> <p>The same cable traffic indicates that, in a cynical Great Power calculation, Washington continues to sacrifice the prospects of the region&#8217;s youth on the altar of &#8220;security.&#8221; It is now forgotten that America&#8217;s biggest foreign policy headache, the Islamic Republic of Iran, arose in response to American backing for Mohammad Reza Pahlevi, the despised Shah who destroyed the Iranian left and centrist political parties, paving the way for the ayatollahs&#8217; takeover in 1979.</p> <p>State Department cables published via WikiLeaks are remarkably revealing when it comes to the way Tunisian strongman Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and his extended family (including his wife Leila&#8217;s Trabelsi clan) fastened upon the Tunisian economy and sucked it dry. The riveting descriptions of U.S. diplomats make the presidential &#8220;family&#8221; sound like True Blood&#8217;s vampires overpowering Bontemps, Louisiana.</p> <p>In July of 2009, for instance, the U.S. ambassador <a href="http://213.251.145.96/cable/2009/07/09TUNIS516.html" type="external">dined with</a> Nesrine Ben Ali el-Materi and Sakher el-Materi, the president&#8217;s daughter and son-in-law, at their sumptuous mansion.&amp;#160; Materi, who rose through nepotism to dominate Tunisia&#8217;s media, provided a 12-course dinner with Kiwi juice &#8211; &#8220;not normally available here&#8221; &#8211; and &#8220;ice cream and frozen yoghurt he had flown in from Saint Tropez,&#8221; all served by an enormous staff of well-paid servants.&amp;#160; The ambassador remarked on the couple&#8217;s pet tiger, &#8220;Pasha,&#8221; which consumed &#8220;four chickens a day&#8221; at a time of extreme economic hardship for ordinary Tunisians.&amp;#160;</p> <p>Other cables <a href="http://www.juancole.com/2011/01/new-wikileaks-us-knew-tunisian-gov-rotten-corrupt-supported-ben-ali-anyway.html" type="external">detail the way</a> the Ben Ali and Trabelsi clans engaged in a Tunisian version of insider trading, using their knowledge of the president&#8217;s upcoming economic decisions to scarf up real estate and companies they knew would suddenly spike in value.&amp;#160; In 2006, the U.S. ambassador estimated that 50% of the economic elite of Tunisia was related by blood or marriage to the president, a degree of nepotism hard to match outside some of the Persian Gulf monarchies.&amp;#160;</p> <p>Despite full knowledge of the corruption and tyranny of the regime, the U.S. embassy <a href="http://213.251.145.96/cable/2009/07/09TUNIS492.html" type="external">concluded</a> in July 2009: &#8220;Notwithstanding the frustrations of doing business here, we cannot write off Tunisia. We have too much at stake. We have an interest in preventing al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and other extremist groups from establishing a foothold here. We have an interest in keeping the Tunisian military professional and neutral.&#8221;&amp;#160;</p> <p>The notion that, if the U.S. hadn&#8217;t given the Tunisian government <a href="http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/01/u-s-copter-sales-cant-save-wiki-ousted-tunisian-dictator/" type="external">hundreds of millions of dollars</a> in military aid over the past two and a half decades, while helping train its military and security forces, a shadowy fringe group calling itself &#8220;al-Qaeda in the Maghreb&#8221; might have established a &#8220;toehold&#8221; in the country was daft.&amp;#160; Yet this became an all-weather, universal excuse for bad policy.</p> <p>In this regard, Tunisia has been the norm when it comes to American policy in the Muslim world.&amp;#160; The Bush administration&#8217;s firm support for Ben Ali makes especially heinous the suggestion of some neoconservative pundits that George W. Bush&#8217;s use of democratization rhetoric for neo-imperialist purposes somehow inspired the workers and internet activists of Tunisia (none of whom ever referenced the despised former US president).&amp;#160; It would surely have been smarter for Washington to cut the Ben Ali regime off without a dime, at least militarily, and distance itself from his pack of jackals.&amp;#160; The region is, of course, littered with dusty, creaking, now exceedingly nervous dictatorships in which government is theft.&amp;#160; The U.S. receives no real benefits from its damaging association with them.</p> <p>No Dominoes to Fall</p> <p>The Bush administration&#8217;s deeply flawed, sometimes dishonest Global War on Terror replayed the worst mistakes of Cold War policy. One of those errors involved recreating the so-called domino theory &#8211; the idea that the U.S. had to make a stand in Vietnam, or else Indonesia, Thailand, Burma and the rest of Asia, if not the world, would fall to communism.&amp;#160; It wasn&#8217;t true then &#8211; the Soviet Union was, at the time, less than two decades from collapsing &#8211; and it isn&#8217;t applicable now in terms of al-Qaeda.&amp;#160; Then and now, though, that domino theory prolonged the agony of ill-conceived wars.</p> <p>Despite the Obama administration&#8217;s abandonment of the phrase &#8220;war on terror,&#8221; the impulses encoded in it still powerfully shape Washington&#8217;s policy-making, as well as its geopolitical fears and fantasies.&amp;#160; It adds up to an absurdly modernized version of domino theory.&amp;#160; This irrational fear that any small setback for the U.S. in the Muslim world could lead straight to an Islamic caliphate lurks beneath many of Washington&#8217;s pronouncements and much of its strategic planning.&amp;#160;</p> <p>A clear example can be seen in the embassy cable that acquiesced in Washington&#8217;s backing of Ben Ali for fear of the insignificant and obscure &#8220;al-Qaeda in the Maghreb.&#8221; Despite the scary name, this small group was not originally even related to Usamah Bin Laden&#8217;s al-Qaeda, but rather grew out of the Algerian Muslim reformist movement called Salafism.&amp;#160;</p> <p>If the U.S. stopped giving military aid to Ben Ali, it was implied, Bin Laden might suddenly be the caliph of Tunis.&amp;#160; This version of the domino theory &#8211; a pretext for overlooking a culture of corruption, as well as human rights abuses against dissidents &#8211; has become so widespread as to make up the warp and woof of America&#8217;s secret diplomatic messaging.</p> <p>Sinking Democracy in the Name of the War on Terror</p> <p>Take Algeria, for instance.&amp;#160; American military assistance to neighboring Algeria <a href="http://carnegieendowment.org/publications/?fa=view&amp;amp;id=23276" type="external">has typically grown</a> from nothing before September 11th to nearly a million dollars a year. It may be a small sum in aid terms, but it is rapidly increasing, and it supplements far more sizeable <a href="http://www.algerie-monde.com/actualite/article1474.html" type="external">support</a> from the French.&amp;#160; It also involves substantial training for counterterrorism; that is, precisely the skills also needed to repress peaceful civilian protests.&amp;#160;</p> <p>Ironically, the Algerian generals who control the strings of power were the ones responsible for radicalizing the country&#8217;s Muslim political party, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS).&amp;#160; Allowed to run for office in 1992, that party won an overwhelming majority in parliament.&amp;#160; Shocked and dismayed, the generals abruptly abrogated the election results.&amp;#160; We will never know if the FIS might have evolved into a parliamentary, democratic party, as later happened to the Justice and Development Party of Turkey, the leaders of which had been Muslim fundamentalists in the 1990s.&amp;#160;</p> <p>Angered at being deprived of the fruits of its victory, however, FIS supporters went on the offensive. Some were <a href="http://www.cfr.org/publication/9154/armed_islamic_group_algeria_islamists.html" type="external">radicalized and formed</a> an organization they called the Armed Islamic Group, which later became an al-Qaeda affiliate. (A member of this group, Ahmed Ressam, <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/trail/inside/cron.html" type="external">attempted to enter</a> the U.S. as part of the millennial plot to blow up Los Angeles International Airport, but was apprehended at the border.)&amp;#160; A bloody civil war then broke out in which the generals and the more secular politicians were the winners, though not before 150,000 Algerians died.&amp;#160; As with Ben Ali in neighboring Tunisia, Paris and Washington consider President Abdel Aziz Bouteflika (elected in 1999) a secular rampart against the influence of radical Muslim fundamentalism in Algeria as well as among the Algerian-French population in France.</p> <p>To outward appearances, in the first years of the twenty-first century, Algeria regained stability under Bouteflika and his military backers, and the violence subsided.&amp;#160; Critics <a href="http://www.europeanforum.net/country/algeria" type="external">charged</a>, however, that the president connived at legislative changes, making it possible for him to run for a third term, a decision that was bad for democracy.&amp;#160; In the 2009 presidential election, he faced a weak field of rivals and his leading opponent was a woman from an obscure Trotskyite party.</p> <p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0230102751/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external" />Cables from the U.S. embassy (revealed again by WikiLeaks) reflected a profound unease with a growing culture of corruption and nepotism, even though it was not on a Tunisian scale.&amp;#160; Last February, for example, Ambassador David D. Pearce <a href="http://wikileaks.nl/cable/2010/02/10ALGIERS111.html" type="external">reported</a> that eight of the directors of the state oil company Sonatrach were under investigation for corruption.&amp;#160; He added, &#8220;This scandal is the latest in a dramatically escalating series of investigations and prosecutions that we have seen since last year involving Algerian government ministries and public enterprises.&amp;#160; Significantly, many of the ministries affected are headed by ministers considered close to Algerian President Bouteflika&#8230;&#8221;&amp;#160;</p> <p>And this was nothing new. More than three years earlier, the embassy in Algiers was already sounding the alarm.&amp;#160; Local observers, it reported to Washington, were depicting President Bouteflika&#8217;s brothers &#8220;Said and Abdallah, as being particularly rapacious.&#8221;&amp;#160; Corruption was spreading into an increasingly riven and contentious officer corps.&amp;#160; Unemployment among youth was so bad that they were taking to the Mediterranean on rickety rafts in hopes of getting to Europe and finding jobs.&amp;#160; And yet when you read the WikiLeaks cables you find no recommendations to stop supporting the Algerian government.</p> <p>As usual when Washington backs corrupt regimes in the name of its war on terror, democracy suffers and things slowly deteriorate.&amp;#160; Bouteflika&#8217;s flawed elections which aimed only at ensuring his victory, for instance, actively discouraged moderate fundamentalists from participating and some observers now think that Algeria, already roiled by food riots, could face Tunisian-style popular turmoil.&amp;#160; (It should be remembered, however, that the Algerian military and secret police, with years of grim civil-war experience behind them, are far more skilled at oppressive techniques of social control than the Tunisian army.)&amp;#160;</p> <p>Were oil-rich Algeria, a much bigger country than Tunisia, to become unstable, it would be a strategically more striking and even less predictable event.&amp;#160; Blame would have to be laid not just at the feet of Bouteflika and his corrupt cronies, but at those of his foreign backers, deeply knowledgeable (as the WikiLeaks cables indicate) but set in their policy ways.</p> <p>The Ben Alis of Central Asia</p> <p>Nor is the problem confined to North Africa or even anxious U.S.-backed autocrats in the Arab world.&amp;#160; Take the natural gas and gold-rich Central Asian country of Uzbekistan with a population of about 27 million, whose <a href="http://213.251.145.96/cable/2006/05/06TASHKENT902.html" type="external">corruption</a> the U.S. embassy was cabling about as early as 2006.&amp;#160; The dictatorial but determinedly secular regime of President Islam Karimov was an early Bush administration ally in its Global War on Terror, quite happy to provide Washington with torture-inspired confessions from &#8220;al-Qaeda&#8221; operatives, most of whom, <a href="http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2008/09/evidence_of_kar.html" type="external">according to</a> former British ambassador Craig Murray, were simply ordinary Uzbek dissidents.&amp;#160; (Although Uzbeks have a Muslim cultural heritage, decades of Soviet rule left most of the population highly secularized, and except in the Farghana Valley, the Muslim fundamentalist movement is tiny.)&amp;#160; Severe human rights abuses finally caused even the Bush administration to criticize Karimov, leading Tashkent to withdraw basing rights in that country from the U.S. military.&amp;#160;</p> <p>In recent years, however, a <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61J13920100220" type="external">rapprochement</a> has occurred, as Washington&#8217;s regional security obsessions once again came to the fore and the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan&#8217;s northwest tribal belt ramped up.&amp;#160; The Obama administration is now convinced that it needs Uzbekistan for the transit of supplies to Afghanistan and that evidently trumps all other policy considerations.&amp;#160; As a result, Washington is now providing Uzbekistan with <a href="http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2010/04/pentagon_gives.html" type="external">hundreds of millions of dollars</a> in Pentagon contracts, a recipe for further corruption.&amp;#160;</p> <p>Last spring, one Central Asian government &#8211; Kyrgyzstan&#8217;s &#8211; <a href="http://www.rferl.org/content/Commentary_Roots_Of_Kyrgyzstan_Uprising/2022430.html" type="external">fell</a>, thanks to popular discontent, which should have been a warning to Washington, and yet U.S. officials already appear to have forgotten what lessons those events held for its policies in the region. As long as ruler Kurmanbek Bakiev allowed the U.S. to use Manas Air Base for the transit and supply of American troops in Afghanistan, Washington overlooked his corruption and his authoritarian ways.&amp;#160; Then it turned out that his regime was not as stable as had been assumed.</p> <p>Here&#8217;s a simple rule of thumb in such situations: bad policy creates even worse policy.&amp;#160; The Obama administration&#8217;s mistake in ramping up its Afghan War left it needing ever more supplies, worrying about perilous supply lines through Pakistan, and so vulnerable to transit blackmail by the ruling kleptocracies of Central Asia.&amp;#160; When their populations, too, explode into anger, the likely damage to U.S. interests could be severe.&amp;#160;</p> <p>And keep in mind that, as the State Department again knows all too well, Afghanistan itself is increasingly just a huge, particularly decrepit version of Ben Ali&#8217;s Tunisia. U.S. diplomats were at least somewhat wary of Ben Ali.&amp;#160; In contrast, American officials wax fulsome in their public praise of Afghan President Hamid Karzai (even if privately they are all too aware of the weakness and corruption of &#8220;the mayor of Kabul&#8221;).&amp;#160; They continue to insist that the success of his government is central to the security of the North American continent, and for that reason, Washington is spending billions of dollars propping him up.</p> <p /> <p>Corruption Triumphant in the Name of Counterterrorism</p> <p>Sometimes it seems that all corrupt regimes backed by the U.S. are corrupt in the same repetitive way.&amp;#160; For instance, one form of corruption U.S. embassy cables particularly highlighted when it came to the Ben Ali and Trabelsi clans in Tunisia was the way they offered &#8220;loans&#8221; to their political supporters and family members via banks they controlled or over which they had influence.&amp;#160;</p> <p>Since these recipients understood that they did not actually have to repay the loans, the banks were weakened and other businesses then found it difficult to get credit, undermining the economy and employment. Thanks to the Jasmine revolution, the problem finally is beginning to be addressed. After the flight of Ben Ali, the Central Bank director was&amp;#160; <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110119/ap_on_re_af/af_tunisia" type="external">forced to resign</a>, and the new government seized the assets of the Zitoune Bank, which belonged to one of his son-in-laws.&amp;#160;</p> <p>Similarly, in Afghanistan,&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.juancole.com/2010/09/collapse-of-kabul-bank-points-to-terminal-corruption-of-karzai-government.html" type="external">Da Kabul Bank</a>, founded by Karzai ally Sherkan Farnood, was used as a piggy bank for Karzai&#8217;s presidential campaign and for loans to members of his family as well as the families of the warlords in his circle. Recipients included Karzai&#8217;s brother Mahmoud Karzai and Haseen Fahim, the son of his vice president and former Northern Alliance warlord Marshal Mohammad Fahim.&amp;#160; Some of the money was used to buy real estate in Dubai.&amp;#160; When a real estate bust occurred in that country, the value of those properties as collateral plummeted.&amp;#160;</p> <p>With recipients unable to service or repay their debts, the bank teetered on the edge of insolvency with potentially dire consequences for the entire Afghan financial system, as desperate crowds gathered to withdraw their deposits.&amp;#160; In the end, the bank was taken over by an impoverished Afghan government, which undoubtedly means that the American taxpayer will end up paying for the mismanagement and corruption.&amp;#160;</p> <p>Just as the Ben Ali clique outdid itself in corruption, so, too, Karzai&#8217;s circle is full of crooks.&amp;#160; American diplomats ( <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/world/asia/05afghan.html" type="external">among others</a>) have, for instance, accused his brother Wali Ahmed of deep involvement in the heroin trade.&amp;#160; With dark humor, the American embassy in Kabul reported last January that Hamid Karzai had nominated, and parliament had accepted, for the counter-narcotics post in the cabinet one Zarar Ahmad Moqbel.&amp;#160; He had earlier been Deputy Interior Minister, but was removed for corruption.&amp;#160; Another former Deputy Interior Minister evidently even informed embassy officials that &#8220;Moqbel was supported by the drug mafia, to include Karzai&#8217;s younger half-brother Ahmed Wali Karzai and Arif Khan Noorzai.&#8221;&amp;#160; This is being alleged of Afghanistan&#8217;s current counter-narcotics czar!</p> <p>Or take the example of Juma Khan Hamdard, whom Karzai appointed governor of Paktya Province in the Pashtun-dominated eastern part of Afghanistan.&amp;#160; A little over a year ago, the embassy&amp;#160; <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/241681" type="external">accused him</a>&amp;#160;of being the leader of &#8220;a province-wide corruption scheme.&#8221;&amp;#160; He is said to have been &#8220;the central point of a vast corruption network involving the provincial chief of police and several Afghan ministry line directors.&#8221;&amp;#160;</p> <p>According to that WikiLeaks-released cable, Hamdard&#8217;s network had set up a sophisticated money-skimming operation aimed at milking U.S. funds going into reconstruction projects.&amp;#160; They gamed the bids on the contracts to do the work and then took cuts at every stage from groundbreaking to ribbon-cutting.&amp;#160;</p> <p>In addition, Governor Hamdard was reported to have longstanding ties to the Hizb-i Islami militia/party movement of Gulbaddin Hikmatyar, one of the Pashtun guerrilla leaders trying to expel the U.S. and NATO from the country, who, U.S. officials claim, is in turn in a vague alliance with the Taliban.&amp;#160; Hamdard allegedly also has a business in Dubai in which Hikmatyar&#8217;s son is a partner, and is accused in the cable of funneling jewels and drug money to Hikmatyar loyalists.&amp;#160; As with Tunisia, the public rhetoric of counterterrorism belies a corrupt and duplicitous ruling elite that may, by its actions, foster rather than forestall radicalism.</p> <p>Harsh Truths</p> <p>For a superpower obsessed with conspiracy theories and invested in the status quo, knowing everything, it turns out, means knowing nothing at all.&amp;#160; WikiLeaks has done us the favor, however, of releasing a harsh set of truths. Hard-line policies such as those of the Algerian generals or of Uzbekistan&#8217;s Karimov often radicalize economically desperate and oppressed populations.&amp;#160; As a result, U.S. backing has a significant probability of boomeranging sooner or later.&amp;#160; Elites, confident that they will retain such backing as long as there is an al-Qaeda cell anywhere on the planet, tend to overreach, plunging into cultures of corruption and self-enrichment so vast that they undermine economies, while producing poverty, unemployment, despair, and ultimately widespread public anger.&amp;#160;</p> <p>It is not that the United States should be, in John Quincy Adams&#8217;s phrase, going out into the world to find dragons to slay. Washington is no longer all-powerful, if it ever was, and President Obama&#8217;s more realistic foreign policy is a welcome change from George W. Bush&#8217;s frenetic interventionism.&amp;#160;</p> <p>Nonetheless, Obama has left in place, or in some cases strengthened, one of the worst aspects of Bush-era policy: a knee-jerk support for self-advertised pro-Western secularists who promise to block Muslim fundamentalist parties (or, in the end, anyone else) from coming to power.&amp;#160; There should be a diplomatic middle path between overthrowing governments on the one hand, and backing odious dictatorships to the hilt on the other.</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p />

The Corruption Game

https://motherjones.com/politics/2011/01/corruption-game/

2011-01-26

4left

Here8217s one obvious lesson of the Tunisian Revolution of 2011 paranoia about Muslim fundamentalist movements and terrorism is causing Washington to make bad choices that will ultimately harm American interests and standing abroad State Department cable traffic from capitals throughout the Greater Middle East made public thanks to WikiLeaks shows that US policymakers have a detailed and profound picture of the depths of corruption and nepotism that prevail among some 8220allies8221 in the region The same cable traffic indicates that in a cynical Great Power calculation Washington continues to sacrifice the prospects of the region8217s youth on the altar of 8220security8221 It is now forgotten that America8217s biggest foreign policy headache the Islamic Republic of Iran arose in response to American backing for Mohammad Reza Pahlevi the despised Shah who destroyed the Iranian left and centrist political parties paving the way for the ayatollahs8217 takeover in 1979 State Department cables published via WikiLeaks are remarkably revealing when it comes to the way Tunisian strongman Zine elAbidine Ben Ali and his extended family including his wife Leila8217s Trabelsi clan fastened upon the Tunisian economy and sucked it dry The riveting descriptions of US diplomats make the presidential 8220family8221 sound like True Blood8217s vampires overpowering Bontemps Louisiana In July of 2009 for instance the US ambassador dined with Nesrine Ben Ali elMateri and Sakher elMateri the president8217s daughter and soninlaw at their sumptuous mansionamp160 Materi who rose through nepotism to dominate Tunisia8217s media provided a 12course dinner with Kiwi juice 8211 8220not normally available here8221 8211 and 8220ice cream and frozen yoghurt he had flown in from Saint Tropez8221 all served by an enormous staff of wellpaid servantsamp160 The ambassador remarked on the couple8217s pet tiger 8220Pasha8221 which consumed 8220four chickens a day8221 at a time of extreme economic hardship for ordinary Tunisiansamp160 Other cables detail the way the Ben Ali and Trabelsi clans engaged in a Tunisian version of insider trading using their knowledge of the president8217s upcoming economic decisions to scarf up real estate and companies they knew would suddenly spike in valueamp160 In 2006 the US ambassador estimated that 50 of the economic elite of Tunisia was related by blood or marriage to the president a degree of nepotism hard to match outside some of the Persian Gulf monarchiesamp160 Despite full knowledge of the corruption and tyranny of the regime the US embassy concluded in July 2009 8220Notwithstanding the frustrations of doing business here we cannot write off Tunisia We have too much at stake We have an interest in preventing alQaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and other extremist groups from establishing a foothold here We have an interest in keeping the Tunisian military professional and neutral8221amp160 The notion that if the US hadn8217t given the Tunisian government hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid over the past two and a half decades while helping train its military and security forces a shadowy fringe group calling itself 8220alQaeda in the Maghreb8221 might have established a 8220toehold8221 in the country was daftamp160 Yet this became an allweather universal excuse for bad policy In this regard Tunisia has been the norm when it comes to American policy in the Muslim worldamp160 The Bush administration8217s firm support for Ben Ali makes especially heinous the suggestion of some neoconservative pundits that George W Bush8217s use of democratization rhetoric for neoimperialist purposes somehow inspired the workers and internet activists of Tunisia none of whom ever referenced the despised former US presidentamp160 It would surely have been smarter for Washington to cut the Ben Ali regime off without a dime at least militarily and distance itself from his pack of jackalsamp160 The region is of course littered with dusty creaking now exceedingly nervous dictatorships in which government is theftamp160 The US receives no real benefits from its damaging association with them No Dominoes to Fall The Bush administration8217s deeply flawed sometimes dishonest Global War on Terror replayed the worst mistakes of Cold War policy One of those errors involved recreating the socalled domino theory 8211 the idea that the US had to make a stand in Vietnam or else Indonesia Thailand Burma and the rest of Asia if not the world would fall to communismamp160 It wasn8217t true then 8211 the Soviet Union was at the time less than two decades from collapsing 8211 and it isn8217t applicable now in terms of alQaedaamp160 Then and now though that domino theory prolonged the agony of illconceived wars Despite the Obama administration8217s abandonment of the phrase 8220war on terror8221 the impulses encoded in it still powerfully shape Washington8217s policymaking as well as its geopolitical fears and fantasiesamp160 It adds up to an absurdly modernized version of domino theoryamp160 This irrational fear that any small setback for the US in the Muslim world could lead straight to an Islamic caliphate lurks beneath many of Washington8217s pronouncements and much of its strategic planningamp160 A clear example can be seen in the embassy cable that acquiesced in Washington8217s backing of Ben Ali for fear of the insignificant and obscure 8220alQaeda in the Maghreb8221 Despite the scary name this small group was not originally even related to Usamah Bin Laden8217s alQaeda but rather grew out of the Algerian Muslim reformist movement called Salafismamp160 If the US stopped giving military aid to Ben Ali it was implied Bin Laden might suddenly be the caliph of Tunisamp160 This version of the domino theory 8211 a pretext for overlooking a culture of corruption as well as human rights abuses against dissidents 8211 has become so widespread as to make up the warp and woof of America8217s secret diplomatic messaging Sinking Democracy in the Name of the War on Terror Take Algeria for instanceamp160 American military assistance to neighboring Algeria has typically grown from nothing before September 11th to nearly a million dollars a year It may be a small sum in aid terms but it is rapidly increasing and it supplements far more sizeable support from the Frenchamp160 It also involves substantial training for counterterrorism that is precisely the skills also needed to repress peaceful civilian protestsamp160 Ironically the Algerian generals who control the strings of power were the ones responsible for radicalizing the country8217s Muslim political party the Islamic Salvation Front FISamp160 Allowed to run for office in 1992 that party won an overwhelming majority in parliamentamp160 Shocked and dismayed the generals abruptly abrogated the election resultsamp160 We will never know if the FIS might have evolved into a parliamentary democratic party as later happened to the Justice and Development Party of Turkey the leaders of which had been Muslim fundamentalists in the 1990samp160 Angered at being deprived of the fruits of its victory however FIS supporters went on the offensive Some were radicalized and formed an organization they called the Armed Islamic Group which later became an alQaeda affiliate A member of this group Ahmed Ressam attempted to enter the US as part of the millennial plot to blow up Los Angeles International Airport but was apprehended at the borderamp160 A bloody civil war then broke out in which the generals and the more secular politicians were the winners though not before 150000 Algerians diedamp160 As with Ben Ali in neighboring Tunisia Paris and Washington consider President Abdel Aziz Bouteflika elected in 1999 a secular rampart against the influence of radical Muslim fundamentalism in Algeria as well as among the AlgerianFrench population in France To outward appearances in the first years of the twentyfirst century Algeria regained stability under Bouteflika and his military backers and the violence subsidedamp160 Critics charged however that the president connived at legislative changes making it possible for him to run for a third term a decision that was bad for democracyamp160 In the 2009 presidential election he faced a weak field of rivals and his leading opponent was a woman from an obscure Trotskyite party Cables from the US embassy revealed again by WikiLeaks reflected a profound unease with a growing culture of corruption and nepotism even though it was not on a Tunisian scaleamp160 Last February for example Ambassador David D Pearce reported that eight of the directors of the state oil company Sonatrach were under investigation for corruptionamp160 He added 8220This scandal is the latest in a dramatically escalating series of investigations and prosecutions that we have seen since last year involving Algerian government ministries and public enterprisesamp160 Significantly many of the ministries affected are headed by ministers considered close to Algerian President Bouteflika82308221amp160 And this was nothing new More than three years earlier the embassy in Algiers was already sounding the alarmamp160 Local observers it reported to Washington were depicting President Bouteflika8217s brothers 8220Said and Abdallah as being particularly rapacious8221amp160 Corruption was spreading into an increasingly riven and contentious officer corpsamp160 Unemployment among youth was so bad that they were taking to the Mediterranean on rickety rafts in hopes of getting to Europe and finding jobsamp160 And yet when you read the WikiLeaks cables you find no recommendations to stop supporting the Algerian government As usual when Washington backs corrupt regimes in the name of its war on terror democracy suffers and things slowly deteriorateamp160 Bouteflika8217s flawed elections which aimed only at ensuring his victory for instance actively discouraged moderate fundamentalists from participating and some observers now think that Algeria already roiled by food riots could face Tunisianstyle popular turmoilamp160 It should be remembered however that the Algerian military and secret police with years of grim civilwar experience behind them are far more skilled at oppressive techniques of social control than the Tunisian armyamp160 Were oilrich Algeria a much bigger country than Tunisia to become unstable it would be a strategically more striking and even less predictable eventamp160 Blame would have to be laid not just at the feet of Bouteflika and his corrupt cronies but at those of his foreign backers deeply knowledgeable as the WikiLeaks cables indicate but set in their policy ways The Ben Alis of Central Asia Nor is the problem confined to North Africa or even anxious USbacked autocrats in the Arab worldamp160 Take the natural gas and goldrich Central Asian country of Uzbekistan with a population of about 27 million whose corruption the US embassy was cabling about as early as 2006amp160 The dictatorial but determinedly secular regime of President Islam Karimov was an early Bush administration ally in its Global War on Terror quite happy to provide Washington with tortureinspired confessions from 8220alQaeda8221 operatives most of whom according to former British ambassador Craig Murray were simply ordinary Uzbek dissidentsamp160 Although Uzbeks have a Muslim cultural heritage decades of Soviet rule left most of the population highly secularized and except in the Farghana Valley the Muslim fundamentalist movement is tinyamp160 Severe human rights abuses finally caused even the Bush administration to criticize Karimov leading Tashkent to withdraw basing rights in that country from the US militaryamp160 In recent years however a rapprochement has occurred as Washington8217s regional security obsessions once again came to the fore and the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan8217s northwest tribal belt ramped upamp160 The Obama administration is now convinced that it needs Uzbekistan for the transit of supplies to Afghanistan and that evidently trumps all other policy considerationsamp160 As a result Washington is now providing Uzbekistan with hundreds of millions of dollars in Pentagon contracts a recipe for further corruptionamp160 Last spring one Central Asian government 8211 Kyrgyzstan8217s 8211 fell thanks to popular discontent which should have been a warning to Washington and yet US officials already appear to have forgotten what lessons those events held for its policies in the region As long as ruler Kurmanbek Bakiev allowed the US to use Manas Air Base for the transit and supply of American troops in Afghanistan Washington overlooked his corruption and his authoritarian waysamp160 Then it turned out that his regime was not as stable as had been assumed Here8217s a simple rule of thumb in such situations bad policy creates even worse policyamp160 The Obama administration8217s mistake in ramping up its Afghan War left it needing ever more supplies worrying about perilous supply lines through Pakistan and so vulnerable to transit blackmail by the ruling kleptocracies of Central Asiaamp160 When their populations too explode into anger the likely damage to US interests could be severeamp160 And keep in mind that as the State Department again knows all too well Afghanistan itself is increasingly just a huge particularly decrepit version of Ben Ali8217s Tunisia US diplomats were at least somewhat wary of Ben Aliamp160 In contrast American officials wax fulsome in their public praise of Afghan President Hamid Karzai even if privately they are all too aware of the weakness and corruption of 8220the mayor of Kabul8221amp160 They continue to insist that the success of his government is central to the security of the North American continent and for that reason Washington is spending billions of dollars propping him up Corruption Triumphant in the Name of Counterterrorism Sometimes it seems that all corrupt regimes backed by the US are corrupt in the same repetitive wayamp160 For instance one form of corruption US embassy cables particularly highlighted when it came to the Ben Ali and Trabelsi clans in Tunisia was the way they offered 8220loans8221 to their political supporters and family members via banks they controlled or over which they had influenceamp160 Since these recipients understood that they did not actually have to repay the loans the banks were weakened and other businesses then found it difficult to get credit undermining the economy and employment Thanks to the Jasmine revolution the problem finally is beginning to be addressed After the flight of Ben Ali the Central Bank director wasamp160 forced to resign and the new government seized the assets of the Zitoune Bank which belonged to one of his soninlawsamp160 Similarly in Afghanistanamp160 Da Kabul Bank founded by Karzai ally Sherkan Farnood was used as a piggy bank for Karzai8217s presidential campaign and for loans to members of his family as well as the families of the warlords in his circle Recipients included Karzai8217s brother Mahmoud Karzai and Haseen Fahim the son of his vice president and former Northern Alliance warlord Marshal Mohammad Fahimamp160 Some of the money was used to buy real estate in Dubaiamp160 When a real estate bust occurred in that country the value of those properties as collateral plummetedamp160 With recipients unable to service or repay their debts the bank teetered on the edge of insolvency with potentially dire consequences for the entire Afghan financial system as desperate crowds gathered to withdraw their depositsamp160 In the end the bank was taken over by an impoverished Afghan government which undoubtedly means that the American taxpayer will end up paying for the mismanagement and corruptionamp160 Just as the Ben Ali clique outdid itself in corruption so too Karzai8217s circle is full of crooksamp160 American diplomats among others have for instance accused his brother Wali Ahmed of deep involvement in the heroin tradeamp160 With dark humor the American embassy in Kabul reported last January that Hamid Karzai had nominated and parliament had accepted for the counternarcotics post in the cabinet one Zarar Ahmad Moqbelamp160 He had earlier been Deputy Interior Minister but was removed for corruptionamp160 Another former Deputy Interior Minister evidently even informed embassy officials that 8220Moqbel was supported by the drug mafia to include Karzai8217s younger halfbrother Ahmed Wali Karzai and Arif Khan Noorzai8221amp160 This is being alleged of Afghanistan8217s current counternarcotics czar Or take the example of Juma Khan Hamdard whom Karzai appointed governor of Paktya Province in the Pashtundominated eastern part of Afghanistanamp160 A little over a year ago the embassyamp160 accused himamp160of being the leader of 8220a provincewide corruption scheme8221amp160 He is said to have been 8220the central point of a vast corruption network involving the provincial chief of police and several Afghan ministry line directors8221amp160 According to that WikiLeaksreleased cable Hamdard8217s network had set up a sophisticated moneyskimming operation aimed at milking US funds going into reconstruction projectsamp160 They gamed the bids on the contracts to do the work and then took cuts at every stage from groundbreaking to ribboncuttingamp160 In addition Governor Hamdard was reported to have longstanding ties to the Hizbi Islami militiaparty movement of Gulbaddin Hikmatyar one of the Pashtun guerrilla leaders trying to expel the US and NATO from the country who US officials claim is in turn in a vague alliance with the Talibanamp160 Hamdard allegedly also has a business in Dubai in which Hikmatyar8217s son is a partner and is accused in the cable of funneling jewels and drug money to Hikmatyar loyalistsamp160 As with Tunisia the public rhetoric of counterterrorism belies a corrupt and duplicitous ruling elite that may by its actions foster rather than forestall radicalism Harsh Truths For a superpower obsessed with conspiracy theories and invested in the status quo knowing everything it turns out means knowing nothing at allamp160 WikiLeaks has done us the favor however of releasing a harsh set of truths Hardline policies such as those of the Algerian generals or of Uzbekistan8217s Karimov often radicalize economically desperate and oppressed populationsamp160 As a result US backing has a significant probability of boomeranging sooner or lateramp160 Elites confident that they will retain such backing as long as there is an alQaeda cell anywhere on the planet tend to overreach plunging into cultures of corruption and selfenrichment so vast that they undermine economies while producing poverty unemployment despair and ultimately widespread public angeramp160 It is not that the United States should be in John Quincy Adams8217s phrase going out into the world to find dragons to slay Washington is no longer allpowerful if it ever was and President Obama8217s more realistic foreign policy is a welcome change from George W Bush8217s frenetic interventionismamp160 Nonetheless Obama has left in place or in some cases strengthened one of the worst aspects of Bushera policy a kneejerk support for selfadvertised proWestern secularists who promise to block Muslim fundamentalist parties or in the end anyone else from coming to poweramp160 There should be a diplomatic middle path between overthrowing governments on the one hand and backing odious dictatorships to the hilt on the other amp160

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<p>* STOXX touches 10-year high</p> <p>* STOXX 600 hits Aug 2015 high</p> <p>* Markets shrug off U.S. shutdown fears</p> <p>* Warnings hammer Dignity, Carpetright (Adds comments, shares)</p> <p>By Danilo Masoni and Julien Ponthus</p> <p>MILAN/LONDON, Jan 19 (Reuters) - European shares rose to highs not seen since 2008 as growing confidence in corporate earnings and in the strength of the global economy continued to fuel a bull market, which shrugged off fears of a possible U.S. government shutdown.</p> <p>The euro zone&#8217;s STOXX benchmark index closed up 0.73 percent at 402.95 points, its highest level in 10 years and the pan-regional STOXX 600 benchmark rose 0.5 percent to 400.71 points, a 2-1/2 year peak.</p> <p>&#8220;In 2017 we were in a catch-up phase and now we are going beyond&#8221;, said Philippe Waechter, chief economist at Natixis AM, commenting on the strength of euro zone shares.</p> <p>&#8220;We are in a period of robust growth, markets are integrating this and because there are no signs of fragility, they have no reason to change directions&#8221;, he added.</p> <p>The European results season shifts into gear next week with equity valuations at their highest in more than a year and investors betting that the engine of earnings upgrades has plenty more fuel in the tank.</p> <p>Strategists at Bank of America Merrill Lynch also said that the relentless rise in global stocks should extend in the short-term as investors pump record amounts of cash into equities.</p> <p>Stocks were higher across all sectors at the exception of energy, down 0.77 percent, tracking a fall in crude prices.</p> <p>At the opposite, the European Personnal and Households goods index jumped 1.5 percent with Adidas up 6.9 percent and France&#8217;s SEB on a 4 percent rise.</p> <p>The basic resources index, where big mining stocks are listed, rose 0.6 percent as metals prices were buoyed by the first acceleration in China&#8217;s economic growth in seven years.</p> <p>Among outstanding movers were shares in OC Oerlikon , up 5.5 percent, after the Swiss-listed textile-and-surfacing solutions group forecast rising textile margins following two big Chinese orders.</p> <p>&#8220;These contracts point to a stronger and more sustainable recovery of the investment cycle in the manmade/polyester industry especially in the key manmade market in China,&#8221; Baader Helvea said in a note, affirming its buy rating.</p> <p>Software AG rose 1.7 percent to its highest level in 18 years, supported by the prospect of a rise in 2018 earnings as a result of tax reforms in the United States.</p> <p>Among British mid-caps, a profit warning sent crematorium operator Dignity down about 50 percent.</p> <p>Britain&#8217;s biggest floor coverings retailer Carpetright also warned on profits, sending its shares plummeting 39.4 percent and weighing on home improvement retailer Kingfisher, down 2.3 percent. (Reporting by Danilo Masoni; Editing by Angus MacSwan)</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>LONDON (Reuters) - Stock markets fell on Friday after U.S. President Donald Trump&#8217;s threat to impose an extra $100 billion in tariffs on China exacerbated fears of a more serious trade dispute, while the dollar paused ahead of crucial U.S. payrolls data.</p> The DAX (German stock index) logo is seen at the stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany, March 23, 2018. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach <p>European shares followed their Asian counterparts into the red but the falls were limited, and the broader ups and downs for markets this week suggest investors are not yet convinced the row will escalate into a full-blown trade war that threatens global economic growth.</p> <p>Britain&#8217;s FTSE 100 dropped 0.3 percent while the German Dax was down 0.56 percent and France&#8217;s CAC 40 0.41 percent.</p> <p>The MSCI World Index slipped 0.15 percent while S&amp;amp;P 500 E-mini futures were down 1 percent, pointing to a lower start for Wall Street when it opens.</p> <p>In Trump&#8217;s latest salvo, he said late on Thursday that he had instructed U.S. trade officials to consider $100 billion in additional tariffs on China. Beijing warned it would fight back &#8220;at any cost&#8221; with fresh measures to safeguard its interests.</p> <p>&#8220;Any escalation in the trade war rhetoric would be more negative for China than the U.S. given the former&#8217;s relative dependency on trade but for now, the markets are focused on the payrolls data,&#8221; said Richard Falkenhall, a senior currency strategist at SEB in Stockholm.</p> <p>Friday&#8217;s U.S. non-farm payrolls report could determine the pace of future Federal Reserve interest rate rises and the dollar&#8217;s direction.</p> <p>Fed chairman Jerome Powell is also speaking later on Friday and investors will be looking for any signs that rates could rise more than the expected three hikes priced in for this year.</p> <p>The U.S. March employment report is expected to show non-farm payroll growth of 193,000 jobs versus 313,000 the prior month, according to the latest Thomson Reuters poll of economists.</p> <p>Average hourly earnings are expected to have risen 0.2 percent last month after edging up 0.1 percent in February. The gain would lift the annual increase in average hourly earnings to 2.7 percent from 2.6 percent in February.</p> <p>&#8220;Away from the political noise, the reality is that the fundamental backdrop for markets hasn&#8217;t changed &#8211; global economic growth is broadly synchronized and interest rates are slowly normalizing,&#8221; wrote Kerry Craig, Melbourne-based global market strategist at J.P. Morgan Asset Management.</p> DOLLAR UP THIS WEEK <p>The dollar, which has tended to fall in recent weeks when trade tensions have risen, rose 0.1 percent against a basket of major currencies in early European trading, bringing week-to-date gains to 0.6 percent.</p> <p>Against the yen, which as a safe haven currency tends to be among the most sensitive to global economic uncertainty, the dollar was flat. So far this week the dollar is up 1 percent versus the Japanese currency, hitting its best level since late February, despite growing U.S.-China trade tensions.</p> <p>Some Asian currencies showed signs of investor nervousness, however.</p> <p>The Chinese yuan fell another 0.4 percent versus the dollar, bringing week-to-date losses to 0.8 percent. The Korean won, heavily exposed to global trade, also fell.</p> <p>Treasury debt prices gained and yields declined as investors sought the safety of government bonds. Euro zone government bond yields also dipped as the trade dispute between the United States and China flared.</p> <p>The 10-year Treasury note yield fell 1.1 basis points to 2.821 percent, pulling back from Thursday&#8217;s nine-day high of 2.838 percent. Treasury yields had fallen further in Asian trading but the European open brought some calmness to markets.</p> <p>The yield on 10-year German government debt, the euro zone benchmark, slid 2 basis points in early trade to a shade below 0.51 percent, erasing much of Thursday&#8217;s rise.</p> <p>Crude oil prices fell after Trump&#8217;s latest tariff proposal. O/R U.S. crude slipped 0.5 percent to $63.22 a barrel and Brent was down 0.45 percent at $68 a barrel.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Shinichi Saoshiro in TOKYO; and Saikat Chatterjee in London; Editing by Richard Balmforth</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Permian basin in Texas is leading the way as U.S. oil production has reached an all-time high, but the prolific output is causing bottlenecks as pipelines transporting the crude have filled up more quickly than expected.</p> FILE PHOTO: An oil pump is seen operating in the Permian Basin near Midland, Texas, U.S. on May 3, 2017. REUTERS/Ernest Scheyder/File Photo <p>That has depressed prices there, posing a threat to future production, while providing a boost to pipeline companies as the lines have filled to near-capacity.</p> <p>With few new pipeline projects scheduled for this year, producers may be forced to slow drilling, or even shut in active production.</p> <p>The problem illustrates the snags that can arise in transporting crude to the U.S. Gulf Coast as oil prices have rebounded to more than $60 a barrel and companies have reduced costs to make drilling more profitable in the Permian.</p> <p>Production there is estimated to have hit a record 3.08 million bpd in March, nearly a third of overall U.S. production of 10.4 million bpd, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA). Permian drillers are branching out into relatively less-profitable areas of the region, said John Zanner, energy analyst for RBN Energy.</p> <p>&#8220;As these fringe areas begin to get exploited, we are seeing more and more crude that needs to find a pipeline to Cushing or the Gulf Coast,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>Most analysts estimated pipelines out of the Permian would fill completely by mid-2018, but this may already be happening. According to market intelligence firm Genscape, pipeline utilization from the Permian to the Gulf Coast averaged about 89 percent this year and 96 percent in the last four weeks.</p> <p>U.S. crude for delivery in Midland, Texas WTC-WTM traded at $5.50/barrel under the price of benchmark futures on Wednesday, weakest since October 2014. West Texas Sour WTC-WTS, the sour grade delivered into Midland, traded as much as $6.25 a barrel below futures.</p> <p>Midland light sweet crude currently trades at more than $8 a barrel below West Texas Intermediate at East Houston, a key delivery spot for export markets - the biggest discount on record.</p> <p>(GRAPHIC: Texas oil output surge - <a href="https://reut.rs/2EmL4nN" type="external">reut.rs/2EmL4nN</a>)</p> Slideshow (3 Images) <a href="https://reut.rs/2EmL4nN" type="external" /> <p>&#8220;What the spreads are telling you is that these pipelines are full going to the Gulf Coast,&#8221; said Kendrick Rhea at energy consultancy East Daley Capital.</p> <p>The wide spreads mean pipeline operators are now seeing a surge in demand and throughput, traders and analysts said.</p> <p>Spreads have even widened enough to cover spot shipping rates, which are typically higher than long-term committed rates offered by pipeline companies.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=EPD.N" type="external">Enterprise Products Partners LP</a> 24.42 EPD.N New York Stock Exchange +0.12 (+0.49%) EPD.N ETP.N PAA.N <p>For midstream companies, this could show up in earnings reports for several quarters. Analysts&#8217; revenue projections for Permian pipeline companies Enterprise Products Partners LP ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=EPD.N" type="external">EPD.N</a>), Energy Transfer Partners LP ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=ETP.N" type="external">ETP.N</a>) and Plains All American Pipeline LP ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=PAA.N" type="external">PAA.N</a>) have been revised higher over the last 90 days, according to Thomson Reuters data.</p> <p>All three rank in the top 10 percent in terms of upward revisions for North American companies in the Thomson Reuters universe, and the same model projects all three will exceed revenue projections in the first quarter.</p> <p>&#8220;They&#8217;re going to see record flows coming out, they&#8217;re going to see record margins on marketing and on walk-up tariffs for the rest of the year,&#8221; Rhea said.</p> <p>As of March 2018, the Permian had a total of 3.175 million bpd of outgoing pipeline, rail and local refining capacity, according to Genscape, of which outgoing pipeline capacity accounts for 2.725 million bpd.</p> <p>The next boost will be the expansion of Permian Express 3, which will add 200 million barrels of daily capacity in late 2018. The Enterprise Midland-to-Sealy line could also expand capacity to bring it to 450,000 bpd from 330,000 bpd late last year.</p> <p>By mid-to-late 2019, projects including the Cactus Pipeline 2 and EPIC lines will add more than 1.5 million bpd of additional capacity.</p> <p>Reporting by Devika Krishna Kumar in New York; Editing by Tom Brown</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. trade deficit increased to a near 9-1/2-year high in February, with both imports and exports rising to record highs in a sign of strong domestic and global demand.</p> <p>News on Thursday of the worsening trade deficit came as the United States and China were embroiled in tit-for-tat tariffs which escalated trade war fears and rattled financial markets.</p> <p>President Donald Trump&#8217;s administration is pursuing import duties to eradicate the deficit and protect domestic industries from what he says is unfair foreign competition. But economists say the trade penalties will not reverse the deficit.</p> <p>&#8220;The U.S. continues to expand faster than most other industrialized countries, so it should not surprise anyone that the trade deficit is worsening,&#8221; said Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economic Advisors in Holland, Pennsylvania.&#8221;Tariffs may sound like a good way to change the pattern of trade, but they tend to raise prices rather than modify the trade fundamentals.&#8221;</p> <p>The Commerce Department said the trade gap increased 1.6 percent to $57.6 billion in February, the highest level since October 2008. The deficit has now increased for six straight months. Most of the rise in the trade deficit in February reflected commodity price increases.</p> <p>Economists polled by Reuters had forecast the trade gap widening to $56.8 billion in February. The goods trade deficit was the highest since July 2008 and the surplus on services was the lowest since December 2012.</p> <p>While the politically sensitive goods trade deficit with China fell 18.6 percent to $29.3 billion in February, it has increased 20.2 percent so far this year.</p> <p>The Trump administration on Tuesday targeted 25 percent tariffs on some 1,300 Chinese industrial technology, transport and medical products, to force changes in Beijing&#8217;s intellectual property practices. China swiftly retaliated on Wednesday with a list of similar duties on key American imports including soybeans, planes, cars, beef and chemicals</p> <p>Trump, who claims the United States is being taken advantage of by its trading partners, has already imposed broad tariffs on imported solar panels and large washing machines. He has also slapped 25 percent import duties on steel and 10 percent on aluminum.</p> <p>While these actions may prove politically popular with Trump&#8217;s working class political base, especially in states hard-hit by factory closures and import competition, analysts warn they could undercut economic growth and raise prices for both consumers and producers.</p> <p>The dollar rose to a two-week high against a currency basket amid signs the United States was looking to resolve the trade dispute with China. Stocks on Wall Street were trading higher while prices for U.S. Treasuries fell.</p> DEFICIT WILL WORSEN <p>The trade deficit is expected to widen further, thanks to an accommodative fiscal policy stance at a time when the economy is operating very close to full capacity. A $1.5 trillion income tax cut package came into effect in January and government spending will increase this year.</p> <p>The economy&#8217;s strong fundamentals were underscored by a report from the Labor Department on Thursday showing the number of Americans on unemployment benefits falling to its lowest level since December 1973 during the week ending March 24.</p> <p>When adjusted for inflation, the trade deficit slipped to $69.11 billion from $69.96 billion in January. The so-called real trade deficit average for the first two months of 2018 is above the fourth-quarter average of $66.8 billion.</p> <p>This suggests trade would subtract from first-quarter gross domestic product. Trade sliced 1.16 percentage points from fourth-quarter GDP growth. The economy grew at a 2.9 percent annualized rate during that period. Growth estimates for the first quarter are mostly below a 2 percent rate.</p> <p>&#8220;We suspect widening trade deficits and resulting subtractions from GDP growth will be a persistent feature of GDP this year as domestic demand outpaces the economy&#8217;s supply potential,&#8221; said John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics in New York. &#8220;Tariffs will do nothing to lessen this trade imbalance, unless there is a retaliatory escalation that leads to an economic downturn.&#8221;</p> <p>In February, exports of goods increased 2.3 percent to $137.2 billion, boosted by shipments of crude oil, natural gas, motor vehicles, civilian aircraft, and drilling and oilfield equipment. Exports to China were unchanged in February.</p> <p>Goods imports jumped 1.6 percent to $214.2 billion in February, lifted by food, civilian aircraft, computers and crude oil. Imports of services rose to a record $47.8 billion from $46.8 billion in January, boosted by royalties and broadcast license fees related to the Winter Olympics.</p> Shipping containers are being loaded onto Xin Da Yang Zhou ship from Shanghai, China at Pier J at the Port of Long Beach in Long Beach, California, U.S., April 4, 2018. REUTERS/Bob Riha Jr. <p>Imports from China declined 14.7 percent in February.</p> <p>Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Andrea Ricci</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stock futures fell more than 1 percent late on Thursday after U.S. President Donald Trump said he had instructed U.S. trade officials to consider $100 billion in additional tariffs on China.</p> <p>S&amp;amp;P 500 e-mini futures EScv1 were down 1.4 percent in trading for the overnight session. Dow futures 1YMcv1 were down 1.7 percent.</p> <p>Trump, in a statement, said he proposed the additional tariffs &#8220;in light of China&#8217;s unfair retaliation&#8221; against earlier U.S. actions that included $50 billion of tariffs on Chinese goods.</p> <p>&#8220;These potential trade wars are not good for the market,&#8221; said Stephen Massocca, senior vice president at Wedbush Securities in San Francisco. &#8220;I don&#8217;t think the market will perceive them as good for the economy, so therefore they&#8217;re not good for the market. It doesn&#8217;t surprise me that as the rhetoric heats up, the market is weak.&#8221;</p> Slideshow (3 Images) <p>Hedge fund manager Doug Kass, who runs Seabreeze Partners Management Inc, said he was shorting the Standard &amp;amp; Poor&#8217;s 500.&#8221;The hastily crafted policy like we have seen from Trump over the last two, three days and now tonight in a world that is flat and ever-more interconnected is dangerous.&#8221;</p> <p>The probabilities of a recession in the last half of 2019 and early 2020 are increasing in odds and maybe quite dramatically, Kass added, saying: &#8220;The bottom line is that our president is going to make market volatility and economic uncertainty great again.&#8221;</p> <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.DJI" type="external">Dow Jones &amp;amp; Company Inc</a> 24505.22 .DJI Dow Jones Indexes +240.92 (+0.99%) .DJI .SPX <p>During the regular session, the Dow <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.DJI" type="external">.DJI</a> and the S&amp;amp;P 500 <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.SPX" type="external">.SPX</a> posted gains for a third day in a row, the longest streak in about a month, as investors' worries of an escalating trade conflict between the United States and China began to ease.</p> <p>On Wednesday, Trump&#8217;s top economic adviser Larry Kudlow said the administration was involved in a &#8220;negotiation&#8221; with China rather than a trade war.</p> <p>Bob Smith, president and chief investment officer at Sage Advisory Services Ltd Co in Austin, Texas, said the markets were going to react adversely to Trump&#8217;s latest statement.</p> <p>&#8220;Anything that&#8217;s twice as large as the last number is going to elicit a response, and I think that we&#8217;re just going to be going on this hayride for a while until they get themselves around the table and start talking turkey ... at some point the market&#8217;s going to get fed up with it.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch and Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by Jennifer Ablan and Peter Cooney</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

UPDATE 2-European shares on a high as optimism on earnings, economy, grow Stocks slip on Trump's latest trade salvo, U.S. jobs report awaited Texas oil output surge clogs pipelines, depresses prices U.S. trade deficit rises to near nine-and-a-half-year high in February Stock futures fall after Trump proposes $100 billion more in tariffs on China

https://reuters.com/article/europe-stocks/update-2-european-shares-on-a-high-as-optimism-on-earnings-economy-grow-idUSL8N1PE1FE

2018-01-19

2least

STOXX touches 10year high STOXX 600 hits Aug 2015 high Markets shrug off US shutdown fears Warnings hammer Dignity Carpetright Adds comments shares By Danilo Masoni and Julien Ponthus MILANLONDON Jan 19 Reuters European shares rose to highs not seen since 2008 as growing confidence in corporate earnings and in the strength of the global economy continued to fuel a bull market which shrugged off fears of a possible US government shutdown The euro zone8217s STOXX benchmark index closed up 073 percent at 40295 points its highest level in 10 years and the panregional STOXX 600 benchmark rose 05 percent to 40071 points a 212 year peak 8220In 2017 we were in a catchup phase and now we are going beyond8221 said Philippe Waechter chief economist at Natixis AM commenting on the strength of euro zone shares 8220We are in a period of robust growth markets are integrating this and because there are no signs of fragility they have no reason to change directions8221 he added The European results season shifts into gear next week with equity valuations at their highest in more than a year and investors betting that the engine of earnings upgrades has plenty more fuel in the tank Strategists at Bank of America Merrill Lynch also said that the relentless rise in global stocks should extend in the shortterm as investors pump record amounts of cash into equities Stocks were higher across all sectors at the exception of energy down 077 percent tracking a fall in crude prices At the opposite the European Personnal and Households goods index jumped 15 percent with Adidas up 69 percent and France8217s SEB on a 4 percent rise The basic resources index where big mining stocks are listed rose 06 percent as metals prices were buoyed by the first acceleration in China8217s economic growth in seven years Among outstanding movers were shares in OC Oerlikon up 55 percent after the Swisslisted textileandsurfacing solutions group forecast rising textile margins following two big Chinese orders 8220These contracts point to a stronger and more sustainable recovery of the investment cycle in the manmadepolyester industry especially in the key manmade market in China8221 Baader Helvea said in a note affirming its buy rating Software AG rose 17 percent to its highest level in 18 years supported by the prospect of a rise in 2018 earnings as a result of tax reforms in the United States Among British midcaps a profit warning sent crematorium operator Dignity down about 50 percent Britain8217s biggest floor coverings retailer Carpetright also warned on profits sending its shares plummeting 394 percent and weighing on home improvement retailer Kingfisher down 23 percent Reporting by Danilo Masoni Editing by Angus MacSwan Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles LONDON Reuters Stock markets fell on Friday after US President Donald Trump8217s threat to impose an extra 100 billion in tariffs on China exacerbated fears of a more serious trade dispute while the dollar paused ahead of crucial US payrolls data The DAX German stock index logo is seen at the stock exchange in Frankfurt Germany March 23 2018 REUTERSKai Pfaffenbach European shares followed their Asian counterparts into the red but the falls were limited and the broader ups and downs for markets this week suggest investors are not yet convinced the row will escalate into a fullblown trade war that threatens global economic growth Britain8217s FTSE 100 dropped 03 percent while the German Dax was down 056 percent and France8217s CAC 40 041 percent The MSCI World Index slipped 015 percent while SampampP 500 Emini futures were down 1 percent pointing to a lower start for Wall Street when it opens In Trump8217s latest salvo he said late on Thursday that he had instructed US trade officials to consider 100 billion in additional tariffs on China Beijing warned it would fight back 8220at any cost8221 with fresh measures to safeguard its interests 8220Any escalation in the trade war rhetoric would be more negative for China than the US given the former8217s relative dependency on trade but for now the markets are focused on the payrolls data8221 said Richard Falkenhall a senior currency strategist at SEB in Stockholm Friday8217s US nonfarm payrolls report could determine the pace of future Federal Reserve interest rate rises and the dollar8217s direction Fed chairman Jerome Powell is also speaking later on Friday and investors will be looking for any signs that rates could rise more than the expected three hikes priced in for this year The US March employment report is expected to show nonfarm payroll growth of 193000 jobs versus 313000 the prior month according to the latest Thomson Reuters poll of economists Average hourly earnings are expected to have risen 02 percent last month after edging up 01 percent in February The gain would lift the annual increase in average hourly earnings to 27 percent from 26 percent in February 8220Away from the political noise the reality is that the fundamental backdrop for markets hasn8217t changed 8211 global economic growth is broadly synchronized and interest rates are slowly normalizing8221 wrote Kerry Craig Melbournebased global market strategist at JP Morgan Asset Management DOLLAR UP THIS WEEK The dollar which has tended to fall in recent weeks when trade tensions have risen rose 01 percent against a basket of major currencies in early European trading bringing weektodate gains to 06 percent Against the yen which as a safe haven currency tends to be among the most sensitive to global economic uncertainty the dollar was flat So far this week the dollar is up 1 percent versus the Japanese currency hitting its best level since late February despite growing USChina trade tensions Some Asian currencies showed signs of investor nervousness however The Chinese yuan fell another 04 percent versus the dollar bringing weektodate losses to 08 percent The Korean won heavily exposed to global trade also fell Treasury debt prices gained and yields declined as investors sought the safety of government bonds Euro zone government bond yields also dipped as the trade dispute between the United States and China flared The 10year Treasury note yield fell 11 basis points to 2821 percent pulling back from Thursday8217s nineday high of 2838 percent Treasury yields had fallen further in Asian trading but the European open brought some calmness to markets The yield on 10year German government debt the euro zone benchmark slid 2 basis points in early trade to a shade below 051 percent erasing much of Thursday8217s rise Crude oil prices fell after Trump8217s latest tariff proposal OR US crude slipped 05 percent to 6322 a barrel and Brent was down 045 percent at 68 a barrel Additional reporting by Shinichi Saoshiro in TOKYO and Saikat Chatterjee in London Editing by Richard Balmforth Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORK Reuters The Permian basin in Texas is leading the way as US oil production has reached an alltime high but the prolific output is causing bottlenecks as pipelines transporting the crude have filled up more quickly than expected FILE PHOTO An oil pump is seen operating in the Permian Basin near Midland Texas US on May 3 2017 REUTERSErnest ScheyderFile Photo That has depressed prices there posing a threat to future production while providing a boost to pipeline companies as the lines have filled to nearcapacity With few new pipeline projects scheduled for this year producers may be forced to slow drilling or even shut in active production The problem illustrates the snags that can arise in transporting crude to the US Gulf Coast as oil prices have rebounded to more than 60 a barrel and companies have reduced costs to make drilling more profitable in the Permian Production there is estimated to have hit a record 308 million bpd in March nearly a third of overall US production of 104 million bpd according to the Energy Information Administration EIA Permian drillers are branching out into relatively lessprofitable areas of the region said John Zanner energy analyst for RBN Energy 8220As these fringe areas begin to get exploited we are seeing more and more crude that needs to find a pipeline to Cushing or the Gulf Coast8221 he said Most analysts estimated pipelines out of the Permian would fill completely by mid2018 but this may already be happening According to market intelligence firm Genscape pipeline utilization from the Permian to the Gulf Coast averaged about 89 percent this year and 96 percent in the last four weeks US crude for delivery in Midland Texas WTCWTM traded at 550barrel under the price of benchmark futures on Wednesday weakest since October 2014 West Texas Sour WTCWTS the sour grade delivered into Midland traded as much as 625 a barrel below futures Midland light sweet crude currently trades at more than 8 a barrel below West Texas Intermediate at East Houston a key delivery spot for export markets the biggest discount on record GRAPHIC Texas oil output surge reutrs2EmL4nN Slideshow 3 Images 8220What the spreads are telling you is that these pipelines are full going to the Gulf Coast8221 said Kendrick Rhea at energy consultancy East Daley Capital The wide spreads mean pipeline operators are now seeing a surge in demand and throughput traders and analysts said Spreads have even widened enough to cover spot shipping rates which are typically higher than longterm committed rates offered by pipeline companies Enterprise Products Partners LP 2442 EPDN New York Stock Exchange 012 049 EPDN ETPN PAAN For midstream companies this could show up in earnings reports for several quarters Analysts8217 revenue projections for Permian pipeline companies Enterprise Products Partners LP EPDN Energy Transfer Partners LP ETPN and Plains All American Pipeline LP PAAN have been revised higher over the last 90 days according to Thomson Reuters data All three rank in the top 10 percent in terms of upward revisions for North American companies in the Thomson Reuters universe and the same model projects all three will exceed revenue projections in the first quarter 8220They8217re going to see record flows coming out they8217re going to see record margins on marketing and on walkup tariffs for the rest of the year8221 Rhea said As of March 2018 the Permian had a total of 3175 million bpd of outgoing pipeline rail and local refining capacity according to Genscape of which outgoing pipeline capacity accounts for 2725 million bpd The next boost will be the expansion of Permian Express 3 which will add 200 million barrels of daily capacity in late 2018 The Enterprise MidlandtoSealy line could also expand capacity to bring it to 450000 bpd from 330000 bpd late last year By midtolate 2019 projects including the Cactus Pipeline 2 and EPIC lines will add more than 15 million bpd of additional capacity Reporting by Devika Krishna Kumar in New York Editing by Tom Brown Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters The US trade deficit increased to a near 912year high in February with both imports and exports rising to record highs in a sign of strong domestic and global demand News on Thursday of the worsening trade deficit came as the United States and China were embroiled in titfortat tariffs which escalated trade war fears and rattled financial markets President Donald Trump8217s administration is pursuing import duties to eradicate the deficit and protect domestic industries from what he says is unfair foreign competition But economists say the trade penalties will not reverse the deficit 8220The US continues to expand faster than most other industrialized countries so it should not surprise anyone that the trade deficit is worsening8221 said Joel Naroff chief economist at Naroff Economic Advisors in Holland Pennsylvania8221Tariffs may sound like a good way to change the pattern of trade but they tend to raise prices rather than modify the trade fundamentals8221 The Commerce Department said the trade gap increased 16 percent to 576 billion in February the highest level since October 2008 The deficit has now increased for six straight months Most of the rise in the trade deficit in February reflected commodity price increases Economists polled by Reuters had forecast the trade gap widening to 568 billion in February The goods trade deficit was the highest since July 2008 and the surplus on services was the lowest since December 2012 While the politically sensitive goods trade deficit with China fell 186 percent to 293 billion in February it has increased 202 percent so far this year The Trump administration on Tuesday targeted 25 percent tariffs on some 1300 Chinese industrial technology transport and medical products to force changes in Beijing8217s intellectual property practices China swiftly retaliated on Wednesday with a list of similar duties on key American imports including soybeans planes cars beef and chemicals Trump who claims the United States is being taken advantage of by its trading partners has already imposed broad tariffs on imported solar panels and large washing machines He has also slapped 25 percent import duties on steel and 10 percent on aluminum While these actions may prove politically popular with Trump8217s working class political base especially in states hardhit by factory closures and import competition analysts warn they could undercut economic growth and raise prices for both consumers and producers The dollar rose to a twoweek high against a currency basket amid signs the United States was looking to resolve the trade dispute with China Stocks on Wall Street were trading higher while prices for US Treasuries fell DEFICIT WILL WORSEN The trade deficit is expected to widen further thanks to an accommodative fiscal policy stance at a time when the economy is operating very close to full capacity A 15 trillion income tax cut package came into effect in January and government spending will increase this year The economy8217s strong fundamentals were underscored by a report from the Labor Department on Thursday showing the number of Americans on unemployment benefits falling to its lowest level since December 1973 during the week ending March 24 When adjusted for inflation the trade deficit slipped to 6911 billion from 6996 billion in January The socalled real trade deficit average for the first two months of 2018 is above the fourthquarter average of 668 billion This suggests trade would subtract from firstquarter gross domestic product Trade sliced 116 percentage points from fourthquarter GDP growth The economy grew at a 29 percent annualized rate during that period Growth estimates for the first quarter are mostly below a 2 percent rate 8220We suspect widening trade deficits and resulting subtractions from GDP growth will be a persistent feature of GDP this year as domestic demand outpaces the economy8217s supply potential8221 said John Ryding chief economist at RDQ Economics in New York 8220Tariffs will do nothing to lessen this trade imbalance unless there is a retaliatory escalation that leads to an economic downturn8221 In February exports of goods increased 23 percent to 1372 billion boosted by shipments of crude oil natural gas motor vehicles civilian aircraft and drilling and oilfield equipment Exports to China were unchanged in February Goods imports jumped 16 percent to 2142 billion in February lifted by food civilian aircraft computers and crude oil Imports of services rose to a record 478 billion from 468 billion in January boosted by royalties and broadcast license fees related to the Winter Olympics Shipping containers are being loaded onto Xin Da Yang Zhou ship from Shanghai China at Pier J at the Port of Long Beach in Long Beach California US April 4 2018 REUTERSBob Riha Jr Imports from China declined 147 percent in February Reporting by Lucia Mutikani Editing by Andrea Ricci Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles NEW YORK Reuters US stock futures fell more than 1 percent late on Thursday after US President Donald Trump said he had instructed US trade officials to consider 100 billion in additional tariffs on China SampampP 500 emini futures EScv1 were down 14 percent in trading for the overnight session Dow futures 1YMcv1 were down 17 percent Trump in a statement said he proposed the additional tariffs 8220in light of China8217s unfair retaliation8221 against earlier US actions that included 50 billion of tariffs on Chinese goods 8220These potential trade wars are not good for the market8221 said Stephen Massocca senior vice president at Wedbush Securities in San Francisco 8220I don8217t think the market will perceive them as good for the economy so therefore they8217re not good for the market It doesn8217t surprise me that as the rhetoric heats up the market is weak8221 Slideshow 3 Images Hedge fund manager Doug Kass who runs Seabreeze Partners Management Inc said he was shorting the Standard ampamp Poor8217s 5008221The hastily crafted policy like we have seen from Trump over the last two three days and now tonight in a world that is flat and evermore interconnected is dangerous8221 The probabilities of a recession in the last half of 2019 and early 2020 are increasing in odds and maybe quite dramatically Kass added saying 8220The bottom line is that our president is going to make market volatility and economic uncertainty great again8221 Dow Jones ampamp Company Inc 2450522 DJI Dow Jones Indexes 24092 099 DJI SPX During the regular session the Dow DJI and the SampampP 500 SPX posted gains for a third day in a row the longest streak in about a month as investors worries of an escalating trade conflict between the United States and China began to ease On Wednesday Trump8217s top economic adviser Larry Kudlow said the administration was involved in a 8220negotiation8221 with China rather than a trade war Bob Smith president and chief investment officer at Sage Advisory Services Ltd Co in Austin Texas said the markets were going to react adversely to Trump8217s latest statement 8220Anything that8217s twice as large as the last number is going to elicit a response and I think that we8217re just going to be going on this hayride for a while until they get themselves around the table and start talking turkey at some point the market8217s going to get fed up with it8221 Reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch and Trevor Hunnicutt Editing by Jennifer Ablan and Peter Cooney Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>After his triumph in Iowa, Ted Cruz delivered an beautifully eloquent speech resonating with love for America. To comment on it would be superfluous; it is, simply put, a wonderfully articulate and moving response to the ills that have plagued the nation during the long night of Barack Obama's tenure as well as a stinging rebuke to the last 100 years of the left attempting to remold the country and shatter the American ideal.</p> <p>Here's the complete transcript:</p> <p>God bless the great state of Iowa. Let me first of all say, to God be the glory. Tonight is a victory for the grassroots. Tonight is a victory for courageous conservatives across Iowa, and all across this great nation. Tonight the state of Iowa has spoken. Iowa has sent notice that the Republican nominee and the next president of the United States will not be chosen by the media. Will not be chosen by the Washington establishment. Will not be chosen by the lobbyists. But will be chosen by the most incredible powerful force, where all sovereignty resides in our nation, by we the people: the American people.</p> <p>Tonight, thanks to the incredible hard work of everyone gathered here, of courageous conservatives across the state, we together earned the votes of 48,608 Iowans. To put in perspective, your incredible victory that you have won tonight, that is the most votes ever cast for any Republican primary winner.</p> <p>Tonight is a victory for millions of Americans, who have shouldered the burden of seven years of Washington deals run amok. Tonight is a victory for every American who's watched in dismay as career politicians in Washington in both parties refuse to listen and too often fail to keep their commitments to the people. Tonight is a victory for every American who understands that after we survive eight long years of the Obama presidency, that no one personality can right the wrongs done by Washington. The millions who understand that it is a commitment to the Constitution to our shared insistence that we rise and return to a higher standard, the very standard that gave birth to the greatest nation that the world has ever known. To the revolutionary understanding that all men and all women are created equal. That our rights do not come from the Democratic party or the Republican party or even from the Tea Party. Our rights come from our Creator.</p> <p>And the federal government's role, the federal government's responsibility, is to defend those fundamental rights, to defend us. And while Americans will continue to suffer under a president who has set an agenda that is causing millions to hurt across this country I want to remind you of the promise of Scripture. &#8220;Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.&#8221;</p> <p>Tonight, Iowa has proclaimed to the world, morning is coming. Morning is coming. From day one this campaign has been a movement. For millions of Americans across this country to organize, to rally, to come together. Whatever Washington says, they cannot keep the people down. And tonight is a testament to the people's commitments to their yearnings to get back to our core commitments: free market principles, Constitutional liberties, and the Judeo-Christian values that built this great nation.</p> <p>When the Washington lobbyists settled on other candidates in this race, when the media in one voice said a conservative cannot win, nationwide over 800,000 contributions poured in to tedcruz.org as courageous conservatives said, &#8220;Yes, we can.&#8221; 800,000 contributions at tedcruz.org with an average contribution of $67. That is the power of the grassroots.</p> <p>But it's more than that. It's 12,000 volunteers here in the state of Iowa. It's over 200,000 volunteers all across this great nation.</p> <p>You know, during the course of this campaign people have asked Heidi and me, &#8220;Are you tired?&#8221; And I will admit it is 16, 18 hours a day, 6, 7 days a week. We are not tired at all.</p> <p>To the contrary, we are inspired by each and every one of you. I leap out of bed every morning amazed that at a time when our country is in crisis, every one of us has the opportunity to stand and lead, that we have been put in a place of leadership for such a time as this.</p> <p>I'm inspired by the stories of heroism that I see every day, working men, like Jerry Dunleavy from Columbus, Ohio, who requested an entire month off his job to come to Iowa to live at Camp Cruz and to volunteer full time. When his employer refused to give him the time off, Jerry quit his job and came anyway.</p> <p>(Responding to someone yelling, &#8220;I love you, Ted!) And I love the great state of Iowa!</p> <p>I'm inspired by people like Elliott Gazer and Josh Hammer, students at the University of Chicago who spent their winter break at Camp Cruz. But they didn&#8217;t stop there; they came back this weekend they hit the phones and they hit the pavement, campaigning so that students across this country, upon graduation, rather than having mountains of debt will instead have 2, 3, 4, 5 high-paying job offers and a chance at the American dream.</p> <p>I'm inspired by people like Alexandra Ziegler, a 13-year-old girl from Lubbock, Texas, who, yesterday, at our campaign headquarters made 823 volunteer calls.</p> <p>That has always been the strength of this campaign. Are the men and women gathered here and courageous conservatives standing up and speaking out and lifting us up in prayer, lifting this country up in prayer each and every day. And let me say our leadership team, our Iowa state chairman, Matt Schultz, what an extraordinary job you have done organizing a grass roots army. And let me say to our Iowa state director, Brian English, what an amazing job Brian has done.</p> <p>And to our national co-chairmen, Bob Vander Plaats and Steve King, these men have become dear and trusted friends. They are warriors. They are men of principle. They stand and speak the truth. They stand to defend their values and let me tell you, these leaders, day after day, week after week, have been crawling under broken glass with knives between their teeth. I'm grateful for the support, the early support of my friend, Steve Deace.</p> <p>We're grateful for the over 150 pastors across the state of Iowa who joined our team to energize people of faith. We're grateful to the state senators, to the state representatives, to the volunteer leaders in each of the 99 counties who stood up and said, We will be heard and this will be decided by the grass roots.&#8221;</p> <p>And then, I am so grateful to national leaders, people like Dr. James Dobson. And Tony Perkins. And Phil Robertson. And Governor Rick Perry. And Glenn Beck. Leaders who have stood and led, bringing together and coalescing conservatives here in Iowa and across the country.</p> <p>Do you want to know what scares the Washington cartel?</p> <p>(Audience : &#8220;You!&#8221;)</p> <p>Actually, not remotely. I don't scare them in the tiniest bit. What scares them is you. What scares them is that old Reagan coalition is coming back together, of conservatives. We're seeing conservatives and evangelicals and libertarian and Reagan Democrats all coming together as one and that terrifies Washington, D.C.</p> <p>And so to the people of Iowa, Heidi and I say thank you for your incredible hospitality, for your love, thank you for welcoming us into your homes, into your living rooms. Thank you for welcoming my father to preach from the pulpits of your churches. And let me say to my parents, Mom, thank you. For the incredible, unconditional love that you have given me every day of my life, the knowledge that whatever I might do, whatever I might say that my mother loves me.</p> <p>To my cousin, Bebe, who is like a sister to me, we grew up together, I love you, Beebs.</p> <p>And to my Dad, a man who came from Cuba at age 18 with nothing. With $100 in his underwear. He doesn't carry money in his underwear anymore. A man who was imprisoned, who was tortured, who washed dishes making $0.50 an hour, who has lived the American dream; and a man who is today a pastor, traveling the country preaching the gospel.</p> <p>My Dad is 76 years old and yet he&#8217;s got the energy of a teenager and Dad you have been my hero my whole life. I love you, Dad.</p> <p>When the sun rises tomorrow, this campaign will take the next step. We will continue to campaign the same way: sitting down, person to person, leader to leader, VFW halls, Dunkin Donuts, returning to the great state of New Hampshire. And let me speak for a minute to the men and women of the state of New Hampshire. 36 years ago, you welcomed to the Granite State a candidate running for president who was also deeply disliked by the Washington establishment and the Washington cartel. A candidate who had been dismissed outright by the media. Some polls had him 15 to 20 points behind. But you refused to let the establishment and media do your thinking for you. You refused to let them tell you how to vote. You wanted a candidate who didn't adopt his positions because of the latest opinion polls, but instead because of a deep and underlying conservative philosophy that grounded him so that he knew exactly what he believed, exactly what the principles were that built this great nation.</p> <p>And so tonight I want to say to the people of New Hampshire, thank you for what you did 36 years ago. Thank you for giving America, and the world, and yes, history itself, our 40th president of the United States, Ronald Wilson Reagan. And I ask the people of New Hampshire, and the people of South Carolina, and the people of Nevada, and the people of the super Tuesday states on March 1: to each of you, do not listen to our words. Do not listen to the rhetoric from campaigns, but rather, hold each and every one of us accountable, hold me accountable and every other candidate accountable to be a consistent conservative.</p> <p>If you want a candidate to repeal Obamacare, then support a candidate who has led the fight to repeal Obamacare. If you want a president to stop amnesty, to secure the borders and keep us safe, then support a candidate who has led the fight to stop amnesty to secure the borders and to keep us safe. If you want a candidate to support life and marriage and religious liberty, then support a candidate who spent decades of his life fighting to defend life and marriage and religious liberty. If you want a candidate to defend the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, then ask of every candidate, &#8220;Where were you in the spring of 2013 when Barack Obama and Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer tried to undermine the second amendment right to keep and bear arms?&#8221;</p> <p>If you want a candidate who will stand unapologetically with the nation of Israel, then support a candidate who has led the fight over and over again to stand by our friend and ally, the nation of Israel.</p> <p>And if you want a commander in chief who will fulfill the most solemn obligation of the president to keep this nation safe, then support a candidate who has demonstrated the commitment, the judgment, the experience, the clarity of vision, to identify our enemy, to call it by its name, radical Islamic terrorism, and to utterly and completely defeat ISIS. If I am elected president, every militant on the face of the planet will know, if you go and join ISIS, if you wage jihad on the United States of America, if you attempt to murder innocent Americans you are signing your death warrant.</p> <p>And I'll tell you this. If the other states across the country follow the lead of the good men and women of Iowa, and support this campaign, then I tell you this: This July, in Cleveland, you will hear these words spoken from the podium of the unified Republican convention:</p> <p>Tonight, I want to say to every member of the Democratic party, who believes in limited government, in personal opportunity and the United States Constitution, and a safe and secure America: come home. To the Reagan Democrats, your party has left you, and the Republican Party wants you, we welcome you back. Because together, this year, Republicans and the Reagan Democrats can send an unmistakable message, the message of a Reagan-like landslide that once and for all will drive the liberal elites and the Washington cartel into the Potomac and out to sea, never to be seen again. Together, we can bring out a new era of economic growth, of military strength, of international security and the future of hope that our children deserve. If we commit to do more than hope, if we aspire to govern by a higher standard, a standard that transcends political party and race and gender and income, and to everyone that is tired of a president that divides us daily on racial lines, on ethnic lines, on religious lines, on gender lines, on socioeconomic lines, we will have a president that once again seeks to bring us together and unite us on our shared values of who we are as Americans.</p> <p>The most solemn responsibility of the president is to keep this country safe. And we will stop the weakness and appeasement; we will stop making excuses for global bullies and terrorists and rather, simply do what it takes to defeat them. I give you my solemn promise. We will finally, finally, finally secure the borders and end sanctuary cities.</p> <p>And I want to speak for a moment to the soldiers and sailors and airmen and Marines, I want to speak to the moms and dads who have a child serving overseas; I want to speak to the husbands and wives who wake up at night wondering if their loved one is still alive; I want to speak to the little kids who have been waiting months upon months to get a hug from daddy, a kiss from mommy; to all of our fighting men and women who have been sent into combat with their arms tied behind their back with rules of engagement that are wrong, that are immoral; that will end on January 2017. You will have a commander in chief who finally has your back.</p> <p>And to the police officers, and the firemen, and the first responders, the heroes who rushed into burning buildings instead of out of burning buildings, the last seven years of having a president, having an attorney general that demonizes you, that vilifies you, that sides with the criminals and looters instead of the brave men and women of law enforcement, that will end on January 20, 2017.</p> <p>So tonight, the state of Iowa, the Democrats here seem to be in a virtual tie, between one candidate, who admits he's a socialist, and the other candidate who pretends she's not. I wish them both luck. But I will tell you this, as Margaret Thatcher observed, the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples' money.</p> <p>And let me tell you tonight, I cannot wait to stand on that debate stage with Hillary Clinton.</p> <p>We will win by speaking the truth with a smile. The truth is the American people are fed up with Washington, with a corrupt class that enriches itself and leaves behind the working men and women of this country. The truth is the American people are fed up with a federal government that views the Bill of Rights and the Constitution as a rough draft, as an inconvenience, as something to be set aside, and we are ready to get back to the vision of the framers, of protecting the unalienable rights given to each of us by our Creator.</p> <p>You know, the reason all of you are here is the same reason I am here; the same reason Heidi and I have spent every waking moment for the last year: We love our kids, our girls, Caroline and Catherine, at age seven and age five.</p> <p>Every one of us here, when we go to bed at night, we think, &#8220;What kind of world are we leaving our kids? Are we giving our children a brighter future? Are we giving our children what our parents gave us? A country with greater freedom, greater opportunity, more promise, more hope?&#8221;</p> <p>You want to know why I&#8217;m getting on a plane in about an hour and flying all night to New Hampshire to knock on doors and sit down and visit with people and ask for their support?</p> <p>The reason is simple: Because when I look my girls in the eyes, ten, twenty years from now, I am not going to tell them, &#8220;We could have stood up and saved this country, but we didn&#8217;t do everything we could.&#8221; Instead, I&#8217;m going to tell them: &#8220;Millions of Americans saw that America was in jeopardy and we rose up together and said, &#8216;We are going to preserve this nation for our children and grandchildren.&#8217;&#8221;</p> <p>To those who supported other candidates in this race, the Republican Party is so blessed to have a bounty of talented young dynamic candidates, people who are friends, people who I like and respect. To those who supported other candidates, I will tell you, each of them, we welcome you as part of our team. Because if we stand together as one, if the American people stand together and say, &#8220;We want our country back,&#8221; there is no force in Washington that can stand against the American people, that can stand against the grassroots, that can stand against our unity. We are going to do this together, as a movement from the people. And I tell you tonight, Iowa has made clear to America and the world, morning is coming.</p> <p>Morning is coming.</p> <p>Thank you and God bless you.</p> <p>Video below:</p>

The Eloquent Victory Speech Of Ted Cruz: Compete Transcript

https://dailywire.com/news/3066/eloquent-victory-speech-ted-cruz-compete-hank-berrien

2016-02-02

0right

After his triumph in Iowa Ted Cruz delivered an beautifully eloquent speech resonating with love for America To comment on it would be superfluous it is simply put a wonderfully articulate and moving response to the ills that have plagued the nation during the long night of Barack Obamas tenure as well as a stinging rebuke to the last 100 years of the left attempting to remold the country and shatter the American ideal Heres the complete transcript God bless the great state of Iowa Let me first of all say to God be the glory Tonight is a victory for the grassroots Tonight is a victory for courageous conservatives across Iowa and all across this great nation Tonight the state of Iowa has spoken Iowa has sent notice that the Republican nominee and the next president of the United States will not be chosen by the media Will not be chosen by the Washington establishment Will not be chosen by the lobbyists But will be chosen by the most incredible powerful force where all sovereignty resides in our nation by we the people the American people Tonight thanks to the incredible hard work of everyone gathered here of courageous conservatives across the state we together earned the votes of 48608 Iowans To put in perspective your incredible victory that you have won tonight that is the most votes ever cast for any Republican primary winner Tonight is a victory for millions of Americans who have shouldered the burden of seven years of Washington deals run amok Tonight is a victory for every American whos watched in dismay as career politicians in Washington in both parties refuse to listen and too often fail to keep their commitments to the people Tonight is a victory for every American who understands that after we survive eight long years of the Obama presidency that no one personality can right the wrongs done by Washington The millions who understand that it is a commitment to the Constitution to our shared insistence that we rise and return to a higher standard the very standard that gave birth to the greatest nation that the world has ever known To the revolutionary understanding that all men and all women are created equal That our rights do not come from the Democratic party or the Republican party or even from the Tea Party Our rights come from our Creator And the federal governments role the federal governments responsibility is to defend those fundamental rights to defend us And while Americans will continue to suffer under a president who has set an agenda that is causing millions to hurt across this country I want to remind you of the promise of Scripture 8220Weeping may endure for a night but joy cometh in the morning8221 Tonight Iowa has proclaimed to the world morning is coming Morning is coming From day one this campaign has been a movement For millions of Americans across this country to organize to rally to come together Whatever Washington says they cannot keep the people down And tonight is a testament to the peoples commitments to their yearnings to get back to our core commitments free market principles Constitutional liberties and the JudeoChristian values that built this great nation When the Washington lobbyists settled on other candidates in this race when the media in one voice said a conservative cannot win nationwide over 800000 contributions poured in to tedcruzorg as courageous conservatives said 8220Yes we can8221 800000 contributions at tedcruzorg with an average contribution of 67 That is the power of the grassroots But its more than that Its 12000 volunteers here in the state of Iowa Its over 200000 volunteers all across this great nation You know during the course of this campaign people have asked Heidi and me 8220Are you tired8221 And I will admit it is 16 18 hours a day 6 7 days a week We are not tired at all To the contrary we are inspired by each and every one of you I leap out of bed every morning amazed that at a time when our country is in crisis every one of us has the opportunity to stand and lead that we have been put in a place of leadership for such a time as this Im inspired by the stories of heroism that I see every day working men like Jerry Dunleavy from Columbus Ohio who requested an entire month off his job to come to Iowa to live at Camp Cruz and to volunteer full time When his employer refused to give him the time off Jerry quit his job and came anyway Responding to someone yelling 8220I love you Ted And I love the great state of Iowa Im inspired by people like Elliott Gazer and Josh Hammer students at the University of Chicago who spent their winter break at Camp Cruz But they didn8217t stop there they came back this weekend they hit the phones and they hit the pavement campaigning so that students across this country upon graduation rather than having mountains of debt will instead have 2 3 4 5 highpaying job offers and a chance at the American dream Im inspired by people like Alexandra Ziegler a 13yearold girl from Lubbock Texas who yesterday at our campaign headquarters made 823 volunteer calls That has always been the strength of this campaign Are the men and women gathered here and courageous conservatives standing up and speaking out and lifting us up in prayer lifting this country up in prayer each and every day And let me say our leadership team our Iowa state chairman Matt Schultz what an extraordinary job you have done organizing a grass roots army And let me say to our Iowa state director Brian English what an amazing job Brian has done And to our national cochairmen Bob Vander Plaats and Steve King these men have become dear and trusted friends They are warriors They are men of principle They stand and speak the truth They stand to defend their values and let me tell you these leaders day after day week after week have been crawling under broken glass with knives between their teeth Im grateful for the support the early support of my friend Steve Deace Were grateful for the over 150 pastors across the state of Iowa who joined our team to energize people of faith Were grateful to the state senators to the state representatives to the volunteer leaders in each of the 99 counties who stood up and said We will be heard and this will be decided by the grass roots8221 And then I am so grateful to national leaders people like Dr James Dobson And Tony Perkins And Phil Robertson And Governor Rick Perry And Glenn Beck Leaders who have stood and led bringing together and coalescing conservatives here in Iowa and across the country Do you want to know what scares the Washington cartel Audience 8220You8221 Actually not remotely I dont scare them in the tiniest bit What scares them is you What scares them is that old Reagan coalition is coming back together of conservatives Were seeing conservatives and evangelicals and libertarian and Reagan Democrats all coming together as one and that terrifies Washington DC And so to the people of Iowa Heidi and I say thank you for your incredible hospitality for your love thank you for welcoming us into your homes into your living rooms Thank you for welcoming my father to preach from the pulpits of your churches And let me say to my parents Mom thank you For the incredible unconditional love that you have given me every day of my life the knowledge that whatever I might do whatever I might say that my mother loves me To my cousin Bebe who is like a sister to me we grew up together I love you Beebs And to my Dad a man who came from Cuba at age 18 with nothing With 100 in his underwear He doesnt carry money in his underwear anymore A man who was imprisoned who was tortured who washed dishes making 050 an hour who has lived the American dream and a man who is today a pastor traveling the country preaching the gospel My Dad is 76 years old and yet he8217s got the energy of a teenager and Dad you have been my hero my whole life I love you Dad When the sun rises tomorrow this campaign will take the next step We will continue to campaign the same way sitting down person to person leader to leader VFW halls Dunkin Donuts returning to the great state of New Hampshire And let me speak for a minute to the men and women of the state of New Hampshire 36 years ago you welcomed to the Granite State a candidate running for president who was also deeply disliked by the Washington establishment and the Washington cartel A candidate who had been dismissed outright by the media Some polls had him 15 to 20 points behind But you refused to let the establishment and media do your thinking for you You refused to let them tell you how to vote You wanted a candidate who didnt adopt his positions because of the latest opinion polls but instead because of a deep and underlying conservative philosophy that grounded him so that he knew exactly what he believed exactly what the principles were that built this great nation And so tonight I want to say to the people of New Hampshire thank you for what you did 36 years ago Thank you for giving America and the world and yes history itself our 40th president of the United States Ronald Wilson Reagan And I ask the people of New Hampshire and the people of South Carolina and the people of Nevada and the people of the super Tuesday states on March 1 to each of you do not listen to our words Do not listen to the rhetoric from campaigns but rather hold each and every one of us accountable hold me accountable and every other candidate accountable to be a consistent conservative If you want a candidate to repeal Obamacare then support a candidate who has led the fight to repeal Obamacare If you want a president to stop amnesty to secure the borders and keep us safe then support a candidate who has led the fight to stop amnesty to secure the borders and to keep us safe If you want a candidate to support life and marriage and religious liberty then support a candidate who spent decades of his life fighting to defend life and marriage and religious liberty If you want a candidate to defend the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms then ask of every candidate 8220Where were you in the spring of 2013 when Barack Obama and Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer tried to undermine the second amendment right to keep and bear arms8221 If you want a candidate who will stand unapologetically with the nation of Israel then support a candidate who has led the fight over and over again to stand by our friend and ally the nation of Israel And if you want a commander in chief who will fulfill the most solemn obligation of the president to keep this nation safe then support a candidate who has demonstrated the commitment the judgment the experience the clarity of vision to identify our enemy to call it by its name radical Islamic terrorism and to utterly and completely defeat ISIS If I am elected president every militant on the face of the planet will know if you go and join ISIS if you wage jihad on the United States of America if you attempt to murder innocent Americans you are signing your death warrant And Ill tell you this If the other states across the country follow the lead of the good men and women of Iowa and support this campaign then I tell you this This July in Cleveland you will hear these words spoken from the podium of the unified Republican convention Tonight I want to say to every member of the Democratic party who believes in limited government in personal opportunity and the United States Constitution and a safe and secure America come home To the Reagan Democrats your party has left you and the Republican Party wants you we welcome you back Because together this year Republicans and the Reagan Democrats can send an unmistakable message the message of a Reaganlike landslide that once and for all will drive the liberal elites and the Washington cartel into the Potomac and out to sea never to be seen again Together we can bring out a new era of economic growth of military strength of international security and the future of hope that our children deserve If we commit to do more than hope if we aspire to govern by a higher standard a standard that transcends political party and race and gender and income and to everyone that is tired of a president that divides us daily on racial lines on ethnic lines on religious lines on gender lines on socioeconomic lines we will have a president that once again seeks to bring us together and unite us on our shared values of who we are as Americans The most solemn responsibility of the president is to keep this country safe And we will stop the weakness and appeasement we will stop making excuses for global bullies and terrorists and rather simply do what it takes to defeat them I give you my solemn promise We will finally finally finally secure the borders and end sanctuary cities And I want to speak for a moment to the soldiers and sailors and airmen and Marines I want to speak to the moms and dads who have a child serving overseas I want to speak to the husbands and wives who wake up at night wondering if their loved one is still alive I want to speak to the little kids who have been waiting months upon months to get a hug from daddy a kiss from mommy to all of our fighting men and women who have been sent into combat with their arms tied behind their back with rules of engagement that are wrong that are immoral that will end on January 2017 You will have a commander in chief who finally has your back And to the police officers and the firemen and the first responders the heroes who rushed into burning buildings instead of out of burning buildings the last seven years of having a president having an attorney general that demonizes you that vilifies you that sides with the criminals and looters instead of the brave men and women of law enforcement that will end on January 20 2017 So tonight the state of Iowa the Democrats here seem to be in a virtual tie between one candidate who admits hes a socialist and the other candidate who pretends shes not I wish them both luck But I will tell you this as Margaret Thatcher observed the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples money And let me tell you tonight I cannot wait to stand on that debate stage with Hillary Clinton We will win by speaking the truth with a smile The truth is the American people are fed up with Washington with a corrupt class that enriches itself and leaves behind the working men and women of this country The truth is the American people are fed up with a federal government that views the Bill of Rights and the Constitution as a rough draft as an inconvenience as something to be set aside and we are ready to get back to the vision of the framers of protecting the unalienable rights given to each of us by our Creator You know the reason all of you are here is the same reason I am here the same reason Heidi and I have spent every waking moment for the last year We love our kids our girls Caroline and Catherine at age seven and age five Every one of us here when we go to bed at night we think 8220What kind of world are we leaving our kids Are we giving our children a brighter future Are we giving our children what our parents gave us A country with greater freedom greater opportunity more promise more hope8221 You want to know why I8217m getting on a plane in about an hour and flying all night to New Hampshire to knock on doors and sit down and visit with people and ask for their support The reason is simple Because when I look my girls in the eyes ten twenty years from now I am not going to tell them 8220We could have stood up and saved this country but we didn8217t do everything we could8221 Instead I8217m going to tell them 8220Millions of Americans saw that America was in jeopardy and we rose up together and said 8216We are going to preserve this nation for our children and grandchildren82178221 To those who supported other candidates in this race the Republican Party is so blessed to have a bounty of talented young dynamic candidates people who are friends people who I like and respect To those who supported other candidates I will tell you each of them we welcome you as part of our team Because if we stand together as one if the American people stand together and say 8220We want our country back8221 there is no force in Washington that can stand against the American people that can stand against the grassroots that can stand against our unity We are going to do this together as a movement from the people And I tell you tonight Iowa has made clear to America and the world morning is coming Morning is coming Thank you and God bless you Video below

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<p>Jan 18 (Reuters) - Barratt Developments Plc:</p> <p>* BARRATT - HAS ENTERED INTO A 50:50 JOINT VENTURE WITH SWINDON BOROUGH COUNCIL TO DEVELOP APPROXIMATELY 250 HECTARES AT WICHELSTOWE, SOUTH OF SWINDON</p> <p>* &#8205;SCHEME WILL DELIVER AROUND 2,670 NEW HOMES OVER NEXT 20 YEARS&#8203; Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Weapons inspectors will try on Saturday to reach the site of a suspected poison attack in the Syrian town of Douma, hours after Western countries launched air strikes in retaliation over the gassing.</p> <p>The OPCW&#8217;s fact-finding mission &#8220;will continue its deployment to the Syrian Arab Republic to establish facts around the allegations of chemical weapons use in Douma&#8221;, the agency said in a statement.</p> <p>The United States, Britain and France fired more than 100 missiles at Syria early on Saturday in the first coordinated Western military intervention against the Damascus government. They say the strikes are punishment for killing dozens of people, many of them women and children, with banned toxic munitions.</p> <p>Damascus and its ally Russia have denounced the Western action, in particular for refusing to wait until the results of the fact-finding mission sent by the OPCW in the wake of the April 7 incident.</p> <p>Rescue workers said scores of people died in that incident. Washington says it has confirmed that chlorine gas was used, and has unconfirmed suspicion that nerve agents may also have been used. Damascus and Moscow deny blame for any such attack.</p> <p>Security permitting, a team from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons will deploy briefly on Saturday to the site.</p> <p>The team will work with the United Nations Department of Safety and Security ensure the safety of the team, it said.</p> <p>Syria agreed to give up its chemical weapons arsenal in 2013 and submit to OPCW inspections. It is meant to have destroyed all of its stockpiles of nerve agents. In the case of chlorine, it is permitted to possess it for civilian use, but not to use it as a weapon.</p> <p>The OPCW will determine whether chemical weapons were used, but will not assign blame.</p> <p>Despite a U.S.-Russian agreement to completely eliminate Syria&#8217;s chemical weapons program after hundreds of people were gassed with sarin in Ghouta on Aug. 21, 2013, the OPCW had been unable to verify that all manufacturing, storage and research facilities were destroyed.</p> <p>Among the sites reportedly hit overnight Friday was the Scientific Studies and Research Centre, a facility that has played a key role in Syria&#8217;s chemical weapons program since the 1970s.</p> <p>OPCW inspectors have raised questions about the SSRC since 2013, when Damascus joined the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention and agreed to do away with its stockpile to avert threatened strikes under President Barack Obama.</p> <p>Syria has been unable to explain several findings by inspectors, including undeclared research and development sites, the presence of banned chemicals and missing munitions, sources have told Reuters.</p> <p>Reporting by Anthony Deutsch; Editing by Peter Graff</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON/BEIRUT (Reuters) - U.S., British and French forces struck Syria with more than 100 missiles on Saturday in the first coordinated Western strikes against the Damascus government, targetting what they called chemical weapons sites in retaliation for a poison gas attack.</p> <p>U.S. President Donald Trump announced the military action from the White House, saying the three allies had &#8220;marshaled their righteous power against barbarism and brutality&#8221;.</p> <p>As he spoke, explosions rocked Damascus.</p> <p>The bombing represents a major escalation in the West&#8217;s confrontation with Assad&#8217;s superpower ally Russia, but is unlikely to alter the course of a multi-sided war which has killed at least half a million people in the past seven years.</p> <p>That in turn raises the question of where Western countries go from here, after a volley of strikes denounced by Damascus and Moscow as at once both reckless and pointless.</p> <p>By morning, the Western countries said their bombing was over for now. Syria released video of the wreckage of a bombed-out research lab, but also of President Bashar al-Assad arriving at work as usual, with the caption &#8220;morning of resilience&#8221;.</p> <p>There were no immediate reports of casualties, with Damascus allies saying the buildings hit had been evacuated in advance.</p> <p>British Prime Minister Theresa May described the strike as &#8220;limited and targeted&#8221;. She said she had authorized British action after intelligence indicated Assad&#8217;s government was to blame for gassing the Damascus suburb of Douma a week ago.</p> <p>In a speech she gave a vivid description of the victims of the chemical strike that killed scores, huddling in basements as gas rained down. She said Russia had thwarted diplomatic efforts to halt Assad&#8217;s use of poison gas, leaving no option but force.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-israel/syria-strikes-an-important-signal-to-iran-and-hezbollah-israeli-minister-idUSKBN1HL0A4" type="external">Syria strikes an 'important signal' to Iran and Hezbollah: Israeli minister</a> <a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-nato/u-s-france-britain-to-brief-nato-allies-on-syria-on-saturday-idUSKBN1HL0MA" type="external">U.S., France, Britain to brief NATO allies on Syria on Saturday</a> <a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-explosions/western-attack-struck-syrian-research-center-other-targets-idUSKBN1HL02U" type="external">Western attack struck Syrian research center, other targets</a> <p>French President Emmanuel Macron said the strikes had been limited so far to Syria&#8217;s chemical weapons facilities. Paris released a dossier which it said showed Damascus was to blame for the poison gas attack on Douma, the last town holding out in a rebel-held swathe of territory near Damascus which government forces have recaptured in this year&#8217;s biggest offensive.</p> <p>Washington described its targets as a center near Damascus for the research, development, production and testing of chemical and biological weapons, a chemical weapons storage site near the city of Homs and another site near Homs that stored chemical weapons equipment and housed a command post.</p> <p>U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis called the strikes a &#8220;one time shot&#8221;, although Trump raised the prospect of further strikes if Assad&#8217;s government again used chemical weapons.</p> <p>&#8220;We are prepared to sustain this response until the Syrian regime stops its use of prohibited chemical agents,&#8221; the U.S. president said in a televised address.</p> <p>The Syrian conflict pits a complex myriad of parties against each other, with Russia and Iran giving Assad military help that has largely proven decisive over the past three years, crushing any rebel threat to topple him. Fractured opposition forces have had varying support from the West, Arab states and Turkey.</p> <p>The United States, Britain and France have all bombed Islamic State fighters in Syria for years and had troops on the ground to fight them, but refrained from targetting Assad&#8217;s government apart from a volley of U.S. missiles last year.</p> <p>Although the Western countries have all said for seven years that Assad must leave power, they held back in the past from striking his government, lacking a wider strategy to defeat him.</p> <p>Assad&#8217;s government and allies responded outwardly with fury to Saturday&#8217;s attack, but also made clear that they considered it a one-off, unlikely to harm Assad in any meaningful way.</p> <p>Russia, whose relations with the West have deteriorated to levels of Cold War-era hostility, has denied that last week&#8217;s chemical weapons attack took place and even accused Britain of staging it to whip up anti-Russian hysteria.</p> <p>President Vladimir Putin called for a meeting of the U.N. Security Council to discuss what Moscow decried as an unjustified attack on a sovereign state. Syrian state media called the attack a &#8220;flagrant violation of international law.&#8221; An official in Iran&#8217;s Revolutionary Guards said it would cause consequences against U.S. interests.</p> <p>Arab states, generally hostile to Assad and Iran, backed the Western action, including both Saudi Arabi and its rival Qatar.</p> &#8220;ABSORBED THE STRIKE&#8221; <p>But the Western powers were at pains to avert any further escalation, including any unexpected conflict with their superpower rival. French Defense Minister Florence Parly said the Russians &#8220;were warned beforehand&#8221; to avert conflict.</p> <p>A senior official in a regional alliance that backs Damascus told Reuters the Syrian government and its allies had &#8220;absorbed&#8221; the attack. The sites that were targeted had been evacuated days ago thanks to a warning from Russia, the official said.</p> <p>&#8220;If it is finished, and there is no second round, it will be considered limited,&#8221; the official said.</p> <p>At least six loud explosions were heard in Damascus and smoke rose over the city, a Reuters witness said. A second witness said the Barzah district of Damascus was hit.</p> <p>A scientific research facility in Barzah appeared to have been completely destroyed, according to footage broadcast by Syrian state TV station al-Ikhbariya. Smoke rose from piles of rubble and a heavily damaged bus was parked outside.</p> <p>The Western intervention appears to have virtually no chance of altering the military balance of power at a time when Assad is in his strongest position since the war&#8217;s early months.</p> <p>In Douma, site of last week&#8217;s suspected gas attack, the final buses were due on Saturday to transport out rebels and their families who agreed to surrender the town, Syrian state TV reported. That effectively ends all resistance in the suburbs of Damascus known as eastern Ghouta, marking one of the biggest victories for Assad&#8217;s government of the entire war.</p> <p>The combined U.S., British and French assault involved more missiles, but appears to have struck more limited targets, than a similar strike Trump ordered a year ago in retaliation for an earlier suspected chemical weapons attack. Last year&#8217;s U.S. strike, which Washington said at the time would cripple Assad&#8217;s air forces and defenses, had effectively no impact on the war.</p> <p>Mattis said the United States conducted Saturday&#8217;s strikes with conclusive evidence that chlorine gas had been used in the April 7 attack in Syria. Evidence that the nerve agent sarin also was used was inconclusive, he said.</p> <p>Syria agreed in 2013 to give up its chemical weapons after a nerve gas attack killed hundreds of people in Douma. Damascus is still permitted to have chlorine for civilian use, although its use as a weapon is banned. Allegations of Assad&#8217;s chlorine use have been frequent during the war, although unlike nerve agents chlorine did not produce mass casualties as seen last week.</p> <p>The global chemical weapons watchdog, the OPCW, has sent a team to assess last week&#8217;s suspected gas attack. Saturday&#8217;s strikes took place before the inspectors had a chance to gather evidence at the scene.</p> <p>Mattis, who U.S. officials said had earlier warned in internal debates that too large an attack would risk confrontation with Russia, described the strikes as a one-off to dissuade Assad from &#8220;doing this again&#8221;.</p> <p>But a U.S. official familiar with the military planning said there could be more air strikes if the intelligence indicates Assad has not stopped making, importing, storing or using chemical weapons, including chlorine. The official said this could require a more sustained U.S. air and naval presence.</p> A missile is seen crossing over Damascus, Syria April 14, 2018. SANA/Handout via REUTERS EXIT SYRIA? <p>The U.S., British and French leaders all face domestic political issues over the decision to use force in Syria.</p> <p>Trump has been leery of U.S. military involvement in the Middle East, and is eager to withdraw roughly 2,000 troops in Syria taking part in the campaign against Islamic State.</p> <p>&#8220;America does not seek an indefinite presence in Syria, under no circumstances,&#8221; Trump said in his address. &#8220;The purpose of our actions tonight is to establish a strong deterrent against the production, spread and use of chemical weapons.&#8221;</p> <p>Trump has tried to build good relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin. A prosecutor is investigating whether Trump&#8217;s campaign colluded with Moscow in illegal efforts to help him get elected, which Trump calls a witch hunt.</p> <p>&#8220;To Iran and to Russia, I ask, what kind of a nation wants to be associated with the mass murder of innocent men, women and children?&#8221; Trump said in his address.</p> <p>In Britain, May&#8217;s decision to order strikes without consulting parliament overturned an arrangement in place since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Her predecessor David Cameron was damaged politically when he lost a vote in the House of Commons on whether to bomb Syria.</p> <p>Britain has led international condemnation of Russia, persuading more than 20 countries to expel Russian diplomats, over the poisoning with a nerve agent of a former Russian spy in England last month. May made clear that case was part of her calculus in ordering retaliation for chemical weapons in Syria.</p> <p>She argued on Saturday it was necessary to act quickly without waiting for parliament&#8217;s approval. Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn accused her of following Trump, hugely unpopular in Britain, into battle without waiting for the evidence.</p> Slideshow (11 Images) <p>In France, Macron has long threatened to use force against Assad if he uses chemical weapons, and had faced criticism over what opponents described as an empty threat.</p> <p>Reporting by Steve Holland and Tom Perry,; Additional reporting by Phil Stewart, Tim Ahmann, Eric Beech, Lesley Wroughton, Lucia Mutikani, Idrees Ali, Patricia Zengerle, Matt Spetalnick and John Walcott in Washington; Samia Nakhoul, Tom Perry, Laila Bassam Ellen Francis in Beirut; Michael Holden and Guy Faulconbridge in London; and Jean-Baptiste Vey, Geert de Clerq and Matthias Blamont in Paris; Polina Ivanova in Moscow, Writing by Peter Graff, Editing by Angus MacSwan</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>PRAGUE (Reuters) - Milos Forman, the Czech-born movie director who found fame in Hollywood with the Oscar-winning classics &#8220;One Flew Over the Cuckoo&#8217;s Nest&#8221; and &#8220;Amadeus,&#8221; has died at the age of 86, Czech news agency CTK reported on Saturday.</p> FILE PHOTO: Czech director Milos Forman talks after being presented with the 'Giraldillo' award for his life-long career achievements at Sevilla Festival Film in Seville, Spain November 6, 2004. REUTERS/Marcelo Del Pozo/File photo <p>Forman died on Friday in the United States after a short illness, his wife, Martina, told CTK.</p> Slideshow (4 Images) <p>&#8220;His departure was calm and he was surrounded the whole time by his family and his closest friends,&#8221; she said.</p> <p>Forman was born in the Czech town of Caslav on Feb. 18, 1932, but moved to the United States after the Communist crackdown on the &#8220;Prague Spring&#8221; uprising in 1968. He became a U.S. citizen in the 1970s.</p> <p>&#8220;One Flew Over the Cuckoo&#8217;s Nest,&#8221; in which a psychiatric institution becomes a microcosm of the contemporary world, and &#8220;Amadeus,&#8221; the life of 18th-century composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart through the eyes of his rival Antonio Salieri, earned 13 Oscars between them, including those for best director to Forman.</p> <p>His other notable work included the rock musical &#8220;Hair&#8221; in 1979, &#8220;Ragtime&#8221; in 1981 and &#8220;The People vs Larry Flint&#8221; in 1996, which was nominated for an Academy Award that year.</p> <p>Reporting by Jason Hovet; editing by Angus MacSwan</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>ANKARA (Reuters) - Iran&#8217;s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said an attack on Syria by the United States, France and Britain on Saturday was a crime and would not achieve any gains.</p> FILE PHOTO - Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei gestures as he delivers a speech in Mashad, Iran, March 21, 2018. Leader.ir/Handout via REUTERS <p>&#8220;Today&#8217;s dawn attack on Syria is a crime. I clearly declare that the president of the United States, the president of France and the British prime minister are criminals,&#8221; Khamenei said in a speech, according to his Twitter account.</p> <p>&#8220;They will not benefit (from the attack) as they went to Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan in the past years and committed such crimes and did not gain any benefits,&#8221; Khamenei said.</p> <p>Iran - the dominant Shi&#8217;ite Muslim power which is in rivalry with Saudi Arabia and the United States&#8217; other Sunni Arab friends - has fought decades of sectarian proxy wars in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen.</p> <p>Iran&#8217;s pragmatist President Hassan Rouhani also warned that the U.S.-led missile attack on Syria would lead to further destruction in the Middle East, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported.</p> <p>&#8220;Such attacks will have no result but more destruction ... the Americans want to justify their presence in the region by such attacks,&#8221; Rouhani was quoted as saying by Tasnim.</p> <p>Rouhani signaled that Iran&#8217;s support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad would grow.</p> <p>&#8220;The Syrian nation will continue to resist against foreign aggression ...Iran has always helped and will continue to support oppressed nations in the region and around the globe,&#8221; Rouhani said.</p> <p>Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan said: &#8220;The Syrian people will certainly answer these attacks and the people of the world should condemn this aggression,&#8221; Fars news agency reported.</p> <p>An official in Iran&#8217;s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the Islamic Republic&#8217;s most powerful arm, said the fallout from the attacks will be at Washington&#8217;s expense.</p> <p>&#8220;With this attack ... the situation will become more complex, and this will surely be at the expense of the United States, which will be responsible for the aftermath of upcoming regional events that will certainly not be in their interest,&#8221; Yadollah Javani, the Guards&#8217; deputy head for political affairs, told Fars news agency.</p> <p>&#8220;The resistance front will be strengthened and it will have more capacity to act against (U.S.) acts of intervention. Americans should expect the consequences of their actions,&#8221; Javani said.</p> <p>Iran often refers to regional countries and forces opposed to Israel and the United States as a &#8220;resistance front&#8221;.</p> <p>&#8220;Undoubtedly, the United States and its allies, which took military action against Syria despite the absence of any proven evidence ... will assume responsibility for the regional and trans-regional consequences of this adventurism,&#8221; Iran&#8217;s Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by state media.</p> <p>&#8220;Iran is opposed to the use of chemical weapons on the basis of religious, legal and ethical standards, while at the same time it ... strongly condemns (using this) as an excuse to commit aggression against a sovereign state,&#8221; it said.</p> <p>Iran has been Assad&#8217;s most supportive ally against insurgents throughout the conflict. Iran-backed militias helped his army stem rebel advances and, following Russia&#8217;s entry into the war in 2015, turn the tide decisively in Assad&#8217;s favor.</p> <p>Analyst Hossein Sheikholeslam, a former Iranian ambassador to Damascus, told state television the attacks would help unite Syrians behind the government.</p> <p>&#8220;These attacks will stabilize the Syrian government... and unite the different tribes in Syria as Syrians become aware of their honor and come to the defense of the independence, territorial integrity and the government of their country,&#8221; Sheikholeslam said.</p> <p>Reporting by Parisa Hafezi and Dubai newsroom; writing by Samia Nakhoul and Parisa Hafezi; editing by Jason Neely</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

BRIEF-British builder Barratt Signs JV With Swindon Borough Council Weapons inspectors plan to head to Syria's Douma hours after strikes US, UK, France strike Syria in first coordinated action against Assad Oscar-winning director Forman dies at 86 Iran's supreme leader says Western attack on Syria a crime

https://reuters.com/article/brief-british-builder-barratt-signs-jv-w/brief-british-builder-barratt-signs-jv-with-swindon-borough-council-idUSFWN1PD147

2018-01-18

2least

Jan 18 Reuters Barratt Developments Plc BARRATT HAS ENTERED INTO A 5050 JOINT VENTURE WITH SWINDON BOROUGH COUNCIL TO DEVELOP APPROXIMATELY 250 HECTARES AT WICHELSTOWE SOUTH OF SWINDON 8205SCHEME WILL DELIVER AROUND 2670 NEW HOMES OVER NEXT 20 YEARS8203 Source text for Eikon Further company coverage Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles AMSTERDAM Reuters Weapons inspectors will try on Saturday to reach the site of a suspected poison attack in the Syrian town of Douma hours after Western countries launched air strikes in retaliation over the gassing The OPCW8217s factfinding mission 8220will continue its deployment to the Syrian Arab Republic to establish facts around the allegations of chemical weapons use in Douma8221 the agency said in a statement The United States Britain and France fired more than 100 missiles at Syria early on Saturday in the first coordinated Western military intervention against the Damascus government They say the strikes are punishment for killing dozens of people many of them women and children with banned toxic munitions Damascus and its ally Russia have denounced the Western action in particular for refusing to wait until the results of the factfinding mission sent by the OPCW in the wake of the April 7 incident Rescue workers said scores of people died in that incident Washington says it has confirmed that chlorine gas was used and has unconfirmed suspicion that nerve agents may also have been used Damascus and Moscow deny blame for any such attack Security permitting a team from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons will deploy briefly on Saturday to the site The team will work with the United Nations Department of Safety and Security ensure the safety of the team it said Syria agreed to give up its chemical weapons arsenal in 2013 and submit to OPCW inspections It is meant to have destroyed all of its stockpiles of nerve agents In the case of chlorine it is permitted to possess it for civilian use but not to use it as a weapon The OPCW will determine whether chemical weapons were used but will not assign blame Despite a USRussian agreement to completely eliminate Syria8217s chemical weapons program after hundreds of people were gassed with sarin in Ghouta on Aug 21 2013 the OPCW had been unable to verify that all manufacturing storage and research facilities were destroyed Among the sites reportedly hit overnight Friday was the Scientific Studies and Research Centre a facility that has played a key role in Syria8217s chemical weapons program since the 1970s OPCW inspectors have raised questions about the SSRC since 2013 when Damascus joined the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention and agreed to do away with its stockpile to avert threatened strikes under President Barack Obama Syria has been unable to explain several findings by inspectors including undeclared research and development sites the presence of banned chemicals and missing munitions sources have told Reuters Reporting by Anthony Deutsch Editing by Peter Graff Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTONBEIRUT Reuters US British and French forces struck Syria with more than 100 missiles on Saturday in the first coordinated Western strikes against the Damascus government targetting what they called chemical weapons sites in retaliation for a poison gas attack US President Donald Trump announced the military action from the White House saying the three allies had 8220marshaled their righteous power against barbarism and brutality8221 As he spoke explosions rocked Damascus The bombing represents a major escalation in the West8217s confrontation with Assad8217s superpower ally Russia but is unlikely to alter the course of a multisided war which has killed at least half a million people in the past seven years That in turn raises the question of where Western countries go from here after a volley of strikes denounced by Damascus and Moscow as at once both reckless and pointless By morning the Western countries said their bombing was over for now Syria released video of the wreckage of a bombedout research lab but also of President Bashar alAssad arriving at work as usual with the caption 8220morning of resilience8221 There were no immediate reports of casualties with Damascus allies saying the buildings hit had been evacuated in advance British Prime Minister Theresa May described the strike as 8220limited and targeted8221 She said she had authorized British action after intelligence indicated Assad8217s government was to blame for gassing the Damascus suburb of Douma a week ago In a speech she gave a vivid description of the victims of the chemical strike that killed scores huddling in basements as gas rained down She said Russia had thwarted diplomatic efforts to halt Assad8217s use of poison gas leaving no option but force Related Coverage Syria strikes an important signal to Iran and Hezbollah Israeli minister US France Britain to brief NATO allies on Syria on Saturday Western attack struck Syrian research center other targets French President Emmanuel Macron said the strikes had been limited so far to Syria8217s chemical weapons facilities Paris released a dossier which it said showed Damascus was to blame for the poison gas attack on Douma the last town holding out in a rebelheld swathe of territory near Damascus which government forces have recaptured in this year8217s biggest offensive Washington described its targets as a center near Damascus for the research development production and testing of chemical and biological weapons a chemical weapons storage site near the city of Homs and another site near Homs that stored chemical weapons equipment and housed a command post US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis called the strikes a 8220one time shot8221 although Trump raised the prospect of further strikes if Assad8217s government again used chemical weapons 8220We are prepared to sustain this response until the Syrian regime stops its use of prohibited chemical agents8221 the US president said in a televised address The Syrian conflict pits a complex myriad of parties against each other with Russia and Iran giving Assad military help that has largely proven decisive over the past three years crushing any rebel threat to topple him Fractured opposition forces have had varying support from the West Arab states and Turkey The United States Britain and France have all bombed Islamic State fighters in Syria for years and had troops on the ground to fight them but refrained from targetting Assad8217s government apart from a volley of US missiles last year Although the Western countries have all said for seven years that Assad must leave power they held back in the past from striking his government lacking a wider strategy to defeat him Assad8217s government and allies responded outwardly with fury to Saturday8217s attack but also made clear that they considered it a oneoff unlikely to harm Assad in any meaningful way Russia whose relations with the West have deteriorated to levels of Cold Warera hostility has denied that last week8217s chemical weapons attack took place and even accused Britain of staging it to whip up antiRussian hysteria President Vladimir Putin called for a meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss what Moscow decried as an unjustified attack on a sovereign state Syrian state media called the attack a 8220flagrant violation of international law8221 An official in Iran8217s Revolutionary Guards said it would cause consequences against US interests Arab states generally hostile to Assad and Iran backed the Western action including both Saudi Arabi and its rival Qatar 8220ABSORBED THE STRIKE8221 But the Western powers were at pains to avert any further escalation including any unexpected conflict with their superpower rival French Defense Minister Florence Parly said the Russians 8220were warned beforehand8221 to avert conflict A senior official in a regional alliance that backs Damascus told Reuters the Syrian government and its allies had 8220absorbed8221 the attack The sites that were targeted had been evacuated days ago thanks to a warning from Russia the official said 8220If it is finished and there is no second round it will be considered limited8221 the official said At least six loud explosions were heard in Damascus and smoke rose over the city a Reuters witness said A second witness said the Barzah district of Damascus was hit A scientific research facility in Barzah appeared to have been completely destroyed according to footage broadcast by Syrian state TV station alIkhbariya Smoke rose from piles of rubble and a heavily damaged bus was parked outside The Western intervention appears to have virtually no chance of altering the military balance of power at a time when Assad is in his strongest position since the war8217s early months In Douma site of last week8217s suspected gas attack the final buses were due on Saturday to transport out rebels and their families who agreed to surrender the town Syrian state TV reported That effectively ends all resistance in the suburbs of Damascus known as eastern Ghouta marking one of the biggest victories for Assad8217s government of the entire war The combined US British and French assault involved more missiles but appears to have struck more limited targets than a similar strike Trump ordered a year ago in retaliation for an earlier suspected chemical weapons attack Last year8217s US strike which Washington said at the time would cripple Assad8217s air forces and defenses had effectively no impact on the war Mattis said the United States conducted Saturday8217s strikes with conclusive evidence that chlorine gas had been used in the April 7 attack in Syria Evidence that the nerve agent sarin also was used was inconclusive he said Syria agreed in 2013 to give up its chemical weapons after a nerve gas attack killed hundreds of people in Douma Damascus is still permitted to have chlorine for civilian use although its use as a weapon is banned Allegations of Assad8217s chlorine use have been frequent during the war although unlike nerve agents chlorine did not produce mass casualties as seen last week The global chemical weapons watchdog the OPCW has sent a team to assess last week8217s suspected gas attack Saturday8217s strikes took place before the inspectors had a chance to gather evidence at the scene Mattis who US officials said had earlier warned in internal debates that too large an attack would risk confrontation with Russia described the strikes as a oneoff to dissuade Assad from 8220doing this again8221 But a US official familiar with the military planning said there could be more air strikes if the intelligence indicates Assad has not stopped making importing storing or using chemical weapons including chlorine The official said this could require a more sustained US air and naval presence A missile is seen crossing over Damascus Syria April 14 2018 SANAHandout via REUTERS EXIT SYRIA The US British and French leaders all face domestic political issues over the decision to use force in Syria Trump has been leery of US military involvement in the Middle East and is eager to withdraw roughly 2000 troops in Syria taking part in the campaign against Islamic State 8220America does not seek an indefinite presence in Syria under no circumstances8221 Trump said in his address 8220The purpose of our actions tonight is to establish a strong deterrent against the production spread and use of chemical weapons8221 Trump has tried to build good relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin A prosecutor is investigating whether Trump8217s campaign colluded with Moscow in illegal efforts to help him get elected which Trump calls a witch hunt 8220To Iran and to Russia I ask what kind of a nation wants to be associated with the mass murder of innocent men women and children8221 Trump said in his address In Britain May8217s decision to order strikes without consulting parliament overturned an arrangement in place since the 2003 invasion of Iraq Her predecessor David Cameron was damaged politically when he lost a vote in the House of Commons on whether to bomb Syria Britain has led international condemnation of Russia persuading more than 20 countries to expel Russian diplomats over the poisoning with a nerve agent of a former Russian spy in England last month May made clear that case was part of her calculus in ordering retaliation for chemical weapons in Syria She argued on Saturday it was necessary to act quickly without waiting for parliament8217s approval Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn accused her of following Trump hugely unpopular in Britain into battle without waiting for the evidence Slideshow 11 Images In France Macron has long threatened to use force against Assad if he uses chemical weapons and had faced criticism over what opponents described as an empty threat Reporting by Steve Holland and Tom Perry Additional reporting by Phil Stewart Tim Ahmann Eric Beech Lesley Wroughton Lucia Mutikani Idrees Ali Patricia Zengerle Matt Spetalnick and John Walcott in Washington Samia Nakhoul Tom Perry Laila Bassam Ellen Francis in Beirut Michael Holden and Guy Faulconbridge in London and JeanBaptiste Vey Geert de Clerq and Matthias Blamont in Paris Polina Ivanova in Moscow Writing by Peter Graff Editing by Angus MacSwan Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles PRAGUE Reuters Milos Forman the Czechborn movie director who found fame in Hollywood with the Oscarwinning classics 8220One Flew Over the Cuckoo8217s Nest8221 and 8220Amadeus8221 has died at the age of 86 Czech news agency CTK reported on Saturday FILE PHOTO Czech director Milos Forman talks after being presented with the Giraldillo award for his lifelong career achievements at Sevilla Festival Film in Seville Spain November 6 2004 REUTERSMarcelo Del PozoFile photo Forman died on Friday in the United States after a short illness his wife Martina told CTK Slideshow 4 Images 8220His departure was calm and he was surrounded the whole time by his family and his closest friends8221 she said Forman was born in the Czech town of Caslav on Feb 18 1932 but moved to the United States after the Communist crackdown on the 8220Prague Spring8221 uprising in 1968 He became a US citizen in the 1970s 8220One Flew Over the Cuckoo8217s Nest8221 in which a psychiatric institution becomes a microcosm of the contemporary world and 8220Amadeus8221 the life of 18thcentury composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart through the eyes of his rival Antonio Salieri earned 13 Oscars between them including those for best director to Forman His other notable work included the rock musical 8220Hair8221 in 1979 8220Ragtime8221 in 1981 and 8220The People vs Larry Flint8221 in 1996 which was nominated for an Academy Award that year Reporting by Jason Hovet editing by Angus MacSwan Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles ANKARA Reuters Iran8217s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said an attack on Syria by the United States France and Britain on Saturday was a crime and would not achieve any gains FILE PHOTO Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei gestures as he delivers a speech in Mashad Iran March 21 2018 LeaderirHandout via REUTERS 8220Today8217s dawn attack on Syria is a crime I clearly declare that the president of the United States the president of France and the British prime minister are criminals8221 Khamenei said in a speech according to his Twitter account 8220They will not benefit from the attack as they went to Iraq Syria and Afghanistan in the past years and committed such crimes and did not gain any benefits8221 Khamenei said Iran the dominant Shi8217ite Muslim power which is in rivalry with Saudi Arabia and the United States8217 other Sunni Arab friends has fought decades of sectarian proxy wars in Syria Lebanon Iraq and Yemen Iran8217s pragmatist President Hassan Rouhani also warned that the USled missile attack on Syria would lead to further destruction in the Middle East the semiofficial Tasnim news agency reported 8220Such attacks will have no result but more destruction the Americans want to justify their presence in the region by such attacks8221 Rouhani was quoted as saying by Tasnim Rouhani signaled that Iran8217s support for Syrian President Bashar alAssad would grow 8220The Syrian nation will continue to resist against foreign aggression Iran has always helped and will continue to support oppressed nations in the region and around the globe8221 Rouhani said Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan said 8220The Syrian people will certainly answer these attacks and the people of the world should condemn this aggression8221 Fars news agency reported An official in Iran8217s Revolutionary Guards Corps IRGC the Islamic Republic8217s most powerful arm said the fallout from the attacks will be at Washington8217s expense 8220With this attack the situation will become more complex and this will surely be at the expense of the United States which will be responsible for the aftermath of upcoming regional events that will certainly not be in their interest8221 Yadollah Javani the Guards8217 deputy head for political affairs told Fars news agency 8220The resistance front will be strengthened and it will have more capacity to act against US acts of intervention Americans should expect the consequences of their actions8221 Javani said Iran often refers to regional countries and forces opposed to Israel and the United States as a 8220resistance front8221 8220Undoubtedly the United States and its allies which took military action against Syria despite the absence of any proven evidence will assume responsibility for the regional and transregional consequences of this adventurism8221 Iran8217s Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by state media 8220Iran is opposed to the use of chemical weapons on the basis of religious legal and ethical standards while at the same time it strongly condemns using this as an excuse to commit aggression against a sovereign state8221 it said Iran has been Assad8217s most supportive ally against insurgents throughout the conflict Iranbacked militias helped his army stem rebel advances and following Russia8217s entry into the war in 2015 turn the tide decisively in Assad8217s favor Analyst Hossein Sheikholeslam a former Iranian ambassador to Damascus told state television the attacks would help unite Syrians behind the government 8220These attacks will stabilize the Syrian government and unite the different tribes in Syria as Syrians become aware of their honor and come to the defense of the independence territorial integrity and the government of their country8221 Sheikholeslam said Reporting by Parisa Hafezi and Dubai newsroom writing by Samia Nakhoul and Parisa Hafezi editing by Jason Neely Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>Jan 23 (Reuters) - MOBILE TELECOMMUNICATIONS COMPANY SAUDI ARABIA:</p> <p>* FY NET PROFIT 12 MILLION RIYALS VERSUS LOSS OF 979 MILLION RIYALS YEAR AGO</p> <p>* FY TOTAL REVENUE 7.31 BILLION RIYALS VERSUS 6.93 BILLION RIYALS YEAR AGO</p> <p>* SUBSCRIBER BASE DECREASED BY 24 PERCENT, REACHING 8.3 MILLION SUBSCRIBERS FOR CURRENT YEAR COMPARED TO 10.9 MILLION SUBSCRIBERS IN PREVIOUS YEAR Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage: )</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>SAN FRANCISCO/LONDON (Reuters) - Opinion polls published on Sunday in the United States and Germany indicated that a majority of the public were losing trust in Facebook over privacy, as the firm ran advertisements in British and U.S. newspapers apologizing to users.</p> FILE PHOTO: Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks on stage during the annual Facebook F8 developers conference in San Jose, California, U.S., April 18, 2017. REUTERS/Stephen Lam <p>Fewer than half of Americans trust Facebook to obey U.S. privacy laws, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Sunday, while a survey published by Bild am Sonntag, Germany&#8217;s largest-selling Sunday paper, found 60 percent of Germans fear that Facebook and other social networks are having a negative impact on democracy.</p> <p>Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg apologized for &#8220;a breach of trust&#8221; in advertisements placed in papers including the Observer in Britain and the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal.</p> <p>&#8220;We have a responsibility to protect your information. If we can&#8217;t, we don&#8217;t deserve it,&#8221; said the advertisement, which appeared in plain text on a white background with a tiny Facebook logo.</p> <p>The world&#8217;s largest social media network is coming under growing government scrutiny in Europe and the United States, and is trying to repair its reputation among users, advertisers, lawmakers and investors.</p> <p>This follows allegations that the British consultancy Cambridge Analytica improperly gained access to users&#8217; information to build profiles of American voters that were later used to help elect U.S. President Donald Trump in 2016.</p> <p>U.S. Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in an interview on NBC&#8217;s Meet the Press&#8221; on Sunday that Facebook had not been &#8220;fully forthcoming&#8221; over how Cambridge Analytica had used Facebook data.</p> <p>Warner repeated calls for Zuckerberg to testify in person before U.S. lawmakers, saying Facebook and other internet companies had been reluctant to confront &#8220;the dark underbelly of social media&#8221; and how it can be manipulated.</p> &#8220;BREACH OF TRUST&#8221; <p>Zuckerberg acknowledged that an app built by a university researcher had &#8220;leaked Facebook data of millions of people in 2014&#8221;.</p> A figurine is seen in front of the Facebook logo in this illustration taken March 20, 2018. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic <p>&#8220;This was a breach of trust, and I&#8217;m sorry we didn&#8217;t do more at the time,&#8221; Zuckerberg said, reiterating an apology first made last week in U.S. television interviews.</p> <p>Facebook shares tumbled 14 percent last week, while the hashtag #DeleteFacebook gained traction online.</p> <p>The Reuters/Ipsos online poll found that 41 percent of Americans trust Facebook to obey laws that protect their personal information, compared with 66 percent who said they trust Amazon.com Inc, 62 percent who trust Alphabet Inc&#8217;s Google, 60 percent for Microsoft Corp.</p> <p>The poll was conducted from Wednesday through Friday and had 2,237 responses. ( <a href="https://reut.rs/2G9hvrv" type="external">reut.rs/2G9hvrv</a>)</p> <p>The German poll published by Bild was conducted by Kantar EMNID, a unit of global advertising holding company WPP, using representative polling methods, the firm said. Overall, only 33 percent found social media had a positive effect on democracy, against 60 percent who believed the opposite.</p> Related Video <p>It is too early to say if distrust will cause people to step back from Facebook, eMarketer analyst Debra Williamson said in an interview. Customers of banks or other industries do not necessarily quit after losing faith, she said.</p> <p>&#8220;It&#8217;s psychologically harder to let go of a platform like Facebook that&#8217;s become pretty well ingrained into people&#8217;s lives,&#8221; she said.</p> <p>Data supplied to Reuters by the Israeli firm SimilarWeb, which measures global online audiences, indicated that Facebook usage in major markets and worldwide remained steady over the past week.</p> <p>&#8220;Desktop, mobile and app usage has remained steady and well within the expected range,&#8221; said Gitit Greenberg, SimilarWeb&#8217;s director of market insights. &#8220;It is important to separate frustration from actual tangible impacts to Facebook usage.&#8221;</p> <p>Additional reporting by William James in London, Dustin Volz in Washington D.C. and Chris Kahn in New Editing by Kevin Liffey</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Chanting &#8220;never again,&#8221; hundreds of thousands of young Americans and their supporters answered a call to action from survivors of last month&#8217;s Florida high school massacre and rallied across the United States on Saturday to demand tighter gun laws.</p> <p>In some of the biggest U.S. youth demonstrations for decades, protesters called on lawmakers and President Donald Trump to confront the issue. Voter registration activists fanned out in the crowds, signing up thousands of the nation&#8217;s newest voters.</p> <p>At the largest March For Our Lives protest, demonstrators jammed Washington&#8217;s Pennsylvania Avenue where they listened to speeches from survivors of the Feb. 14 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.</p> <p>There were sobs as one teenage survivor, Emma Gonzalez, read the names of the 17 victims and then stood in silence. Tears ran down her cheeks as she stared out over the crowd for the rest of a speech that lasted six minutes and 20 seconds, the time it took for the gunman to slaughter them.</p> <p>The massive March For Our Lives rallies aimed to break legislative gridlock that has long stymied efforts to increase restrictions on firearms sales in a nation where mass shootings like the one in Parkland have become frighteningly common.</p> <p>&#8220;Politicians: either represent the people or get out. Stand with us or beware, the voters are coming,&#8221; Cameron Kasky, a 17-year-old junior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas, told the crowd.</p> <p>Another survivor, David Hogg, said it was a new day.</p> <p>&#8220;We&#8217;re going to make sure the best people get in our elections to run not as politicians, but as Americans. Because this - this - is not cutting it,&#8221; he said, pointing at the white-domed Capitol behind the stage.</p> <p>Youthful marchers filled streets in cities including Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, San Diego and St. Louis.</p> <p>More than 800 demonstrations were scheduled in the United States and overseas, according to coordinators, with events as far afield as London, Mauritius, Stockholm and Sydney.</p> &#8216;TAKE THEIR LIBERTY AWAY&#8217; <p>Underlining sharp differences among the American public over the issue, counter-demonstrators and supporters of gun rights were also in evidence in many U.S. cities.</p> <p>Organizers of the anti-gun rallies want Congress, many of whose members are up for re-election in November, to ban the sale of assault weapons like the one used in the Florida rampage and to tighten background checks for gun buyers.</p> <p>On the other side of the debate, gun rights advocates cite constitutional guarantees of the right to bear arms.</p> <p>&#8220;All they&#8217;re doing is asking the government to take their liberty away from them without due process,&#8221; Brandon Howard, a 42-year-old Trump supporter, said of the protesters in the capital. He had a sign saying: &#8220;Keep your hands off my guns.&#8221;</p> Daisy Hernandez, age 22, joins students and gun control advocates for the "March for Our Lives" event demanding gun control after recent school shootings at a rally in Washington, U.S., March 24, 2018. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst <p>Wearing a red &#8220;Make America Great Again&#8221; sweatshirt, 16-year-old Connor Humphrey of San Luis Obispo, California, said: &#8220;Guns don&#8217;t kill people. People kill people.&#8221;</p> <p>Humphrey, who was visiting Washington with his family for spring break, said he owns guns for target shooting and hunting and uses them responsibly. His school had a lockdown exercise last week.</p> <p>&#8220;I think teachers should have guns,&#8221; he said, echoing a proposal made by Trump after the Parkland killings.</p> <p>Still, rallies for tighter firearm restrictions also sprang up in rural, Republican-leaning communities ranging from Lewiston, Idaho to Logan, Utah where there is strong support for the Second Amendment constitutional right to own guns.</p> Slideshow (30 Images) CELEBRITIES BACK STUDENTS <p>Among those marching next to New York&#8217;s Central Park to call for tighter gun controls was pop star Paul McCartney, who said he had a personal stake in the debate.</p> <p>&#8220;One of my best friends was shot not far from here,&#8221; he told CNN, referring to Beatles bandmate John Lennon, who was gunned down near the park in 1980.</p> <p>Taking aim at the National Rifle Association gun lobby, teenagers chanted, &#8220;Hey, hey, NRA, how many kids have you killed today?&#8221;</p> <p>The young U.S. organizers have won kudos and cash from dozens of celebrities, with singers Demi Lovato and Ariana Grande, as well as &#8220;Hamilton&#8221; creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, among those performing in Washington. Actor George Clooney and his human rights attorney wife, Amal, donated $500,000 and said they would be at the Washington rally.</p> <p>The U.S. football team the New England Patriots loaned its plane to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students and their families to travel to Washington.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-usa-guns-voters/vote-them-out-thousands-register-to-vote-at-u-s-gun-control-marches-idUSKBN1H00RY" type="external">'Vote them out!': Thousands register to vote at U.S. gun-control marches</a> <p>At the march in Washington, an elementary school student from Virginia, Naomi Wadler, 11, captivated demonstrators when she spoke up for African American girls who were victims of gun violence but whose stories &#8220;don&#8217;t make the front page.&#8221;</p> <p>White House deputy press secretary Lindsay Walters said the administration applauded &#8220;the many courageous young Americans&#8221; who exercised their free-speech rights.</p> <p>&#8220;Keeping our children safe is a top priority of the president&#8217;s,&#8221; said Walters, noting that on Friday the Justice Department proposed rule changes that would effectively ban &#8220;bump stock&#8221; devices that let semi-automatic weapons fire like a machine gun.</p> <p>Also on Friday, Trump signed a $1.3-trillion spending bill including modest improvements to background checks for gun sales and grants to help schools prevent gun violence.</p> <p>Former President Barack Obama said on Twitter that he and his wife Michelle were inspired by all the young people who made the marches happen.</p> <p>&#8220;Keep at it. You&#8217;re leading us forward. Nothing can stand in the way of millions of voices calling for change,&#8221; Obama said.</p> <p>Reporting by Ian Simpson, Lacey Johnson, Katanga Johnson and Lauren Young in Washington, Alice Popovici in New York, Phoenix Tso in Los Angeles, Zachary Fagenson in Parkland, Robert Chiarito in Chicago, Jim Oliphant in West Palm Beach and Andrew Hay in Taos; Editing by Daniel Wallis, James Dalgleish and Nick Zieminski</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump will not hire two lawyers to his legal team handling the special counsel&#8217;s probe despite announcing their addition last week, Trump&#8217;s personal lawyer said on Sunday, adding to uncertainty about the president&#8217;s legal representation in the Russia investigation.</p> U.S. President Donald Trump waves to well wishers as he arrive in West Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., March 23, 2018. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts <p>&#8220;The president is disappointed that conflicts prevent Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing from joining the president&#8217;s special counsel legal team,&#8221; Jay Sekulow said in a statement. &#8220;However, those conflicts do not prevent them from assisting the president in other legal matters. The president looks forward to working with them.&#8217;</p> <p>The announcement came nearly a week after Sekulow said diGenova would join the legal team handling Special Counsel Robert Mueller&#8217;s investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 presidential election.</p> <p>The quick reversal is likely to add to the perception that Trump&#8217;s legal representation is in disarray as his lawyers have been negotiating the terms of a possible interview with the president.</p> <p>Trump&#8217;s lead lawyer in the special counsel investigation, John Dowd, resigned Thursday.</p> <p>&#8220;Many lawyers and top law firms want to represent me in the Russia case...don&#8217;t believe the Fake News narrative that it is hard to find a lawyer who wants to take this on,&#8221; Trump tweeted on Sunday.</p> <p>Trump has denounced the investigation as a &#8220;witch hunt.&#8221; Russia denies meddling in the election.</p> <p>&#8220;We thank the president for his confidence in us and we look forward to working with him,&#8221; on other matters, Toensing said in a statement on behalf of both her and diGenova. The married pair work together at their namesake law firm.</p> <p>Toensing declined to comment on what specific conflicts may have led to the work on the Russia legal team falling through.</p> <p>DiGenova &amp;amp; Toensing has represented Mark Corallo, a former spokesman for Trump&#8217;s legal team, and Sam Clovis, a former campaign aide.</p> <p>Corallo was the spokesman for Trump&#8217;s outside lawyers until last summer, when he resigned during another legal team shake-up.</p> <p>Since then, Corallo has spoken with Mueller about what he viewed as a false statement dictated by Trump from Air Force One about a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower in New York City that included several Russians, according to a person familiar with the matter. That meeting was attended by Trump&#8217;s son, Donald Jr.</p> <p>Clovis, a former Pentagon official, was a campaign supervisor who wrote &#8220;great work&#8221; in an email after Trump&#8217;s foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos discussed efforts to broker a meeting between the campaign and Russian leaders.</p> <p>Corallo told Reuters on Friday that he had signed a waiver of potential conflicts last week.</p> <p>Clovis could not be reached for comment, but a person familiar with the matter said appropriate waivers had been signed.</p> <p>DiGenova was at the White House on Thursday, according to a person familiar with the meeting.</p> <p>Trump has had trouble finding outside lawyers to assist him in the Russia probe.</p> <p>Major firms such as Williams &amp;amp; Connolly and Gibson, Dunn &amp;amp; Crutcher turned him down in the last year, citing conflicts, people familiar with the matter have told Reuters.</p> <p>Trump representatives have reached out to some of those firms again more recently, sources said.</p> <p>Reporting by Karen Freifeld in New York; Writing by Dustin Volz; Editing by Lisa Shumaker</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BARCELONA/BERLIN (Reuters) - Former Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont was detained in Germany on Sunday, five months after entering self-imposed exile from Spain, where he faces up to 25 years in prison for organizing an illegal secession referendum last year.</p> <p>Puigdemont had entered Germany from Denmark after leaving Finland on Friday when it appeared that police would arrest him there and begin an extradition process requested by Spain.</p> <p>The detention threatens to worsen the Catalan crisis that flared last year when the region made a symbolic declaration of independence, prompting Madrid to take direct rule.</p> <p>Spain&#8217;s Supreme Court ruled on Friday that 25 Catalan leaders would be tried for rebellion, embezzlement or disobeying the state and reactivated international arrest warrants for Puigdemont and four other politicians who went into self-imposed exile last year.</p> <p>Among those subject to the arrest order, Clara Ponsati, a former Catalan minister now living in Scotland, told authorities she would turn herself in, Scottish police said in a statement on Sunday afternoon.</p> <p>The other three Catalan leaders are in Belgium.</p> <p>Pro-independence groups called for protests on Sunday outside the offices of the delegation of the European Commission and the German consulate.</p> <p>German police arrested Puigdemont on Sunday in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein on a European arrest warrant issued by Spain. In a statement, police said Puigdemont was detained near a section of the A7 highway, which cuts through the state from the city of Flensburg near the Danish border.</p> <p>Puigdemont was later transferred to Neumuenster prison, German news agency DPA reported.</p> <p>German magazine Focus said that Spanish intelligence informed the BKA federal police that Puigdemont was on his way from Finland to Germany. It gave no source for its report.</p> <p>He had arrived in Finland on Thursday to meet lawmakers and attend a conference as part of a campaign to raise the profile of the Catalan independence movement in Europe.</p> People protest after former president Carles Puigdemont was detained in Germany, during a demonstration held by pro-independence associations in Barcelona, Spain March 25, 2018. REUTERS/Albert Gea EXTRADITION ISSUE <p>The Higher Regional Court in Schleswig-Holstein will be responsible for deciding whether to grant Spain&#8217;s extradition request.</p> <p>The European arrest warrant system in place since 2004 makes it easier for EU countries to demand extradition from other EU states, having removed political decision-making from the process. EU nations issue thousands of such warrants each year.</p> <p>Puigdemont will appear in court tomorrow to have his remand extended, German prosecutors said in a statement.</p> <p>Paul Bekaert, who represents Puigdemont in Belgium, where he had been subject to an arrest warrant in December, said his client rang him after being detained in Germany and had appeared calm during the conversation.</p> Slideshow (8 Images) <p>Bekaert told Reuters TV that his client would have to appear before a German judge within 48 hours to determine whether or not to keep him in custody. Puigdemont will take German legal representation, Bekaert said, with the whole legal process, including possible appeals, likely to take months.</p> <p>Puigdemont could take his case to Germany&#8217;s highest court, which in 2005 blocked the extradition to Spain on an EU arrest warrant of a German-Syrian al-Qaeda suspect.</p> <p>The case of Mamoun Darkazanli sparked a judicial row between the two countries after Germany&#8217;s Federal Constitutional court refused to turn over Darkazanli, saying that EU extradition laws designed to speed up the delivery of suspects between member states violated the rights of German citizens.</p> <p>Puigdemont has previously made clear his preference to fight the extradition process from Belgium, where the former Catalan leader was heading at the time of his detention, according to Puigdemont&#8217;s spokesman, Joan Maria Pique.</p> <p>&#8220;The president was going to Belgium to put himself, as always, at the disposal of Belgian justice,&#8221; Pique told Reuters.</p> <p>The Spanish Supreme Court had issued an international arrest warrant against Puigdemont last year but withdrew it in December to avoid the risk of Belgian authorities granting him asylum.</p> <p>Leaving Belgium had exposed him again to the risk of arrest.</p> <p>Supreme Court judge Pablo Llarena also sent five separatist leaders to pre-trial jail, sparking protests across Catalonia.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Andres Gonzalez in Madrid and Thorsten Severin in Berlin; Writing by Julien Toyer; Editing by Keith Weir and David Goodman</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

BRIEF-Zain Saudi turns to Profit in FY 2017 Polls show Facebook losing trust as firm uses ads to apologize 'No more' or we vote you out: students lead huge U.S. anti-gun rallies Trump not adding two lawyers to legal team, citing conflicts Former Catalan leader Puigdemont detained in Germany

https://reuters.com/article/brief-zain-saudi-turns-to-profit-in-fy-2/brief-zain-saudi-turns-to-profit-in-fy-2017-idUSFWN1PI0T5

2018-01-23

2least

Jan 23 Reuters MOBILE TELECOMMUNICATIONS COMPANY SAUDI ARABIA FY NET PROFIT 12 MILLION RIYALS VERSUS LOSS OF 979 MILLION RIYALS YEAR AGO FY TOTAL REVENUE 731 BILLION RIYALS VERSUS 693 BILLION RIYALS YEAR AGO SUBSCRIBER BASE DECREASED BY 24 PERCENT REACHING 83 MILLION SUBSCRIBERS FOR CURRENT YEAR COMPARED TO 109 MILLION SUBSCRIBERS IN PREVIOUS YEAR Source text for Eikon Further company coverage Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles SAN FRANCISCOLONDON Reuters Opinion polls published on Sunday in the United States and Germany indicated that a majority of the public were losing trust in Facebook over privacy as the firm ran advertisements in British and US newspapers apologizing to users FILE PHOTO Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks on stage during the annual Facebook F8 developers conference in San Jose California US April 18 2017 REUTERSStephen Lam Fewer than half of Americans trust Facebook to obey US privacy laws according to a ReutersIpsos poll released on Sunday while a survey published by Bild am Sonntag Germany8217s largestselling Sunday paper found 60 percent of Germans fear that Facebook and other social networks are having a negative impact on democracy Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg apologized for 8220a breach of trust8221 in advertisements placed in papers including the Observer in Britain and the New York Times Washington Post and Wall Street Journal 8220We have a responsibility to protect your information If we can8217t we don8217t deserve it8221 said the advertisement which appeared in plain text on a white background with a tiny Facebook logo The world8217s largest social media network is coming under growing government scrutiny in Europe and the United States and is trying to repair its reputation among users advertisers lawmakers and investors This follows allegations that the British consultancy Cambridge Analytica improperly gained access to users8217 information to build profiles of American voters that were later used to help elect US President Donald Trump in 2016 US Senator Mark Warner the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee said in an interview on NBC8217s Meet the Press8221 on Sunday that Facebook had not been 8220fully forthcoming8221 over how Cambridge Analytica had used Facebook data Warner repeated calls for Zuckerberg to testify in person before US lawmakers saying Facebook and other internet companies had been reluctant to confront 8220the dark underbelly of social media8221 and how it can be manipulated 8220BREACH OF TRUST8221 Zuckerberg acknowledged that an app built by a university researcher had 8220leaked Facebook data of millions of people in 20148221 A figurine is seen in front of the Facebook logo in this illustration taken March 20 2018 REUTERSDado Ruvic 8220This was a breach of trust and I8217m sorry we didn8217t do more at the time8221 Zuckerberg said reiterating an apology first made last week in US television interviews Facebook shares tumbled 14 percent last week while the hashtag DeleteFacebook gained traction online The ReutersIpsos online poll found that 41 percent of Americans trust Facebook to obey laws that protect their personal information compared with 66 percent who said they trust Amazoncom Inc 62 percent who trust Alphabet Inc8217s Google 60 percent for Microsoft Corp The poll was conducted from Wednesday through Friday and had 2237 responses reutrs2G9hvrv The German poll published by Bild was conducted by Kantar EMNID a unit of global advertising holding company WPP using representative polling methods the firm said Overall only 33 percent found social media had a positive effect on democracy against 60 percent who believed the opposite Related Video It is too early to say if distrust will cause people to step back from Facebook eMarketer analyst Debra Williamson said in an interview Customers of banks or other industries do not necessarily quit after losing faith she said 8220It8217s psychologically harder to let go of a platform like Facebook that8217s become pretty well ingrained into people8217s lives8221 she said Data supplied to Reuters by the Israeli firm SimilarWeb which measures global online audiences indicated that Facebook usage in major markets and worldwide remained steady over the past week 8220Desktop mobile and app usage has remained steady and well within the expected range8221 said Gitit Greenberg SimilarWeb8217s director of market insights 8220It is important to separate frustration from actual tangible impacts to Facebook usage8221 Additional reporting by William James in London Dustin Volz in Washington DC and Chris Kahn in New Editing by Kevin Liffey Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters Chanting 8220never again8221 hundreds of thousands of young Americans and their supporters answered a call to action from survivors of last month8217s Florida high school massacre and rallied across the United States on Saturday to demand tighter gun laws In some of the biggest US youth demonstrations for decades protesters called on lawmakers and President Donald Trump to confront the issue Voter registration activists fanned out in the crowds signing up thousands of the nation8217s newest voters At the largest March For Our Lives protest demonstrators jammed Washington8217s Pennsylvania Avenue where they listened to speeches from survivors of the Feb 14 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida There were sobs as one teenage survivor Emma Gonzalez read the names of the 17 victims and then stood in silence Tears ran down her cheeks as she stared out over the crowd for the rest of a speech that lasted six minutes and 20 seconds the time it took for the gunman to slaughter them The massive March For Our Lives rallies aimed to break legislative gridlock that has long stymied efforts to increase restrictions on firearms sales in a nation where mass shootings like the one in Parkland have become frighteningly common 8220Politicians either represent the people or get out Stand with us or beware the voters are coming8221 Cameron Kasky a 17yearold junior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas told the crowd Another survivor David Hogg said it was a new day 8220We8217re going to make sure the best people get in our elections to run not as politicians but as Americans Because this this is not cutting it8221 he said pointing at the whitedomed Capitol behind the stage Youthful marchers filled streets in cities including Atlanta Baltimore Boston Chicago Los Angeles Miami Minneapolis New York San Diego and St Louis More than 800 demonstrations were scheduled in the United States and overseas according to coordinators with events as far afield as London Mauritius Stockholm and Sydney 8216TAKE THEIR LIBERTY AWAY8217 Underlining sharp differences among the American public over the issue counterdemonstrators and supporters of gun rights were also in evidence in many US cities Organizers of the antigun rallies want Congress many of whose members are up for reelection in November to ban the sale of assault weapons like the one used in the Florida rampage and to tighten background checks for gun buyers On the other side of the debate gun rights advocates cite constitutional guarantees of the right to bear arms 8220All they8217re doing is asking the government to take their liberty away from them without due process8221 Brandon Howard a 42yearold Trump supporter said of the protesters in the capital He had a sign saying 8220Keep your hands off my guns8221 Daisy Hernandez age 22 joins students and gun control advocates for the March for Our Lives event demanding gun control after recent school shootings at a rally in Washington US March 24 2018 REUTERSJonathan Ernst Wearing a red 8220Make America Great Again8221 sweatshirt 16yearold Connor Humphrey of San Luis Obispo California said 8220Guns don8217t kill people People kill people8221 Humphrey who was visiting Washington with his family for spring break said he owns guns for target shooting and hunting and uses them responsibly His school had a lockdown exercise last week 8220I think teachers should have guns8221 he said echoing a proposal made by Trump after the Parkland killings Still rallies for tighter firearm restrictions also sprang up in rural Republicanleaning communities ranging from Lewiston Idaho to Logan Utah where there is strong support for the Second Amendment constitutional right to own guns Slideshow 30 Images CELEBRITIES BACK STUDENTS Among those marching next to New York8217s Central Park to call for tighter gun controls was pop star Paul McCartney who said he had a personal stake in the debate 8220One of my best friends was shot not far from here8221 he told CNN referring to Beatles bandmate John Lennon who was gunned down near the park in 1980 Taking aim at the National Rifle Association gun lobby teenagers chanted 8220Hey hey NRA how many kids have you killed today8221 The young US organizers have won kudos and cash from dozens of celebrities with singers Demi Lovato and Ariana Grande as well as 8220Hamilton8221 creator LinManuel Miranda among those performing in Washington Actor George Clooney and his human rights attorney wife Amal donated 500000 and said they would be at the Washington rally The US football team the New England Patriots loaned its plane to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students and their families to travel to Washington Related Coverage Vote them out Thousands register to vote at US guncontrol marches At the march in Washington an elementary school student from Virginia Naomi Wadler 11 captivated demonstrators when she spoke up for African American girls who were victims of gun violence but whose stories 8220don8217t make the front page8221 White House deputy press secretary Lindsay Walters said the administration applauded 8220the many courageous young Americans8221 who exercised their freespeech rights 8220Keeping our children safe is a top priority of the president8217s8221 said Walters noting that on Friday the Justice Department proposed rule changes that would effectively ban 8220bump stock8221 devices that let semiautomatic weapons fire like a machine gun Also on Friday Trump signed a 13trillion spending bill including modest improvements to background checks for gun sales and grants to help schools prevent gun violence Former President Barack Obama said on Twitter that he and his wife Michelle were inspired by all the young people who made the marches happen 8220Keep at it You8217re leading us forward Nothing can stand in the way of millions of voices calling for change8221 Obama said Reporting by Ian Simpson Lacey Johnson Katanga Johnson and Lauren Young in Washington Alice Popovici in New York Phoenix Tso in Los Angeles Zachary Fagenson in Parkland Robert Chiarito in Chicago Jim Oliphant in West Palm Beach and Andrew Hay in Taos Editing by Daniel Wallis James Dalgleish and Nick Zieminski Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters US President Donald Trump will not hire two lawyers to his legal team handling the special counsel8217s probe despite announcing their addition last week Trump8217s personal lawyer said on Sunday adding to uncertainty about the president8217s legal representation in the Russia investigation US President Donald Trump waves to well wishers as he arrive in West Palm Beach Florida US March 23 2018 REUTERSJoshua Roberts 8220The president is disappointed that conflicts prevent Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing from joining the president8217s special counsel legal team8221 Jay Sekulow said in a statement 8220However those conflicts do not prevent them from assisting the president in other legal matters The president looks forward to working with them8217 The announcement came nearly a week after Sekulow said diGenova would join the legal team handling Special Counsel Robert Mueller8217s investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 presidential election The quick reversal is likely to add to the perception that Trump8217s legal representation is in disarray as his lawyers have been negotiating the terms of a possible interview with the president Trump8217s lead lawyer in the special counsel investigation John Dowd resigned Thursday 8220Many lawyers and top law firms want to represent me in the Russia casedon8217t believe the Fake News narrative that it is hard to find a lawyer who wants to take this on8221 Trump tweeted on Sunday Trump has denounced the investigation as a 8220witch hunt8221 Russia denies meddling in the election 8220We thank the president for his confidence in us and we look forward to working with him8221 on other matters Toensing said in a statement on behalf of both her and diGenova The married pair work together at their namesake law firm Toensing declined to comment on what specific conflicts may have led to the work on the Russia legal team falling through DiGenova ampamp Toensing has represented Mark Corallo a former spokesman for Trump8217s legal team and Sam Clovis a former campaign aide Corallo was the spokesman for Trump8217s outside lawyers until last summer when he resigned during another legal team shakeup Since then Corallo has spoken with Mueller about what he viewed as a false statement dictated by Trump from Air Force One about a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower in New York City that included several Russians according to a person familiar with the matter That meeting was attended by Trump8217s son Donald Jr Clovis a former Pentagon official was a campaign supervisor who wrote 8220great work8221 in an email after Trump8217s foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos discussed efforts to broker a meeting between the campaign and Russian leaders Corallo told Reuters on Friday that he had signed a waiver of potential conflicts last week Clovis could not be reached for comment but a person familiar with the matter said appropriate waivers had been signed DiGenova was at the White House on Thursday according to a person familiar with the meeting Trump has had trouble finding outside lawyers to assist him in the Russia probe Major firms such as Williams ampamp Connolly and Gibson Dunn ampamp Crutcher turned him down in the last year citing conflicts people familiar with the matter have told Reuters Trump representatives have reached out to some of those firms again more recently sources said Reporting by Karen Freifeld in New York Writing by Dustin Volz Editing by Lisa Shumaker Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BARCELONABERLIN Reuters Former Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont was detained in Germany on Sunday five months after entering selfimposed exile from Spain where he faces up to 25 years in prison for organizing an illegal secession referendum last year Puigdemont had entered Germany from Denmark after leaving Finland on Friday when it appeared that police would arrest him there and begin an extradition process requested by Spain The detention threatens to worsen the Catalan crisis that flared last year when the region made a symbolic declaration of independence prompting Madrid to take direct rule Spain8217s Supreme Court ruled on Friday that 25 Catalan leaders would be tried for rebellion embezzlement or disobeying the state and reactivated international arrest warrants for Puigdemont and four other politicians who went into selfimposed exile last year Among those subject to the arrest order Clara Ponsati a former Catalan minister now living in Scotland told authorities she would turn herself in Scottish police said in a statement on Sunday afternoon The other three Catalan leaders are in Belgium Proindependence groups called for protests on Sunday outside the offices of the delegation of the European Commission and the German consulate German police arrested Puigdemont on Sunday in the northern state of SchleswigHolstein on a European arrest warrant issued by Spain In a statement police said Puigdemont was detained near a section of the A7 highway which cuts through the state from the city of Flensburg near the Danish border Puigdemont was later transferred to Neumuenster prison German news agency DPA reported German magazine Focus said that Spanish intelligence informed the BKA federal police that Puigdemont was on his way from Finland to Germany It gave no source for its report He had arrived in Finland on Thursday to meet lawmakers and attend a conference as part of a campaign to raise the profile of the Catalan independence movement in Europe People protest after former president Carles Puigdemont was detained in Germany during a demonstration held by proindependence associations in Barcelona Spain March 25 2018 REUTERSAlbert Gea EXTRADITION ISSUE The Higher Regional Court in SchleswigHolstein will be responsible for deciding whether to grant Spain8217s extradition request The European arrest warrant system in place since 2004 makes it easier for EU countries to demand extradition from other EU states having removed political decisionmaking from the process EU nations issue thousands of such warrants each year Puigdemont will appear in court tomorrow to have his remand extended German prosecutors said in a statement Paul Bekaert who represents Puigdemont in Belgium where he had been subject to an arrest warrant in December said his client rang him after being detained in Germany and had appeared calm during the conversation Slideshow 8 Images Bekaert told Reuters TV that his client would have to appear before a German judge within 48 hours to determine whether or not to keep him in custody Puigdemont will take German legal representation Bekaert said with the whole legal process including possible appeals likely to take months Puigdemont could take his case to Germany8217s highest court which in 2005 blocked the extradition to Spain on an EU arrest warrant of a GermanSyrian alQaeda suspect The case of Mamoun Darkazanli sparked a judicial row between the two countries after Germany8217s Federal Constitutional court refused to turn over Darkazanli saying that EU extradition laws designed to speed up the delivery of suspects between member states violated the rights of German citizens Puigdemont has previously made clear his preference to fight the extradition process from Belgium where the former Catalan leader was heading at the time of his detention according to Puigdemont8217s spokesman Joan Maria Pique 8220The president was going to Belgium to put himself as always at the disposal of Belgian justice8221 Pique told Reuters The Spanish Supreme Court had issued an international arrest warrant against Puigdemont last year but withdrew it in December to avoid the risk of Belgian authorities granting him asylum Leaving Belgium had exposed him again to the risk of arrest Supreme Court judge Pablo Llarena also sent five separatist leaders to pretrial jail sparking protests across Catalonia Additional reporting by Andres Gonzalez in Madrid and Thorsten Severin in Berlin Writing by Julien Toyer Editing by Keith Weir and David Goodman Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>BRUSSELS (Reuters) - France&#8217;s foreign minister accused Iran on Monday of not respecting part of a U.N. resolution that calls on Tehran to refrain from work on ballistic missiles designed to carry nuclear warheads.</p> FILE PHOTO: French Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian arrives at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, January 5, 2018. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier <p>Speaking on arrival at a European foreign ministers meeting in Brussels, Jean-Yves Le Drian also said the 28 ministers would reiterate their concerns over Iran&#8217;s activities in Yemen, Lebanon and Syria, which he described as destabilizing.</p> <p>&#8220;We will also have the opportunity of underlining our firmness on Iran&#8217;s compliance with United Nations Resolution 2231, which limits access to ballistic capacity and which Iran does not respect,&#8221; Le Drian said.</p> <p>Under the U.N. resolution enshrining the 2015 nuclear deal with Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States, Iran is &#8220;called upon&#8221; to refrain from work on ballistic missiles designed to deliver nuclear weapons for up to 8 years.</p> <p>Some states say this phrasing does not make it an obligatory commitment.</p> <p>Iran has repeatedly said its missile program is purely defensive and denied they are designed to carry nuclear warheads.</p> <p>Le Drian on Sunday said he would travel to Iran in March and that France had begun talks with Tehran to discuss its missile program and regional activities.</p> <p>But Iran&#8217;s foreign ministry spokesman on Monday dismissed the suggestion of talks on either issue.</p> <p>&#8220;If there is such a quote (from the French foreign minister) that we held talks, we deny it. We have not had any negotiations about our missile and defense capabilities and will not talk about these issues with others,&#8221; Bahram Qasemi was quoted as saying by Tasnim news agency on Monday.</p> <p>With U.S. President Donald Trump warning of a last chance for &#8220;the worst deal ever negotiated&#8221;, Britain, France and Germany have begun talks on a plan to satisfy him by addressing Iran&#8217;s ballistic missile tests and its regional influence while preserving the 2015 accord.</p> <p>&#8220;The French foreign minister is not familiar with Iranian society yet,&#8221; Qasemi said. &#8220;Iran has proved that it would not change course under pressure.</p> <p>&#8220;We should surely discuss Iran&#8217;s influence in the region because it has been a positive one and everyone has benefited from it. Without Iran&#8217;s influence, terrorists (would have) captured Damascus and Baghdad,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>Robin Emmott in Brussels and Bozorgmehr Sharafedin in London; writing by John Irish; editing by Richard Balmforth</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>ROME (Reuters) - Italy on Saturday protested to France over a incident in which French border police entered a clinic run by a non-governmental organization that cares for migrants trying to cross the Alps, the foreign ministry said.</p> <p>The episode angered many politicians, some of whom saw it as a violation of Italian territory.</p> <p>The ministry, which had earlier summoned the French ambassador for an explanation, said in a statement that it had conveyed the Rome government&#8217;s &#8220;firm protest for the behavior of the French customs agents, which was unacceptable ...&#8221;</p> <p>The NGO, Rainbow for Africa, said that on Friday evening the French brought a Nigerian migrant to the railway station of the Italian border town of Bardonecchia.</p> <p>The NGO said they entered the clinic, which is in the train station, and conducted a urine test on the man because they suspected him of drug trafficking.</p> <p>The foreign ministry said France had been told earlier this month that the station was no longer accessible for its police because it was now being used for humanitarian purposes.</p> <p>In their account of the incident, French customs said they had the written consent of the man for the test and the NGO had also given them permission to use the facilities for it. The test was negative.</p> <p>French customs said they had followed regulations and were ready to clarify with the Italians any legal and operational procedures to avoid future incidents.</p> <p>Massimiliano Fedriga of the right-wing League, which made big gains in recent elections, said the French had made Italy look like the laughing stock of Europe.</p> <p>&#8220;French police do whatever they want on Italian territory without being disturbed, as if they are at home. What happened in Bardonecchia is grave and shows how our so-called friends in Europe have little or no consideration for us,&#8221; he said in a statement.</p> <p>Reporting By Philip Pullella; Additional reporting by Leigh Thomas in Paris; Editing by Andrew Bolton and Stephen Powell</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>GAZA (Reuters) - Israeli troops shot and wounded about 70 Palestinians among crowds demonstrating at the Gaza-Israel border on Saturday, health officials said, after one of the deadliest days of unrest in the area in years.</p> A Palestinian hurls stones at Israeli troops during clashes at the Gaza-Israel border at a protest demanding the right to return to their homeland, in the southern Gaza Strip March 31, 2018. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa <p>Thousands of people marched through the streets of Gaza in funerals for the 15 people killed by Israeli gunfire on Friday, and a national day of mourning was observed in the enclave and in the occupied West Bank.</p> <p>Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Israel was responsible for the violence. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was protecting its sovereignty and citizens.</p> <p>An Israeli military spokesman said he was checking the details of Saturday&#8217;s unrest. It broke out when Palestinians gathered on the border between the Hamas-run enclave and Israel then began throwing stones. Palestinian health officials said about 70 were wounded.</p> A Palestinian is evacuated during clashes with Israeli troops at the Gaza-Israel border at a protest demanding the right to return to their homeland, in the southern Gaza Strip March 31, 2018. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa <p>On Friday at least 15 Palestinians were killed by Israeli security forces confronting protesters. The military said some had shot at them, rolled burning tyres and hurled rocks and fire bombs toward troops across the border.</p> <p>Hamas said five of them were members of its armed wing. Israel said eight of the 15 dead belonged to Hamas, designated a terrorist group by Israel and the West, and two others belonged to other militant groups.</p> <p>Tens of thousands of Palestinians had gathered on Friday along the fenced 65-km (40-mile) frontier, where tents had been erected for a planned six-week protest pressing for a right of return for refugees and their descendents to what is now Israel.</p> <p>But hundreds of Palestinian youths ignored calls from the organizers and the Israeli military to stay away from the frontier and violence broke out.</p> <p>The protest, organized by Hamas and other Palestinian factions, is scheduled to culminate on May 15, the day Palestinians commemorate what they call the &#8220;Nakba&#8221; or &#8220;Catastrophe&#8221; when hundreds of thousands fled or were driven out of their homes in 1948, when the state of Israel was created.</p> <p>Israel has long ruled out any right of return, fearing an influx of Arabs that would wipe out its Jewish majority. It says refugees should resettle in a future state the Palestinians seek in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza. Peace talks to that end have been frozen since 2014.</p> Slideshow (12 Images) <p>Israel withdrew its troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005 but still maintains tight control of its land and sea borders.</p> <p>Egypt also keeps its border with Gaza largely closed.</p> <p>Abbas&#8217;s spokesman, Nabil Abu Rdainah, said: &#8220;The message of the Palestinian people is clear. The Palestinian land will always belong to its legitimate owners and the occupation will be removed.&#8221;</p> <p>Israeli military spokesman Brigadier-General Ronen Manelis said Hamas was using the protests as a guise to launch attacks against Israel and ignite the area. He said violence was likely to continue along the border until May 15.</p> <p>&#8220;We won&#8217;t let this turn into a ping-pong zone where they perpetrate a terrorist act and we respond with pinpoint action. If this continues we will not have no choice but to respond inside the Gaza Strip,&#8221; Manelis told reporters.</p> <p>United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for an independent investigation into Friday&#8217;s bloodshed, and appealed for all sides to refrain from any actions that could lead to further casualties or put civilians in harm&#8217;s way.</p> <p>Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi and Maayan Lubell, Editing by Angus MacSwan</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey said on Friday that a French pledge to help stabilize a region of northern Syria controlled by Kurdish-dominated forces amounted to support for terrorism and could make France a &#8220;target of Turkey&#8221;.</p> Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan speaks during a meeting in Ankara, Turkey March 30, 2018. Murat Cetinmuhurdar/Presidential Palace/Handout via REUTERS <p>French backing for the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), spearheaded by the Kurdish YPG militia, has angered Ankara at a time when it is fighting the YPG in northern Syria and considers it a terrorist organization.</p> <p>President Tayyip Erdogan said France had taken a &#8220;completely wrong approach&#8221; on Syria, adding that he exchanged heated words with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, last week.</p> <p>The split with France is the latest rift between Turkey under Erdogan and its NATO allies in the West.</p> <p>Turkey has long complained about U.S. support for the SDF, among a number of irritants to ties with the leading NATO power. Last year it compared the German and Dutch authorities to Nazis for restricting pro-Erdogan demonstrations during a campaign for a referendum to give him greater powers.</p> <p>The White House said President Donald Trump, who added fresh uncertainty on Thursday when he said that the United States would be &#8220;coming out of Syria&#8221; very soon, spoke to Erdogan on Friday &#8220;to discuss regional developments and the strategic partnership between the United States and Turkey&#8221;.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-turkey-erdogan/turkey-started-preparations-for-further-operations-in-northern-syria-erdogan-idUSKBN1H60S0" type="external">Turkey started preparations for further operations in northern Syria: Erdogan</a> <a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-turkey-france-er/turkeys-erdogan-says-france-completely-wrong-on-syria-idUSKBN1H60U0" type="external">Turkey's Erdogan says France 'completely wrong' on Syria</a> <p>&#8220;The two leaders expressed support for continued efforts to increase cooperation between their two countries, to advance shared interests as NATO allies, and to work through issues that affect the bilateral relationship,&#8221; a White House statement said.</p> <p>Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag said the French stance was setting Paris on a collision course with Ankara.</p> <p>&#8220;Those who enter into cooperation and solidarity with terror groups against Turkey ... will, like the terrorists, become a target of Turkey,&#8221; Bozdag, who is also the Turkish government spokesman, wrote on Twitter. &#8220;We hope France does not take such an irrational step.&#8221;</p> <p>Macron met an SDF delegation on Thursday and gave assurances of French support to stabilize northern Syria. A presidential source later said France could increase its military contribution to the U.S.-led coalition which - alongside the SDF - is fighting Islamic State in Syria.</p> <p>The United States has 2,000 troops in SDF-held territory, and France also has some troops there as part of the coalition.</p> <p>Ankara considers the YPG fighters in the SDF to be an extension of Kurdish militants who have waged a decades-old insurgency in southeast Turkey.</p> <p>Turkish forces drove the YPG from the northwestern Syrian town of Afrin nearly two weeks ago and Erdogan says Ankara is preparing to extend operations along hundreds of miles of border, including areas where the American forces are deployed.</p> <p>The Afrin operation has already drawn international criticism, notably from Macron. Ankara, meanwhile, has said it expects its allies to move their troops out of the way of a Turkish advance.</p> <p>&#8220;We have no intention to harm soldiers of allied nations, but we cannot allow terrorists to roam freely (in northern Syria),&#8221; Erdogan said.</p> <p>One U.S. service member and one other member of the U.S.-led coalition were killed by a bomb in Syria overnight, the first to die in an attack this year.</p> TRUMP SURPRISE <p>Trump&#8217;s remark on Thursday that the United States would be &#8220;coming out of Syria&#8221; appeared to take his own administration by surprise.</p> <p>U.S. officials have said in recent months that Washington planned to keep an open-ended presence in northern Syria, to support stability in the SDF-controlled region, prevent any Islamic State resurgence and counter Iranian influence.</p> <p>SDF spokesman Kino Gabriel said the force had not been informed of any U.S. withdrawal plan.</p> <p>&#8220;Our work and coordination (with the coalition) is continuing,&#8221; Gabriel told Reuters in a written message.</p> <p>Asked whether U.S. forces had been informed of a decision to withdraw or were preparing to do so, a spokesman for the coalition said he would not comment on future operations.</p> FILE PHOTO: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan addresses members of parliament from his ruling AK Party (AKP) during a meeting at the Turkish parliament in Ankara, Turkey, March 6, 2018. REUTERS/Umit Bektas/File Photo <p>A PYD member in Paris said Macron had promised at Thursday&#8217;s meeting with the SDF to send more troops to northern Syria, provide humanitarian assistance and push a diplomatic solution.</p> <p>The French presidency did not confirm that Macron had pledged more troops, but the presidential source said France could bolster its military intervention in Syria &#8220;within the existing framework&#8221; of the U.S.-led coalition.</p> <p>The presidency also said Macron was offering to mediate between Turkey and the SDF - a suggestion Erdogan dismissed.</p> <p>&#8220;Do not engage in things beyond you, we do not need a mediator,&#8221; he said, responding to the French offer in remarks to members of his ruling AK Party in Ankara. &#8220;Who are you to speak of mediation between Turkey and a terrorist organization?&#8221;</p> <p>Accusing Paris of appeasing terrorism, he said Macron would be held accountable for his policy by his own people.</p> <p>&#8220;We hope France doesn&#8217;t come to us for help when the terrorists running from Syria and Iraq fill their country after being encouraged by their policy,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>Erdogan spoke last week with Macron about the French president&#8217;s criticism of Turkey&#8217;s Afrin campaign.</p> <p>&#8220;He was saying weird things and so, even if it was a bit high-octane, I had to tell him some things,&#8221; Erdogan said. &#8220;It is not anyone&#8217;s place to portray our armed forces as something we do not find acceptable.&#8221;</p> <p>Additional reporting by John Irish and Marine Pennetier in Paris, Tom Perry in Beirut, Maher Chmaytelli in Baghdad and David Brunnstrom in Washington; Writing by Dominic Evans; Editing by Peter Graff and Susan Thomas</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian authorities on Saturday arrested billionaire Ziyavudin Magomedov on charges of embezzling more than $35 million, in one of the highest-profile prosecutions of a Russian tycoon in years.</p> Magomed Magomedov, a business partner and brother of co-owner of Russia's Summa group Ziyavudin Magomedov, attends a hearing on his detention at the Tverskoy District Court in Moscow, Russia March 31, 2018. REUTERS/Tatyana Makeyeva <p>Magomedov denied the charges at a pre-trial hearing, where a judge ordered that he be held in custody until May 30.</p> <p>One of Russia&#8217;s richest men, the 49-year-old Magomedov holds assets in construction and logistics through his sprawling Summa Group. He also has investments in U.S. tech ventures, including the Virgin One Hyperloop project.</p> <p>He was detained along with his business partner and brother, Magomed Magomedov, and Artur Maksidov, the head of a company in the Summa Group that was involved in the construction of a soccer World Cup venue in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.</p> <p>Both businessmen will also be held in custody until May 30, the court ruled.</p> <p>At a hearing in Moscow&#8217;s Tverskoy District Court to decide whether Magomedov and his associates should be detained before their trial, Judge Maria Sizintseva said they had acted as part of an organized crime group and had tried to put pressure on witnesses. She rejected an offer from Magomedov to put up a $35 million bail bond, and ordered he be detained.</p> <p>Citing the arguments against granting bail, the judge said Magomedov had access to his own aircraft, and assets abroad. The day before he was detained, he had booked a flight from Moscow to Miami, the judge said.</p> <p>Summa said it planned to appeal the court decision and was ready to cooperate with the investigation.</p> MUSCULAR STATE <p>Invited to speak from a cage in the courtroom, Magomedov, dressed in a dark-blue jogging suit, said: &#8220;I categorically disagree with the charges presented ... The prosecution case does not stand up to scrutiny.&#8221;</p> Slideshow (7 Images) <p>He said he needed treatment in the United States for a medical problem, and offered to put up the $35 million bail. &#8220;I&#8217;m willing to pull together this money, so no one has any thoughts that I might go on the run,&#8221; Magomedov said.</p> <p>Magomedov is part of a group of Russian multi-millionaires who, while publicly loyal to the Kremlin, are not in President Vladimir Putin&#8217;s inner circle.</p> <p>Some members of the group say they are being squeezed by a tough economy, Western sanctions on Russia, and powerful state-run companies that are muscling in on nearly all sectors of the economy.</p> <p>In past cases when magnates have been prosecuted, some in the Russia business community have said the tycoons were victims of a plot by the Kremlin or by politically connected business rivals - though the authorities deny that.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=NMTP.MM" type="external">Novorossiyskiy Morskoy Torgovyi Port PAO</a> 7.765 NMTP.MM Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange -0.19 (-2.33%) NMTP.MM TRNF_p.MM FESH.MM <p>People familiar with the Russian judicial system say high-profile corruption cases are rarely fabricated, but that the law is applied selectively, and that prosecutions can be influenced by outside factors.</p> <p>Ziyavudin Magomedov ranked 63rd last year on the Forbes list of the richest business people in Russia with $1.4 billion. In January, he was listed by the U.S. Treasury Department as one of 96 &#8220;oligarchs&#8221; close to Putin.</p> <p>His Caspian Venture Capital fund has investments in ride-hailing service Uber UBER.UL; Diamond Foundry, a company that produces man-made diamonds; and Peek, an online leisure activities company.</p> <p>Magomedov is also co-executive chairman of Los Angeles-based tech firm Virgin Hyperloop One, which is chaired by Richard Branson. It is one of several firms developing a futuristic transport system that involves propelling people at high speed through sealed tubes.</p> <p>He also co-owns the Novorossiysk Commercial Sea Port ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=NMTP.MM" type="external">NMTP.MM</a>) with Russian oil pipeline monopoly Transneft ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=TRNF_p.MM" type="external">TRNF_p.MM</a>) and transportation group Fesco ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FESH.MM" type="external">FESH.MM</a>).</p> <p>Additional reporting by Gleb Stolyarov; Writing by Gabrielle Tetrault-Farber and Christian Lowe; Editing by Larry King</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

France says Iran not respecting U.N. text on ballistic missiles Italy protests to France over border incident Israeli troops wound dozens on Gaza border as Palestinians bury dead from earlier violence Turkey says France could become 'target' for backing Syria Kurds Russian tycoon Magomedov arrested on embezzlement charges

https://reuters.com/article/us-iran-nuclear-ballistics-france/france-says-iran-not-respecting-un-text-on-ballistic-missiles-idUSKBN1FB19L

2018-01-22

2least

BRUSSELS Reuters France8217s foreign minister accused Iran on Monday of not respecting part of a UN resolution that calls on Tehran to refrain from work on ballistic missiles designed to carry nuclear warheads FILE PHOTO French Foreign Affairs Minister JeanYves Le Drian arrives at the Elysee Palace in Paris France January 5 2018 REUTERSBenoit Tessier Speaking on arrival at a European foreign ministers meeting in Brussels JeanYves Le Drian also said the 28 ministers would reiterate their concerns over Iran8217s activities in Yemen Lebanon and Syria which he described as destabilizing 8220We will also have the opportunity of underlining our firmness on Iran8217s compliance with United Nations Resolution 2231 which limits access to ballistic capacity and which Iran does not respect8221 Le Drian said Under the UN resolution enshrining the 2015 nuclear deal with Britain China France Germany Russia and the United States Iran is 8220called upon8221 to refrain from work on ballistic missiles designed to deliver nuclear weapons for up to 8 years Some states say this phrasing does not make it an obligatory commitment Iran has repeatedly said its missile program is purely defensive and denied they are designed to carry nuclear warheads Le Drian on Sunday said he would travel to Iran in March and that France had begun talks with Tehran to discuss its missile program and regional activities But Iran8217s foreign ministry spokesman on Monday dismissed the suggestion of talks on either issue 8220If there is such a quote from the French foreign minister that we held talks we deny it We have not had any negotiations about our missile and defense capabilities and will not talk about these issues with others8221 Bahram Qasemi was quoted as saying by Tasnim news agency on Monday With US President Donald Trump warning of a last chance for 8220the worst deal ever negotiated8221 Britain France and Germany have begun talks on a plan to satisfy him by addressing Iran8217s ballistic missile tests and its regional influence while preserving the 2015 accord 8220The French foreign minister is not familiar with Iranian society yet8221 Qasemi said 8220Iran has proved that it would not change course under pressure 8220We should surely discuss Iran8217s influence in the region because it has been a positive one and everyone has benefited from it Without Iran8217s influence terrorists would have captured Damascus and Baghdad8221 he said Robin Emmott in Brussels and Bozorgmehr Sharafedin in London writing by John Irish editing by Richard Balmforth Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles ROME Reuters Italy on Saturday protested to France over a incident in which French border police entered a clinic run by a nongovernmental organization that cares for migrants trying to cross the Alps the foreign ministry said The episode angered many politicians some of whom saw it as a violation of Italian territory The ministry which had earlier summoned the French ambassador for an explanation said in a statement that it had conveyed the Rome government8217s 8220firm protest for the behavior of the French customs agents which was unacceptable 8221 The NGO Rainbow for Africa said that on Friday evening the French brought a Nigerian migrant to the railway station of the Italian border town of Bardonecchia The NGO said they entered the clinic which is in the train station and conducted a urine test on the man because they suspected him of drug trafficking The foreign ministry said France had been told earlier this month that the station was no longer accessible for its police because it was now being used for humanitarian purposes In their account of the incident French customs said they had the written consent of the man for the test and the NGO had also given them permission to use the facilities for it The test was negative French customs said they had followed regulations and were ready to clarify with the Italians any legal and operational procedures to avoid future incidents Massimiliano Fedriga of the rightwing League which made big gains in recent elections said the French had made Italy look like the laughing stock of Europe 8220French police do whatever they want on Italian territory without being disturbed as if they are at home What happened in Bardonecchia is grave and shows how our socalled friends in Europe have little or no consideration for us8221 he said in a statement Reporting By Philip Pullella Additional reporting by Leigh Thomas in Paris Editing by Andrew Bolton and Stephen Powell Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles GAZA Reuters Israeli troops shot and wounded about 70 Palestinians among crowds demonstrating at the GazaIsrael border on Saturday health officials said after one of the deadliest days of unrest in the area in years A Palestinian hurls stones at Israeli troops during clashes at the GazaIsrael border at a protest demanding the right to return to their homeland in the southern Gaza Strip March 31 2018 REUTERSIbraheem Abu Mustafa Thousands of people marched through the streets of Gaza in funerals for the 15 people killed by Israeli gunfire on Friday and a national day of mourning was observed in the enclave and in the occupied West Bank Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Israel was responsible for the violence Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was protecting its sovereignty and citizens An Israeli military spokesman said he was checking the details of Saturday8217s unrest It broke out when Palestinians gathered on the border between the Hamasrun enclave and Israel then began throwing stones Palestinian health officials said about 70 were wounded A Palestinian is evacuated during clashes with Israeli troops at the GazaIsrael border at a protest demanding the right to return to their homeland in the southern Gaza Strip March 31 2018 REUTERSIbraheem Abu Mustafa On Friday at least 15 Palestinians were killed by Israeli security forces confronting protesters The military said some had shot at them rolled burning tyres and hurled rocks and fire bombs toward troops across the border Hamas said five of them were members of its armed wing Israel said eight of the 15 dead belonged to Hamas designated a terrorist group by Israel and the West and two others belonged to other militant groups Tens of thousands of Palestinians had gathered on Friday along the fenced 65km 40mile frontier where tents had been erected for a planned sixweek protest pressing for a right of return for refugees and their descendents to what is now Israel But hundreds of Palestinian youths ignored calls from the organizers and the Israeli military to stay away from the frontier and violence broke out The protest organized by Hamas and other Palestinian factions is scheduled to culminate on May 15 the day Palestinians commemorate what they call the 8220Nakba8221 or 8220Catastrophe8221 when hundreds of thousands fled or were driven out of their homes in 1948 when the state of Israel was created Israel has long ruled out any right of return fearing an influx of Arabs that would wipe out its Jewish majority It says refugees should resettle in a future state the Palestinians seek in the Israelioccupied West Bank and Gaza Peace talks to that end have been frozen since 2014 Slideshow 12 Images Israel withdrew its troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005 but still maintains tight control of its land and sea borders Egypt also keeps its border with Gaza largely closed Abbas8217s spokesman Nabil Abu Rdainah said 8220The message of the Palestinian people is clear The Palestinian land will always belong to its legitimate owners and the occupation will be removed8221 Israeli military spokesman BrigadierGeneral Ronen Manelis said Hamas was using the protests as a guise to launch attacks against Israel and ignite the area He said violence was likely to continue along the border until May 15 8220We won8217t let this turn into a pingpong zone where they perpetrate a terrorist act and we respond with pinpoint action If this continues we will not have no choice but to respond inside the Gaza Strip8221 Manelis told reporters United Nations SecretaryGeneral Antonio Guterres has called for an independent investigation into Friday8217s bloodshed and appealed for all sides to refrain from any actions that could lead to further casualties or put civilians in harm8217s way Reporting by Nidal alMughrabi and Maayan Lubell Editing by Angus MacSwan Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles ANKARA Reuters Turkey said on Friday that a French pledge to help stabilize a region of northern Syria controlled by Kurdishdominated forces amounted to support for terrorism and could make France a 8220target of Turkey8221 Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan speaks during a meeting in Ankara Turkey March 30 2018 Murat CetinmuhurdarPresidential PalaceHandout via REUTERS French backing for the Syrian Democratic Forces SDF spearheaded by the Kurdish YPG militia has angered Ankara at a time when it is fighting the YPG in northern Syria and considers it a terrorist organization President Tayyip Erdogan said France had taken a 8220completely wrong approach8221 on Syria adding that he exchanged heated words with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron last week The split with France is the latest rift between Turkey under Erdogan and its NATO allies in the West Turkey has long complained about US support for the SDF among a number of irritants to ties with the leading NATO power Last year it compared the German and Dutch authorities to Nazis for restricting proErdogan demonstrations during a campaign for a referendum to give him greater powers The White House said President Donald Trump who added fresh uncertainty on Thursday when he said that the United States would be 8220coming out of Syria8221 very soon spoke to Erdogan on Friday 8220to discuss regional developments and the strategic partnership between the United States and Turkey8221 Related Coverage Turkey started preparations for further operations in northern Syria Erdogan Turkeys Erdogan says France completely wrong on Syria 8220The two leaders expressed support for continued efforts to increase cooperation between their two countries to advance shared interests as NATO allies and to work through issues that affect the bilateral relationship8221 a White House statement said Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag said the French stance was setting Paris on a collision course with Ankara 8220Those who enter into cooperation and solidarity with terror groups against Turkey will like the terrorists become a target of Turkey8221 Bozdag who is also the Turkish government spokesman wrote on Twitter 8220We hope France does not take such an irrational step8221 Macron met an SDF delegation on Thursday and gave assurances of French support to stabilize northern Syria A presidential source later said France could increase its military contribution to the USled coalition which alongside the SDF is fighting Islamic State in Syria The United States has 2000 troops in SDFheld territory and France also has some troops there as part of the coalition Ankara considers the YPG fighters in the SDF to be an extension of Kurdish militants who have waged a decadesold insurgency in southeast Turkey Turkish forces drove the YPG from the northwestern Syrian town of Afrin nearly two weeks ago and Erdogan says Ankara is preparing to extend operations along hundreds of miles of border including areas where the American forces are deployed The Afrin operation has already drawn international criticism notably from Macron Ankara meanwhile has said it expects its allies to move their troops out of the way of a Turkish advance 8220We have no intention to harm soldiers of allied nations but we cannot allow terrorists to roam freely in northern Syria8221 Erdogan said One US service member and one other member of the USled coalition were killed by a bomb in Syria overnight the first to die in an attack this year TRUMP SURPRISE Trump8217s remark on Thursday that the United States would be 8220coming out of Syria8221 appeared to take his own administration by surprise US officials have said in recent months that Washington planned to keep an openended presence in northern Syria to support stability in the SDFcontrolled region prevent any Islamic State resurgence and counter Iranian influence SDF spokesman Kino Gabriel said the force had not been informed of any US withdrawal plan 8220Our work and coordination with the coalition is continuing8221 Gabriel told Reuters in a written message Asked whether US forces had been informed of a decision to withdraw or were preparing to do so a spokesman for the coalition said he would not comment on future operations FILE PHOTO Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan addresses members of parliament from his ruling AK Party AKP during a meeting at the Turkish parliament in Ankara Turkey March 6 2018 REUTERSUmit BektasFile Photo A PYD member in Paris said Macron had promised at Thursday8217s meeting with the SDF to send more troops to northern Syria provide humanitarian assistance and push a diplomatic solution The French presidency did not confirm that Macron had pledged more troops but the presidential source said France could bolster its military intervention in Syria 8220within the existing framework8221 of the USled coalition The presidency also said Macron was offering to mediate between Turkey and the SDF a suggestion Erdogan dismissed 8220Do not engage in things beyond you we do not need a mediator8221 he said responding to the French offer in remarks to members of his ruling AK Party in Ankara 8220Who are you to speak of mediation between Turkey and a terrorist organization8221 Accusing Paris of appeasing terrorism he said Macron would be held accountable for his policy by his own people 8220We hope France doesn8217t come to us for help when the terrorists running from Syria and Iraq fill their country after being encouraged by their policy8221 he said Erdogan spoke last week with Macron about the French president8217s criticism of Turkey8217s Afrin campaign 8220He was saying weird things and so even if it was a bit highoctane I had to tell him some things8221 Erdogan said 8220It is not anyone8217s place to portray our armed forces as something we do not find acceptable8221 Additional reporting by John Irish and Marine Pennetier in Paris Tom Perry in Beirut Maher Chmaytelli in Baghdad and David Brunnstrom in Washington Writing by Dominic Evans Editing by Peter Graff and Susan Thomas Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles MOSCOW Reuters Russian authorities on Saturday arrested billionaire Ziyavudin Magomedov on charges of embezzling more than 35 million in one of the highestprofile prosecutions of a Russian tycoon in years Magomed Magomedov a business partner and brother of coowner of Russias Summa group Ziyavudin Magomedov attends a hearing on his detention at the Tverskoy District Court in Moscow Russia March 31 2018 REUTERSTatyana Makeyeva Magomedov denied the charges at a pretrial hearing where a judge ordered that he be held in custody until May 30 One of Russia8217s richest men the 49yearold Magomedov holds assets in construction and logistics through his sprawling Summa Group He also has investments in US tech ventures including the Virgin One Hyperloop project He was detained along with his business partner and brother Magomed Magomedov and Artur Maksidov the head of a company in the Summa Group that was involved in the construction of a soccer World Cup venue in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad Both businessmen will also be held in custody until May 30 the court ruled At a hearing in Moscow8217s Tverskoy District Court to decide whether Magomedov and his associates should be detained before their trial Judge Maria Sizintseva said they had acted as part of an organized crime group and had tried to put pressure on witnesses She rejected an offer from Magomedov to put up a 35 million bail bond and ordered he be detained Citing the arguments against granting bail the judge said Magomedov had access to his own aircraft and assets abroad The day before he was detained he had booked a flight from Moscow to Miami the judge said Summa said it planned to appeal the court decision and was ready to cooperate with the investigation MUSCULAR STATE Invited to speak from a cage in the courtroom Magomedov dressed in a darkblue jogging suit said 8220I categorically disagree with the charges presented The prosecution case does not stand up to scrutiny8221 Slideshow 7 Images He said he needed treatment in the United States for a medical problem and offered to put up the 35 million bail 8220I8217m willing to pull together this money so no one has any thoughts that I might go on the run8221 Magomedov said Magomedov is part of a group of Russian multimillionaires who while publicly loyal to the Kremlin are not in President Vladimir Putin8217s inner circle Some members of the group say they are being squeezed by a tough economy Western sanctions on Russia and powerful staterun companies that are muscling in on nearly all sectors of the economy In past cases when magnates have been prosecuted some in the Russia business community have said the tycoons were victims of a plot by the Kremlin or by politically connected business rivals though the authorities deny that Novorossiyskiy Morskoy Torgovyi Port PAO 7765 NMTPMM Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange 019 233 NMTPMM TRNF_pMM FESHMM People familiar with the Russian judicial system say highprofile corruption cases are rarely fabricated but that the law is applied selectively and that prosecutions can be influenced by outside factors Ziyavudin Magomedov ranked 63rd last year on the Forbes list of the richest business people in Russia with 14 billion In January he was listed by the US Treasury Department as one of 96 8220oligarchs8221 close to Putin His Caspian Venture Capital fund has investments in ridehailing service Uber UBERUL Diamond Foundry a company that produces manmade diamonds and Peek an online leisure activities company Magomedov is also coexecutive chairman of Los Angelesbased tech firm Virgin Hyperloop One which is chaired by Richard Branson It is one of several firms developing a futuristic transport system that involves propelling people at high speed through sealed tubes He also coowns the Novorossiysk Commercial Sea Port NMTPMM with Russian oil pipeline monopoly Transneft TRNF_pMM and transportation group Fesco FESHMM Additional reporting by Gleb Stolyarov Writing by Gabrielle TetraultFarber and Christian Lowe Editing by Larry King Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>LOS ANGELES (AP) &#8212; The Latest on deadly storms in California (all times local):</p> <p>4:50 p.m.</p> <p>Flooding and mudslides from a deadly storm has shut down some 30 miles of a major coastal freeway between Northern and Southern California.</p> <p>The California Highway Patrol says Interstate 101 was closed Tuesday between Ventura and Santa Barbara as water, mud and debris inundated the road.</p> <p>Capt. Cindy Pontes says crews are working "feverishly" to clear the road but it will take 48 hours or longer to reopen it.</p> <p>Runoff from heavy rain has washed mud, branches and debris from the foothill and coastal mountain area burned by the Thomas fire. Pontes says a broken water main spilled even more water.</p> <p>The CHP says at one point early Tuesday, the entire freeway was inundated and the mud was 3 feet deep at the top of a rise.</p> <p>___</p> <p>4:10 p.m.</p> <p>The death toll from flash flooding and debris flows in Southern California has risen to 13.</p> <p>Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown announced the new number of dead at a news conference on Tuesday afternoon. Officials had previously announced eight deaths.</p> <p>A powerful storm hit the region early Tuesday, deluging hills and mountains burned bare last month by the largest wildfire in recorded California history.</p> <p>Torrents roared down through neighborhoods in Montecito near Santa Barbara, sweeping some homes away entirely in what officials called a catastrophic debris flow.</p> <p>Rescues in the area are continuing. At least 50 people have been rescued so far, and about 300 are stranded in one neighborhood.</p> <p>___</p> <p>2:27 p.m.</p> <p>The death toll from flash flooding and debris flows in Southern California has risen to eight.</p> <p>Santa Barbara County spokesman David Villalobos says all of the deaths are believed to have occurred in Montecito, a community neighboring the city of Santa Barbara.</p> <p>A powerful storm hit the region early Tuesday, deluging hills and mountains burned bare last month by the largest wildfire in recorded California history.</p> <p>Torrents roared down through Montecito neighborhoods, sweeping some homes away entirely and leaving behind tangled, smashed debris and massive boulders.</p> <p>In addition to the deaths, at least 25 people were injured. Searches are continuing.</p> <p>___</p> <p>2:10 p.m.</p> <p>One of the six people killed in a mudslide caused by a flash flood in Southern California was the founder a Catholic school who dedicated his life to helping others.</p> <p>Michael Van Hecke, the headmaster of the St. Augustine Academy in Ventura, tells The Associated Press that the school's founder, Roy Rohter, was killed in Monday's storm.</p> <p>He says Rohter's wife, Theresa, was injured and remained hospitalized Monday afternoon.</p> <p>Van Hecke says he was told of the death by the Rohters' daughter.</p> <p>He says Roy Rohter was raised in Chicago and was a real estate broker for several years before he founded the Catholic academy in Ventura, California.</p> <p>Van Hecke says Rohter, who is survived by three children and several grandchildren, believed strongly in Catholic education.</p> <p>___</p> <p>1:02 p.m.</p> <p>A fire department spokesman says there are now six confirmed deaths in the aftermath of Southern California flash floods during a powerful storm.</p> <p>Santa Barbara County fire Capt. Dave Zaniboni confirms the additional death that raised the toll from an earlier tally of five.</p> <p>Several homes were swept away before dawn Tuesday when mud and debris roared into Montecito neighborhoods from hillsides stripped of vegetation during a recent wildfire.</p> <p>Authorities say a small percentage of people heeded evacuation warnings as the storm approached.</p> <p>___</p> <p>12 p.m.</p> <p>Santa Barbara County officials estimate that just 10 to 15 percent of residents ordered to evacuate heeded the warning ahead of a dangerous storm that has killed five people.</p> <p>Several homes were swept away before dawn Tuesday when mud and debris roared into neighborhoods in Montecito from hillsides stripped of vegetation during a recent wildfire.</p> <p>About 21,000 people were under mandatory evacuation orders by mid-Monday. County spokeswoman Amber Anderson says only 200 of the 1,200 residents contacted in person had left by the evening.</p> <p>There is a backlog of calls for rescue or evacuation from the area, where roads are blocked by mud and downed power poles.</p> <p>___</p> <p>9:53 a.m.</p> <p>Firefighters have rescued a 14-year-old girl from the rubble of a home devastated by a mudslide in the Montecito area of Southern California after a powerful storm hit an area ravaged by a December wildfire.</p> <p>Santa Barbara County authorities say there have been five confirmed fatalities as of Tuesday morning and there is a backlog of 75 calls for rescue or evacuation from the area.</p> <p>The storm hit hard in the early morning hours, sweeping a number of homes off their foundations.</p> <p>___</p> <p>9:30 a.m.</p> <p>A fire official says five people have been killed by mudslides that swept Southern California homes from their foundations as a powerful storm drenched recent wildfire burn areas.</p> <p>Santa Barbara County Fire Department Capt. Dave Zaniboni says the bodies were found in mud and debris during rescue operations Tuesday in Montecito northwest of Los Angeles.</p> <p>KEYT-TV showed a body being loaded into a military-style truck on a mud-covered street.</p> <p>Zaniboni says "multiple" homes were destroyed and residents are unaccounted for in neighborhoods below hillsides scarred by recent fires.</p> <p>Crews are clearing debris that closed a section of U.S. 101 along the border of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.</p> <p>___</p> <p>8:45 a.m.</p> <p>Authorities say two people have been killed by a mudslide that has destroyed homes during a powerful Southern California storm.</p> <p>Santa Barbara County Fire Department Capt. Dave Zaniboni says the bodies were found in mud and debris during rescue operations Tuesday in Montecito northwest of Los Angeles.</p> <p>Zaniboni says several homes were swept from their foundations and residents are unaccounted for in neighborhoods below hillsides scarred by recent wildfires.</p> <p>Crews are working to clear debris from a key stretch of U.S. 101 that was shut down along the border of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.</p> <p>__</p> <p>7:20 a.m.</p> <p>Several homes have swept from their foundations and residents are unaccounted for as mud flows into Southern California neighborhoods below hillsides scarred by recent wildfires.</p> <p>Santa Barbara County Fire Department Capt. Dave Zaniboni says crews are making rescues across the foothill enclave of Montecito northwest of Los Angeles.</p> <p>He says some of those rescued were buried in mud and debris. Active searches are underway as rain continues to fall from a huge winter storm that has soaked much of the state.</p> <p>Crews are working to clear debris from roads across greater Los Angeles, including a key stretch of U.S. 101 that was shut down along the border of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.</p> <p>___</p> <p>6:50 a.m.</p> <p>The wettest rainstorm of the winter dumped steady rain in fire-ravaged Northern California communities but only some fallen trees and minor rockslides were reported overnight.</p> <p>Santa Rosa Assistant Fire Marshal Paul Lowenthal says no major problems have been reported in the hillsides communities hardest hit by wildfires in October where heavy rain brought the risk of mudslides.</p> <p>Lingering showers are expected Tuesday, but forecasters say the storm would exit the region by the evening.</p> <p>The Santa Rosa Press Democrat reported rockslides in the lower Russian River and Sonoma Coast temporarily blocked roads and that about 50 people in the Cazadero area were without power after a tree fell into power lines</p> <p>The National Weather Service says that more than 2 inches (5centimeters) of rain fell at Sonoma County Airport's and that up to 1 1/2 additional inches were expected by Tuesday morning. Similar amounts were reported across that county.</p> <p>___</p> <p>6:30 a.m.</p> <p>Crews are rescuing residents from homes as mud and debris from wildfire-scarred hillsides inundate Southern California neighborhoods during a powerful winter storm.</p> <p>Santa Barbara County spokeswoman Amber Anderson says helicopters are being used early Tuesday because roads are blocked by downed trees and power lines.</p> <p>Anderson says there are reports of injuries, but she didn't immediately know how many or the extent. She says "multiple" residents have been rescued and more are calling for help in Montecito and Carpinteria. Evacuations were ordered in those foothill neighborhoods Monday because of mudslide fears.</p> <p>Thousands are without power in and around Santa Barbara, northwest of Los Angeles.</p> <p>The first significant storm of the season has soaked much of the state. A record 3.15 inches (8 centimeters) of rain fell in downtown San Francisco on Monday.</p> <p>___</p> <p>5:10 a.m.</p> <p>Heavy rains pounding Southern California for a second day are causing floods and loosening hillsides as officials in fire-ravaged communities warn people to stay off roads over fears of mud and debris flows.</p> <p>Traffic accidents have slowed the Tuesday morning commute to a crawl across the region, including along coastal U.S. 101 in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. That's where thousands of residents evacuated Monday over fears of destructive mudslides in areas where the state's largest-ever fire raged last month.</p> <p>Forecasters issued flash flood warnings and predicted the cold front with powerful winds could bring several inches of rain.</p> <p>A winter weather advisory is in place for mountain areas, where officials warned motorists to prepare for difficult travel conditions, including gusty winds, low visibility and snow-covered roads.</p> <p>LOS ANGELES (AP) &#8212; The Latest on deadly storms in California (all times local):</p> <p>4:50 p.m.</p> <p>Flooding and mudslides from a deadly storm has shut down some 30 miles of a major coastal freeway between Northern and Southern California.</p> <p>The California Highway Patrol says Interstate 101 was closed Tuesday between Ventura and Santa Barbara as water, mud and debris inundated the road.</p> <p>Capt. Cindy Pontes says crews are working "feverishly" to clear the road but it will take 48 hours or longer to reopen it.</p> <p>Runoff from heavy rain has washed mud, branches and debris from the foothill and coastal mountain area burned by the Thomas fire. Pontes says a broken water main spilled even more water.</p> <p>The CHP says at one point early Tuesday, the entire freeway was inundated and the mud was 3 feet deep at the top of a rise.</p> <p>___</p> <p>4:10 p.m.</p> <p>The death toll from flash flooding and debris flows in Southern California has risen to 13.</p> <p>Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown announced the new number of dead at a news conference on Tuesday afternoon. Officials had previously announced eight deaths.</p> <p>A powerful storm hit the region early Tuesday, deluging hills and mountains burned bare last month by the largest wildfire in recorded California history.</p> <p>Torrents roared down through neighborhoods in Montecito near Santa Barbara, sweeping some homes away entirely in what officials called a catastrophic debris flow.</p> <p>Rescues in the area are continuing. At least 50 people have been rescued so far, and about 300 are stranded in one neighborhood.</p> <p>___</p> <p>2:27 p.m.</p> <p>The death toll from flash flooding and debris flows in Southern California has risen to eight.</p> <p>Santa Barbara County spokesman David Villalobos says all of the deaths are believed to have occurred in Montecito, a community neighboring the city of Santa Barbara.</p> <p>A powerful storm hit the region early Tuesday, deluging hills and mountains burned bare last month by the largest wildfire in recorded California history.</p> <p>Torrents roared down through Montecito neighborhoods, sweeping some homes away entirely and leaving behind tangled, smashed debris and massive boulders.</p> <p>In addition to the deaths, at least 25 people were injured. Searches are continuing.</p> <p>___</p> <p>2:10 p.m.</p> <p>One of the six people killed in a mudslide caused by a flash flood in Southern California was the founder a Catholic school who dedicated his life to helping others.</p> <p>Michael Van Hecke, the headmaster of the St. Augustine Academy in Ventura, tells The Associated Press that the school's founder, Roy Rohter, was killed in Monday's storm.</p> <p>He says Rohter's wife, Theresa, was injured and remained hospitalized Monday afternoon.</p> <p>Van Hecke says he was told of the death by the Rohters' daughter.</p> <p>He says Roy Rohter was raised in Chicago and was a real estate broker for several years before he founded the Catholic academy in Ventura, California.</p> <p>Van Hecke says Rohter, who is survived by three children and several grandchildren, believed strongly in Catholic education.</p> <p>___</p> <p>1:02 p.m.</p> <p>A fire department spokesman says there are now six confirmed deaths in the aftermath of Southern California flash floods during a powerful storm.</p> <p>Santa Barbara County fire Capt. Dave Zaniboni confirms the additional death that raised the toll from an earlier tally of five.</p> <p>Several homes were swept away before dawn Tuesday when mud and debris roared into Montecito neighborhoods from hillsides stripped of vegetation during a recent wildfire.</p> <p>Authorities say a small percentage of people heeded evacuation warnings as the storm approached.</p> <p>___</p> <p>12 p.m.</p> <p>Santa Barbara County officials estimate that just 10 to 15 percent of residents ordered to evacuate heeded the warning ahead of a dangerous storm that has killed five people.</p> <p>Several homes were swept away before dawn Tuesday when mud and debris roared into neighborhoods in Montecito from hillsides stripped of vegetation during a recent wildfire.</p> <p>About 21,000 people were under mandatory evacuation orders by mid-Monday. County spokeswoman Amber Anderson says only 200 of the 1,200 residents contacted in person had left by the evening.</p> <p>There is a backlog of calls for rescue or evacuation from the area, where roads are blocked by mud and downed power poles.</p> <p>___</p> <p>9:53 a.m.</p> <p>Firefighters have rescued a 14-year-old girl from the rubble of a home devastated by a mudslide in the Montecito area of Southern California after a powerful storm hit an area ravaged by a December wildfire.</p> <p>Santa Barbara County authorities say there have been five confirmed fatalities as of Tuesday morning and there is a backlog of 75 calls for rescue or evacuation from the area.</p> <p>The storm hit hard in the early morning hours, sweeping a number of homes off their foundations.</p> <p>___</p> <p>9:30 a.m.</p> <p>A fire official says five people have been killed by mudslides that swept Southern California homes from their foundations as a powerful storm drenched recent wildfire burn areas.</p> <p>Santa Barbara County Fire Department Capt. Dave Zaniboni says the bodies were found in mud and debris during rescue operations Tuesday in Montecito northwest of Los Angeles.</p> <p>KEYT-TV showed a body being loaded into a military-style truck on a mud-covered street.</p> <p>Zaniboni says "multiple" homes were destroyed and residents are unaccounted for in neighborhoods below hillsides scarred by recent fires.</p> <p>Crews are clearing debris that closed a section of U.S. 101 along the border of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.</p> <p>___</p> <p>8:45 a.m.</p> <p>Authorities say two people have been killed by a mudslide that has destroyed homes during a powerful Southern California storm.</p> <p>Santa Barbara County Fire Department Capt. Dave Zaniboni says the bodies were found in mud and debris during rescue operations Tuesday in Montecito northwest of Los Angeles.</p> <p>Zaniboni says several homes were swept from their foundations and residents are unaccounted for in neighborhoods below hillsides scarred by recent wildfires.</p> <p>Crews are working to clear debris from a key stretch of U.S. 101 that was shut down along the border of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.</p> <p>__</p> <p>7:20 a.m.</p> <p>Several homes have swept from their foundations and residents are unaccounted for as mud flows into Southern California neighborhoods below hillsides scarred by recent wildfires.</p> <p>Santa Barbara County Fire Department Capt. Dave Zaniboni says crews are making rescues across the foothill enclave of Montecito northwest of Los Angeles.</p> <p>He says some of those rescued were buried in mud and debris. Active searches are underway as rain continues to fall from a huge winter storm that has soaked much of the state.</p> <p>Crews are working to clear debris from roads across greater Los Angeles, including a key stretch of U.S. 101 that was shut down along the border of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.</p> <p>___</p> <p>6:50 a.m.</p> <p>The wettest rainstorm of the winter dumped steady rain in fire-ravaged Northern California communities but only some fallen trees and minor rockslides were reported overnight.</p> <p>Santa Rosa Assistant Fire Marshal Paul Lowenthal says no major problems have been reported in the hillsides communities hardest hit by wildfires in October where heavy rain brought the risk of mudslides.</p> <p>Lingering showers are expected Tuesday, but forecasters say the storm would exit the region by the evening.</p> <p>The Santa Rosa Press Democrat reported rockslides in the lower Russian River and Sonoma Coast temporarily blocked roads and that about 50 people in the Cazadero area were without power after a tree fell into power lines</p> <p>The National Weather Service says that more than 2 inches (5centimeters) of rain fell at Sonoma County Airport's and that up to 1 1/2 additional inches were expected by Tuesday morning. Similar amounts were reported across that county.</p> <p>___</p> <p>6:30 a.m.</p> <p>Crews are rescuing residents from homes as mud and debris from wildfire-scarred hillsides inundate Southern California neighborhoods during a powerful winter storm.</p> <p>Santa Barbara County spokeswoman Amber Anderson says helicopters are being used early Tuesday because roads are blocked by downed trees and power lines.</p> <p>Anderson says there are reports of injuries, but she didn't immediately know how many or the extent. She says "multiple" residents have been rescued and more are calling for help in Montecito and Carpinteria. Evacuations were ordered in those foothill neighborhoods Monday because of mudslide fears.</p> <p>Thousands are without power in and around Santa Barbara, northwest of Los Angeles.</p> <p>The first significant storm of the season has soaked much of the state. A record 3.15 inches (8 centimeters) of rain fell in downtown San Francisco on Monday.</p> <p>___</p> <p>5:10 a.m.</p> <p>Heavy rains pounding Southern California for a second day are causing floods and loosening hillsides as officials in fire-ravaged communities warn people to stay off roads over fears of mud and debris flows.</p> <p>Traffic accidents have slowed the Tuesday morning commute to a crawl across the region, including along coastal U.S. 101 in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. That's where thousands of residents evacuated Monday over fears of destructive mudslides in areas where the state's largest-ever fire raged last month.</p> <p>Forecasters issued flash flood warnings and predicted the cold front with powerful winds could bring several inches of rain.</p> <p>A winter weather advisory is in place for mountain areas, where officials warned motorists to prepare for difficult travel conditions, including gusty winds, low visibility and snow-covered roads.</p>

The Latest: Flooding blocks coastal California freeway

https://apnews.com/amp/f529fa65502a459ea0a7964b7c2d3d66

2018-01-10

2least

LOS ANGELES AP 8212 The Latest on deadly storms in California all times local 450 pm Flooding and mudslides from a deadly storm has shut down some 30 miles of a major coastal freeway between Northern and Southern California The California Highway Patrol says Interstate 101 was closed Tuesday between Ventura and Santa Barbara as water mud and debris inundated the road Capt Cindy Pontes says crews are working feverishly to clear the road but it will take 48 hours or longer to reopen it Runoff from heavy rain has washed mud branches and debris from the foothill and coastal mountain area burned by the Thomas fire Pontes says a broken water main spilled even more water The CHP says at one point early Tuesday the entire freeway was inundated and the mud was 3 feet deep at the top of a rise ___ 410 pm The death toll from flash flooding and debris flows in Southern California has risen to 13 Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown announced the new number of dead at a news conference on Tuesday afternoon Officials had previously announced eight deaths A powerful storm hit the region early Tuesday deluging hills and mountains burned bare last month by the largest wildfire in recorded California history Torrents roared down through neighborhoods in Montecito near Santa Barbara sweeping some homes away entirely in what officials called a catastrophic debris flow Rescues in the area are continuing At least 50 people have been rescued so far and about 300 are stranded in one neighborhood ___ 227 pm The death toll from flash flooding and debris flows in Southern California has risen to eight Santa Barbara County spokesman David Villalobos says all of the deaths are believed to have occurred in Montecito a community neighboring the city of Santa Barbara A powerful storm hit the region early Tuesday deluging hills and mountains burned bare last month by the largest wildfire in recorded California history Torrents roared down through Montecito neighborhoods sweeping some homes away entirely and leaving behind tangled smashed debris and massive boulders In addition to the deaths at least 25 people were injured Searches are continuing ___ 210 pm One of the six people killed in a mudslide caused by a flash flood in Southern California was the founder a Catholic school who dedicated his life to helping others Michael Van Hecke the headmaster of the St Augustine Academy in Ventura tells The Associated Press that the schools founder Roy Rohter was killed in Mondays storm He says Rohters wife Theresa was injured and remained hospitalized Monday afternoon Van Hecke says he was told of the death by the Rohters daughter He says Roy Rohter was raised in Chicago and was a real estate broker for several years before he founded the Catholic academy in Ventura California Van Hecke says Rohter who is survived by three children and several grandchildren believed strongly in Catholic education ___ 102 pm A fire department spokesman says there are now six confirmed deaths in the aftermath of Southern California flash floods during a powerful storm Santa Barbara County fire Capt Dave Zaniboni confirms the additional death that raised the toll from an earlier tally of five Several homes were swept away before dawn Tuesday when mud and debris roared into Montecito neighborhoods from hillsides stripped of vegetation during a recent wildfire Authorities say a small percentage of people heeded evacuation warnings as the storm approached ___ 12 pm Santa Barbara County officials estimate that just 10 to 15 percent of residents ordered to evacuate heeded the warning ahead of a dangerous storm that has killed five people Several homes were swept away before dawn Tuesday when mud and debris roared into neighborhoods in Montecito from hillsides stripped of vegetation during a recent wildfire About 21000 people were under mandatory evacuation orders by midMonday County spokeswoman Amber Anderson says only 200 of the 1200 residents contacted in person had left by the evening There is a backlog of calls for rescue or evacuation from the area where roads are blocked by mud and downed power poles ___ 953 am Firefighters have rescued a 14yearold girl from the rubble of a home devastated by a mudslide in the Montecito area of Southern California after a powerful storm hit an area ravaged by a December wildfire Santa Barbara County authorities say there have been five confirmed fatalities as of Tuesday morning and there is a backlog of 75 calls for rescue or evacuation from the area The storm hit hard in the early morning hours sweeping a number of homes off their foundations ___ 930 am A fire official says five people have been killed by mudslides that swept Southern California homes from their foundations as a powerful storm drenched recent wildfire burn areas Santa Barbara County Fire Department Capt Dave Zaniboni says the bodies were found in mud and debris during rescue operations Tuesday in Montecito northwest of Los Angeles KEYTTV showed a body being loaded into a militarystyle truck on a mudcovered street Zaniboni says multiple homes were destroyed and residents are unaccounted for in neighborhoods below hillsides scarred by recent fires Crews are clearing debris that closed a section of US 101 along the border of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties ___ 845 am Authorities say two people have been killed by a mudslide that has destroyed homes during a powerful Southern California storm Santa Barbara County Fire Department Capt Dave Zaniboni says the bodies were found in mud and debris during rescue operations Tuesday in Montecito northwest of Los Angeles Zaniboni says several homes were swept from their foundations and residents are unaccounted for in neighborhoods below hillsides scarred by recent wildfires Crews are working to clear debris from a key stretch of US 101 that was shut down along the border of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties __ 720 am Several homes have swept from their foundations and residents are unaccounted for as mud flows into Southern California neighborhoods below hillsides scarred by recent wildfires Santa Barbara County Fire Department Capt Dave Zaniboni says crews are making rescues across the foothill enclave of Montecito northwest of Los Angeles He says some of those rescued were buried in mud and debris Active searches are underway as rain continues to fall from a huge winter storm that has soaked much of the state Crews are working to clear debris from roads across greater Los Angeles including a key stretch of US 101 that was shut down along the border of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties ___ 650 am The wettest rainstorm of the winter dumped steady rain in fireravaged Northern California communities but only some fallen trees and minor rockslides were reported overnight Santa Rosa Assistant Fire Marshal Paul Lowenthal says no major problems have been reported in the hillsides communities hardest hit by wildfires in October where heavy rain brought the risk of mudslides Lingering showers are expected Tuesday but forecasters say the storm would exit the region by the evening The Santa Rosa Press Democrat reported rockslides in the lower Russian River and Sonoma Coast temporarily blocked roads and that about 50 people in the Cazadero area were without power after a tree fell into power lines The National Weather Service says that more than 2 inches 5centimeters of rain fell at Sonoma County Airports and that up to 1 12 additional inches were expected by Tuesday morning Similar amounts were reported across that county ___ 630 am Crews are rescuing residents from homes as mud and debris from wildfirescarred hillsides inundate Southern California neighborhoods during a powerful winter storm Santa Barbara County spokeswoman Amber Anderson says helicopters are being used early Tuesday because roads are blocked by downed trees and power lines Anderson says there are reports of injuries but she didnt immediately know how many or the extent She says multiple residents have been rescued and more are calling for help in Montecito and Carpinteria Evacuations were ordered in those foothill neighborhoods Monday because of mudslide fears Thousands are without power in and around Santa Barbara northwest of Los Angeles The first significant storm of the season has soaked much of the state A record 315 inches 8 centimeters of rain fell in downtown San Francisco on Monday ___ 510 am Heavy rains pounding Southern California for a second day are causing floods and loosening hillsides as officials in fireravaged communities warn people to stay off roads over fears of mud and debris flows Traffic accidents have slowed the Tuesday morning commute to a crawl across the region including along coastal US 101 in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties Thats where thousands of residents evacuated Monday over fears of destructive mudslides in areas where the states largestever fire raged last month Forecasters issued flash flood warnings and predicted the cold front with powerful winds could bring several inches of rain A winter weather advisory is in place for mountain areas where officials warned motorists to prepare for difficult travel conditions including gusty winds low visibility and snowcovered roads LOS ANGELES AP 8212 The Latest on deadly storms in California all times local 450 pm Flooding and mudslides from a deadly storm has shut down some 30 miles of a major coastal freeway between Northern and Southern California The California Highway Patrol says Interstate 101 was closed Tuesday between Ventura and Santa Barbara as water mud and debris inundated the road Capt Cindy Pontes says crews are working feverishly to clear the road but it will take 48 hours or longer to reopen it Runoff from heavy rain has washed mud branches and debris from the foothill and coastal mountain area burned by the Thomas fire Pontes says a broken water main spilled even more water The CHP says at one point early Tuesday the entire freeway was inundated and the mud was 3 feet deep at the top of a rise ___ 410 pm The death toll from flash flooding and debris flows in Southern California has risen to 13 Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown announced the new number of dead at a news conference on Tuesday afternoon Officials had previously announced eight deaths A powerful storm hit the region early Tuesday deluging hills and mountains burned bare last month by the largest wildfire in recorded California history Torrents roared down through neighborhoods in Montecito near Santa Barbara sweeping some homes away entirely in what officials called a catastrophic debris flow Rescues in the area are continuing At least 50 people have been rescued so far and about 300 are stranded in one neighborhood ___ 227 pm The death toll from flash flooding and debris flows in Southern California has risen to eight Santa Barbara County spokesman David Villalobos says all of the deaths are believed to have occurred in Montecito a community neighboring the city of Santa Barbara A powerful storm hit the region early Tuesday deluging hills and mountains burned bare last month by the largest wildfire in recorded California history Torrents roared down through Montecito neighborhoods sweeping some homes away entirely and leaving behind tangled smashed debris and massive boulders In addition to the deaths at least 25 people were injured Searches are continuing ___ 210 pm One of the six people killed in a mudslide caused by a flash flood in Southern California was the founder a Catholic school who dedicated his life to helping others Michael Van Hecke the headmaster of the St Augustine Academy in Ventura tells The Associated Press that the schools founder Roy Rohter was killed in Mondays storm He says Rohters wife Theresa was injured and remained hospitalized Monday afternoon Van Hecke says he was told of the death by the Rohters daughter He says Roy Rohter was raised in Chicago and was a real estate broker for several years before he founded the Catholic academy in Ventura California Van Hecke says Rohter who is survived by three children and several grandchildren believed strongly in Catholic education ___ 102 pm A fire department spokesman says there are now six confirmed deaths in the aftermath of Southern California flash floods during a powerful storm Santa Barbara County fire Capt Dave Zaniboni confirms the additional death that raised the toll from an earlier tally of five Several homes were swept away before dawn Tuesday when mud and debris roared into Montecito neighborhoods from hillsides stripped of vegetation during a recent wildfire Authorities say a small percentage of people heeded evacuation warnings as the storm approached ___ 12 pm Santa Barbara County officials estimate that just 10 to 15 percent of residents ordered to evacuate heeded the warning ahead of a dangerous storm that has killed five people Several homes were swept away before dawn Tuesday when mud and debris roared into neighborhoods in Montecito from hillsides stripped of vegetation during a recent wildfire About 21000 people were under mandatory evacuation orders by midMonday County spokeswoman Amber Anderson says only 200 of the 1200 residents contacted in person had left by the evening There is a backlog of calls for rescue or evacuation from the area where roads are blocked by mud and downed power poles ___ 953 am Firefighters have rescued a 14yearold girl from the rubble of a home devastated by a mudslide in the Montecito area of Southern California after a powerful storm hit an area ravaged by a December wildfire Santa Barbara County authorities say there have been five confirmed fatalities as of Tuesday morning and there is a backlog of 75 calls for rescue or evacuation from the area The storm hit hard in the early morning hours sweeping a number of homes off their foundations ___ 930 am A fire official says five people have been killed by mudslides that swept Southern California homes from their foundations as a powerful storm drenched recent wildfire burn areas Santa Barbara County Fire Department Capt Dave Zaniboni says the bodies were found in mud and debris during rescue operations Tuesday in Montecito northwest of Los Angeles KEYTTV showed a body being loaded into a militarystyle truck on a mudcovered street Zaniboni says multiple homes were destroyed and residents are unaccounted for in neighborhoods below hillsides scarred by recent fires Crews are clearing debris that closed a section of US 101 along the border of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties ___ 845 am Authorities say two people have been killed by a mudslide that has destroyed homes during a powerful Southern California storm Santa Barbara County Fire Department Capt Dave Zaniboni says the bodies were found in mud and debris during rescue operations Tuesday in Montecito northwest of Los Angeles Zaniboni says several homes were swept from their foundations and residents are unaccounted for in neighborhoods below hillsides scarred by recent wildfires Crews are working to clear debris from a key stretch of US 101 that was shut down along the border of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties __ 720 am Several homes have swept from their foundations and residents are unaccounted for as mud flows into Southern California neighborhoods below hillsides scarred by recent wildfires Santa Barbara County Fire Department Capt Dave Zaniboni says crews are making rescues across the foothill enclave of Montecito northwest of Los Angeles He says some of those rescued were buried in mud and debris Active searches are underway as rain continues to fall from a huge winter storm that has soaked much of the state Crews are working to clear debris from roads across greater Los Angeles including a key stretch of US 101 that was shut down along the border of Santa Barbara and Ventura counties ___ 650 am The wettest rainstorm of the winter dumped steady rain in fireravaged Northern California communities but only some fallen trees and minor rockslides were reported overnight Santa Rosa Assistant Fire Marshal Paul Lowenthal says no major problems have been reported in the hillsides communities hardest hit by wildfires in October where heavy rain brought the risk of mudslides Lingering showers are expected Tuesday but forecasters say the storm would exit the region by the evening The Santa Rosa Press Democrat reported rockslides in the lower Russian River and Sonoma Coast temporarily blocked roads and that about 50 people in the Cazadero area were without power after a tree fell into power lines The National Weather Service says that more than 2 inches 5centimeters of rain fell at Sonoma County Airports and that up to 1 12 additional inches were expected by Tuesday morning Similar amounts were reported across that county ___ 630 am Crews are rescuing residents from homes as mud and debris from wildfirescarred hillsides inundate Southern California neighborhoods during a powerful winter storm Santa Barbara County spokeswoman Amber Anderson says helicopters are being used early Tuesday because roads are blocked by downed trees and power lines Anderson says there are reports of injuries but she didnt immediately know how many or the extent She says multiple residents have been rescued and more are calling for help in Montecito and Carpinteria Evacuations were ordered in those foothill neighborhoods Monday because of mudslide fears Thousands are without power in and around Santa Barbara northwest of Los Angeles The first significant storm of the season has soaked much of the state A record 315 inches 8 centimeters of rain fell in downtown San Francisco on Monday ___ 510 am Heavy rains pounding Southern California for a second day are causing floods and loosening hillsides as officials in fireravaged communities warn people to stay off roads over fears of mud and debris flows Traffic accidents have slowed the Tuesday morning commute to a crawl across the region including along coastal US 101 in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties Thats where thousands of residents evacuated Monday over fears of destructive mudslides in areas where the states largestever fire raged last month Forecasters issued flash flood warnings and predicted the cold front with powerful winds could bring several inches of rain A winter weather advisory is in place for mountain areas where officials warned motorists to prepare for difficult travel conditions including gusty winds low visibility and snowcovered roads

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<p>Come now to a Parable of Swine.</p> <p>Not so many years ago in North Carolina, the pig barons sensed opportunity for their &#8216;right to work&#8217; state. In the traditional hog belt of the mid-west, unions and laws against some forms of agribusiness still protect the medium-sized farmer. Today, in North Carolina the hog industry is headed the same way chicken production went thirty years ago, with the vertical integration pioneered by Purdue and others wiping out a million small chicken farmers across the country. [33] The coastal plains and piedmont of North Carolina are now pocked by vast pig factories and pig slaughterhouses. People living here sicken from the stink of twenty-five-foot deep lagoons of pig shit which have poisoned the water table and decanted nitrogen and phosphorous-laced sludge into such rivers as the Neuse, the Tar-Pamlico and the Albemarle. Ammonia gas burdens the air, just as it does in northern Europe-doing more damage in Holland than factories or cars-where at least open lagoons are banned and the pig shit must be &#8216;injected&#8217; into cropland rather than sprayed over it, as is the habit in the United States. In North Carolina it is as though the sewage of fifteen million people were being flushed into open pits and sprayed onto fields, with almost no restrictions. That&#8217;s where the seven million pigs worth of manure goes.</p> <p>Small hog producers have been bankrupted or become &#8216;contract&#8217; producers for the giants, bearing the up-front costs. The economies of scale produce fewer jobs than in the chicken business or in the tobacco industry, which it is increasingly replacing. To insulate themselves from popular outrage or even regulatory surveillance, the pig barons have either bought political protection or gone directly into politics, there writing or endorsing laws favourable to themselves. Most conspicuous in this art is Wendell Murphy, head of Murphy Farms, the biggest pig business in the country, selling $200 million worth of hogs in 1994. Murphy joined the state legislature in 1982 and soon augmented the steady stream of laws protecting hog and chicken interests.</p> <p>In North Carolina legislators may make money off the bills or amendments or votes they offer so long as they can assert that such profit possibilities do not cloud their judgement. Presumptively unclouded, Murphy pushed through or supported laws exempting his business from sales taxes, inspection fees, property taxes on feed, zoning laws, pollution fines. Laws imposing harsh penalties on animal-rights activists were also advanced and ratified. In 1993, after Murphy had left the assembly, one of his executives was still there to press successfully for a bill that blocked environmental researchers from getting state agriculture department records on hog-farm sites and sizes. In 1991, when Murphy was still installed as tribune for the pig business, the North Carolina legislature brazenly passed Senate Bill 669 allowing the nc Pork Producers Association to collect a hog levy which could be used to lobby state legislators, fight lawsuits and pursue purposes prohibited with money derived from a federal check-off.</p> <p>Pork is power in North Carolina. In 1988 when a particularly dear friend of the hog, chicken and turkey industries-Senator Harold &#8216;Bull&#8217; Hardison-was running for the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor in North Carolina, Murphy gave him $100,000. A few days later Hardison got another $100,000 from Marvin Johnson, head of Raeford Farms, one of the biggest turkey processors in the country. The legal maximum in such primary elections is $4,000. The State Bureau of Investigations uncovered these illegal disbursements but announced in 1993 that, given the two-year statute of limitations, Murphy and Johnson could not be touched. Hardison had done his part by advancing the laws protecting the pig barons from environmental laws and sales taxes. The pig men of North Carolina have a friend even higher up the political chain, in the form of us Senator Lauch Faircloth, a Republican who is part owner of Coharie Farms, the thirtieth largest hog producer in the country. Faircloth also owns more than $1 million worth of stock in two slaughterhouses. In Congress he is now ensconced as chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Clean Water, Wetland, Private Property and Nuclear Safety.</p> <p>Just as with Don Tyson, Arkansas&#8217; chicken king, North Carolina&#8217;s pig barons have the place sewn up, even without Murphy there as an elected representative. John M. Nichols, the Republican who leads North Carolina&#8217;s House committee on Health and Environment is also a member of its House Agriculture Committee. He is now building a 2,400 sow farm in Craven County that will raise pigs for Murphy. Leo Daughtry, North Carolina&#8217;s House majority leader, owns a part-interest in Johnson County Hams, which cures about 60,000 hams a year. Murphy&#8217;s old seat is now occupied by Charles Albertson, a professional country-music singer and former employee of the us Department of Agriculture, who won his seat with the help of pork money. After two terms in the North Carolina House, he rose to the senatorial purple in 1993, where he was immediately named chairman of the Agriculture, Marine Resources and Wildlife Committee.</p> <p>Such is the swollen empire of pork in North Carolina. Its reeking lagoons surround darkened warehouses of animals trapped in metal crates barely larger than their bodies, tails chopped off, pumped with corn, soy beans and chemicals until, in six months, they weigh about 240 pounds, at which point they are shipped off to abattoirs to be killed, sometimes by prisoners on work release from the county jail. Near the town of Tar Heel, in Smithfield&#8217;s Carolina Foods abattoir, half the workforce are Latin American immigrants; a number of others are prisoners. The sows are killed after about two years or whenever their reproductive performance declines. It takes maybe eight to ten people to run a sow factory, overseeing two thousand sows, boars and piglets. A computerized &#8216;finishing&#8217; farm, where the pigs are fattened, may just require a part-time caretaker to check the equipment and clean up between arriving and departing cohorts of hogs. The noise in these factories is ghastly, and many workers wear ear pads against the squealing and crashing of the animals in their cages. When the Raleigh News and Observer did a series on North Carolina&#8217;s pig barons in early 1995-following a pioneering article in Southern Exposure in 1992-readers were told they could call the paper&#8217;s number in Raleigh, 549&#173;5100, extension 4647 and listen to a recording of this terrible sound. Thus do we travel toward necropolis from Olmsted&#8217;s visit to Porkopolis nearly a century and a half ago.</p> <p>Art met meat early on.</p> <p>Nearly 20,000 years ago a paleolithic artist drew an auroch-wild ox-in black pigment on the walls of a cave at Lascaux, near what is now called Montignac, in the department of the Dordogne in France. He made the auroch-ancestor of the Spanish fighting bulls, and of the Longhorns-eighteen feet long, its outline first sketched out with bird feathers, then etched in with a stone blade. The artist prepared the surface with fat and oil, then blew powdered ochre onto it through a bone tube. In the lower gallery at Lascaux there&#8217;s a picture of a man lying dead. He had evidently been attacked by an auroch, which itself had a lance in its flank and entrails hanging from its belly. Before him, on a pole, is a bird. Throughout the cave there are many paintings of pregnant animals. Art here was surely an instrument of magic, an expression of ritual; magic not contrived in sorrow and repentance, but in hope; art enlisted, in Arnold Hauser&#8217;s words, &#8216;to secure the path to future enjoyment.&#8217;</p> <p>The relationships between people and other creatures in the paleolithic period necessarily remain mysterious. Discussing how hunters and gatherers perceive their environments, Tim Ingold cites one example:</p> <p>Among the Cree Indians of Northern Canada, it is believed that animals intentionally present themselves to the hunter to be killed. The hunter consumes the meat, but the soul of the animal is released to be reclothed with flesh. Hunting there, as among many northern peoples, is conceived as a rite of regeneration: consumption follows killing as birth follows intercourse, and both acts are integral to the reproductive cycles, respectively, of animals and humans. However, animals will not return to hunters who have treated them badly in the past. One treats an animal badly by failing to observe the proper disposal of the bones, or by causing undue pain and suffering to the animal in killing it. Above all, animals are offended by unnecessary killing: that is, by killing as an end in itself rather than to satisfy genuine consumption needs. They are offended, too, if the meat is not properly shared by all those in the community who need it. Thus meat and other usable products should on no account be wasted. [34]</p> <p>The &#8216;path to future enjoyment&#8217; was next secured by the domestication of animals, which turns out to be the main topic of the Middle Eastern Holy Books, much of which consist of bragging about the size of herds and flocks. The self-sustaining family farm or the journeys of the pastoralists were well on the path to destruction by the mid-nineteenth century, with the rise of the modern commodity markets. But the values of family-farm life remain an important ingredient of the culture of consumption: not &#8216;Murphy Hog Industries&#8217;, but &#8216;Murphy Farms&#8217;. Not &#8216;John&#8217;s Slaughterhouse&#8217;, but &#8216;Farmer John&#8217; in Los Angeles. Hence, restating Hauser, the &#8216;needs of everyday life&#8217; today require that we use the magic of art to conceal the slaughter house. Our &#8216;needs&#8217; are a continual supply of meat, not provided by the chances of the hunt, nor by the family farm with Peter the Pig and Daisy the Cow, but refrigerated in plastic wrap, dissociated from an animal context and accompanied by the quiet assurance that it can always be obtained by money. The modern cave painter should depict a credit card and a Safeway. But art mostly has not made the transition from the pre-industrial state, when 90 per cent of the world was peasant and 10 per cent &#8216;other,&#8217; with the latter living off the surplus of the former. From this world come most of our values and sentiments about the animals we have domesticated for work, companionship and food.</p> <p>The British artist Sue Coe, who now lives in New York, escorts us to our modern state. In terms of art history the only previous depictions of this sort were of the Day of Judgement, of Inferno, as for example displayed by Coppo di Marcovaldo in the Baptistry in Florence. Coe gives us the meat machinery of the slaughterhouse depicted as the day of judgement, with no heaven, only the purgatory of the feedlot, and the hell-fires of death.</p> <p>And finally, on a personal note.</p> <p>I wrote those last words and went forth with my friends Karen and Joe Paff to chop up the carcasses of two sheep on the tailgate of Joe&#8217;s pick-up outside my house: one for my deep-freeze, the other for the Paffs. Our neighbours, Greg and Margie Smith, had raised the sheep on their fields a couple of miles further down the Mattole River. Eating Mochie</p> <p>Unlike Sue Coe, I&#8217;m not a vegetarian. She once sent me a wonderful print of hers called &#8216;Modern Man Followed by the Ghost of His Meat&#8217;, a fellow accompanied by an accusatory posse of pigs, chickens, cows and sheep. The posse after me would be ample enough, starting with the crow my mother trapped during the Blitz in London, continuing with whale-wartime London again-and then picking up with the bullocks I helped consume, raised by local butchers on their farms around the southern Irish town of Youghal where I grew up.</p> <p>These days I live in Humboldt County, in the Mattole Valley, a couple of hours drive south of Eureka. The ranchers here run cattle on the hills, or the river bottom or the King Range, which is controlled by the Bureau of Land Management. The sheep have come and mostly gone. Here it&#8217;s cattle, raised and grazed and shipped off to the feedlots. I suppose my house goes through a couple of sheep, a pig and a hindquarter of a cow each year. The pig would be one raised by a 4-H kid-Cisco Benemann&#8217;s was the best so far-from around Ferndale, an hour over the hills, and killed and cut up by a local butcher. The cow for the last two years was called Mochie, raised by Michael Evenson.</p> <p>At a Christmas party last year I ate a good piece of beef, said so, and Michael told me it was from Mochie and sold me a hindquarter. He gave me this little piece of Homeric history about her origins, which go back to the early 1970s, when a number of counterculture folk headed north from the Bay Area and settled in southern Humboldt. Michael bought Mochie&#8217;s grandmother as a day-old calf in a Fortuna auction in 1972. She gave good milk in Michael&#8217;s three-cow dairy. At the age of sixteen or seventeen, she&#8217;d had fourteen calves and earned retirement. She died in the pasture of natural causes at the age of twenty-two. Her last calf was a heifer, who herself had fourteen calves. Michael sold her to a couple that wanted a milk cow, and he got back the calf she was about to have:</p> <p>So the animal you had part of was that calf that came to me. I was out of milking and dairy by then. I had very few animals and the pasture was in perfect condition. About sixty acres. When I first got there we figured about fifteen acres a cow but after we reseeded it, this dropped down to ten. When you reseed, you reseed a balanced diet, with perennial and annual grasses, so the soil is always alive with something. A lot of variety. It was a mix Fred Hurlbutt, a rancher in Garberville, developed. My animals were slaughtered in winter and the butcher thought they&#8217;d been on grain. I don&#8217;t grain feed animals. Too concentrated and unbalanced. My animals always had choices, in the kind of grasses to eat and where to sleep. I had cross fencing but they were generous enough pastures and choice. I had goats in the 1960s and they really taught me animals like choices. They let you know when they&#8217;re not happy. There have never been any diseases on my place.</p> <p>Bullocks I&#8217;d slaughter after about two years. I don&#8217;t lie to my animals. I tell them the only way I know, using English, that I&#8217;m going to slaughter them. I give them as much love and care as I can. Then, when they&#8217;re slaughtered they will be part of my body, part of your body. You do the same in your garden.</p> <p>The couple I sold Mochie&#8217;s mother to are hippies living east of the Eel River. She&#8217;s a midwife and he grows lettuce. They&#8217;re new settlers, and they were the ones who called the calf Mochie. I never sent any animal to a commercial slaughterhouse. Mochie was four and she was breaking fences and wandering. I used a 30.30 and shot her behind the ear, out through the eye.&#8217;</p> <p>Michael is off red meat now. A friend of his, the late John Iris, who started the Wild Iris Institute for Sustainable Forestry, got bone cancer when he was fairly young. In the military he&#8217;d worked in missile silos in Europe, and with nuclear warheads in Vietnam. He lived in Briceland and went on a macrobiotic diet. Michael joined him, eating fish and chicken, but nothing from the nightshade family, for example tomatoes or potatoes. No milk, no red meat, &#8216;even though I had a freezer full of beef and a cow I was milking. I felt better. I&#8217;m realizing now my life has changed because I no longer have twice daily contact with cows. I wouldn&#8217;t say life is more peaceful. It became more turbulent.&#8217;</p> <p>So much for versions of pastoral in the Mattole Valley. Most people don&#8217;t have the option of getting Greg Smith to kill them a lamb. Probably most people wouldn&#8217;t want to cut it up. Someone in the supermarket in Garberville the other day went to the manager and complained because the meat-counter man had some bloodstains on his apron. But even so, there are options. If you don&#8217;t like the thought of debeaked chickens sitting in a wire box all their lives, don&#8217;t buy them. [35] Figure out if you can have a meal that squares with ethical standards you can live with, or even vaguely aspire to. If you don&#8217;t want to eat a piece of an animal tortured by hog barons, then cut up by prisoners, aside from campaigning against such cruelties and conditions, ask yourself, is there a way out, at a level that goes beyond eating the pre-Fall diet, only so long as Sue Coe&#8217;s paintings remain vivid in your mind.</p> <p>The End</p> <p>This essay appears as part of <a href="" type="internal">Dead Meat</a>, presenting Sue Coe&#8217;s record, in the form of paintings and diaries, of slaughterhouses in the United States. Dead Meat is published by Four Walls Eight Windows Press, in New York, and paintings in it may be seen at the St. Etienne Gallery, 20 West 57th St, New York.</p> <p>Footnotes</p> <p>[33] Hog farming in North Carolina has been the subject of some fine journalism, notably David Cecelski and Mary Lee Kerr&#8217;s &#8216;Hog Wild&#8217; in Southern Exposure, Fall 1992, and an excellent five-part series in the Raleigh News &amp;amp; Observer, first published 19&#173;26 February 1995, and reprinted 19 March 1995.</p> <p>[34] &#8216;From Trust to Domination&#8217;, in Aubrey Manning and James Serpell, eds, Animals and Human Society, London 1994.</p> <p>[35] As with organically-grown produce, there are purchasing co-ops and kindred organizations, that seek out free-range animals, humanely raised. This does not deal with the moral absolute, but it does address less environmentally destructive, more artisanal and ultimately more equitable forms of production. Not the full bill of rights to be sure, but a slightly more elevated bill of fare.</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p>

Cutting Up Mochie

https://counterpunch.org/2005/08/19/cutting-up-mochie/

2005-08-19

4left

Come now to a Parable of Swine Not so many years ago in North Carolina the pig barons sensed opportunity for their 8216right to work8217 state In the traditional hog belt of the midwest unions and laws against some forms of agribusiness still protect the mediumsized farmer Today in North Carolina the hog industry is headed the same way chicken production went thirty years ago with the vertical integration pioneered by Purdue and others wiping out a million small chicken farmers across the country 33 The coastal plains and piedmont of North Carolina are now pocked by vast pig factories and pig slaughterhouses People living here sicken from the stink of twentyfivefoot deep lagoons of pig shit which have poisoned the water table and decanted nitrogen and phosphorouslaced sludge into such rivers as the Neuse the TarPamlico and the Albemarle Ammonia gas burdens the air just as it does in northern Europedoing more damage in Holland than factories or carswhere at least open lagoons are banned and the pig shit must be 8216injected8217 into cropland rather than sprayed over it as is the habit in the United States In North Carolina it is as though the sewage of fifteen million people were being flushed into open pits and sprayed onto fields with almost no restrictions That8217s where the seven million pigs worth of manure goes Small hog producers have been bankrupted or become 8216contract8217 producers for the giants bearing the upfront costs The economies of scale produce fewer jobs than in the chicken business or in the tobacco industry which it is increasingly replacing To insulate themselves from popular outrage or even regulatory surveillance the pig barons have either bought political protection or gone directly into politics there writing or endorsing laws favourable to themselves Most conspicuous in this art is Wendell Murphy head of Murphy Farms the biggest pig business in the country selling 200 million worth of hogs in 1994 Murphy joined the state legislature in 1982 and soon augmented the steady stream of laws protecting hog and chicken interests In North Carolina legislators may make money off the bills or amendments or votes they offer so long as they can assert that such profit possibilities do not cloud their judgement Presumptively unclouded Murphy pushed through or supported laws exempting his business from sales taxes inspection fees property taxes on feed zoning laws pollution fines Laws imposing harsh penalties on animalrights activists were also advanced and ratified In 1993 after Murphy had left the assembly one of his executives was still there to press successfully for a bill that blocked environmental researchers from getting state agriculture department records on hogfarm sites and sizes In 1991 when Murphy was still installed as tribune for the pig business the North Carolina legislature brazenly passed Senate Bill 669 allowing the nc Pork Producers Association to collect a hog levy which could be used to lobby state legislators fight lawsuits and pursue purposes prohibited with money derived from a federal checkoff Pork is power in North Carolina In 1988 when a particularly dear friend of the hog chicken and turkey industriesSenator Harold 8216Bull8217 Hardisonwas running for the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor in North Carolina Murphy gave him 100000 A few days later Hardison got another 100000 from Marvin Johnson head of Raeford Farms one of the biggest turkey processors in the country The legal maximum in such primary elections is 4000 The State Bureau of Investigations uncovered these illegal disbursements but announced in 1993 that given the twoyear statute of limitations Murphy and Johnson could not be touched Hardison had done his part by advancing the laws protecting the pig barons from environmental laws and sales taxes The pig men of North Carolina have a friend even higher up the political chain in the form of us Senator Lauch Faircloth a Republican who is part owner of Coharie Farms the thirtieth largest hog producer in the country Faircloth also owns more than 1 million worth of stock in two slaughterhouses In Congress he is now ensconced as chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Clean Water Wetland Private Property and Nuclear Safety Just as with Don Tyson Arkansas8217 chicken king North Carolina8217s pig barons have the place sewn up even without Murphy there as an elected representative John M Nichols the Republican who leads North Carolina8217s House committee on Health and Environment is also a member of its House Agriculture Committee He is now building a 2400 sow farm in Craven County that will raise pigs for Murphy Leo Daughtry North Carolina8217s House majority leader owns a partinterest in Johnson County Hams which cures about 60000 hams a year Murphy8217s old seat is now occupied by Charles Albertson a professional countrymusic singer and former employee of the us Department of Agriculture who won his seat with the help of pork money After two terms in the North Carolina House he rose to the senatorial purple in 1993 where he was immediately named chairman of the Agriculture Marine Resources and Wildlife Committee Such is the swollen empire of pork in North Carolina Its reeking lagoons surround darkened warehouses of animals trapped in metal crates barely larger than their bodies tails chopped off pumped with corn soy beans and chemicals until in six months they weigh about 240 pounds at which point they are shipped off to abattoirs to be killed sometimes by prisoners on work release from the county jail Near the town of Tar Heel in Smithfield8217s Carolina Foods abattoir half the workforce are Latin American immigrants a number of others are prisoners The sows are killed after about two years or whenever their reproductive performance declines It takes maybe eight to ten people to run a sow factory overseeing two thousand sows boars and piglets A computerized 8216finishing8217 farm where the pigs are fattened may just require a parttime caretaker to check the equipment and clean up between arriving and departing cohorts of hogs The noise in these factories is ghastly and many workers wear ear pads against the squealing and crashing of the animals in their cages When the Raleigh News and Observer did a series on North Carolina8217s pig barons in early 1995following a pioneering article in Southern Exposure in 1992readers were told they could call the paper8217s number in Raleigh 5491735100 extension 4647 and listen to a recording of this terrible sound Thus do we travel toward necropolis from Olmsted8217s visit to Porkopolis nearly a century and a half ago Art met meat early on Nearly 20000 years ago a paleolithic artist drew an aurochwild oxin black pigment on the walls of a cave at Lascaux near what is now called Montignac in the department of the Dordogne in France He made the aurochancestor of the Spanish fighting bulls and of the Longhornseighteen feet long its outline first sketched out with bird feathers then etched in with a stone blade The artist prepared the surface with fat and oil then blew powdered ochre onto it through a bone tube In the lower gallery at Lascaux there8217s a picture of a man lying dead He had evidently been attacked by an auroch which itself had a lance in its flank and entrails hanging from its belly Before him on a pole is a bird Throughout the cave there are many paintings of pregnant animals Art here was surely an instrument of magic an expression of ritual magic not contrived in sorrow and repentance but in hope art enlisted in Arnold Hauser8217s words 8216to secure the path to future enjoyment8217 The relationships between people and other creatures in the paleolithic period necessarily remain mysterious Discussing how hunters and gatherers perceive their environments Tim Ingold cites one example Among the Cree Indians of Northern Canada it is believed that animals intentionally present themselves to the hunter to be killed The hunter consumes the meat but the soul of the animal is released to be reclothed with flesh Hunting there as among many northern peoples is conceived as a rite of regeneration consumption follows killing as birth follows intercourse and both acts are integral to the reproductive cycles respectively of animals and humans However animals will not return to hunters who have treated them badly in the past One treats an animal badly by failing to observe the proper disposal of the bones or by causing undue pain and suffering to the animal in killing it Above all animals are offended by unnecessary killing that is by killing as an end in itself rather than to satisfy genuine consumption needs They are offended too if the meat is not properly shared by all those in the community who need it Thus meat and other usable products should on no account be wasted 34 The 8216path to future enjoyment8217 was next secured by the domestication of animals which turns out to be the main topic of the Middle Eastern Holy Books much of which consist of bragging about the size of herds and flocks The selfsustaining family farm or the journeys of the pastoralists were well on the path to destruction by the midnineteenth century with the rise of the modern commodity markets But the values of familyfarm life remain an important ingredient of the culture of consumption not 8216Murphy Hog Industries8217 but 8216Murphy Farms8217 Not 8216John8217s Slaughterhouse8217 but 8216Farmer John8217 in Los Angeles Hence restating Hauser the 8216needs of everyday life8217 today require that we use the magic of art to conceal the slaughter house Our 8216needs8217 are a continual supply of meat not provided by the chances of the hunt nor by the family farm with Peter the Pig and Daisy the Cow but refrigerated in plastic wrap dissociated from an animal context and accompanied by the quiet assurance that it can always be obtained by money The modern cave painter should depict a credit card and a Safeway But art mostly has not made the transition from the preindustrial state when 90 per cent of the world was peasant and 10 per cent 8216other8217 with the latter living off the surplus of the former From this world come most of our values and sentiments about the animals we have domesticated for work companionship and food The British artist Sue Coe who now lives in New York escorts us to our modern state In terms of art history the only previous depictions of this sort were of the Day of Judgement of Inferno as for example displayed by Coppo di Marcovaldo in the Baptistry in Florence Coe gives us the meat machinery of the slaughterhouse depicted as the day of judgement with no heaven only the purgatory of the feedlot and the hellfires of death And finally on a personal note I wrote those last words and went forth with my friends Karen and Joe Paff to chop up the carcasses of two sheep on the tailgate of Joe8217s pickup outside my house one for my deepfreeze the other for the Paffs Our neighbours Greg and Margie Smith had raised the sheep on their fields a couple of miles further down the Mattole River Eating Mochie Unlike Sue Coe I8217m not a vegetarian She once sent me a wonderful print of hers called 8216Modern Man Followed by the Ghost of His Meat8217 a fellow accompanied by an accusatory posse of pigs chickens cows and sheep The posse after me would be ample enough starting with the crow my mother trapped during the Blitz in London continuing with whalewartime London againand then picking up with the bullocks I helped consume raised by local butchers on their farms around the southern Irish town of Youghal where I grew up These days I live in Humboldt County in the Mattole Valley a couple of hours drive south of Eureka The ranchers here run cattle on the hills or the river bottom or the King Range which is controlled by the Bureau of Land Management The sheep have come and mostly gone Here it8217s cattle raised and grazed and shipped off to the feedlots I suppose my house goes through a couple of sheep a pig and a hindquarter of a cow each year The pig would be one raised by a 4H kidCisco Benemann8217s was the best so farfrom around Ferndale an hour over the hills and killed and cut up by a local butcher The cow for the last two years was called Mochie raised by Michael Evenson At a Christmas party last year I ate a good piece of beef said so and Michael told me it was from Mochie and sold me a hindquarter He gave me this little piece of Homeric history about her origins which go back to the early 1970s when a number of counterculture folk headed north from the Bay Area and settled in southern Humboldt Michael bought Mochie8217s grandmother as a dayold calf in a Fortuna auction in 1972 She gave good milk in Michael8217s threecow dairy At the age of sixteen or seventeen she8217d had fourteen calves and earned retirement She died in the pasture of natural causes at the age of twentytwo Her last calf was a heifer who herself had fourteen calves Michael sold her to a couple that wanted a milk cow and he got back the calf she was about to have So the animal you had part of was that calf that came to me I was out of milking and dairy by then I had very few animals and the pasture was in perfect condition About sixty acres When I first got there we figured about fifteen acres a cow but after we reseeded it this dropped down to ten When you reseed you reseed a balanced diet with perennial and annual grasses so the soil is always alive with something A lot of variety It was a mix Fred Hurlbutt a rancher in Garberville developed My animals were slaughtered in winter and the butcher thought they8217d been on grain I don8217t grain feed animals Too concentrated and unbalanced My animals always had choices in the kind of grasses to eat and where to sleep I had cross fencing but they were generous enough pastures and choice I had goats in the 1960s and they really taught me animals like choices They let you know when they8217re not happy There have never been any diseases on my place Bullocks I8217d slaughter after about two years I don8217t lie to my animals I tell them the only way I know using English that I8217m going to slaughter them I give them as much love and care as I can Then when they8217re slaughtered they will be part of my body part of your body You do the same in your garden The couple I sold Mochie8217s mother to are hippies living east of the Eel River She8217s a midwife and he grows lettuce They8217re new settlers and they were the ones who called the calf Mochie I never sent any animal to a commercial slaughterhouse Mochie was four and she was breaking fences and wandering I used a 3030 and shot her behind the ear out through the eye8217 Michael is off red meat now A friend of his the late John Iris who started the Wild Iris Institute for Sustainable Forestry got bone cancer when he was fairly young In the military he8217d worked in missile silos in Europe and with nuclear warheads in Vietnam He lived in Briceland and went on a macrobiotic diet Michael joined him eating fish and chicken but nothing from the nightshade family for example tomatoes or potatoes No milk no red meat 8216even though I had a freezer full of beef and a cow I was milking I felt better I8217m realizing now my life has changed because I no longer have twice daily contact with cows I wouldn8217t say life is more peaceful It became more turbulent8217 So much for versions of pastoral in the Mattole Valley Most people don8217t have the option of getting Greg Smith to kill them a lamb Probably most people wouldn8217t want to cut it up Someone in the supermarket in Garberville the other day went to the manager and complained because the meatcounter man had some bloodstains on his apron But even so there are options If you don8217t like the thought of debeaked chickens sitting in a wire box all their lives don8217t buy them 35 Figure out if you can have a meal that squares with ethical standards you can live with or even vaguely aspire to If you don8217t want to eat a piece of an animal tortured by hog barons then cut up by prisoners aside from campaigning against such cruelties and conditions ask yourself is there a way out at a level that goes beyond eating the preFall diet only so long as Sue Coe8217s paintings remain vivid in your mind The End This essay appears as part of Dead Meat presenting Sue Coe8217s record in the form of paintings and diaries of slaughterhouses in the United States Dead Meat is published by Four Walls Eight Windows Press in New York and paintings in it may be seen at the St Etienne Gallery 20 West 57th St New York Footnotes 33 Hog farming in North Carolina has been the subject of some fine journalism notably David Cecelski and Mary Lee Kerr8217s 8216Hog Wild8217 in Southern Exposure Fall 1992 and an excellent fivepart series in the Raleigh News ampamp Observer first published 1917326 February 1995 and reprinted 19 March 1995 34 8216From Trust to Domination8217 in Aubrey Manning and James Serpell eds Animals and Human Society London 1994 35 As with organicallygrown produce there are purchasing coops and kindred organizations that seek out freerange animals humanely raised This does not deal with the moral absolute but it does address less environmentally destructive more artisanal and ultimately more equitable forms of production Not the full bill of rights to be sure but a slightly more elevated bill of fare amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160

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States/PROPN In/ADP North/PROPN Carolina/PROPN it/PRON is/AUX as/SCONJ though/SCONJ the/DET sewage/NOUN of/ADP fifteen/NUM million/NUM people/NOUN were/AUX being/AUX flushed/VERB into/ADP open/ADJ pits/NOUN and/CCONJ sprayed/VERB onto/ADP fields/NOUN with/ADP almost/ADV no/PRON restrictions/NOUN That8217s/PROPN where/SCONJ the/DET seven/NUM million/NUM pigs/NOUN worth/ADJ of/ADP manure/NOUN goes/VERB Small/ADJ hog/NOUN producers/NOUN have/AUX been/AUX bankrupted/VERB or/CCONJ become/VERB 8216contract8217/NUM producers/NOUN for/ADP the/DET giants/NOUN bearing/VERB the/DET upfront/ADJ costs/VERB The/DET economies/NOUN of/ADP scale/NOUN produce/VERB fewer/ADJ jobs/NOUN than/ADP in/ADP the/DET chicken/NOUN business/NOUN or/CCONJ in/ADP the/DET tobacco/NOUN industry/NOUN which/PRON it/PRON is/AUX increasingly/ADV replacing/VERB To/PART insulate/VERB themselves/PRON from/ADP popular/ADJ outrage/NOUN or/CCONJ even/ADV regulatory/ADJ surveillance/NOUN the/DET pig/NOUN barons/NOUN have/AUX 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cloud/VERB their/PRON judgement/NOUN Presumptively/ADV unclouded/ADJ Murphy/PROPN pushed/VERB through/ADP or/CCONJ supported/VERB laws/NOUN exempting/VERB his/PRON business/NOUN from/ADP sales/NOUN taxes/NOUN inspection/NOUN fees/NOUN property/NOUN taxes/NOUN on/ADP feed/NOUN zoning/NOUN laws/NOUN pollution/NOUN fines/NOUN Laws/NOUN imposing/VERB harsh/ADJ penalties/NOUN on/ADP animalrights/NOUN activists/NOUN were/AUX also/ADV advanced/ADJ and/CCONJ ratified/VERB In/ADP 1993/NUM after/SCONJ Murphy/PROPN had/AUX left/VERB the/DET assembly/NOUN one/NUM of/ADP his/PRON executives/NOUN was/AUX still/ADV there/ADV to/PART press/VERB successfully/ADV for/ADP a/DET bill/NOUN that/PRON blocked/VERB environmental/ADJ researchers/NOUN from/ADP getting/VERB state/NOUN agriculture/NOUN department/NOUN records/NOUN on/ADP hogfarm/NOUN sites/NOUN and/CCONJ sizes/NOUN In/ADP 1991/NUM when/SCONJ Murphy/PROPN was/AUX still/ADV installed/VERB as/ADP tribune/NOUN for/ADP the/DET pig/NOUN business/NOUN the/DET North/PROPN Carolina/PROPN legislature/NOUN brazenly/ADV passed/VERB Senate/PROPN Bill/PROPN 669/NUM allowing/VERB the/DET nc/PROPN Pork/PROPN Producers/PROPN Association/PROPN to/PART collect/VERB a/DET hog/NOUN levy/NOUN which/PRON could/AUX be/AUX used/VERB to/PART lobby/VERB state/NOUN legislators/NOUN fight/VERB lawsuits/NOUN and/CCONJ pursue/VERB purposes/NOUN prohibited/VERB with/ADP money/NOUN derived/VERB from/ADP a/DET federal/ADJ checkoff/NOUN Pork/PROPN is/AUX power/NOUN in/ADP North/PROPN Carolina/PROPN In/ADP 1988/NUM when/SCONJ a/DET particularly/ADV dear/ADJ friend/NOUN of/ADP the/DET hog/NOUN chicken/NOUN and/CCONJ turkey/NOUN industriesSenator/NOUN Harold/PROPN 8216Bull8217/NUM Hardisonwas/PROPN running/VERB for/ADP the/DET Democratic/ADJ nomination/NOUN for/ADP lieutenant/NOUN governor/NOUN in/ADP North/PROPN Carolina/PROPN Murphy/PROPN gave/VERB him/PRON 100000/NUM A/DET few/ADJ days/NOUN later/ADV Hardison/PROPN got/VERB another/DET 100000/NUM from/ADP 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and/CCONJ Environment/PROPN is/AUX also/ADV a/DET member/NOUN of/ADP its/PRON House/PROPN Agriculture/PROPN Committee/PROPN He/PRON is/AUX now/ADV building/VERB a/DET 2400/NUM sow/NOUN farm/NOUN in/ADP Craven/PROPN County/PROPN that/PRON will/AUX raise/VERB pigs/NOUN for/SCONJ Murphy/PROPN Leo/PROPN Daughtry/PROPN North/PROPN Carolina8217s/PROPN House/PROPN majority/NOUN leader/NOUN owns/VERB a/DET partinterest/NOUN in/ADP Johnson/PROPN County/PROPN Hams/PROPN which/PRON cures/VERB about/ADV 60000/NUM hams/NOUN a/DET year/NOUN Murphy8217s/PROPN old/ADJ seat/NOUN is/AUX now/ADV occupied/VERB by/ADP Charles/PROPN Albertson/PROPN a/DET professional/ADJ countrymusic/NOUN singer/NOUN and/CCONJ former/ADJ employee/NOUN of/ADP the/DET us/PROPN Department/PROPN of/ADP Agriculture/PROPN who/PRON won/VERB his/PRON seat/NOUN with/ADP the/DET help/NOUN of/ADP pork/NOUN money/NOUN After/ADP two/NUM terms/NOUN in/ADP the/DET North/PROPN Carolina/PROPN House/PROPN he/PRON rose/VERB to/ADP the/DET 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amp160/PROPN amp160/PROPN amp160/PROPN amp160/PROPN amp160/PROPN amp160/PROPN amp160/PROPN amp160/PROPN

<p>Jan 17 (Reuters) - Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corp:</p> <p>* THE GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION AWARDS BOOZ ALLEN A 5 YEAR, $165M CONTRACT TO SUPPORT USCYBERCOM</p> <p>* BOOZ ALLEN HAMILTON HOLDING -AWARDED $165M CONTRACT TO PROVIDE PLANS, POLICY, TRAINING, COMMAND ADMINISTRATIVE, STAFF SUPPORT SERVICES TO USCYBERCOM Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BEIRUT/DAMASCUS (Reuters) - International chemical weapons inspectors will probably not go into the Syrian town of Douma on Wednesday, a U.N. source in Syria told Reuters, marking a further delay to efforts to investigate a suspected poison gas attack there.</p> <p>A U.N. security team entered Douma on Tuesday ahead of the planned visit by inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) international watchdog.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-inspectors/weapons-inspectors-delayed-after-gunfire-in-syrias-douma-sources-idUSKBN1HP0XC" type="external">Weapons inspectors delayed after gunfire in Syria's Douma: sources</a> <p>Syria's U.N. ambassador said on Tuesday the fact-finding mission would begin its work in Douma on Wednesday if the U.N. security team deemed the situation there safe.</p> <p>The U.N. source did not say when the inspectors might visit the site, or whether a planned visit to Douma on Wednesday had been postponed. The inspectors arrived in Damascus at the weekend.</p> <p>The suspected chemical attack on April 7 killed dozens of people in Douma, medical relief organizations say. It led to the rebel group that controlled Douma agreeing to surrender control of the town to the Syrian government.</p> <p>The government and its Russian allies say the attack was fabricated as a pretext to justify military strikes that were launched on Saturday by the United States, Britain and France.</p> <p>France has said it was very likely that evidence of the poison gas attack was disappearing before the inspectors could reach the town.</p> <p>The United States accused Russia on Monday of blocking international inspectors from reaching the site of the suspected poison gas attack in Syria and said Russians or Syrians may have tampered with evidence on the ground.</p> <p>Moscow denied the charge and blamed delays on retaliatory U.S.-led missile strikes on Syria at the weekend.</p> <p>Reporting by Kinda Makieh in Damascus; Writing by Ellen Francis in Beirut, Editing by Angus MacSwan</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea said on Wednesday it is considering how to change a decades-old armistice with North Korea into a peace agreement, as U.S. officials confirmed an unprecedented top-level meeting with the North Korean leader.</p> North Korean leader Kim Jong Un meets Song Tao, the head of the China's Communist Party's International Department who led a Chinese art troupe to North Korea for the April Spring Friendship Art Festival, in this handout photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on April 15, 2018. KCNA/via REUTERS <p>U.S. Secretary of State nominee and CIA Director Mike Pompeo became the most senior U.S. official known to have met North Korean leader Kim Jong Un when he visited Pyongyang at the end of March to discuss a planned summit with U.S. President Donald Trump.</p> <p>Pompeo's visit provided the strongest sign yet about Trump's willingness to become the first serving U.S. president ever to meet a North Korean leader.</p> <p>At the same time, old rivals North Korea and South Korea are preparing for their own summit, between Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, on April 27, with a bid to formally end the 1950-53 Korean War a major factor in talks.</p> <p>"As one of the plans, we are looking at a possibility of shifting the Korean peninsula's armistice to a peace regime," a high-ranking South Korean presidential official told reporters when asked about the North-South summit.</p> <p>"But that's not a matter than can be resolved between the two Koreas alone. It requires close consultations with other concerned nations, as well as North Korea," the official said.</p> <p>South Korea and a U.S.-led U.N. force are technically still at war with North Korea after the Korean War ended with a truce, not a peace treaty. The U.S.-led United Nations Command, Chinese forces and North Korea signed the 1953 armistice, to which South Korea is not a party.</p> <p>"I do not know if any joint statement to be reached at the inter-Korean summit would include wording about ending the war, but we certainly hope to be able to include an agreement to end hostile acts between the South and North," the official said.</p> <p>Such discussions between the two Koreas, and between North Korea and the United States, would have been unthinkable at the end of last year, after months of escalating tension, and fear of war, over the North's nuclear and missile programs.</p> <p>But then Kim declared in a New Year's speech his country was "a peace-loving and responsible nuclear power" and called for lower military tension and improved ties with the South.</p> <p>He also said he was considering sending a delegation to the Winter Olympics in South Korea in February, a visit that began a succession of steps to improve ties.</p> WAR NOT OVER <p>Pompeo's visit to the North was arranged by South Korean intelligence chief Suh Hoon with his North Korean counterpart, Kim Yong Chol, and was intended to assess whether Kim was prepared to hold serious talks, a U.S. official said.</p> <p>Pompeo flew from a U.S. air force base in Osan, south of Seoul, an official with the South's defense ministry said. The South's presidential office declined to comment on the trip.</p> <p>Amid the diplomatic flurry, CNN reported that Chinese President Xi Jinping also planned to visit Pyongyang soon, after North Korean leader Kim made a surprise trip last month to China, its major sole ally.</p> <p>Speaking in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said she had no information about any Xi visit to North Korea.</p> <p>"What I can stress is that China and North Korea have a tradition of high level mutual visits," she told reporters.</p> <p>"China is willing to strengthen high-level exchanges with North Korea, deepen strategic communications, expand talks and cooperation, and to bring out the important leading role of high-level contact in China-North Korea relations."</p> <p>Trump said on Tuesday he backed efforts between North and South Korea aimed at ending the state of war.</p> <p>"People don't realize the Korean War has not ended," Trump told reporters.</p> <p>"It's going on right now. And they are discussing an end to the war. Subject to a deal, they have my blessing and they do have my blessing to discuss that."</p> <p>Trump said he believed there was a lot of goodwill in the diplomatic push with North Korea, but added it was possible the summit - first proposed in March and which the president said could take place in late May or early June - may not happen.</p> <p>If the summit did not happen, the United States and its allies would maintain pressure on North Korea through sanctions, he said.</p> <p>Nevertheless, Pompeo's conversations in North Korea had fueled Trump's belief that productive negotiations were possible, according to a U.S. senior official briefed on the trip.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Soyoung Kim and Joyce Lee in SEOUL, John Walcott and Steve Holland in WASHINGTON, and Christian Shepherd in BEIJING; Editing by Robert Birsel</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>((In this April 17 story, corrects spelling of "cowling" in fifth paragraph.)</p> <p>By Mark Makela</p> <p>PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - An engine on a Southwest Airlines flight with 149 people aboard exploded and broke apart in mid-air on Tuesday, killing one passenger and nearly sucking another out of a shattered window, according to airline and federal authorities and witness and media accounts.</p> <p>The plane, a Boeing 737-700 which was bound to Dallas from New York, made an emergency landing in Philadelphia.</p> <p>The death of 43-year-old Jennifer Riordan on Flight 1380 was the first in a U.S. commercial aviation accident since 2009, according to National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) statistics.</p> <p>NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt told an evening news conference at the Philadelphia airport that a preliminary investigation found an engine fan blade missing, having apparently broken off, and that there was metal fatigue at the point where it normally attached.</p> <p>Sumwalt said part of the engine's covering, called a cowling, was found in Bernville, Pennsylvania, about 70 miles from the Philadelphia airport.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-pennsylvania-airplane-inspection/southwest-says-aircraft-hit-by-engine-explosion-was-inspected-this-week-idUSKBN1HO3F5" type="external">Southwest says aircraft hit by engine explosion was inspected this week</a> <p>"It is very unusual so we are taking this event extremely seriously," Sumwalt said. "This should not happen and we want to find out why it happened so that preventative measures can be put in place." He said the investigation could take 12 to 15 months to complete.</p> <p>Flight 1380 took off from New York's LaGuardia Airport at around 10:27 a.m. and was diverted to Philadelphia just under an hour later, according to flight tracking website FlightAware.com.</p> <p>Southwest Chief Executive Officer Gary Kelly said the flight landed at Philadelphia International at around 11:20 a.m.</p> <p>The engine on the plane's left side threw off shrapnel when it blew apart, shattering a window and causing rapid cabin depressurization that nearly pulled a female passenger through the hole, according to witness accounts and local news media reports.</p> <p>"We have a part of the aircraft missing, so we're going to need to slow down a bit," the plane's captain, Tammy Jo Shults, told air traffic controllers in audio from the cockpit released on NBC News.</p> <p>Asked by a controller if the jet was on fire, Shults said it was not, but added, "They said there is a hole and someone went out."</p> <p>"A woman was partially, was drawn out of the plane and pulled back in by other passengers," Todd Bauer, whose daughter was on the flight, told the NBC affiliate in Philadelphia.</p> <p>Riordan was a Wells Fargo banking executive and well-known community volunteer from Albuquerque, New Mexico, according to a Wells Fargo official, who spoke on condition of anonymity as she was unsure whether all of Riordan's family had been notified of her death.</p> <p>Riordan was on the way back from a New York business trip, where she had sent a tweet on Monday showing the view from her hotel in Midtown Manhattan with the caption: "Great business stay." Her Facebook page shows she was married with two children.</p> <p>The plane, which was bound for Dallas Love Field, had been inspected as recently as Sunday, according to Southwest's Kelly, who confirmed that Tuesday's fatality was the first of its kind in the carrier's 51-year history.</p> <p>At 11:18 a.m., passenger Marty Martinez posted on Facebook a live video of himself on the plane, wearing a breathing mask, as the plane descended. More than an hour later, at 12:27 p.m., Martinez posted pictures of a blown-out window and the badly damaged engine.</p> ULTRASONIC INSPECTIONS <p>Southwest Airlines said it was accelerating its existing engine inspection program and conducting ultrasonic inspections of fan blades of the CFM56 engines on all of its the 737 jets.</p> <p>In 2017 the Federal Aviation Administration issued a proposed airworthiness directive on the engine after an uncontained engine failure on a Southwest flight in August 2016.</p> <p>"What we want to do is see if anything in that airworthiness directive that came out from an event two years ago involving another Southwest airplane landed in Pensacola, we want to see if this part might have been subjected to that airworthiness directive," Sumwalt said.</p> <p>"The entire Southwest Airlines Family is devastated and extends its deepest, heartfelt sympathy to the customers, employees, family members and loved ones affected by this tragic event," Southwest said in a statement.</p> <p>There were 144 passengers and five crew members aboard the flight.</p> <p>One passenger was taken to a hospital in critical condition and seven people were treated for minor injuries at the scene, Philadelphia Fire Department spokeswoman Kathy Matheson said. Matheson could not confirm how the passenger in critical condition sustained her injuries.</p> <p>Flight 1380 was diverted to Philadelphia for an emergency landing after crew members reported damage to an engine, the fuselage and at least one window, the Federal Aviation Administration said.</p> Emergency personnel monitor the damaged engine of Southwest Airlines Flight 1380, which diverted to the Philadelphia International Airport this morning after the airline crew reported damage to one of the aircraft's engines, on a runway in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania U.S. April 17, 2018. REUTERS/Mark Makela ?YELLING AND SCREAMING? <p>"Everybody was going crazy, and yelling and screaming," passenger Martinez told CNN.</p> <p>Martinez said objects flew out of the hole where the window had exploded, and "passengers right next to her were holding onto (the woman being pulled out). And, meanwhile, there was blood all over this man's hands. He was tending to her."</p> <p>Television images showed that most of the outer casing around the left engine of the Boeing Co 737-700 ripped away and a window near the engine on the plane's left side was missing.</p> <p>"All of a sudden, we heard this loud bang, rattling, it felt like one of the engines went out. The oxygen masks dropped," passenger Kristopher Johnson told CNN. "It just shredded the left-side engine completely. ... It was scary."</p> <p>Southwest shares fell more than 3 percent after the NTSB reported the fatality, before closing down 1.1 percent at $54.27 on the New York Stock Exchange.</p> <p>Boeing in a statement extended its condolences to the family of the woman killed, and said it is "providing assistance at the request and under the direction" of the NTSB.</p> Slideshow (5 Images) <p>The Boeing 737 is the world's most-sold aircraft and its engines - supplied by a joint-venture co-owned by General Electric and France's Safran called CFM International - are the most widely used in the aircraft industry and are reported to be among the most reliable.</p> <p>Any design issues with the long-established CFM56 engine could have repercussions for fleets worldwide. But given that thousands of the engines are already in use globally, industry experts say the focus of the investigation is more likely to fall on one-off production or maintenance issues, though it is too early to say what caused the explosion.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Tim Hepher in Paris, Andrew Hay in New Mexico, David Shepardson in Washington, Alana Wise, Anna Driver and Peter Szekeley in New York, Jeffrey Dastin in San Francisco and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Writing by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Bill Tarrant and Leslie Adler</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>SYDNEY (Reuters) - Asian shares crept ahead on Wednesday after Wall Street took heart from upbeat corporate earnings, though nagging concerns about trade barriers and the global growth outlook kept currencies and bonds subdued.</p> FILE PHOTO: A man looks at an electronic stock quotation board outside a brokerage in Tokyo, Japan February 9, 2018. REUTERS/Toru Hanai <p>Chinese markets struggled even as Beijing boosted liquidity in the banking system. Shanghai blue chips hit an eight-month low before recouping losses.</p> <p>Late Tuesday, the PBOC unexpectedly announced it would cut the cash banks must hold as reserves in a move that frees up lending for small firms but falls short of a broad monetary easing.</p> <p>Mainland Chinese shares buckled after the United States banned American companies from selling components to Chinese telecom equipment maker ZTE Corp.</p> <p>MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan bounced 0.5 percent, though that followed four straight sessions of losses.</p> <p>Japan's Nikkei climbed 1.2 percent, with investors waiting for any developments on trade as Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe meets President Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort.</p> <p>European shares are seen rising, with spread-betters expecting 0.2-0.3 percent gains in Britain's FTSE, France's Cac and Germany's Dax.</p> <p>E-Mini futures for the S&amp;amp;P 500 gained 0.1 percent after robust earnings from Netflix, Goldman Sachs and healthcare companies fuelled optimism about what is expected to be the strongest earnings season in seven years.</p> <p>Profits at the 48 S&amp;amp;P500 companies that have announced earnings so far have risen 28.7 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, said Mutsumi Kagawa, chief global strategist at Rakuten Securities in Tokyo.</p> <p>The Dow ended Tuesday up 0.88 percent, while the S&amp;amp;P 500 rose 1.06 percent and the Nasdaq 1.78 percent.</p> <p>"The three main U.S. indexes turned positive on the year, which seems to suggest to me that markets are entering risk-on mode from risk-off," Kagawa said.</p> <p>Yet there were signs of caution in the latest BofA Merrill Lynch survey of fund mangers which found investors squirreling more funds away into cash, while cutting their equity allocation to an 18-month low.</p> OPTIMISM TESTED <p>The outlook for the global economy also darkened with just a net 5 percent of fund managers expecting stronger growth in the next 12 months - the lowest since the United Kingdom voted to leave the EU in June 2016.</p> <p>While the IMF left its global growth forecasts unchanged for 2018 and 2019 on Tuesday, it judged medium-term risks were to the downside - citing financial vulnerabilities, geopolitical strains and tariffs.</p> <p>"The global narrative has quickly shifted from synchronous global growth, upgraded growth and glimmers of inflation in early 2018 to a focus on tariffs and protectionist rhetoric," said Robert Rennie, head of financial markets strategy at Westpac.</p> <p>"We ultimately believe that we will see a negotiated solution, but there is still a long way to go and further bouts of volatility and headline risk seem assured."</p> <p>Worries about the longevity of the U.S. economic expansion were one reason the Treasury curve was at its flattest in a decade and why some interest-rate curves were starting to price in rate cuts for 2020.</p> <p>The air of uncertainty was keeping currencies restrained.</p> <p>The euro was stuck at $1.2370, after topping out at $1.2413 overnight, while the dollar index was barely moved at 89.538.</p> <p>The dollar did nudge modestly higher on the yen to 107.25, helped by signs of progress in U.S. talks with North Korea.</p> <p>U.S. Secretary of State nominee and CIA Director Mike Pompeo secretly visited North Korea and met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to discuss a planned summit with President Trump.</p> <p>In commodity markets, gold was a fraction easier at $1,344.11 an ounce.</p> <p>Oil prices firmed with Brent crude futures up 32 cents to $71.90 a barrel, while U.S. crude rose 33 cents to $66.85 a barrel.</p> <p>Reporting by Wayne Cole; Additional reporting by Hideyuki Sano in Tokyo; Editing by Eric Meijer</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

BRIEF-Booz Allen Awarded a 5-Yr, $165 Mln Contract to Support USCYBERCOM OPCW experts unlikely to enter Syria's Douma on Wednesday: U.N. source South Korea says discussing peace deal with North Korea ahead of summit One killed when engine explodes on Southwest flight Asian shares edge higher in step with Wall Street, China lags

https://reuters.com/article/brief-booz-allen-awarded-a-5-yr-165-mln/brief-booz-allen-awarded-a-5-yr-165-mln-contract-to-support-uscybercom-idUSFWN1PC16I

2018-01-17

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Jan 17 Reuters Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corp THE GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION AWARDS BOOZ ALLEN A 5 YEAR 165M CONTRACT TO SUPPORT USCYBERCOM BOOZ ALLEN HAMILTON HOLDING AWARDED 165M CONTRACT TO PROVIDE PLANS POLICY TRAINING COMMAND ADMINISTRATIVE STAFF SUPPORT SERVICES TO USCYBERCOM Source text for Eikon Further company coverage Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BEIRUTDAMASCUS Reuters International chemical weapons inspectors will probably not go into the Syrian town of Douma on Wednesday a UN source in Syria told Reuters marking a further delay to efforts to investigate a suspected poison gas attack there A UN security team entered Douma on Tuesday ahead of the planned visit by inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons OPCW international watchdog Related Coverage Weapons inspectors delayed after gunfire in Syrias Douma sources Syrias UN ambassador said on Tuesday the factfinding mission would begin its work in Douma on Wednesday if the UN security team deemed the situation there safe The UN source did not say when the inspectors might visit the site or whether a planned visit to Douma on Wednesday had been postponed The inspectors arrived in Damascus at the weekend The suspected chemical attack on April 7 killed dozens of people in Douma medical relief organizations say It led to the rebel group that controlled Douma agreeing to surrender control of the town to the Syrian government The government and its Russian allies say the attack was fabricated as a pretext to justify military strikes that were launched on Saturday by the United States Britain and France France has said it was very likely that evidence of the poison gas attack was disappearing before the inspectors could reach the town The United States accused Russia on Monday of blocking international inspectors from reaching the site of the suspected poison gas attack in Syria and said Russians or Syrians may have tampered with evidence on the ground Moscow denied the charge and blamed delays on retaliatory USled missile strikes on Syria at the weekend Reporting by Kinda Makieh in Damascus Writing by Ellen Francis in Beirut Editing by Angus MacSwan Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles SEOUL Reuters South Korea said on Wednesday it is considering how to change a decadesold armistice with North Korea into a peace agreement as US officials confirmed an unprecedented toplevel meeting with the North Korean leader North Korean leader Kim Jong Un meets Song Tao the head of the Chinas Communist Partys International Department who led a Chinese art troupe to North Korea for the April Spring Friendship Art Festival in this handout photo released by North Koreas Korean Central News Agency KCNA on April 15 2018 KCNAvia REUTERS US Secretary of State nominee and CIA Director Mike Pompeo became the most senior US official known to have met North Korean leader Kim Jong Un when he visited Pyongyang at the end of March to discuss a planned summit with US President Donald Trump Pompeos visit provided the strongest sign yet about Trumps willingness to become the first serving US president ever to meet a North Korean leader At the same time old rivals North Korea and South Korea are preparing for their own summit between Kim and South Korean President Moon Jaein on April 27 with a bid to formally end the 195053 Korean War a major factor in talks As one of the plans we are looking at a possibility of shifting the Korean peninsulas armistice to a peace regime a highranking South Korean presidential official told reporters when asked about the NorthSouth summit But thats not a matter than can be resolved between the two Koreas alone It requires close consultations with other concerned nations as well as North Korea the official said South Korea and a USled UN force are technically still at war with North Korea after the Korean War ended with a truce not a peace treaty The USled United Nations Command Chinese forces and North Korea signed the 1953 armistice to which South Korea is not a party I do not know if any joint statement to be reached at the interKorean summit would include wording about ending the war but we certainly hope to be able to include an agreement to end hostile acts between the South and North the official said Such discussions between the two Koreas and between North Korea and the United States would have been unthinkable at the end of last year after months of escalating tension and fear of war over the Norths nuclear and missile programs But then Kim declared in a New Years speech his country was a peaceloving and responsible nuclear power and called for lower military tension and improved ties with the South He also said he was considering sending a delegation to the Winter Olympics in South Korea in February a visit that began a succession of steps to improve ties WAR NOT OVER Pompeos visit to the North was arranged by South Korean intelligence chief Suh Hoon with his North Korean counterpart Kim Yong Chol and was intended to assess whether Kim was prepared to hold serious talks a US official said Pompeo flew from a US air force base in Osan south of Seoul an official with the Souths defense ministry said The Souths presidential office declined to comment on the trip Amid the diplomatic flurry CNN reported that Chinese President Xi Jinping also planned to visit Pyongyang soon after North Korean leader Kim made a surprise trip last month to China its major sole ally Speaking in Beijing Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said she had no information about any Xi visit to North Korea What I can stress is that China and North Korea have a tradition of high level mutual visits she told reporters China is willing to strengthen highlevel exchanges with North Korea deepen strategic communications expand talks and cooperation and to bring out the important leading role of highlevel contact in ChinaNorth Korea relations Trump said on Tuesday he backed efforts between North and South Korea aimed at ending the state of war People dont realize the Korean War has not ended Trump told reporters Its going on right now And they are discussing an end to the war Subject to a deal they have my blessing and they do have my blessing to discuss that Trump said he believed there was a lot of goodwill in the diplomatic push with North Korea but added it was possible the summit first proposed in March and which the president said could take place in late May or early June may not happen If the summit did not happen the United States and its allies would maintain pressure on North Korea through sanctions he said Nevertheless Pompeos conversations in North Korea had fueled Trumps belief that productive negotiations were possible according to a US senior official briefed on the trip Additional reporting by Soyoung Kim and Joyce Lee in SEOUL John Walcott and Steve Holland in WASHINGTON and Christian Shepherd in BEIJING Editing by Robert Birsel Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles In this April 17 story corrects spelling of cowling in fifth paragraph By Mark Makela PHILADELPHIA Reuters An engine on a Southwest Airlines flight with 149 people aboard exploded and broke apart in midair on Tuesday killing one passenger and nearly sucking another out of a shattered window according to airline and federal authorities and witness and media accounts The plane a Boeing 737700 which was bound to Dallas from New York made an emergency landing in Philadelphia The death of 43yearold Jennifer Riordan on Flight 1380 was the first in a US commercial aviation accident since 2009 according to National Transportation Safety Board NTSB statistics NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt told an evening news conference at the Philadelphia airport that a preliminary investigation found an engine fan blade missing having apparently broken off and that there was metal fatigue at the point where it normally attached Sumwalt said part of the engines covering called a cowling was found in Bernville Pennsylvania about 70 miles from the Philadelphia airport Related Coverage Southwest says aircraft hit by engine explosion was inspected this week It is very unusual so we are taking this event extremely seriously Sumwalt said This should not happen and we want to find out why it happened so that preventative measures can be put in place He said the investigation could take 12 to 15 months to complete Flight 1380 took off from New Yorks LaGuardia Airport at around 1027 am and was diverted to Philadelphia just under an hour later according to flight tracking website FlightAwarecom Southwest Chief Executive Officer Gary Kelly said the flight landed at Philadelphia International at around 1120 am The engine on the planes left side threw off shrapnel when it blew apart shattering a window and causing rapid cabin depressurization that nearly pulled a female passenger through the hole according to witness accounts and local news media reports We have a part of the aircraft missing so were going to need to slow down a bit the planes captain Tammy Jo Shults told air traffic controllers in audio from the cockpit released on NBC News Asked by a controller if the jet was on fire Shults said it was not but added They said there is a hole and someone went out A woman was partially was drawn out of the plane and pulled back in by other passengers Todd Bauer whose daughter was on the flight told the NBC affiliate in Philadelphia Riordan was a Wells Fargo banking executive and wellknown community volunteer from Albuquerque New Mexico according to a Wells Fargo official who spoke on condition of anonymity as she was unsure whether all of Riordans family had been notified of her death Riordan was on the way back from a New York business trip where she had sent a tweet on Monday showing the view from her hotel in Midtown Manhattan with the caption Great business stay Her Facebook page shows she was married with two children The plane which was bound for Dallas Love Field had been inspected as recently as Sunday according to Southwests Kelly who confirmed that Tuesdays fatality was the first of its kind in the carriers 51year history At 1118 am passenger Marty Martinez posted on Facebook a live video of himself on the plane wearing a breathing mask as the plane descended More than an hour later at 1227 pm Martinez posted pictures of a blownout window and the badly damaged engine ULTRASONIC INSPECTIONS Southwest Airlines said it was accelerating its existing engine inspection program and conducting ultrasonic inspections of fan blades of the CFM56 engines on all of its the 737 jets In 2017 the Federal Aviation Administration issued a proposed airworthiness directive on the engine after an uncontained engine failure on a Southwest flight in August 2016 What we want to do is see if anything in that airworthiness directive that came out from an event two years ago involving another Southwest airplane landed in Pensacola we want to see if this part might have been subjected to that airworthiness directive Sumwalt said The entire Southwest Airlines Family is devastated and extends its deepest heartfelt sympathy to the customers employees family members and loved ones affected by this tragic event Southwest said in a statement There were 144 passengers and five crew members aboard the flight One passenger was taken to a hospital in critical condition and seven people were treated for minor injuries at the scene Philadelphia Fire Department spokeswoman Kathy Matheson said Matheson could not confirm how the passenger in critical condition sustained her injuries Flight 1380 was diverted to Philadelphia for an emergency landing after crew members reported damage to an engine the fuselage and at least one window the Federal Aviation Administration said Emergency personnel monitor the damaged engine of Southwest Airlines Flight 1380 which diverted to the Philadelphia International Airport this morning after the airline crew reported damage to one of the aircrafts engines on a runway in Philadelphia Pennsylvania US April 17 2018 REUTERSMark Makela YELLING AND SCREAMING Everybody was going crazy and yelling and screaming passenger Martinez told CNN Martinez said objects flew out of the hole where the window had exploded and passengers right next to her were holding onto the woman being pulled out And meanwhile there was blood all over this mans hands He was tending to her Television images showed that most of the outer casing around the left engine of the Boeing Co 737700 ripped away and a window near the engine on the planes left side was missing All of a sudden we heard this loud bang rattling it felt like one of the engines went out The oxygen masks dropped passenger Kristopher Johnson told CNN It just shredded the leftside engine completely It was scary Southwest shares fell more than 3 percent after the NTSB reported the fatality before closing down 11 percent at 5427 on the New York Stock Exchange Boeing in a statement extended its condolences to the family of the woman killed and said it is providing assistance at the request and under the direction of the NTSB Slideshow 5 Images The Boeing 737 is the worlds mostsold aircraft and its engines supplied by a jointventure coowned by General Electric and Frances Safran called CFM International are the most widely used in the aircraft industry and are reported to be among the most reliable Any design issues with the longestablished CFM56 engine could have repercussions for fleets worldwide But given that thousands of the engines are already in use globally industry experts say the focus of the investigation is more likely to fall on oneoff production or maintenance issues though it is too early to say what caused the explosion Additional reporting by Tim Hepher in Paris Andrew Hay in New Mexico David Shepardson in Washington Alana Wise Anna Driver and Peter Szekeley in New York Jeffrey Dastin in San Francisco and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles Writing by Dan Whitcomb Editing by Bill Tarrant and Leslie Adler Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles SYDNEY Reuters Asian shares crept ahead on Wednesday after Wall Street took heart from upbeat corporate earnings though nagging concerns about trade barriers and the global growth outlook kept currencies and bonds subdued FILE PHOTO A man looks at an electronic stock quotation board outside a brokerage in Tokyo Japan February 9 2018 REUTERSToru Hanai Chinese markets struggled even as Beijing boosted liquidity in the banking system Shanghai blue chips hit an eightmonth low before recouping losses Late Tuesday the PBOC unexpectedly announced it would cut the cash banks must hold as reserves in a move that frees up lending for small firms but falls short of a broad monetary easing Mainland Chinese shares buckled after the United States banned American companies from selling components to Chinese telecom equipment maker ZTE Corp MSCIs broadest index of AsiaPacific shares outside Japan bounced 05 percent though that followed four straight sessions of losses Japans Nikkei climbed 12 percent with investors waiting for any developments on trade as Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe meets President Donald Trump at his MaraLago resort European shares are seen rising with spreadbetters expecting 0203 percent gains in Britains FTSE Frances Cac and Germanys Dax EMini futures for the SampampP 500 gained 01 percent after robust earnings from Netflix Goldman Sachs and healthcare companies fuelled optimism about what is expected to be the strongest earnings season in seven years Profits at the 48 SampampP500 companies that have announced earnings so far have risen 287 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier said Mutsumi Kagawa chief global strategist at Rakuten Securities in Tokyo The Dow ended Tuesday up 088 percent while the SampampP 500 rose 106 percent and the Nasdaq 178 percent The three main US indexes turned positive on the year which seems to suggest to me that markets are entering riskon mode from riskoff Kagawa said Yet there were signs of caution in the latest BofA Merrill Lynch survey of fund mangers which found investors squirreling more funds away into cash while cutting their equity allocation to an 18month low OPTIMISM TESTED The outlook for the global economy also darkened with just a net 5 percent of fund managers expecting stronger growth in the next 12 months the lowest since the United Kingdom voted to leave the EU in June 2016 While the IMF left its global growth forecasts unchanged for 2018 and 2019 on Tuesday it judged mediumterm risks were to the downside citing financial vulnerabilities geopolitical strains and tariffs The global narrative has quickly shifted from synchronous global growth upgraded growth and glimmers of inflation in early 2018 to a focus on tariffs and protectionist rhetoric said Robert Rennie head of financial markets strategy at Westpac We ultimately believe that we will see a negotiated solution but there is still a long way to go and further bouts of volatility and headline risk seem assured Worries about the longevity of the US economic expansion were one reason the Treasury curve was at its flattest in a decade and why some interestrate curves were starting to price in rate cuts for 2020 The air of uncertainty was keeping currencies restrained The euro was stuck at 12370 after topping out at 12413 overnight while the dollar index was barely moved at 89538 The dollar did nudge modestly higher on the yen to 10725 helped by signs of progress in US talks with North Korea US Secretary of State nominee and CIA Director Mike Pompeo secretly visited North Korea and met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to discuss a planned summit with President Trump In commodity markets gold was a fraction easier at 134411 an ounce Oil prices firmed with Brent crude futures up 32 cents to 7190 a barrel while US crude rose 33 cents to 6685 a barrel Reporting by Wayne Cole Additional reporting by Hideyuki Sano in Tokyo Editing by Eric Meijer Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p /> <p>On Wednesday, President Barack Obama spoke at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, on the 50th anniversary of the <a href="" type="internal">March on Washington</a>.</p> <p>Video and transcript of the speech are below:</p> <p /> <p /> <p>Here&#8217;s the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/transcript-president-obamas-speech-on-the-50th-anniversary-of-the-march-on-washington/2013/08/28/0138e01e-0ffb-11e3-8cdd-bcdc09410972_story.html" type="external">transcript</a>:</p> <p>To the King family, who have sacrificed and inspired so much, to President Clinton, President Carter, Vice President Biden, Jill, fellow Americans, five decades ago today, Americans came to this honored place to lay claim to a promise made at our founding.</p> <p>We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.</p> <p>In 1963, almost 200 years after those words were set to paper, a full century after a great war was fought and emancipation proclaimed, that promise, those truths remained unmet. And so they came by the thousands, from every corner of our country &#8212; men and women, young and old, blacks who longed for freedom and whites who could no longer accept freedom for themselves while witnessing the subjugation of others. Across the land, congregations sent them off with food and with prayer. In the middle of the night, entire blocks of Harlem came out to wish them well.</p> <p>With the few dollars they scrimped from their labor, some bought tickets and boarded buses, even if they couldn&#8217;t always sit where they wanted to sit. Those with less money hitchhiked, or walked. They were seamstresses, and steelworkers, and students, and teachers, maids and pullman porters. They shared simple meals and bunked together on floors.</p> <p>And then, on a hot summer day, they assembled here, in our nation&#8217;s capital, under the shadow of the great emancipator, to offer testimony of injustice, to petition their government for redress and to awaken America&#8217;s long-slumbering conscience.</p> <p>We rightly and best remember Dr. King&#8217;s soaring oratory that day, how he gave mighty voice to the quiet hopes of millions, how he offered a salvation path for oppressed and oppressors alike. His words belong to the ages, possessing a power and prophecy unmatched in our time.</p> <p>But we would do well to recall that day itself also belonged to those ordinary people whose names never appeared in the history books, never got on TV.</p> <p>Many had gone to segregated schools and sat at segregated lunch counters, had lived in towns where they couldn&#8217;t vote, in cities where their votes didn&#8217;t matter. There were couples in love who couldn&#8217;t marry, soldiers who fought for freedom abroad that they found denied to them at home. They had seen loved ones beaten and children fire- hosed. And they had every reason to lash out in anger or resign themselves to a bitter fate.</p> <p>And yet they chose a different path. In the face of hatred, they prayed for their tormentors. In the face of violence, they stood up and sat in with the moral force of nonviolence. Willingly, they went to jail to protest unjust laws, their cells swelling with the sound of freedom songs. A lifetime of indignities had taught them that no man can take away the dignity and grace that God grants us. They had learned through hard experience what&amp;#160;Frederick Douglass once taught: that freedom is not given; it must be won through struggle and discipline, persistence and faith.</p> <p>That was the spirit they brought here that day.</p> <p>That was the spirit young people like John Lewis brought that day. That was the spirit that they carried with them like a torch back to their cities and their neighborhoods, that steady flame of conscience and courage that would sustain them through the campaigns to come, through boycotts and voter registration drives and smaller marches, far from the spotlight, through the loss of four little girls in Birmingham, the carnage of Edmund Pettus Bridge and the agony of Dallas, California, Memphis. Through setbacks and heartbreaks and gnawing doubt, that flame of justice flickered and never died.</p> <p>And because they kept marching, America changed. Because they marched, the civil rights law was passed. Because they marched, the voting rights law was signed. Because they marched, doors of opportunity and education swung open so their daughters and sons could finally imagine a life for themselves beyond washing somebody else&#8217;s laundry or shining somebody else&#8217;s shoes. (Applause.) Because they marched, city councils changed and state legislatures changed and Congress changed and, yes, eventually the White House changed. (Cheers, applause.)</p> <p>Because they marched, America became more free and more fair, not just for African-Americans but for women and Latinos, Asians and Native Americans, for Catholics, Jews and Muslims, for gays, for Americans with disabilities.</p> <p>America changed for you and for me.</p> <p>And the entire world drew strength from that example, whether it be young people who watched from the other side of an Iron Curtain and would eventually tear down that wall, or the young people inside South Africa who would eventually end the scourge of apartheid. (Applause.) Those are the victories they won, with iron wills and hope in their hearts. That is the transformation that they wrought with each step of their well-worn shoes. That&#8217;s the depth that I and millions of Americans owe those maids, those laborers, those porters, those secretaries &#8212; folks who could have run a company, maybe, if they had ever had a chance; those white students who put themselves in harm&#8217;s way even though they didn&#8217;t have to &#8212; (applause) &#8212; those Japanese- Americans who recalled their own interment, those Jewish Americans who had survived the Holocaust, people who could have given up and given in but kept on keeping on, knowing that weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning &#8212; (cheers, applause) &#8212; on the battlefield of justice, men and women without rank or wealth or title or fame would liberate us all, in ways that our children now take for granted as people of all colors and creeds live together and learn together and walk together, and fight alongside one another and love one another, and judge one another by the content of our character in this greatest nation on Earth.</p> <p>To dismiss the magnitude of this progress, to suggest, as some sometimes do, that little has changed &#8212; that dishonors the courage and the sacrifice of those who paid the price to march in those years. (Applause.) Medgar Evers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, Martin Luther King Jr., they did not die in vain. (Applause.) Their victory was great.</p> <p>But we would dishonor those heroes as well to suggest that the work of this nation is somehow complete. The arc of the moral universe may bend towards justice, but it doesn&#8217;t bend on its own. To secure the gains this country has made requires constant vigilance, not complacency. Whether it&#8217;s by challenging those who erect new barriers to the vote or ensuring that the scales of justice work equally for all in the criminal justice system and not simply a pipeline from underfunded schools to overcrowded jails &#8212; (applause) &#8212; it requires vigilance.</p> <p>(Cheers, applause.)</p> <p>And we&#8217;ll suffer the occasional setback. But we will win these fights. This country has changed too much. (Applause.) People of good will, regardless of party, are too plentiful for those with ill will to change history&#8217;s currents. (Applause.)</p> <p>In some ways, though, the securing of civil rights, voting rights, the eradication of legalized discrimination &#8212; the very significance of these victories may have obscured a second goal of the march, for the men and women who gathered 50 years ago were not there in search of some abstract idea. They were there seeking jobs as well as justice &#8212; (applause) &#8212; not just the absence of oppression but the presence of economic opportunity. For what does it profit a man, Dr. King would ask, to sit at an integrated lunch counter if he can&#8217;t afford the meal?</p> <p>This idea that &#8212; that one&#8217;s liberty is linked to one&#8217;s livelihood, that the pursuit of happiness requires the dignity of work, the skills to find work, decent pay, some measure of material security &#8212; this idea was not new.</p> <p>Lincoln himself understood the Declaration of Independence in such terms, as a promise that in due time, the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men and that all should have an equal chance.</p> <p>Dr. King explained that the goals of African-Americans were identical to working people of all races: decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old age security, health and welfare measures &#8212; conditions in which families can grow, have education for their children and respect in the community.</p> <p>What King was describing has been the dream of every American. It&#8217;s what&#8217;s lured for centuries new arrivals to our shores. And it&#8217;s along this second dimension of economic opportunity, the chance through honest toil to advance one&#8217;s station in life, that the goals of 50 years ago have fallen most short.</p> <p>Yes, there have been examples of success within black America that would have been unimaginable a half-century ago. But as has already been noted, black unemployment has remained almost twice as high as white employment (sic), Latino unemployment close behind. The gap in wealth between races has not lessened, it&#8217;s grown.</p> <p>As President Clinton indicated, the position of all working Americans, regardless of color, has eroded, making the dream Dr. King described even more elusive.</p> <p>For over a decade, working Americans of all races have seen their wages and incomes stagnate. Even as corporate profits soar, even as the pay of a fortunate few explodes, inequality has steadily risen over the decades. Upward mobility has become harder. In too many communities across this country in cities and suburbs and rural hamlets, the shadow of poverty casts a pall over our youth, their lives a fortress of substandard schools and diminished prospects, inadequate health care and perennial violence.</p> <p>And so as we mark this anniversary, we must remind ourselves that the measure of progress for those who marched 50 years ago was not merely how many blacks had joined the ranks of millionaires; it was whether this country would admit all people who were willing to work hard, regardless of race, into the ranks of a middle-class life. (Applause.) The test was not and never has been whether the doors of opportunity are cracked a bit wider for a few. It was whether our economic system provides a fair shot for the many, for the black custodian and the white steelworker, the immigrant dishwasher and the Native American veteran. To win that battle, to answer that call &#8212; this remains our great unfinished business.</p> <p>We shouldn&#8217;t fool ourselves. The task will not be easy. Since 1963 the economy&#8217;s changed.</p> <p>The twin forces of technology and global competition have subtracted those jobs that once provided a foothold into the middle class, reduced the bargaining power of American workers.</p> <p>And our politics has suffered. Entrenched interests &#8212; those who benefit from an unjust status quo resisted any government efforts to give working families a fair deal, marshaling an army of lobbyists and opinion makers to argue that minimum wage increases or stronger labor laws or taxes on the wealthy who could afford it just to fund crumbling schools &#8212; that all these things violated sound economic principles.</p> <p>We&#8217;d be told that growing inequality was the price for a growing economy, a measure of the free market &#8212; that greed was good and compassion ineffective, and those without jobs or health care had only themselves to blame.</p> <p>And then there were those elected officials who found it useful to practice the old politics of division, doing their best to convince middle-class Americans of a great untruth, that government was somehow itself to blame for their growing economic insecurity &#8212; that distant bureaucrats were taking their hard-earned dollars to benefit the welfare cheat or the illegal immigrant.</p> <p>And then, if we&#8217;re honest with ourselves, we&#8217;ll admit that during the course of 50 years, there were times when some of us, claiming to push for change, lost our way. The anguish of assassinations set off self-defeating riots.</p> <p>Legitimate grievances against police brutality tipped into excuse- making for criminal behavior. Racial politics could cut both ways as the transformative message of unity and brotherhood was drowned out by the language of recrimination. And what had once been a call for equality of opportunity, the chance for all Americans to work hard and get ahead was too often framed as a mere desire for government support, as if we had no agency in our own liberation, as if poverty was an excuse for not raising your child and the bigotry of others was reason to give up on yourself. All of that history is how progress stalled. That&#8217;s how hope was diverted. It&#8217;s how our country remained divided.</p> <p>But the good news is, just as was true in 1963, we now have a choice. We can continue down our current path in which the gears of this great democracy grind to a halt and our children accept a life of lower expectations, where politics is a zero-sum game, where a few do very well while struggling families of every race fight over a shrinking economic pie. That&#8217;s one path. Or we can have the courage to change.</p> <p>The March on Washington teaches us that we are not trapped by the mistakes of history, that we are masters of our fate.</p> <p>But it also teaches us that the promise of this nation will only be kept when we work together. We&#8217;ll have to reignite the embers of empathy and fellow feeling, the coalition of conscience that found expression in this place 50 years ago.</p> <p>And I believe that spirit is there, that true force inside each of us. I see it when a white mother recognizes her own daughter in the face of a poor black child. I see it when the black youth thinks of his own grandfather in the dignified steps of an elderly white man. It&#8217;s there when the native born recognizing that striving spirit of a new immigrant, when the interracial couple connects the pain of a gay couple who were discriminated against and understands it as their own. That&#8217;s where courage comes from, when we turn not from each other or on each other but towards one another, and we find that we do not walk alone. That&#8217;s where courage comes from. (Applause.)</p> <p>And with that courage, we can stand together for good jobs and just wages. With that courage, we can stand together for the right to health care in the richest nation on earth for every person. (Applause.) With that courage, we can stand together for the right of every child, from the corners of Anacostia to the hills of Appalachia, to get an education that stirs the mind and captures the spirit and prepares them for the world that awaits them. (Applause.) With that courage, we can feed the hungry and house the homeless and transform bleak wastelands of poverty into fields of commerce and promise.</p> <p>America, I know the road will be long, but I know we can get there. Yes, we will stumble, but I know we&#8217;ll get back up. That&#8217;s how a movement happens. That&#8217;s how history bends. That&#8217;s how, when somebody is faint of heart, somebody else brings them along and says, come on, we&#8217;re marching. (Cheers, applause.)</p> <p>There&#8217;s a reason why so many who marched that day and in the days to come were young, for the young are unconstrained by habits of fear, unconstrained by the conventions of what is. They dared to dream different and to imagine something better. And I am convinced that same imagination, the same hunger of purpose serves in this generation.</p> <p>We might not face the same dangers as 1963, but the fierce urgency of now remains. We may never duplicate the swelling crowds and dazzling processions of that day so long ago, no one can match King&#8217;s brilliance, but the same flames that lit the heart of all who are willing to take a first step for justice, I know that flame remains. (Applause.)</p> <p>That tireless teacher who gets to class early and stays late and dips into her own pocket to buy supplies because she believes that every child is her charge &#8212; she&#8217;s marching. (Applause.) That successful businessman who doesn&#8217;t have to, but pays his workers a fair wage and then offers a shot to a man, maybe an ex-con, who&#8217;s down on his luck &#8212; he&#8217;s marching.</p> <p>(Cheers, applause.) The mother who pours her love into her daughter so that she grows up with the confidence to walk through the same doors as anybody&#8217;s son &#8212; she&#8217;s marching. (Cheers, applause.) The father who realizes the most important job he&#8217;ll ever have is raising his boy right, even if he didn&#8217;t have a father, especially if he didn&#8217;t have a father at home &#8212; he&#8217;s marching. (Applause.) The battle-scarred veterans who devote themselves not only to helping their fellow warriors stand again and walk again and run again, but to keep serving their country when they come home &#8212; they are marching. (Applause.) Everyone who realizes what those glorious patriots knew on that day, that change does not come from Washington but to Washington, that change has always been built on our willingness, we, the people, to take on the mantle of citizenship &#8212; you are marching. (Applause.)</p> <p>And that&#8217;s the lesson of our past, that&#8217;s the promise of tomorrow, that in the face of impossible odds, people who love their country can change it. And when millions of Americans of every race and every region, every faith and every station can join together in a spirit of brotherhood, then those mountains will be made low, and those rough places will be made plain, and those crooked places, they straighten out towards grace, and we will vindicate the faith of those who sacrificed so much and live up to the true meaning of our creed as one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. (Cheers, applause.)</p> <p />

Video and Transcript: President Obama’s Speech on 50th Anniversary of MLK’s “I Have a Dream”

https://motherjones.com/politics/2013/08/video-and-transcript-president-obama-speech-50th-anniversary-mlk-i-have-dream/

2013-08-28

4left

On Wednesday President Barack Obama spoke at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC on the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington Video and transcript of the speech are below Here8217s the transcript To the King family who have sacrificed and inspired so much to President Clinton President Carter Vice President Biden Jill fellow Americans five decades ago today Americans came to this honored place to lay claim to a promise made at our founding We hold these truths to be selfevident that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness In 1963 almost 200 years after those words were set to paper a full century after a great war was fought and emancipation proclaimed that promise those truths remained unmet And so they came by the thousands from every corner of our country 8212 men and women young and old blacks who longed for freedom and whites who could no longer accept freedom for themselves while witnessing the subjugation of others Across the land congregations sent them off with food and with prayer In the middle of the night entire blocks of Harlem came out to wish them well With the few dollars they scrimped from their labor some bought tickets and boarded buses even if they couldn8217t always sit where they wanted to sit Those with less money hitchhiked or walked They were seamstresses and steelworkers and students and teachers maids and pullman porters They shared simple meals and bunked together on floors And then on a hot summer day they assembled here in our nation8217s capital under the shadow of the great emancipator to offer testimony of injustice to petition their government for redress and to awaken America8217s longslumbering conscience We rightly and best remember Dr King8217s soaring oratory that day how he gave mighty voice to the quiet hopes of millions how he offered a salvation path for oppressed and oppressors alike His words belong to the ages possessing a power and prophecy unmatched in our time But we would do well to recall that day itself also belonged to those ordinary people whose names never appeared in the history books never got on TV Many had gone to segregated schools and sat at segregated lunch counters had lived in towns where they couldn8217t vote in cities where their votes didn8217t matter There were couples in love who couldn8217t marry soldiers who fought for freedom abroad that they found denied to them at home They had seen loved ones beaten and children fire hosed And they had every reason to lash out in anger or resign themselves to a bitter fate And yet they chose a different path In the face of hatred they prayed for their tormentors In the face of violence they stood up and sat in with the moral force of nonviolence Willingly they went to jail to protest unjust laws their cells swelling with the sound of freedom songs A lifetime of indignities had taught them that no man can take away the dignity and grace that God grants us They had learned through hard experience whatamp160Frederick Douglass once taught that freedom is not given it must be won through struggle and discipline persistence and faith That was the spirit they brought here that day That was the spirit young people like John Lewis brought that day That was the spirit that they carried with them like a torch back to their cities and their neighborhoods that steady flame of conscience and courage that would sustain them through the campaigns to come through boycotts and voter registration drives and smaller marches far from the spotlight through the loss of four little girls in Birmingham the carnage of Edmund Pettus Bridge and the agony of Dallas California Memphis Through setbacks and heartbreaks and gnawing doubt that flame of justice flickered and never died And because they kept marching America changed Because they marched the civil rights law was passed Because they marched the voting rights law was signed Because they marched doors of opportunity and education swung open so their daughters and sons could finally imagine a life for themselves beyond washing somebody else8217s laundry or shining somebody else8217s shoes Applause Because they marched city councils changed and state legislatures changed and Congress changed and yes eventually the White House changed Cheers applause Because they marched America became more free and more fair not just for AfricanAmericans but for women and Latinos Asians and Native Americans for Catholics Jews and Muslims for gays for Americans with disabilities America changed for you and for me And the entire world drew strength from that example whether it be young people who watched from the other side of an Iron Curtain and would eventually tear down that wall or the young people inside South Africa who would eventually end the scourge of apartheid Applause Those are the victories they won with iron wills and hope in their hearts That is the transformation that they wrought with each step of their wellworn shoes That8217s the depth that I and millions of Americans owe those maids those laborers those porters those secretaries 8212 folks who could have run a company maybe if they had ever had a chance those white students who put themselves in harm8217s way even though they didn8217t have to 8212 applause 8212 those Japanese Americans who recalled their own interment those Jewish Americans who had survived the Holocaust people who could have given up and given in but kept on keeping on knowing that weeping may endure for a night but joy cometh in the morning 8212 cheers applause 8212 on the battlefield of justice men and women without rank or wealth or title or fame would liberate us all in ways that our children now take for granted as people of all colors and creeds live together and learn together and walk together and fight alongside one another and love one another and judge one another by the content of our character in this greatest nation on Earth To dismiss the magnitude of this progress to suggest as some sometimes do that little has changed 8212 that dishonors the courage and the sacrifice of those who paid the price to march in those years Applause Medgar Evers James Chaney Andrew Goodman Michael Schwerner Martin Luther King Jr they did not die in vain Applause Their victory was great But we would dishonor those heroes as well to suggest that the work of this nation is somehow complete The arc of the moral universe may bend towards justice but it doesn8217t bend on its own To secure the gains this country has made requires constant vigilance not complacency Whether it8217s by challenging those who erect new barriers to the vote or ensuring that the scales of justice work equally for all in the criminal justice system and not simply a pipeline from underfunded schools to overcrowded jails 8212 applause 8212 it requires vigilance Cheers applause And we8217ll suffer the occasional setback But we will win these fights This country has changed too much Applause People of good will regardless of party are too plentiful for those with ill will to change history8217s currents Applause In some ways though the securing of civil rights voting rights the eradication of legalized discrimination 8212 the very significance of these victories may have obscured a second goal of the march for the men and women who gathered 50 years ago were not there in search of some abstract idea They were there seeking jobs as well as justice 8212 applause 8212 not just the absence of oppression but the presence of economic opportunity For what does it profit a man Dr King would ask to sit at an integrated lunch counter if he can8217t afford the meal This idea that 8212 that one8217s liberty is linked to one8217s livelihood that the pursuit of happiness requires the dignity of work the skills to find work decent pay some measure of material security 8212 this idea was not new Lincoln himself understood the Declaration of Independence in such terms as a promise that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men and that all should have an equal chance Dr King explained that the goals of AfricanAmericans were identical to working people of all races decent wages fair working conditions livable housing old age security health and welfare measures 8212 conditions in which families can grow have education for their children and respect in the community What King was describing has been the dream of every American It8217s what8217s lured for centuries new arrivals to our shores And it8217s along this second dimension of economic opportunity the chance through honest toil to advance one8217s station in life that the goals of 50 years ago have fallen most short Yes there have been examples of success within black America that would have been unimaginable a halfcentury ago But as has already been noted black unemployment has remained almost twice as high as white employment sic Latino unemployment close behind The gap in wealth between races has not lessened it8217s grown As President Clinton indicated the position of all working Americans regardless of color has eroded making the dream Dr King described even more elusive For over a decade working Americans of all races have seen their wages and incomes stagnate Even as corporate profits soar even as the pay of a fortunate few explodes inequality has steadily risen over the decades Upward mobility has become harder In too many communities across this country in cities and suburbs and rural hamlets the shadow of poverty casts a pall over our youth their lives a fortress of substandard schools and diminished prospects inadequate health care and perennial violence And so as we mark this anniversary we must remind ourselves that the measure of progress for those who marched 50 years ago was not merely how many blacks had joined the ranks of millionaires it was whether this country would admit all people who were willing to work hard regardless of race into the ranks of a middleclass life Applause The test was not and never has been whether the doors of opportunity are cracked a bit wider for a few It was whether our economic system provides a fair shot for the many for the black custodian and the white steelworker the immigrant dishwasher and the Native American veteran To win that battle to answer that call 8212 this remains our great unfinished business We shouldn8217t fool ourselves The task will not be easy Since 1963 the economy8217s changed The twin forces of technology and global competition have subtracted those jobs that once provided a foothold into the middle class reduced the bargaining power of American workers And our politics has suffered Entrenched interests 8212 those who benefit from an unjust status quo resisted any government efforts to give working families a fair deal marshaling an army of lobbyists and opinion makers to argue that minimum wage increases or stronger labor laws or taxes on the wealthy who could afford it just to fund crumbling schools 8212 that all these things violated sound economic principles We8217d be told that growing inequality was the price for a growing economy a measure of the free market 8212 that greed was good and compassion ineffective and those without jobs or health care had only themselves to blame And then there were those elected officials who found it useful to practice the old politics of division doing their best to convince middleclass Americans of a great untruth that government was somehow itself to blame for their growing economic insecurity 8212 that distant bureaucrats were taking their hardearned dollars to benefit the welfare cheat or the illegal immigrant And then if we8217re honest with ourselves we8217ll admit that during the course of 50 years there were times when some of us claiming to push for change lost our way The anguish of assassinations set off selfdefeating riots Legitimate grievances against police brutality tipped into excuse making for criminal behavior Racial politics could cut both ways as the transformative message of unity and brotherhood was drowned out by the language of recrimination And what had once been a call for equality of opportunity the chance for all Americans to work hard and get ahead was too often framed as a mere desire for government support as if we had no agency in our own liberation as if poverty was an excuse for not raising your child and the bigotry of others was reason to give up on yourself All of that history is how progress stalled That8217s how hope was diverted It8217s how our country remained divided But the good news is just as was true in 1963 we now have a choice We can continue down our current path in which the gears of this great democracy grind to a halt and our children accept a life of lower expectations where politics is a zerosum game where a few do very well while struggling families of every race fight over a shrinking economic pie That8217s one path Or we can have the courage to change The March on Washington teaches us that we are not trapped by the mistakes of history that we are masters of our fate But it also teaches us that the promise of this nation will only be kept when we work together We8217ll have to reignite the embers of empathy and fellow feeling the coalition of conscience that found expression in this place 50 years ago And I believe that spirit is there that true force inside each of us I see it when a white mother recognizes her own daughter in the face of a poor black child I see it when the black youth thinks of his own grandfather in the dignified steps of an elderly white man It8217s there when the native born recognizing that striving spirit of a new immigrant when the interracial couple connects the pain of a gay couple who were discriminated against and understands it as their own That8217s where courage comes from when we turn not from each other or on each other but towards one another and we find that we do not walk alone That8217s where courage comes from Applause And with that courage we can stand together for good jobs and just wages With that courage we can stand together for the right to health care in the richest nation on earth for every person Applause With that courage we can stand together for the right of every child from the corners of Anacostia to the hills of Appalachia to get an education that stirs the mind and captures the spirit and prepares them for the world that awaits them Applause With that courage we can feed the hungry and house the homeless and transform bleak wastelands of poverty into fields of commerce and promise America I know the road will be long but I know we can get there Yes we will stumble but I know we8217ll get back up That8217s how a movement happens That8217s how history bends That8217s how when somebody is faint of heart somebody else brings them along and says come on we8217re marching Cheers applause There8217s a reason why so many who marched that day and in the days to come were young for the young are unconstrained by habits of fear unconstrained by the conventions of what is They dared to dream different and to imagine something better And I am convinced that same imagination the same hunger of purpose serves in this generation We might not face the same dangers as 1963 but the fierce urgency of now remains We may never duplicate the swelling crowds and dazzling processions of that day so long ago no one can match King8217s brilliance but the same flames that lit the heart of all who are willing to take a first step for justice I know that flame remains Applause That tireless teacher who gets to class early and stays late and dips into her own pocket to buy supplies because she believes that every child is her charge 8212 she8217s marching Applause That successful businessman who doesn8217t have to but pays his workers a fair wage and then offers a shot to a man maybe an excon who8217s down on his luck 8212 he8217s marching Cheers applause The mother who pours her love into her daughter so that she grows up with the confidence to walk through the same doors as anybody8217s son 8212 she8217s marching Cheers applause The father who realizes the most important job he8217ll ever have is raising his boy right even if he didn8217t have a father especially if he didn8217t have a father at home 8212 he8217s marching Applause The battlescarred veterans who devote themselves not only to helping their fellow warriors stand again and walk again and run again but to keep serving their country when they come home 8212 they are marching Applause Everyone who realizes what those glorious patriots knew on that day that change does not come from Washington but to Washington that change has always been built on our willingness we the people to take on the mantle of citizenship 8212 you are marching Applause And that8217s the lesson of our past that8217s the promise of tomorrow that in the face of impossible odds people who love their country can change it And when millions of Americans of every race and every region every faith and every station can join together in a spirit of brotherhood then those mountains will be made low and those rough places will be made plain and those crooked places they straighten out towards grace and we will vindicate the faith of those who sacrificed so much and live up to the true meaning of our creed as one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all Cheers applause

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<p>Those disturbed by the United States&#8217; largest-in-the-world incarceration rate have some new reasons to be cautiously optimistic. President Obama nominated an opponent of the drug war to the Justice Department&#8217;s highest civil rights position, signaling the possibility that the costly and counterproductive imprisonment of drug users may be coming to an end. Conservatives from Newt Gingrich to Jeb Bush to Rand Paul are advocating for less incarceration and an end to employment discrimination for people with criminal records, hinting that crime panics won&#8217;t be the campaign fodder they once were.[1] The public is also less concerned with crime. In 1994, 37 percent of respondents listed crime as the most important problem facing the country. In 2014, only 2 percent did.[2] That might be because only half as many people reported being the victim of a violent crime in 2013 as did in 1994. The incarceration rate is also declining (albeit slightly) after 40 years of steep increases.[3]</p> <p>This pivotal moment presents the socialist and social democratic left with possibilities and pitfalls. With a less-fevered crime discussion, now might be the best time to adequately address the harms that crime visits on our communities. Obviously, stopping crime is important, but we must situate it as one harm among many. There are preventative responses to crime that are likely cheaper than our current criminal justice response, that will avoid the human consequences of mass incarceration, and that will bolster a traditional social democratic agenda. There are groups pioneering community-based responses to violence that stop the causes of violence. The time has never been better to show that reducing inequality, providing health care, creating affordable housing, and reinvesting in schools are all crime-stopping measures. As some conservatives shift their positions on crime, we might be tempted to ally with the right. But, as I will argue, we should remember that the anti-prison right will be useful only in specific ways, lest we further dismantle social programs.</p> <p>The left has good reasons to address crime. The working class, the poor, LGBT folks, and people of color are all at disproportionate risk for victimization.[4] If we want an equitable distribution of wealth we no doubt also want an equitable distribution of safety. Addressing crime is important, and doing so will mean replacing the traditional, heavily loaded definitions of crimes. Drug use and theft are not the problems they are often made out to be.</p> <p>Drug use on college campuses is as common as drug use on city streets, but drug laws are enforced much differently there. What qualifies as a crime for someone on a city street corner is more likely to be ignored&#8212;or met with treatment&#8212;on a college campus. If we look to reduce the harm of drugs, rather than reduce &#8220;crime,&#8221; our strategies will look more like public health and less like criminal justice, more needle exchanges and fewer police.</p> <p>Unlike drugs, theft causes real harms, but its impact is far less than often assumed. Unpaid taxes cost Americans 15 times more than property theft did in 2006 (the most recent year with data).[5] Tax evasion and investment banks&#8217; ruinous schemes pose greater risks than burglars. That theft is more prevalent in poor communities reveals the need for jobs, not prison cells. Job creation is the best way to prevent theft, and, as will be explored below, restorative justice practices are better responses to theft than the criminal justice system. Police and prisons do little to address property loss in part because arrest and incarceration hurt the possibility for future employment, increasing the likelihood of people returning to theft for income. Voters in California showed in November 2014 that they are getting wise to the wastefulness of drug and theft arrests, as 58 percent of them approved a ballot measure reducing the penalties for many nonviolent crimes.[6]</p> <p>It is perhaps easy to demonstrate that drug use and nonviolent theft would be better served by non-police responses. Violent crime requires a more difficult reckoning. Homicide is the second leading cause of death for men aged 15-24 (death from unintended injuries is the first). It is not easy to ignore. The harm is real, but contrary to stories told during political campaigns, homicides and other violent crimes are more likely committed by someone the victim knows than by a stranger.[7] Police are ill-equipped to prevent such known-attacker violence. Later, I will describe groups that are providing non-police responses to violence and discuss how understanding the causes of such violence will help us understand possible solutions. First, though, it is important to see why one commonly proposed solution to violence causes more harm than good.</p> <p>The Big &#8220;Reform&#8221; That Hurt</p> <p>The government claimed that incarceration&#8212;its response to crime that defined the past four decades&#8212;would stop violence and &#8220;urban unrest,&#8221; but instead it has helped shore up whites&#8217; economic and political advantage while devastating poor communities of color. The summary statistics are well known: between 1975 and 2005, the U.S. incarceration rate quintupled, putting 1 out of every 100 people behind bars, more than any other country in the world and more than at any time in U.S. history. Black and Latino people are a quarter of the population at large, but 58 percent of the incarcerated population. One in nine black children has a parent incarcerated.[8]</p> <p>The racial disparity in incarceration has translated into a host of unearned benefits for white people. Obviously, people without criminal records, who are disproportionately rich and white, are favored in hiring decisions over people with criminal records. Of people who get arrested, most have jobs prior to the arrest,[9] but incarceration interrupts those jobs and becomes time spent not gaining experience and skills, further pushing formerly incarcerated people into low-status and low-wage jobs. Because incarceration combines with racism to force many people of color to the bottom of the labor hierarchy, whites have disproportionately benefited from economic booms and have been buffered from recessions. Sociologist Bruce Western found that, over all, black men obtained no benefit in either jobs or wages from the 1990s economic expansion because of their overrepresentation in prisons.[10]</p> <p>Mass incarceration has also helped increase white political power. One in 13 black men cannot vote because of a felony conviction, and in Florida, Kentucky, and Virginia the figure is one in five.[11] Sociologists Chris Uggen and Jeff Manza analyzed the outcome of U.S. senate and presidential races between 1978 and 2002 and found that if people with felony convictions had been allowed to vote, seven senate races and the 2000 presidential election that were won by Republicans would have been carried by Democrats.[12]</p> <p>Does mass incarceration&#8217;s role in reducing crime outweighs all of these negative effects? The trouble is, the prison boom did not have a large effect on crime. The National Research Council convened a group of experts to determine whether the incarceration boom and the crime decline were related and they found, summarizing numerous multi-year studies, that &#8220;the growth in incarceration rates reduced crime, but the magnitude of the crime reduction remains highly uncertain and the evidence suggests it was unlikely to have been large.&#8221;[13] One of the studies they cited found incarceration was responsible for 5-10 percent of the crime drop. On the other hand, sociologist Todd Clear has found that high incarceration rates so destabilize some neighborhoods that crime there actually increases in response.[14]</p> <p>I linger on the effects of prison not just to show that the current government response to crime has been horribly counterproductive and supportive of white supremacy, but also because understanding how the current government response to crime has hurt helps us understand how it can be changed. For instance, state governments around the country currently spend the bulk of their corrections budgets in rural, mostly white towns where prisons are usually located. This government expenditure, what geographer Ruth Wilson Gilmore calls &#8220;carceral Keynesianism,&#8221;[15] redistributes money from the mostly urban neighborhoods from which prisoners largely come to the mostly white towns where prisoners are sent. In 2004, there were 35 &#8220;million-dollar blocks&#8221; in Brooklyn, New York, blocks whose residents the state spent over one million dollars locking up. Government capacity could be redirected to benefit&#8212;rather than cage&#8212;the residents of those blocks.[16]</p> <p>Police and corrections budgets are ripe to be redirected toward more beneficial ends. Local government spending on police has grown 300 percent since the 1970s to an average of $295 per person. Shifting this spending towards housing, jobs, healthcare, and education would combat inequality, removing the conditions of poverty that often cause crime. Reparations for slavery would be an especially beneficial use for old corrections dollars because it would address the racialized way that incarceration has benefited white people and hurt black people.</p> <p>Community Responses to Violence</p> <p>Public housing is usually thought of as a nexus of crime, places where poverty and poor conditions combine to foster drug use and violence. But in a study of Mount Laurel, New Jersey, sociologist Douglas Massey and his colleagues found that locating public housing in the town did not increase crime rates.[17] Residents who moved into the subsidized housing benefited from lower crime levels, and their neighbors experienced no more crime after the public housing was built. That the Mount Laurel initiative included high-quality homes that were well maintained and not crowded likely contributed to their safety&#8212;but these should be characteristics of all public housing. Other studies have shown that prenatal health care, quality pre-K, and steady employment are all correlated with lower crime rates.[18] The success of these preventative measures show that a more holistic approach is needed to reduce crime. The criminal justice system need not be our primary response to harm. It also indicates that a traditional socialist platform is consistent with&#8212;indeed supportive of&#8212;lower crime rates.</p> <p>Holistic preventative measures will help, but even with them, interpersonal violence will occur. Fortunately, community-based responses to violence are beginning to replace individualistic ones. One approach, called restorative justice, takes into account not just the perpetrator and a punishment, but the whole range of people affected by a crime: the victims, the offenders, and their communities. As people who understand that solutions take a village, socialists and social democrats are natural proponents of restorative justice. Rather than seeking a prison term, a restorative justice conference seeks discussion and restitution in a manner that more closely resembles a truth and reconciliation committee than a gulag. While the exact implementation of such practices varies across the United States, they are undergoing wide adoption as alternatives to traditional criminal justice procedures for crimes as diverse as theft and murder.[19] Schools like New York City&#8217;s Lyons Community School are avoiding suspensions and detentions using a restorative justice model.[20] Developing community-based justice practices will not just address the narrow slice of harms that get defined as crimes, but will deal with inter-personal harms that happen more frequently.</p> <p>Restorative justice work helps address harm after it has happened. There are groups working to stop violence before it happens without appealing to the criminal justice system. Cure Violence, a group made famous in the 2011 documentary The Interrupters, takes a public health approach to violence. The group employs &#8220;violence interrupters&#8221; who are from the neighborhoods in which they work and were often previously involved in violence themselves. The group views killings in retaliation for other killings as a disease that can be stopped. To this end they meet with victims of violence and their families to discourage retaliation and to settle grievances through other means. A Department of Justice-funded study found the group was responsible for a reduction of violence between 40-70 percent in seven neighborhoods in Chicago,[21] and the group has expanded to Kansas City, New York, New Orleans, Baltimore, and three international cities. If overlarge police budgets were spent on violence interrupters, we could not just react to, but prevent, violence.</p> <p>Addressing intimate-partner violence will require some different approaches from those employed to stop the cycle of retaliation killings. A moment in 2012 demonstrates two distinct approaches to addressing domestic violence. That year, the New York state legislature considered two bills. They could have passed the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act, a bill being pushed by many grassroots feminist and anti-mass incarceration activists that would have decreased the penalties for women convicted of crimes against their abusers. Or the legislature could have passed a bill that made penalties more severe for men who repeatedly abuse their partners or children.[22] When faced with divergent approaches&#8212;one that called for less prison and one for more&#8212;the legislature voted for and the governor signed into law only the bill that increased prison, sending violent men to violent prisons for a longer time and keeping women who lash out against their abusers in prison. A law criminalizing repeat abuse without recognizing that prisons make violence more likely is starkly ignorant of the causes of violence.</p> <p>In addition to the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act, there are many responses the left can adopt to reduce both the harms of incarceration and the harms of intimate-partner violence. Universal day care would provide the financial and child care independence some women need to leave a partner who is abusing them and their children (as well as reducing violence against children from stressed-out parents and parents&#8217; partners). Rape crisis centers provide women and their chosen communities a chance to determine the best response to abuse without fear of police or child protective services getting involved. Championing these responses to crime will help stop violence while also avoiding what sociologist Elizabeth Bernstein and others have called &#8220;carceral feminism,&#8221;[23] which responds to violence against women with demands for more police and harsher sentences.</p> <p>Alternatives like restorative justice practices, neighborhood patrols, and rape crisis centers are bold demonstrations that police are not the only or the best response to violence. These on-the-ground responses, coupled with jobs, housing, health care, and schools, are the basis of the left response to violence.</p> <p>&#8220;Right on Crime&#8221;</p> <p>Conservatives have historically had electoral success appealing to voters&#8217; crime fears. This is starting to change, however, and the realigned political landscape could be a moment of opportunity. The right is opposing incarceration not out of compassion but because of spending. As incarceration rates have ballooned, so too has spending on prisons. States typically spend between $15,000 and $55,000 per person incarcerated per year, with New York spending over $60,000.[24] Some big names on the right&#8212;who were previously comfortable with the contradiction of promoting small government for social programs and big government for police, prisons, and defense&#8212;are starting to doubt the wisdom of mass incarceration. Newt Gingrich, Jeb Bush, and Rand Paul all support the Texas-based organization Right on Crime, which advocates less spending on the &#8220;out of control unaccountable [criminal justice] bureaucracy.&#8221; The conservative Heritage Foundation is working to end &#8220;overcriminalization&#8221; by publicizing how engagement with the criminal justice system is detrimental for so many. Can we use this shift on the right to both end mass incarceration and build strong social programs?</p> <p>Anti-prison leftists partnering with conservatives in local campaigns to stop this jail construction or close that prison can be useful. On single-issue campaigns we can use strange bedfellows without advancing their anti-poor, small-government agendas. But, as historian David P. Stein has warned, to ally with anti-prison conservatives at the state and national levels would serve a different function.[25] Bolstering their credentials by partnering with them would likely shrink prisons only to grow other forms of economic and social inequality. The right would be OK with releasing people from prison and watching them return to communities without quality jobs, schools, or homes. Reducing crime through preventative measures and ending mass incarceration will likely be cheaper than the previous, prison-based response, but it will require a reallocation of resources that conservatives will oppose. Still, national conservatives can act as symbols, signs that we no longer need to be &#8220;tough on crime.&#8221; They can be what we point to when we are holding liberal policymakers&#8217; feet to the fire, telling them that opposing prisons need not have negative electoral consequences.</p> <p>The waning significance of crime is due in part to the reduced whipping up of panic by politicians and media. Crime fear is not an organic emotion that bubbles up from the grassroots; it follows after news coverage. Sociologist Katherine Beckett has shown that from the 1960s to the 1990s, political initiatives and media coverage of crime were better predictors of public opinion on crime concerns than were crime rates.[26] This does not mean we can ignore crime because public concern over crime is merely an artifact of fear mongering. We know that crime has serious consequences, especially among marginalized groups. What this does tell us, though, is that there is room to reshape the public&#8217;s view of crime and prisons. Indeed, crime fears are low at the same time that people think crime rates are high. Crime is down almost 50 percent since its high in 1993, yet 65 percent of respondents to a recent poll said that crime had increased or stayed the same in the last 20 years.[27] The public&#8217;s seemingly contradictory beliefs that crime is high and that crime is not the country&#8217;s most pressing problem shows that the left can frame crime as one harm among many that need to be addressed. Crime is a problem, but so are inequality, climate change, and mass incarceration.</p> <p>The modern prison is about two hundred years old. During its tenure we have innovated better responses to disease, a larger (though not large enough) welfare state, and vast public transportation networks, but we still respond to crime and violence in the same way, by putting people in cages. As crime continues to decline and as innovative responses to violence grow in acceptance, we have a unique moment to advance social democratic, non-prison ways of preventing and responding to crime. Punitive and regressive forces might again surge, promoting &#8220;tough&#8221; penalties. We might repeat past errors, mistaking criminal justice responses as the best solution. But it is also possible that we will build alliances and organize the grassroots to advance these innovative crime responses, finding that one day soon both wealth and safety are distributed equitably.</p> <p><a href="/filter/tips" type="external">More information about formatting options</a></p>

Crime, Incarceration, and the Left

http://newpol.org/content/crime-incarceration-and-left

4left

Those disturbed by the United States8217 largestintheworld incarceration rate have some new reasons to be cautiously optimistic President Obama nominated an opponent of the drug war to the Justice Department8217s highest civil rights position signaling the possibility that the costly and counterproductive imprisonment of drug users may be coming to an end Conservatives from Newt Gingrich to Jeb Bush to Rand Paul are advocating for less incarceration and an end to employment discrimination for people with criminal records hinting that crime panics won8217t be the campaign fodder they once were1 The public is also less concerned with crime In 1994 37 percent of respondents listed crime as the most important problem facing the country In 2014 only 2 percent did2 That might be because only half as many people reported being the victim of a violent crime in 2013 as did in 1994 The incarceration rate is also declining albeit slightly after 40 years of steep increases3 This pivotal moment presents the socialist and social democratic left with possibilities and pitfalls With a lessfevered crime discussion now might be the best time to adequately address the harms that crime visits on our communities Obviously stopping crime is important but we must situate it as one harm among many There are preventative responses to crime that are likely cheaper than our current criminal justice response that will avoid the human consequences of mass incarceration and that will bolster a traditional social democratic agenda There are groups pioneering communitybased responses to violence that stop the causes of violence The time has never been better to show that reducing inequality providing health care creating affordable housing and reinvesting in schools are all crimestopping measures As some conservatives shift their positions on crime we might be tempted to ally with the right But as I will argue we should remember that the antiprison right will be useful only in specific ways lest we further dismantle social programs The left has good reasons to address crime The working class the poor LGBT folks and people of color are all at disproportionate risk for victimization4 If we want an equitable distribution of wealth we no doubt also want an equitable distribution of safety Addressing crime is important and doing so will mean replacing the traditional heavily loaded definitions of crimes Drug use and theft are not the problems they are often made out to be Drug use on college campuses is as common as drug use on city streets but drug laws are enforced much differently there What qualifies as a crime for someone on a city street corner is more likely to be ignored8212or met with treatment8212on a college campus If we look to reduce the harm of drugs rather than reduce 8220crime8221 our strategies will look more like public health and less like criminal justice more needle exchanges and fewer police Unlike drugs theft causes real harms but its impact is far less than often assumed Unpaid taxes cost Americans 15 times more than property theft did in 2006 the most recent year with data5 Tax evasion and investment banks8217 ruinous schemes pose greater risks than burglars That theft is more prevalent in poor communities reveals the need for jobs not prison cells Job creation is the best way to prevent theft and as will be explored below restorative justice practices are better responses to theft than the criminal justice system Police and prisons do little to address property loss in part because arrest and incarceration hurt the possibility for future employment increasing the likelihood of people returning to theft for income Voters in California showed in November 2014 that they are getting wise to the wastefulness of drug and theft arrests as 58 percent of them approved a ballot measure reducing the penalties for many nonviolent crimes6 It is perhaps easy to demonstrate that drug use and nonviolent theft would be better served by nonpolice responses Violent crime requires a more difficult reckoning Homicide is the second leading cause of death for men aged 1524 death from unintended injuries is the first It is not easy to ignore The harm is real but contrary to stories told during political campaigns homicides and other violent crimes are more likely committed by someone the victim knows than by a stranger7 Police are illequipped to prevent such knownattacker violence Later I will describe groups that are providing nonpolice responses to violence and discuss how understanding the causes of such violence will help us understand possible solutions First though it is important to see why one commonly proposed solution to violence causes more harm than good The Big 8220Reform8221 That Hurt The government claimed that incarceration8212its response to crime that defined the past four decades8212would stop violence and 8220urban unrest8221 but instead it has helped shore up whites8217 economic and political advantage while devastating poor communities of color The summary statistics are well known between 1975 and 2005 the US incarceration rate quintupled putting 1 out of every 100 people behind bars more than any other country in the world and more than at any time in US history Black and Latino people are a quarter of the population at large but 58 percent of the incarcerated population One in nine black children has a parent incarcerated8 The racial disparity in incarceration has translated into a host of unearned benefits for white people Obviously people without criminal records who are disproportionately rich and white are favored in hiring decisions over people with criminal records Of people who get arrested most have jobs prior to the arrest9 but incarceration interrupts those jobs and becomes time spent not gaining experience and skills further pushing formerly incarcerated people into lowstatus and lowwage jobs Because incarceration combines with racism to force many people of color to the bottom of the labor hierarchy whites have disproportionately benefited from economic booms and have been buffered from recessions Sociologist Bruce Western found that over all black men obtained no benefit in either jobs or wages from the 1990s economic expansion because of their overrepresentation in prisons10 Mass incarceration has also helped increase white political power One in 13 black men cannot vote because of a felony conviction and in Florida Kentucky and Virginia the figure is one in five11 Sociologists Chris Uggen and Jeff Manza analyzed the outcome of US senate and presidential races between 1978 and 2002 and found that if people with felony convictions had been allowed to vote seven senate races and the 2000 presidential election that were won by Republicans would have been carried by Democrats12 Does mass incarceration8217s role in reducing crime outweighs all of these negative effects The trouble is the prison boom did not have a large effect on crime The National Research Council convened a group of experts to determine whether the incarceration boom and the crime decline were related and they found summarizing numerous multiyear studies that 8220the growth in incarceration rates reduced crime but the magnitude of the crime reduction remains highly uncertain and the evidence suggests it was unlikely to have been large822113 One of the studies they cited found incarceration was responsible for 510 percent of the crime drop On the other hand sociologist Todd Clear has found that high incarceration rates so destabilize some neighborhoods that crime there actually increases in response14 I linger on the effects of prison not just to show that the current government response to crime has been horribly counterproductive and supportive of white supremacy but also because understanding how the current government response to crime has hurt helps us understand how it can be changed For instance state governments around the country currently spend the bulk of their corrections budgets in rural mostly white towns where prisons are usually located This government expenditure what geographer Ruth Wilson Gilmore calls 8220carceral Keynesianism822115 redistributes money from the mostly urban neighborhoods from which prisoners largely come to the mostly white towns where prisoners are sent In 2004 there were 35 8220milliondollar blocks8221 in Brooklyn New York blocks whose residents the state spent over one million dollars locking up Government capacity could be redirected to benefit8212rather than cage8212the residents of those blocks16 Police and corrections budgets are ripe to be redirected toward more beneficial ends Local government spending on police has grown 300 percent since the 1970s to an average of 295 per person Shifting this spending towards housing jobs healthcare and education would combat inequality removing the conditions of poverty that often cause crime Reparations for slavery would be an especially beneficial use for old corrections dollars because it would address the racialized way that incarceration has benefited white people and hurt black people Community Responses to Violence Public housing is usually thought of as a nexus of crime places where poverty and poor conditions combine to foster drug use and violence But in a study of Mount Laurel New Jersey sociologist Douglas Massey and his colleagues found that locating public housing in the town did not increase crime rates17 Residents who moved into the subsidized housing benefited from lower crime levels and their neighbors experienced no more crime after the public housing was built That the Mount Laurel initiative included highquality homes that were well maintained and not crowded likely contributed to their safety8212but these should be characteristics of all public housing Other studies have shown that prenatal health care quality preK and steady employment are all correlated with lower crime rates18 The success of these preventative measures show that a more holistic approach is needed to reduce crime The criminal justice system need not be our primary response to harm It also indicates that a traditional socialist platform is consistent with8212indeed supportive of8212lower crime rates Holistic preventative measures will help but even with them interpersonal violence will occur Fortunately communitybased responses to violence are beginning to replace individualistic ones One approach called restorative justice takes into account not just the perpetrator and a punishment but the whole range of people affected by a crime the victims the offenders and their communities As people who understand that solutions take a village socialists and social democrats are natural proponents of restorative justice Rather than seeking a prison term a restorative justice conference seeks discussion and restitution in a manner that more closely resembles a truth and reconciliation committee than a gulag While the exact implementation of such practices varies across the United States they are undergoing wide adoption as alternatives to traditional criminal justice procedures for crimes as diverse as theft and murder19 Schools like New York City8217s Lyons Community School are avoiding suspensions and detentions using a restorative justice model20 Developing communitybased justice practices will not just address the narrow slice of harms that get defined as crimes but will deal with interpersonal harms that happen more frequently Restorative justice work helps address harm after it has happened There are groups working to stop violence before it happens without appealing to the criminal justice system Cure Violence a group made famous in the 2011 documentary The Interrupters takes a public health approach to violence The group employs 8220violence interrupters8221 who are from the neighborhoods in which they work and were often previously involved in violence themselves The group views killings in retaliation for other killings as a disease that can be stopped To this end they meet with victims of violence and their families to discourage retaliation and to settle grievances through other means A Department of Justicefunded study found the group was responsible for a reduction of violence between 4070 percent in seven neighborhoods in Chicago21 and the group has expanded to Kansas City New York New Orleans Baltimore and three international cities If overlarge police budgets were spent on violence interrupters we could not just react to but prevent violence Addressing intimatepartner violence will require some different approaches from those employed to stop the cycle of retaliation killings A moment in 2012 demonstrates two distinct approaches to addressing domestic violence That year the New York state legislature considered two bills They could have passed the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act a bill being pushed by many grassroots feminist and antimass incarceration activists that would have decreased the penalties for women convicted of crimes against their abusers Or the legislature could have passed a bill that made penalties more severe for men who repeatedly abuse their partners or children22 When faced with divergent approaches8212one that called for less prison and one for more8212the legislature voted for and the governor signed into law only the bill that increased prison sending violent men to violent prisons for a longer time and keeping women who lash out against their abusers in prison A law criminalizing repeat abuse without recognizing that prisons make violence more likely is starkly ignorant of the causes of violence In addition to the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act there are many responses the left can adopt to reduce both the harms of incarceration and the harms of intimatepartner violence Universal day care would provide the financial and child care independence some women need to leave a partner who is abusing them and their children as well as reducing violence against children from stressedout parents and parents8217 partners Rape crisis centers provide women and their chosen communities a chance to determine the best response to abuse without fear of police or child protective services getting involved Championing these responses to crime will help stop violence while also avoiding what sociologist Elizabeth Bernstein and others have called 8220carceral feminism822123 which responds to violence against women with demands for more police and harsher sentences Alternatives like restorative justice practices neighborhood patrols and rape crisis centers are bold demonstrations that police are not the only or the best response to violence These ontheground responses coupled with jobs housing health care and schools are the basis of the left response to violence 8220Right on Crime8221 Conservatives have historically had electoral success appealing to voters8217 crime fears This is starting to change however and the realigned political landscape could be a moment of opportunity The right is opposing incarceration not out of compassion but because of spending As incarceration rates have ballooned so too has spending on prisons States typically spend between 15000 and 55000 per person incarcerated per year with New York spending over 6000024 Some big names on the right8212who were previously comfortable with the contradiction of promoting small government for social programs and big government for police prisons and defense8212are starting to doubt the wisdom of mass incarceration Newt Gingrich Jeb Bush and Rand Paul all support the Texasbased organization Right on Crime which advocates less spending on the 8220out of control unaccountable criminal justice bureaucracy8221 The conservative Heritage Foundation is working to end 8220overcriminalization8221 by publicizing how engagement with the criminal justice system is detrimental for so many Can we use this shift on the right to both end mass incarceration and build strong social programs Antiprison leftists partnering with conservatives in local campaigns to stop this jail construction or close that prison can be useful On singleissue campaigns we can use strange bedfellows without advancing their antipoor smallgovernment agendas But as historian David P Stein has warned to ally with antiprison conservatives at the state and national levels would serve a different function25 Bolstering their credentials by partnering with them would likely shrink prisons only to grow other forms of economic and social inequality The right would be OK with releasing people from prison and watching them return to communities without quality jobs schools or homes Reducing crime through preventative measures and ending mass incarceration will likely be cheaper than the previous prisonbased response but it will require a reallocation of resources that conservatives will oppose Still national conservatives can act as symbols signs that we no longer need to be 8220tough on crime8221 They can be what we point to when we are holding liberal policymakers8217 feet to the fire telling them that opposing prisons need not have negative electoral consequences The waning significance of crime is due in part to the reduced whipping up of panic by politicians and media Crime fear is not an organic emotion that bubbles up from the grassroots it follows after news coverage Sociologist Katherine Beckett has shown that from the 1960s to the 1990s political initiatives and media coverage of crime were better predictors of public opinion on crime concerns than were crime rates26 This does not mean we can ignore crime because public concern over crime is merely an artifact of fear mongering We know that crime has serious consequences especially among marginalized groups What this does tell us though is that there is room to reshape the public8217s view of crime and prisons Indeed crime fears are low at the same time that people think crime rates are high Crime is down almost 50 percent since its high in 1993 yet 65 percent of respondents to a recent poll said that crime had increased or stayed the same in the last 20 years27 The public8217s seemingly contradictory beliefs that crime is high and that crime is not the country8217s most pressing problem shows that the left can frame crime as one harm among many that need to be addressed Crime is a problem but so are inequality climate change and mass incarceration The modern prison is about two hundred years old During its tenure we have innovated better responses to disease a larger though not large enough welfare state and vast public transportation networks but we still respond to crime and violence in the same way by putting people in cages As crime continues to decline and as innovative responses to violence grow in acceptance we have a unique moment to advance social democratic nonprison ways of preventing and responding to crime Punitive and regressive forces might again surge promoting 8220tough8221 penalties We might repeat past errors mistaking criminal justice responses as the best solution But it is also possible that we will build alliances and organize the grassroots to advance these innovative crime responses finding that one day soon both wealth and safety are distributed equitably More information about formatting options

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<p>George Clooney, Matt Damon, Scarlett Johansson, Cindy Crawford, Bono, Michael Caine, Claudia Schiffer, Bob Geldof, Hugh Grant, Mia Farrow, Mick Jagger and so many others have expressed their solidarity with the people of the oil-rich region of Darfur. A few weeks ago, Democrats John Lewis of Georgia, Keith Ellison of Minnesota, Lynn Woolsey of California, Donna Edwards of Maryland, and Jim McGovern of Massachusetts were all arrested as they demonstrated against the Sudanese government. When Colin Powell used the word genocide in 2004, it kicked off $1 billion-a-year international aid program, much higher than that afforded Somalia or Congo.</p> <p>But why?</p> <p>In the past few months, the International Criminal Court has charged Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir with crimes against humanity and war crimes. The ICC&#8217;s chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo is appealing the setting aside of genocide charges, claiming that there is &#8220;ongoing genocide&#8221; in Darfur. The Sudanese government has expelled some foreign aid groups, accusing them of espionage. They include Oxfam, Save the Children and Medecins Sans Frontieres. According to the Save Darfur Campaign, it was the relief organizations that provided clean water, food, and medical attention to roughly 1.5 million people.&amp;#160; The Sudanese government claims these aid-agencies deliberately exclude Arab Darfuris in their ranks, exacerbating sectarian tensions.</p> <p>And at the moment, President Obama&#8217;s Special Envoy to Sudan, Scott Gration is on a diplomatic tour and Britain is sending $185m in aid and $140m in &#8220;peacekeeping&#8221; money.</p> <p>Collette Valentine, a TV producer visiting from the United Kingdom, and Ali Gunn, a British media consultant, last week returned from Darfur where they attended the first &#8220;International Conference on the Challenge Facing Women in Darfur&#8221; in Al-Fasher in the north. Valentine says that articles about Darfur in the international press make her feel as if she visited a completely different region, a completely different country. It all adds weight to the thesis of Columbia University&#8217;s Professor Mahmood Mamdani that there is something very murky about Western aid agencies&#8217; insistence that there has been genocide in Darfur, that at the heart of campaigns for Darfur is the culmination of a powerful, imperial desire to suppress citizenry from U.S. high school classrooms to right across the developing world.</p> <p>AFSHIN RATTANSI: Tell me about your visit and how your experience differed to the portrayal in the corporate media. I understand you went at the invitation of Rajaa Hassan Khalifa from the largest women&#8217;s union in conjunction with Bakri O.Saeed from Sudan International University.</p> <p>Collette Valentine: Ali Gunn and myself and a group of journalists were lucky enough to be invited to Sudan by the Sudanese Women General Union. The women&#8217;s union in Sudan has got 27,000 branches all over Sudan, including Darfur. They have representatives in all the rural villages, across all different communities consisting of around 80 tribes and clans. The women of Sudan are a real force. Historically, there have been female leaders.&amp;#160; They are wives, mothers, farmers, they build, they grow the vegetables and basically run the communities and are respected by their men folk. A third of families in the camps are headed by women. In recent years, some members of the women&#8217;s union have been elected as ministers in the Sudanese government and a quarter of the seats in the Sudanese parliament are occupied by women.</p> <p>They are all members of the union and they have direct links right down from the most educated academic women from the professional classes to grassroots people. This chain of open communication is active and alive from bottom to top and top to bottom.&amp;#160; Because the women have such a strong role in the communities, the women themselves have decided to take action for peace and security in Darfur. They have seen the failure of external, international agencies and NGOs and they know that peace can only come from within their own communities via reconciliation talks.</p> <p>The IDPs (Internally Displaced Persons) in the refugee camps are people who have fled trouble in their own areas of Sudan. They didn&#8217;t want to leave but had no option but to flee. Before the international NGOs got involved, the IDPs were provided with camps by Al-Bashir&#8217;s government, provided with wells, administrators, bureaucratic structures, materials for shelter and local doctors, clinics, and health services paid for by the Sudanese government. When women fled their villages, active male rebels from every community that were fighting each other remained. Those conflicts rage on even as there is peace and stability in the camps. We saw no evidence of any genocide. We were not embedded by the government nor with any NGO. We had absolute freedom to talk with whomever we wished. And we randomly talked to as many men, women and children as we could.</p> <p>One man, a village leader who led 4,000 of his community , separated in two camps, said he had been there six years. His home was 50km away. We asked about genocide and he said that he wouldn&#8217;t have remained in the Sudanese government camps for six years if he hadn&#8217;t been looked after. When we asked about the issue of rape, he did not deny there wasn&#8217;t an issue. The women we spoke to said that unfortunately, rape exists everywhere in the world and some we spoke to quoted statistics about the prevalence of rape in the U.S. and how in developed nations, women are too frightened to press charges. One woman told me that allegations of wide and systematic rape crimes against Darfur women constitute a type of war against Sudan. Historically, in areas of conflict, they maintained, cases of crime and rape are bound to increase. Rape is not a weapon of the government and women are being told to report instances of rape. But the ICC is using the prevalence of rape and giving it undue importance, helping NGOs fill their coffers.</p> <p>AFSHIN RATTANSI: Were you concerned about safety in Darfur?</p> <p>Ali Gunn: I understood the situation had settled and that there was quite a lot of fighting down south but that the situation in Darfur was more stable since the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. However, I had been warned off by expert security consultants who feared for my safety.</p> <p>We went to two camps in Darfur and we saw people eeking out a simple existence. No bullet holes, no tanks and no fighting. The only military vehicles belonged to the United Nations. We were given carte blanche to wander around the camps as we pleased and talk to anyone we liked. Many spoke English. I was appalled that so much reporting in our newspapers has no basis in reality. Cheap and lazy journalism at its worst.</p> <p>AFSHIN RATTANSI: What about the United Nations&#8217; presence on the ground?</p> <p>Collette Valentine:&amp;#160; When we were actually in one of the two camps, we looked up and saw an American tank approaching, followed by a patrol of around 15 UN vans and two more tanks. They drove up, parked the cars outside the office of the administrator of the camp. We didn&#8217;t know what was happening.</p> <p>We were told that three times day, this happens at the camp and that UN officials come to ask whether everything is alright. Women told us that the camps are peaceful places. While we played football with children in the camp at around 9am, men and women setting out market stalls selling tomatoes and oranges, and as the UN personnel talked to the administrator, the soldiers lined up with guns, five meters apart facing us and the rest of the people in the camps.</p> <p>It was obvious that the soldiers were protecting UN bosses whilst we kicked a football with the children. It was extraordinary. Women were making yoghurt with goat&#8217;s milk even as the UN troops pointed their guns at us. I asked one of the women, Maha Feraigon, why guns were being aimed and whether they were scared that we might throw a tomato at them and she just laughed.&amp;#160; As Ali says, quite a few people could speak English. Maha was first assistant to the Secretary General of the Sudanese Women General Union, independent of the government. All the people we spoke to were furious about UN personnel arriving in this way and wanted the UN to leave. The UN personnel left their engines running and people resented how much that money for the UN was being wasted in front of their eyes. They asked about what they could be doing with the money. I was disgusted. They asked why these personnel were not in the villages where the fighting continues and their &#8216;dar&#8217; or land&amp;#160; was. People said that NGOs did not want the fighting to stop so that they can continue to be paid.&amp;#160; None had seen any money from the Save Darfur campaign and they resented that money was being raised in their names.</p> <p>Ali Gunn: At the conference, we spoke to opposition leaders and women at the conference. There was no sense of urgency about any &#8220;genocide&#8221; in the camps themselves. Our concern for our trip was to look at the living conditions of the people in the camps and look at the future of Darfur and the future for families there. And there was very little evidence of external aid. Darfur is the size of France so we didn&#8217;t go to all the camps. We have photographic evidence of families and women making their own bricks. You would have to ask the aid agencies about where their money has been sent.</p> <p>AFSHIN RATTANSI: What about how the Sudanese perceive outside, external forces?</p> <p>Collette Valentine: I was lucky enough to sit beside Mafa on the flight from Khartoum to Darfur. I emphasize that she has no connection to any NGO or the government. She spoke very good English and explained the anger of the people. Her general feeling, having been all over Darfur, speaking to women at all levels from all communities throughout the region was that they did not want foreign interference because they know that it is all about oil and water &#8211; the &#8220;oil of tomorrow&#8221;.</p> <p>She told me about how Sudan was sitting on the biggest underwater lake in Africa giving rise to the best arable land. Despite the desertification, responsible for so many of the deaths in recent years, the lake holds great promise. She told me about how Chevron was thrown out of the country and how Chevron executives took all their drilling and exploration maps with them. They still believe that the NGOs in concert with the U.S. are only involved because of water and oil.&amp;#160; She pointed to Congo, Sierra Leone and other African countries, firmly believing that there were no good intentions when it comes to great power involvement on the continent.</p> <p>AFSHIN RATTANSI: Not a day goes by without the word genocide being used when Darfur is in the corporate media.</p> <p>Ali Gunn: The Western media has totally misrepresented the situation subsequent to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. In Darfur, they are desperate for long term measures to alleviate the cycle of non-delivery in Darfur. Some believed that there were a significant number of people who would never return to their homeland areas. Living conditions in the camps were spartan but clean and people were very aware of their personal space. There was a market with a butcher, vegetable-sellers, a makeshift restaurant&#8230;many different rows of shops. It was very much like a souk you would see in any country of this type, with domestic goods on sale. The people we saw were not starving and pretty healthy.</p> <p>AFSHIN RATTANSI: Do you see money from oil being used for the benefit of the people?</p> <p>Collette Valentine:&amp;#160; Oil is all-important for Sudan and is vital to the infrastructure-building plans of the country. They are planning schools and health centers. Free medical care is available to everybody but not every village has a clinic so people have to travel to the next village. There is a lot of work to be done in Sudan. This is not a bed of roses, by any means but only oil money is going to be able to change things. I saw in Khartoum how development is beginning. They have big plans for the areas around the Blue Nile in Khartoum and it looks to me like Pudong in Shanghai where I made some documentaries when it was developing, a decade ago.</p> <p>Maha told me that there was a rail system in Sudan that you could time your watch by but U.S. sanctions starting in the 1990s destroyed it as parts to fix trains and tracks dried up. Sanctions prevented people being able to travel. But, now the Sudanese government has done a deal with the Chinese who they feel are completely different to the Americans. I was told that Chinese involvement was trusted where the U.S. wasn&#8217;t. The Chinese are not interested in hegemonic power. I could see the development present in Khartoum. When I later met the president, he said that growth should be across Sudan and not just limited to an elite in Khartoum. The work is in progress and the president&#8217;s popularity has gone through the roof after the ICC indictments.</p> <p>AFSHIN RATTANSI: What about signs of corruption?</p> <p>Ali Gunn:&amp;#160; People had told us the President was a humble and modest man and he certainly seemed like that in person. I was very wary of signs of corruption and wealth. The palace looked like any municipal building in a developing nation. The furniture was all very normal. We were told that he was a modest man who had come up the ranks of the army and as such was possibly less concerned about the ICC than about rebuilding his nation. He is much more popular after the ICC indictments.</p> <p>There was a feeling that the country has been picked on in comparison to what has been happening in surrounding nations. I saw that people were being actively encouraged to vote. I mentioned that I work in the British parliament and stressed the need for people to register to vote and there was certainly no problem in people understanding the importance of voting.</p> <p>Like people in Britain, many of the people we spoke to had a healthy skepticism about politicians per se. But they did believe that the next elections would be free and fair. Collette Valentine: The president knew that the conference was taking place but he had no knowledge of which camps we were visiting. The women were careful not to tell him because they were aware that we were looking for any signs that we were being embedded in any way.</p> <p>AFSHIN RATTANSI: And the perception is that the ICC has aided the president of Sudan?</p> <p>Collette Valentine: On the night before we left, we met with President Al-Bashir and his advisor, Dr Ghazi Salahuddin Atabani. Everything they said backed up what we heard on the ground. He admitted that the ICC has aided his reelection chances. He admitted that rape was present in Darfur but he blamed outside aid agencies for putting petrol on the fire and he highlighted the external supply of arms. He also blamed the classic British divide-and-rule tactics of colonialism for the roots of trouble in Sudan. Attabani said &#8220;Sudan is politically isolated and that when the ICC indictment was first raised 4 years ago the president offered to step aside, to abdicate &#8211; he said 16 years was too long. Our policy in that the National Congress Party (NCP) is that we don&#8217;t believe in a&#8217; president for life.&#8217; The made him look like a villain but internally it boosted his popularity. .. now the NCP can&#8217;t consider any other candidate.&#8221;</p> <p>From my experience of seeing western leaders in London, there is a cavalcade of security. Al Bashir when he goes from his house to local weddings, funerals and the mosque, seems to have no security at all. One of our delegates went to the mosque and was baffled by the lack of security on seeing him there.</p> <p>AFSHIN RATTANSI: What about what the president of Sudan expects from the change of administration in Washington?</p> <p>Ali Gunn: We were attacked about international media coverage of Darfur as the people saw the situation very different to how it is portrayed. They saw the West as patronizing the Sudanese people.&amp;#160; On Obama, President Al-Bashir said &#8220;He&#8217;s much more pragmatic. The old guard from Clinton&#8217;s days are still around &#8211; in the 90s they were hostile..they&#8217;ve not changed, but they have toned down their rhetoric&#8230;we believe that the US has been exploited by certain undercurrents .&#8221; I would suggest that people go and see for themselves what is happening.</p> <p>Collette Valentine: Dr. Ghazi said that they are hopeful about Obama but they don&#8217;t trust the Clinton people, the Susan Rices and Samantha Powers. Continuation of the ICC path would be seen as vindictive and alien and could result in turning Darfur into a real conflict.</p> <p>The women in the camps are focused on talking to their men and they believe that the only hope for peace and reconciliation lies with their ability to encourage forgiveness. They believe no international organizations can persuade the men to reconcile with each other. Before this conflict happened, tribal elders would meet to settle conflicts between nomadic and peasant communities. Right across Darfur, women are campaigning on the ground for reconciliation talks. This was the first peace conference. All the women from all the communities are coming together to urge reconciliation talks with women from each community given their time to speak. Security was on top of the agenda as well as education and healthcare.</p> <p>Ali Gunn: After we came back from the camps, we were both shocked about the disparity of what was happening on the ground and what was in the media.</p> <p>AFSHIN RATTANSI has helped launch and develop television networks and has worked in journalism for more than two decades, at the BBC Today programme, CNN International, Bloomberg News, Al Jazeera Arabic, the Dubai Business&amp;#160; Channel, Press TV and The Guardian. His quartet of novels, &#8220;The Dream of the Decade&#8221; is available on Amazon.com. He can be reached at afshin@afshinrattansi.com</p>

Women in Darfur

https://counterpunch.org/2009/06/01/women-in-darfur/

2009-06-01

4left

George Clooney Matt Damon Scarlett Johansson Cindy Crawford Bono Michael Caine Claudia Schiffer Bob Geldof Hugh Grant Mia Farrow Mick Jagger and so many others have expressed their solidarity with the people of the oilrich region of Darfur A few weeks ago Democrats John Lewis of Georgia Keith Ellison of Minnesota Lynn Woolsey of California Donna Edwards of Maryland and Jim McGovern of Massachusetts were all arrested as they demonstrated against the Sudanese government When Colin Powell used the word genocide in 2004 it kicked off 1 billionayear international aid program much higher than that afforded Somalia or Congo But why In the past few months the International Criminal Court has charged Sudanese President Omar alBashir with crimes against humanity and war crimes The ICC8217s chief prosecutor Luis MorenoOcampo is appealing the setting aside of genocide charges claiming that there is 8220ongoing genocide8221 in Darfur The Sudanese government has expelled some foreign aid groups accusing them of espionage They include Oxfam Save the Children and Medecins Sans Frontieres According to the Save Darfur Campaign it was the relief organizations that provided clean water food and medical attention to roughly 15 million peopleamp160 The Sudanese government claims these aidagencies deliberately exclude Arab Darfuris in their ranks exacerbating sectarian tensions And at the moment President Obama8217s Special Envoy to Sudan Scott Gration is on a diplomatic tour and Britain is sending 185m in aid and 140m in 8220peacekeeping8221 money Collette Valentine a TV producer visiting from the United Kingdom and Ali Gunn a British media consultant last week returned from Darfur where they attended the first 8220International Conference on the Challenge Facing Women in Darfur8221 in AlFasher in the north Valentine says that articles about Darfur in the international press make her feel as if she visited a completely different region a completely different country It all adds weight to the thesis of Columbia University8217s Professor Mahmood Mamdani that there is something very murky about Western aid agencies8217 insistence that there has been genocide in Darfur that at the heart of campaigns for Darfur is the culmination of a powerful imperial desire to suppress citizenry from US high school classrooms to right across the developing world AFSHIN RATTANSI Tell me about your visit and how your experience differed to the portrayal in the corporate media I understand you went at the invitation of Rajaa Hassan Khalifa from the largest women8217s union in conjunction with Bakri OSaeed from Sudan International University Collette Valentine Ali Gunn and myself and a group of journalists were lucky enough to be invited to Sudan by the Sudanese Women General Union The women8217s union in Sudan has got 27000 branches all over Sudan including Darfur They have representatives in all the rural villages across all different communities consisting of around 80 tribes and clans The women of Sudan are a real force Historically there have been female leadersamp160 They are wives mothers farmers they build they grow the vegetables and basically run the communities and are respected by their men folk A third of families in the camps are headed by women In recent years some members of the women8217s union have been elected as ministers in the Sudanese government and a quarter of the seats in the Sudanese parliament are occupied by women They are all members of the union and they have direct links right down from the most educated academic women from the professional classes to grassroots people This chain of open communication is active and alive from bottom to top and top to bottomamp160 Because the women have such a strong role in the communities the women themselves have decided to take action for peace and security in Darfur They have seen the failure of external international agencies and NGOs and they know that peace can only come from within their own communities via reconciliation talks The IDPs Internally Displaced Persons in the refugee camps are people who have fled trouble in their own areas of Sudan They didn8217t want to leave but had no option but to flee Before the international NGOs got involved the IDPs were provided with camps by AlBashir8217s government provided with wells administrators bureaucratic structures materials for shelter and local doctors clinics and health services paid for by the Sudanese government When women fled their villages active male rebels from every community that were fighting each other remained Those conflicts rage on even as there is peace and stability in the camps We saw no evidence of any genocide We were not embedded by the government nor with any NGO We had absolute freedom to talk with whomever we wished And we randomly talked to as many men women and children as we could One man a village leader who led 4000 of his community separated in two camps said he had been there six years His home was 50km away We asked about genocide and he said that he wouldn8217t have remained in the Sudanese government camps for six years if he hadn8217t been looked after When we asked about the issue of rape he did not deny there wasn8217t an issue The women we spoke to said that unfortunately rape exists everywhere in the world and some we spoke to quoted statistics about the prevalence of rape in the US and how in developed nations women are too frightened to press charges One woman told me that allegations of wide and systematic rape crimes against Darfur women constitute a type of war against Sudan Historically in areas of conflict they maintained cases of crime and rape are bound to increase Rape is not a weapon of the government and women are being told to report instances of rape But the ICC is using the prevalence of rape and giving it undue importance helping NGOs fill their coffers AFSHIN RATTANSI Were you concerned about safety in Darfur Ali Gunn I understood the situation had settled and that there was quite a lot of fighting down south but that the situation in Darfur was more stable since the Comprehensive Peace Agreement However I had been warned off by expert security consultants who feared for my safety We went to two camps in Darfur and we saw people eeking out a simple existence No bullet holes no tanks and no fighting The only military vehicles belonged to the United Nations We were given carte blanche to wander around the camps as we pleased and talk to anyone we liked Many spoke English I was appalled that so much reporting in our newspapers has no basis in reality Cheap and lazy journalism at its worst AFSHIN RATTANSI What about the United Nations8217 presence on the ground Collette Valentineamp160 When we were actually in one of the two camps we looked up and saw an American tank approaching followed by a patrol of around 15 UN vans and two more tanks They drove up parked the cars outside the office of the administrator of the camp We didn8217t know what was happening We were told that three times day this happens at the camp and that UN officials come to ask whether everything is alright Women told us that the camps are peaceful places While we played football with children in the camp at around 9am men and women setting out market stalls selling tomatoes and oranges and as the UN personnel talked to the administrator the soldiers lined up with guns five meters apart facing us and the rest of the people in the camps It was obvious that the soldiers were protecting UN bosses whilst we kicked a football with the children It was extraordinary Women were making yoghurt with goat8217s milk even as the UN troops pointed their guns at us I asked one of the women Maha Feraigon why guns were being aimed and whether they were scared that we might throw a tomato at them and she just laughedamp160 As Ali says quite a few people could speak English Maha was first assistant to the Secretary General of the Sudanese Women General Union independent of the government All the people we spoke to were furious about UN personnel arriving in this way and wanted the UN to leave The UN personnel left their engines running and people resented how much that money for the UN was being wasted in front of their eyes They asked about what they could be doing with the money I was disgusted They asked why these personnel were not in the villages where the fighting continues and their 8216dar8217 or landamp160 was People said that NGOs did not want the fighting to stop so that they can continue to be paidamp160 None had seen any money from the Save Darfur campaign and they resented that money was being raised in their names Ali Gunn At the conference we spoke to opposition leaders and women at the conference There was no sense of urgency about any 8220genocide8221 in the camps themselves Our concern for our trip was to look at the living conditions of the people in the camps and look at the future of Darfur and the future for families there And there was very little evidence of external aid Darfur is the size of France so we didn8217t go to all the camps We have photographic evidence of families and women making their own bricks You would have to ask the aid agencies about where their money has been sent AFSHIN RATTANSI What about how the Sudanese perceive outside external forces Collette Valentine I was lucky enough to sit beside Mafa on the flight from Khartoum to Darfur I emphasize that she has no connection to any NGO or the government She spoke very good English and explained the anger of the people Her general feeling having been all over Darfur speaking to women at all levels from all communities throughout the region was that they did not want foreign interference because they know that it is all about oil and water 8211 the 8220oil of tomorrow8221 She told me about how Sudan was sitting on the biggest underwater lake in Africa giving rise to the best arable land Despite the desertification responsible for so many of the deaths in recent years the lake holds great promise She told me about how Chevron was thrown out of the country and how Chevron executives took all their drilling and exploration maps with them They still believe that the NGOs in concert with the US are only involved because of water and oilamp160 She pointed to Congo Sierra Leone and other African countries firmly believing that there were no good intentions when it comes to great power involvement on the continent AFSHIN RATTANSI Not a day goes by without the word genocide being used when Darfur is in the corporate media Ali Gunn The Western media has totally misrepresented the situation subsequent to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement In Darfur they are desperate for long term measures to alleviate the cycle of nondelivery in Darfur Some believed that there were a significant number of people who would never return to their homeland areas Living conditions in the camps were spartan but clean and people were very aware of their personal space There was a market with a butcher vegetablesellers a makeshift restaurant8230many different rows of shops It was very much like a souk you would see in any country of this type with domestic goods on sale The people we saw were not starving and pretty healthy AFSHIN RATTANSI Do you see money from oil being used for the benefit of the people Collette Valentineamp160 Oil is allimportant for Sudan and is vital to the infrastructurebuilding plans of the country They are planning schools and health centers Free medical care is available to everybody but not every village has a clinic so people have to travel to the next village There is a lot of work to be done in Sudan This is not a bed of roses by any means but only oil money is going to be able to change things I saw in Khartoum how development is beginning They have big plans for the areas around the Blue Nile in Khartoum and it looks to me like Pudong in Shanghai where I made some documentaries when it was developing a decade ago Maha told me that there was a rail system in Sudan that you could time your watch by but US sanctions starting in the 1990s destroyed it as parts to fix trains and tracks dried up Sanctions prevented people being able to travel But now the Sudanese government has done a deal with the Chinese who they feel are completely different to the Americans I was told that Chinese involvement was trusted where the US wasn8217t The Chinese are not interested in hegemonic power I could see the development present in Khartoum When I later met the president he said that growth should be across Sudan and not just limited to an elite in Khartoum The work is in progress and the president8217s popularity has gone through the roof after the ICC indictments AFSHIN RATTANSI What about signs of corruption Ali Gunnamp160 People had told us the President was a humble and modest man and he certainly seemed like that in person I was very wary of signs of corruption and wealth The palace looked like any municipal building in a developing nation The furniture was all very normal We were told that he was a modest man who had come up the ranks of the army and as such was possibly less concerned about the ICC than about rebuilding his nation He is much more popular after the ICC indictments There was a feeling that the country has been picked on in comparison to what has been happening in surrounding nations I saw that people were being actively encouraged to vote I mentioned that I work in the British parliament and stressed the need for people to register to vote and there was certainly no problem in people understanding the importance of voting Like people in Britain many of the people we spoke to had a healthy skepticism about politicians per se But they did believe that the next elections would be free and fair Collette Valentine The president knew that the conference was taking place but he had no knowledge of which camps we were visiting The women were careful not to tell him because they were aware that we were looking for any signs that we were being embedded in any way AFSHIN RATTANSI And the perception is that the ICC has aided the president of Sudan Collette Valentine On the night before we left we met with President AlBashir and his advisor Dr Ghazi Salahuddin Atabani Everything they said backed up what we heard on the ground He admitted that the ICC has aided his reelection chances He admitted that rape was present in Darfur but he blamed outside aid agencies for putting petrol on the fire and he highlighted the external supply of arms He also blamed the classic British divideandrule tactics of colonialism for the roots of trouble in Sudan Attabani said 8220Sudan is politically isolated and that when the ICC indictment was first raised 4 years ago the president offered to step aside to abdicate 8211 he said 16 years was too long Our policy in that the National Congress Party NCP is that we don8217t believe in a8217 president for life8217 The made him look like a villain but internally it boosted his popularity now the NCP can8217t consider any other candidate8221 From my experience of seeing western leaders in London there is a cavalcade of security Al Bashir when he goes from his house to local weddings funerals and the mosque seems to have no security at all One of our delegates went to the mosque and was baffled by the lack of security on seeing him there AFSHIN RATTANSI What about what the president of Sudan expects from the change of administration in Washington Ali Gunn We were attacked about international media coverage of Darfur as the people saw the situation very different to how it is portrayed They saw the West as patronizing the Sudanese peopleamp160 On Obama President AlBashir said 8220He8217s much more pragmatic The old guard from Clinton8217s days are still around 8211 in the 90s they were hostilethey8217ve not changed but they have toned down their rhetoric8230we believe that the US has been exploited by certain undercurrents 8221 I would suggest that people go and see for themselves what is happening Collette Valentine Dr Ghazi said that they are hopeful about Obama but they don8217t trust the Clinton people the Susan Rices and Samantha Powers Continuation of the ICC path would be seen as vindictive and alien and could result in turning Darfur into a real conflict The women in the camps are focused on talking to their men and they believe that the only hope for peace and reconciliation lies with their ability to encourage forgiveness They believe no international organizations can persuade the men to reconcile with each other Before this conflict happened tribal elders would meet to settle conflicts between nomadic and peasant communities Right across Darfur women are campaigning on the ground for reconciliation talks This was the first peace conference All the women from all the communities are coming together to urge reconciliation talks with women from each community given their time to speak Security was on top of the agenda as well as education and healthcare Ali Gunn After we came back from the camps we were both shocked about the disparity of what was happening on the ground and what was in the media AFSHIN RATTANSI has helped launch and develop television networks and has worked in journalism for more than two decades at the BBC Today programme CNN International Bloomberg News Al Jazeera Arabic the Dubai Businessamp160 Channel Press TV and The Guardian His quartet of novels 8220The Dream of the Decade8221 is available on Amazoncom He can be reached at afshinafshinrattansicom

George/PROPN Clooney/PROPN Matt/PROPN Damon/PROPN Scarlett/PROPN Johansson/PROPN Cindy/PROPN Crawford/PROPN Bono/PROPN Michael/PROPN Caine/PROPN Claudia/PROPN Schiffer/PROPN Bob/PROPN Geldof/PROPN Hugh/PROPN Grant/PROPN Mia/PROPN Farrow/PROPN Mick/PROPN Jagger/PROPN and/CCONJ so/ADV many/ADJ others/NOUN have/AUX expressed/VERB their/PRON solidarity/NOUN with/ADP the/DET people/NOUN of/ADP the/DET oilrich/NOUN region/NOUN of/ADP Darfur/PROPN A/PROPN few/ADJ weeks/NOUN ago/ADV Democrats/PROPN John/PROPN Lewis/PROPN of/ADP Georgia/PROPN Keith/PROPN Ellison/PROPN of/ADP Minnesota/PROPN Lynn/PROPN Woolsey/PROPN of/ADP California/PROPN Donna/PROPN Edwards/PROPN of/ADP Maryland/PROPN and/CCONJ Jim/PROPN McGovern/PROPN of/ADP Massachusetts/PROPN were/AUX all/ADV arrested/VERB as/SCONJ they/PRON demonstrated/VERB against/ADP the/DET Sudanese/ADJ government/NOUN When/SCONJ Colin/PROPN Powell/PROPN used/VERB the/DET word/NOUN genocide/NOUN in/ADP 2004/NUM it/PRON kicked/VERB off/ADP 1/NUM 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<p>In 1964, 29-year-old Ken Kesey finished &#8220;Sometimes a Great Notion,&#8221; a saga of a defiant Pacific Northwest logging family that was his last novel for 25 years.</p> <p>To celebrate, Kesey and some friends painted an old bus the way a kindergarten class would have &#8212; starting a fashion trend for the decade &#8212; and took off for the publication of the book in New York with Neal Cassady, the model for Jack Kerouac&#8217;s hero in &#8220;On the Road,&#8221; at the wheel.</p> <p>Subsequent voyages headed to Haight-Ashbury, where Kesey, who had discovered LSD as a Stanford student in a CIA-sponsored study, and his Merry Pranksters threw one of their &#8220;Acid Test&#8221; parties where you really had to watch out for the punch and where the Grateful Dead, a former jug band setting out in a new direction that would be called &#8220;acid rock,&#8221; played its first gig.</p> <p>Their adventures became the basis of Tom Wolfe&#8217;s &#8220;The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.&#8221; If it was hard to tell what it all meant, it clearly meant something.</p> <p /> <p>The War of the McCourts is like that, a lusty (with whomever), brawling (through their $1,000-an-hour lawyers) saga of a strong-willed New England family whose idea of running its new baseball team in Los Angeles includes hiring a Russian spiritualist &#8212; no, not Rasputin, he&#8217;s dead, we think &#8212; while turning the franchise upside down and shaking it like a piggy bank.</p> <p>Unfortunately, at that point, the McCourts&#8217; story takes a turn for the worse.</p> <p>Frank and Jamie, who would still be fine if they had done nothing worse, split up and set out to obliterate each other.</p> <p>This is about more than a lost Dodger season. This is Wolfe&#8217;s &#8220;Bonfire of the Vanities&#8221; with Frank and Jamie as dueling Sherman McCoys, and Jamie&#8217;s driver, Jeff Fuller, as Maria Ruskin, the Other Person.</p> <p>If the Dodgers wound up on the bonfire, it could have happened to anyone.</p> <p>Actually, it did.</p> <p>Reality intruded on their blue leveraged heaven in 2008 as the housing bubble burst, threatening to melt down the financial system in what looked like Great Depression II.</p> <p>Of course, Frank and Jamie lived in a galaxy far far away from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which the GOP blamed for the fall for making loans to poor people with minimal down payments.</p> <p>Unfortunately for the poor, who always get the least portion and then the blame, it was hard to get into Georgetown U, where Jamie met Frank, let alone the Sorbonne and MIT, where Jamie continued her education.</p> <p>Otherwise, the poor might not have put any money down &#8230; then borrowed on the property to buy more &#8230; like Jamie and Frank!</p> <p>If schadenfreude is wrong &#8212; no, really &#8212; this is an extreme test after seven seasons in which it was always about them as Frank finessed the truth while doing Dodger Blue over in Boston Red Sox (Grady Little, Nomar Garciaparra, Manny Ramirez), Jamie co-owned visibly and befriended movie stars (Barbra Streisand) and image concerns were addressed by going through five publicists including Derrick Hall, who became president of the Arizona Diamondbacks; Camille Johnston, who became Michelle Obama&#8217;s spokesperson; and Dr. Charles Steinberg, now senior adviser to Commissioner Bud Selig.</p> <p>Now for the big finish, a mushroom cloud rising over Dodger Stadium.</p> <p /> <p /> <p>If you&#8217;re looking for someone besides the McCourts to blame &#8230; consider Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo.</p> <p>If he hadn&#8217;t discovered California, the state would not have inherited the Spanish civil code and there would be no such thing as community property [so] Frank and Jamie wouldn&#8217;t have had to sign a contract when they moved here from Massachusetts &#8230; [and] wouldn&#8217;t have anything to fight about.</p> <p>&#8211;Gene Maddaus, LA Weekly</p> <p>If it&#8217;s hard to tell the difference these days, this isn&#8217;t a series about fictional characters, but real people named Jamie and Frank McCourt, or people who once appeared real.</p> <p>How could this have happened, in general, and to them?</p> <p>Unfortunately, it was simple.</p> <p>No laws of man or nature had to be overcome. The devil didn&#8217;t have to come up from hell to seduce Frank and Jamie into risking all they had and then go even deeper in debt to live like the movie stars around them.</p> <p>The system, or systems (legal, banking, baseball), weren&#8217;t subverted. Actually, they made it possible.</p> <p>Just one thing separated Frank and Jamie from the other Type A&#8217;s running amok: They had a Major League Baseball team.</p> <p>It wasn&#8217;t just any team, but the iconic Dodgers, in their iconic stadium, atop a hill overlooking downtown, where they opened the gates and 3 million people showed up.</p> <p>In the seven pre-McCourt seasons &#8212; the sainted Peter O&#8217;Malley&#8217;s last and six being ignored by Rupert Murdoch, a more callous, devious scourge by far &#8212; the Dodgers had three No. 2 finishes, four No. 3s (in a five-team division) and averaged 3.2 million in attendance.</p> <p>Entering the House Rupe Raped, Frank and Jamie would have been greeted like the Prince of Wales and Lady Di.</p> <p>Instead, Dodgers fans got a preening Yuppie husband-and-wife team, poseurs as baseball executives, lacking in clues, sensitivity and resources.</p> <p>Frank and Jamie weren&#8217;t lacking in brains, though. They knew they had this covered.Even if they had to run the Dodgers &#8212; who once shattered racial barriers and blazed trails &#8212; like a middle-market team, this wasn&#8217;t the AL East with the Yankee payroll at $200 million and the Red Sox at $150 million.</p> <p>The NL West had mom-and-pop stories all in a row, even in boom times like 1993-2002 when the expansion Rockies averaged 3.6 million, or 2000-2003 when the Giants averaged 3.3 million in Pac Bell Stadium.</p> <p>Scaling payroll back from $105 million to $95 million in the McCourts&#8217; 2004 debut to $83 million by 2005, they remained 1-2 in the NL West, where no rival would venture past the $90 million mark until the 2010 Giants.</p> <p>So Frank and Jamie didn&#8217;t need Branch Rickey to rise from his grave to win the NL West their first season and four of their six together.</p> <p>Even if the Dodgers went quietly each time, 4-20 in four post-seasons, the establishment came around, as it always does.</p> <p>Wrote USA Today&#8217;s Jill Lieber in a feature on Jamie in their second season:</p> <p>Don&#8217;t think McCourt was given her position only because she is the owner&#8217;s wife. She&#8217;s running the show because she has the goods: a bachelor&#8217;s in French from Georgetown, a diploma from La Sorbonne in Paris, a J.D. from the University of Maryland School of Law and an M.S. in management from MIT. &#8230;</p> <p>She also practiced law for 15 years &#8230; and raised four boys. Drew, 23, has a degree in astrophysics from Columbia and is the Dodgers&#8217; director of marketing. Travis, 22, recently graduated from Georgetown and just joined the frontoffice. Casey, 18, will be a freshman at Stanford. Gavin, 15, attends Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles and was a nationally ranked tennis player.</p> <p>Quite simply, McCourt is a 5-2, 100-pound, golden-blond tornado in size-0 designer miniskirts and 3-inch heels.</p> <p>If Frank and Jamie were also cutting-edge New Age thinkers, they wisely kept it to themselves, as when they hired their spiritualist to send positive energy.</p> <p>That was 71-year-old Vladimir Shpunt, an &#233;migr&#233; Russian physicist who helped Jamie get over an eye infection and went on the payroll.</p> <p>Shpunt didn&#8217;t claim to know anything about baseball and didn&#8217;t attend games, sending the Dodgers energy while watching them on TV from Boston.</p> <p>Few team officials or players are thought to have known about Shpunt. The Los Angeles Times&#8217; Bill Shaikin broke the story before the trial, which was confirmed by another Jamie biggie, entertainment lawyer Bert Fields (Beatles, Michael Jackson).</p> <p>Not that it was an issue between the McCourts. The Times quoted Frank after clinching the NL West in 2008, e-mailing Shpunt&#8217;s agent:</p> <p>&#8220;Congratulations and thanks to you and vlad. Also, pls pass along a special &#8216;thank you&#8217; to vlad for all of his hard work.&#8221;</p> <p>Energy wasn&#8217;t everything. The Phillies then dispatched the Dodgers, 4-1.</p> <p>This was also their house-acquisition phase &#8230; a $20 million mansion and a $6.5 million cottage next door for a guesthouse in Holmby Hills across from the Playboy Mansion &#8230; adjacent homes on the beach at Malibu at $19 million and $17 million &#8230; a $4.6 million lot in Cabo San Lucas &#8230; to go with those in Brookline, Vail and the $20 million one on 100 acres in Cape Cod.</p> <p>Their debt level was staggering but times were booming and they owned the Hope diamond of properties, which they had picked up in a garage sale.</p> <p>Buying the Dodgers had helped Murdoch pre-empt a Disney challenge to his regional sports networks, but became a PR debacle and, he claimed, a financial one.</p> <p>Since Murdoch was effectively taking money from the Dodgers and giving it to Fox, no one could tell how much &#8212; or if &#8212; he was losing.</p> <p>Murdoch himself couldn&#8217;t have cared less but he did let his lieutenants atop his media empire take a crack at running the team. Six weeks into the season, they traded catcher Mike Piazza &#8212; who wanted a new $100 million deal after averaging .334, 33 home runs and 105 RBIs in his first five seasons &#8212; to Miami after calling the Marlins to discuss a TV matter.</p> <p>After six years of screwing the pooch, Murdoch secured the TV rights for 10 more years in a sweetheart deal &#8212; with himself &#8212; and went looking for a buyer, even one he had to loan half the $421 million purchase price, it turned out.</p> <p>What cash the McCourts needed came in loans on their 24-acre parking lot in Boston. Essentially they traded it for the Dodgers, with a promise to pay off the difference.</p> <p>What could go wrong now?</p> <p>Selig, partial to leveraged owners who wouldn&#8217;t run up $200 million payrolls, embraced the McCourts, vetting their complex transaction and showing no interest in L.A. white knight Eli Broad&#8217;s late overture.</p> <p>Sure enough, raising revenue was a snap for Frank and Jamie, who wrung every last dollar out of every square inch, whether it was real or an accounting device.</p> <p>Parking was hiked from $10 to $15, infuriating fans who lived miles away, had to drive and had two choices: fork up or stay home.</p> <p>They could charge their own team $14 million to play in its own stadium, spun off to a McCourt-owned entity called Blue Land.</p> <p>Like so many other scoops, the rental was revealed before the trial with David Boies, Jamie&#8217;s lead lawyer, telling Shaikin, &#8220;It&#8217;s a way of taking money out of the Dodgers and putting it into a place they can access it.&#8221;In court papers, the McCourts were alleged &#8212; by Jamie&#8217;s lawyers &#8212; to have taken out $108 million in personal distributions.</p> <p>There was only one thing Frank and Jamie apparently didn&#8217;t do &#8212; break any law.</p> <p>Amazingly, despite the scope of the wheeling and dealing, there have been no allegations they did anything illegal.</p> <p>Suppose you were so slick, no matter how many hundreds of millions you owed, you could go out and borrow hundreds of millions more.</p> <p>You just might try to find out how many yachts you could water-ski behind, like Gordon Gekko, Frank and Jamie.</p> <p /> <p /> <p>Where do companies turn when you-know-what hits the fan? Say for example, when FBI agents invade your offices or an out-of-state bank refuses to renew your credit line that is keeping the company and the economy afloat? Two companies with these actual problems had one answer: Michael Sitrick.</p> <p>&#8212; CFO magazine</p> <p>And just as amazingly, no one was on their trail.</p> <p>No one would have even known about the McCourts&#8217; wanton juggling act if they had done only one thing &#8230;</p> <p>Stay together.</p> <p>Unfortunately, it can be hard to split the loot with the heat coming down on you, as times changed and the boom burst.</p> <p>Now the marriage, which had featured stormy confrontations, had a crack in its foundation.</p> <p>Upon buying the team in 2004, Frank and Jamie had signed a property agreement in which she gave up any claim to the Dodgers for title to all their other property, which may be why they bought so much more property.</p> <p>In later years, Jamie, aware the team&#8217;s value would skyrocket in 2014 when it regained its TV rights from Fox, pressed Frank to reapportion their property.</p> <p>Frank was willing but estate planning foundered on the issues of Jamie&#8217;s claim to the team, and the team&#8217;s value.</p> <p>As in any negotiation, there was a doomsday scenario &#8212; divorce &#8212; although Jamie&#8217;s estate lawyer, Leah Bishop, advised her client (in an e-mail that would be filed in court papers) that that was &#8220;the nuclear option.&#8221;</p> <p>Only Jamie and Frank know when they had it with each other, and their versions differ by 180 degrees.</p> <p>In any case, while figuring out who got what, they split up.</p> <p>In 2009, they took separate vacations. Jamie went to Cape Cod with Fuller.</p> <p>A day after the Dodger season ended, Frank fired Jamie from her $2-million-a-year CEO post, noting &#8220;inappropriate behavior with regard to a direct subordinate.&#8221;</p> <p>Jamie tacitly acknowledged the affair with Fuller, telling the L.A. Times&#8217; T.J. Simers that it didn&#8217;t begin &#8220;until the marriage broke up.&#8221;</p> <p>So started the Mutually Assured Destruction phase.</p> <p>Within weeks, TMZ reported Jamie had called 911 to keep Frank from entering their Holmby Hills home.</p> <p>Frank&#8217;s lawyers issued a statement saying he was jogging by when he found &#8220;his wife swimming in the pool and her personal &#8216;security assistant,&#8217; Jeff Fuller, was also at the residence.&#8221;</p> <p>Jamie&#8217;s lawyers denied Fuller was there.</p> <p>On Aug. 30, after 10 months of not settling this before it really got ugly, the trial began, making up in sensation what it seemed to lack in merit.</p> <p>Jamie&#8217;s case is based on her insistence that she didn&#8217;t understand the 2004 property agreement &#8212; incredible as that sounds, as Jamie herself noted.</p> <p>In a 2008 e-mail to the Boston attorney who drafted the document, and backed Frank&#8217;s understanding, Jamie wrote:</p> <p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t forget, I was a divorce lawyer there and I am really clear on what the intended distributions were to be.&#8221;</p> <p>In the same e-mail, Jamie acknowledged that it was &#8220;my fault, I guess, for not having read the post marital document and believing that you were preserving the status quo.&#8221;</p> <p>This seemed to leave Boies a who-are-you-going-to-believe-me-or-your-eyes defense with worse odds than he had with Al Gore before a Supreme Court with five justices wearing &#8220;W.&#8221; buttons.</p> <p>Jamie went for it anyway, pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into a vintage Sitrick PR campaign, sitting down with anyone who mattered, even Simers, who had referred to her as &#8220;the Screaming Meanie.&#8221;</p> <p>(As Kathleen Turner sneers in &#8220;The War of the Roses&#8221; when Michael Douglas tells her to get a good lawyer, &#8220;Best your money can buy.&#8221;)</p> <p>With Frank silent, stories tended to be sympathetic narratives of what went through Jamie&#8217;s mind when this and that happened, which hardly changed the basic equation.</p> <p>Wrote ESPN magazine&#8217;s Molly Knight of Jamie&#8217;s ability to remember the exact time she saw Frank&#8217;s e-mail firing her on her BlackBerry, but not where she was:</p> <p>&#8220;She was alone in her home, yes, but which one? It was hard to keep them straight.&#8221;</p> <p>So much for the PR war.</p> <p>If defendant and claimant were pariahs, the trial was a gift from the gods as the cream of U.S. jurisprudence acknowledged their own clients&#8217; excesses, secrets and lies.</p> <p>It was Steve Susman, Frank&#8217;s lead attorney, who asserted the McCourts put &#8220;not a penny of cash&#8221; in the purchase, making the point that it was prudent for Jamie to trade her claim to the team for their other property.</p> <p>Another of Frank&#8217;s lawyers, local divorce biggie Sorrell Trope (Elin Nordegren, Hugh Grant, Cary Grant), compared Jamie to Marie Antoinette after Jamie&#8217;s attorney, Dennis Wasser (Tom Cruise, Clint Eastwood, Steven Spielberg), set him up, detailing the royal lifestyle to justify Jamie&#8217;s request for $1 million a month.</p> <p>&#8220;They lived in seven lavish homes &#8230; flew in private jets &#8230; had hairstylists come to their house every day,&#8221; said Wasser.&#8220;Every need, every want these people had was met. &#8230;</p> <p>&#8220;It&#8217;s not our province to say, &#8216;That&#8217;s too much, that&#8217;s too little, who lives like that?&#8217;&amp;#160;&#8221;</p> <p>The hairstylists, it was revealed, cost $150,000 a year.</p> <p>Taking it on himself to say, &#8220;Who lives like that?&#8221; Judge Scott Gordon gave Jamie $637,000 a month.</p> <p>She&#8217;s still getting it, perhaps explaining why the most sensational war of attrition in divorce history was still going this week.</p> <p /> <p /> <p>As Yogi Berra said, it ain&#8217;t over until it&#8217;s over.</p> <p>With the trial resuming after a two-week break, Yahoo&#8217;s Tim Brown reported the two sides will begin settlement talks.</p> <p>In other words, having dined on each other for a year, Frank and Jamie would now divide all they own, as everyone knew they would have to all along.</p> <p>Manager Joe Torre, the team&#8217;s professionalism totem, had already resigned, noting it wasn&#8217;t necessarily a retirement.</p> <p>In other words, if the Mets want him, he&#8217;s there.</p> <p>Ramirez, the one Red Sox relic the McCourts brought from Boston who made a difference, was recently waived. Manny was Manny, all right, lighting up Dodger Stadium (turned into Mannywood), getting busted for steroids and no-showing in his farewell season.</p> <p>People come, people go, but not systems.</p> <p>Demands for meaningful federal financial reform in the wake of the economic meltdown perished in the political crossfire.</p> <p>Selig has remained mum despite reports that he&#8217;s fuming at the spectacle.</p> <p>Too bad Frank and Jamie let Bud down, after he escorted them to power, vouching for the viability of their offer, which turned out to have included &#8220;not a penny of cash.&#8221;</p> <p>Of course, baseball runs on hope, which arises in spring. Even if Frank keeps the team, he&#8217;d have to sell it to give Jamie half their estate, unless, of course, she trusts him to run it for her.</p> <p>In all likelihood, Jamie will be as anxious to see Frank sell the team as its fans are.</p> <p>Rupe II, anybody?</p>

The War of the McCourts

https://truthdig.com/articles/the-war-of-the-mccourts/

2010-09-28

4left

In 1964 29yearold Ken Kesey finished 8220Sometimes a Great Notion8221 a saga of a defiant Pacific Northwest logging family that was his last novel for 25 years To celebrate Kesey and some friends painted an old bus the way a kindergarten class would have 8212 starting a fashion trend for the decade 8212 and took off for the publication of the book in New York with Neal Cassady the model for Jack Kerouac8217s hero in 8220On the Road8221 at the wheel Subsequent voyages headed to HaightAshbury where Kesey who had discovered LSD as a Stanford student in a CIAsponsored study and his Merry Pranksters threw one of their 8220Acid Test8221 parties where you really had to watch out for the punch and where the Grateful Dead a former jug band setting out in a new direction that would be called 8220acid rock8221 played its first gig Their adventures became the basis of Tom Wolfe8217s 8220The Electric KoolAid Acid Test8221 If it was hard to tell what it all meant it clearly meant something The War of the McCourts is like that a lusty with whomever brawling through their 1000anhour lawyers saga of a strongwilled New England family whose idea of running its new baseball team in Los Angeles includes hiring a Russian spiritualist 8212 no not Rasputin he8217s dead we think 8212 while turning the franchise upside down and shaking it like a piggy bank Unfortunately at that point the McCourts8217 story takes a turn for the worse Frank and Jamie who would still be fine if they had done nothing worse split up and set out to obliterate each other This is about more than a lost Dodger season This is Wolfe8217s 8220Bonfire of the Vanities8221 with Frank and Jamie as dueling Sherman McCoys and Jamie8217s driver Jeff Fuller as Maria Ruskin the Other Person If the Dodgers wound up on the bonfire it could have happened to anyone Actually it did Reality intruded on their blue leveraged heaven in 2008 as the housing bubble burst threatening to melt down the financial system in what looked like Great Depression II Of course Frank and Jamie lived in a galaxy far far away from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac which the GOP blamed for the fall for making loans to poor people with minimal down payments Unfortunately for the poor who always get the least portion and then the blame it was hard to get into Georgetown U where Jamie met Frank let alone the Sorbonne and MIT where Jamie continued her education Otherwise the poor might not have put any money down 8230 then borrowed on the property to buy more 8230 like Jamie and Frank If schadenfreude is wrong 8212 no really 8212 this is an extreme test after seven seasons in which it was always about them as Frank finessed the truth while doing Dodger Blue over in Boston Red Sox Grady Little Nomar Garciaparra Manny Ramirez Jamie coowned visibly and befriended movie stars Barbra Streisand and image concerns were addressed by going through five publicists including Derrick Hall who became president of the Arizona Diamondbacks Camille Johnston who became Michelle Obama8217s spokesperson and Dr Charles Steinberg now senior adviser to Commissioner Bud Selig Now for the big finish a mushroom cloud rising over Dodger Stadium If you8217re looking for someone besides the McCourts to blame 8230 consider Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo If he hadn8217t discovered California the state would not have inherited the Spanish civil code and there would be no such thing as community property so Frank and Jamie wouldn8217t have had to sign a contract when they moved here from Massachusetts 8230 and wouldn8217t have anything to fight about 8211Gene Maddaus LA Weekly If it8217s hard to tell the difference these days this isn8217t a series about fictional characters but real people named Jamie and Frank McCourt or people who once appeared real How could this have happened in general and to them Unfortunately it was simple No laws of man or nature had to be overcome The devil didn8217t have to come up from hell to seduce Frank and Jamie into risking all they had and then go even deeper in debt to live like the movie stars around them The system or systems legal banking baseball weren8217t subverted Actually they made it possible Just one thing separated Frank and Jamie from the other Type A8217s running amok They had a Major League Baseball team It wasn8217t just any team but the iconic Dodgers in their iconic stadium atop a hill overlooking downtown where they opened the gates and 3 million people showed up In the seven preMcCourt seasons 8212 the sainted Peter O8217Malley8217s last and six being ignored by Rupert Murdoch a more callous devious scourge by far 8212 the Dodgers had three No 2 finishes four No 3s in a fiveteam division and averaged 32 million in attendance Entering the House Rupe Raped Frank and Jamie would have been greeted like the Prince of Wales and Lady Di Instead Dodgers fans got a preening Yuppie husbandandwife team poseurs as baseball executives lacking in clues sensitivity and resources Frank and Jamie weren8217t lacking in brains though They knew they had this coveredEven if they had to run the Dodgers 8212 who once shattered racial barriers and blazed trails 8212 like a middlemarket team this wasn8217t the AL East with the Yankee payroll at 200 million and the Red Sox at 150 million The NL West had momandpop stories all in a row even in boom times like 19932002 when the expansion Rockies averaged 36 million or 20002003 when the Giants averaged 33 million in Pac Bell Stadium Scaling payroll back from 105 million to 95 million in the McCourts8217 2004 debut to 83 million by 2005 they remained 12 in the NL West where no rival would venture past the 90 million mark until the 2010 Giants So Frank and Jamie didn8217t need Branch Rickey to rise from his grave to win the NL West their first season and four of their six together Even if the Dodgers went quietly each time 420 in four postseasons the establishment came around as it always does Wrote USA Today8217s Jill Lieber in a feature on Jamie in their second season Don8217t think McCourt was given her position only because she is the owner8217s wife She8217s running the show because she has the goods a bachelor8217s in French from Georgetown a diploma from La Sorbonne in Paris a JD from the University of Maryland School of Law and an MS in management from MIT 8230 She also practiced law for 15 years 8230 and raised four boys Drew 23 has a degree in astrophysics from Columbia and is the Dodgers8217 director of marketing Travis 22 recently graduated from Georgetown and just joined the frontoffice Casey 18 will be a freshman at Stanford Gavin 15 attends HarvardWestlake School in Los Angeles and was a nationally ranked tennis player Quite simply McCourt is a 52 100pound goldenblond tornado in size0 designer miniskirts and 3inch heels If Frank and Jamie were also cuttingedge New Age thinkers they wisely kept it to themselves as when they hired their spiritualist to send positive energy That was 71yearold Vladimir Shpunt an 233migr233 Russian physicist who helped Jamie get over an eye infection and went on the payroll Shpunt didn8217t claim to know anything about baseball and didn8217t attend games sending the Dodgers energy while watching them on TV from Boston Few team officials or players are thought to have known about Shpunt The Los Angeles Times8217 Bill Shaikin broke the story before the trial which was confirmed by another Jamie biggie entertainment lawyer Bert Fields Beatles Michael Jackson Not that it was an issue between the McCourts The Times quoted Frank after clinching the NL West in 2008 emailing Shpunt8217s agent 8220Congratulations and thanks to you and vlad Also pls pass along a special 8216thank you8217 to vlad for all of his hard work8221 Energy wasn8217t everything The Phillies then dispatched the Dodgers 41 This was also their houseacquisition phase 8230 a 20 million mansion and a 65 million cottage next door for a guesthouse in Holmby Hills across from the Playboy Mansion 8230 adjacent homes on the beach at Malibu at 19 million and 17 million 8230 a 46 million lot in Cabo San Lucas 8230 to go with those in Brookline Vail and the 20 million one on 100 acres in Cape Cod Their debt level was staggering but times were booming and they owned the Hope diamond of properties which they had picked up in a garage sale Buying the Dodgers had helped Murdoch preempt a Disney challenge to his regional sports networks but became a PR debacle and he claimed a financial one Since Murdoch was effectively taking money from the Dodgers and giving it to Fox no one could tell how much 8212 or if 8212 he was losing Murdoch himself couldn8217t have cared less but he did let his lieutenants atop his media empire take a crack at running the team Six weeks into the season they traded catcher Mike Piazza 8212 who wanted a new 100 million deal after averaging 334 33 home runs and 105 RBIs in his first five seasons 8212 to Miami after calling the Marlins to discuss a TV matter After six years of screwing the pooch Murdoch secured the TV rights for 10 more years in a sweetheart deal 8212 with himself 8212 and went looking for a buyer even one he had to loan half the 421 million purchase price it turned out What cash the McCourts needed came in loans on their 24acre parking lot in Boston Essentially they traded it for the Dodgers with a promise to pay off the difference What could go wrong now Selig partial to leveraged owners who wouldn8217t run up 200 million payrolls embraced the McCourts vetting their complex transaction and showing no interest in LA white knight Eli Broad8217s late overture Sure enough raising revenue was a snap for Frank and Jamie who wrung every last dollar out of every square inch whether it was real or an accounting device Parking was hiked from 10 to 15 infuriating fans who lived miles away had to drive and had two choices fork up or stay home They could charge their own team 14 million to play in its own stadium spun off to a McCourtowned entity called Blue Land Like so many other scoops the rental was revealed before the trial with David Boies Jamie8217s lead lawyer telling Shaikin 8220It8217s a way of taking money out of the Dodgers and putting it into a place they can access it8221In court papers the McCourts were alleged 8212 by Jamie8217s lawyers 8212 to have taken out 108 million in personal distributions There was only one thing Frank and Jamie apparently didn8217t do 8212 break any law Amazingly despite the scope of the wheeling and dealing there have been no allegations they did anything illegal Suppose you were so slick no matter how many hundreds of millions you owed you could go out and borrow hundreds of millions more You just might try to find out how many yachts you could waterski behind like Gordon Gekko Frank and Jamie Where do companies turn when youknowwhat hits the fan Say for example when FBI agents invade your offices or an outofstate bank refuses to renew your credit line that is keeping the company and the economy afloat Two companies with these actual problems had one answer Michael Sitrick 8212 CFO magazine And just as amazingly no one was on their trail No one would have even known about the McCourts8217 wanton juggling act if they had done only one thing 8230 Stay together Unfortunately it can be hard to split the loot with the heat coming down on you as times changed and the boom burst Now the marriage which had featured stormy confrontations had a crack in its foundation Upon buying the team in 2004 Frank and Jamie had signed a property agreement in which she gave up any claim to the Dodgers for title to all their other property which may be why they bought so much more property In later years Jamie aware the team8217s value would skyrocket in 2014 when it regained its TV rights from Fox pressed Frank to reapportion their property Frank was willing but estate planning foundered on the issues of Jamie8217s claim to the team and the team8217s value As in any negotiation there was a doomsday scenario 8212 divorce 8212 although Jamie8217s estate lawyer Leah Bishop advised her client in an email that would be filed in court papers that that was 8220the nuclear option8221 Only Jamie and Frank know when they had it with each other and their versions differ by 180 degrees In any case while figuring out who got what they split up In 2009 they took separate vacations Jamie went to Cape Cod with Fuller A day after the Dodger season ended Frank fired Jamie from her 2millionayear CEO post noting 8220inappropriate behavior with regard to a direct subordinate8221 Jamie tacitly acknowledged the affair with Fuller telling the LA Times8217 TJ Simers that it didn8217t begin 8220until the marriage broke up8221 So started the Mutually Assured Destruction phase Within weeks TMZ reported Jamie had called 911 to keep Frank from entering their Holmby Hills home Frank8217s lawyers issued a statement saying he was jogging by when he found 8220his wife swimming in the pool and her personal 8216security assistant8217 Jeff Fuller was also at the residence8221 Jamie8217s lawyers denied Fuller was there On Aug 30 after 10 months of not settling this before it really got ugly the trial began making up in sensation what it seemed to lack in merit Jamie8217s case is based on her insistence that she didn8217t understand the 2004 property agreement 8212 incredible as that sounds as Jamie herself noted In a 2008 email to the Boston attorney who drafted the document and backed Frank8217s understanding Jamie wrote 8220Don8217t forget I was a divorce lawyer there and I am really clear on what the intended distributions were to be8221 In the same email Jamie acknowledged that it was 8220my fault I guess for not having read the post marital document and believing that you were preserving the status quo8221 This seemed to leave Boies a whoareyougoingtobelievemeoryoureyes defense with worse odds than he had with Al Gore before a Supreme Court with five justices wearing 8220W8221 buttons Jamie went for it anyway pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into a vintage Sitrick PR campaign sitting down with anyone who mattered even Simers who had referred to her as 8220the Screaming Meanie8221 As Kathleen Turner sneers in 8220The War of the Roses8221 when Michael Douglas tells her to get a good lawyer 8220Best your money can buy8221 With Frank silent stories tended to be sympathetic narratives of what went through Jamie8217s mind when this and that happened which hardly changed the basic equation Wrote ESPN magazine8217s Molly Knight of Jamie8217s ability to remember the exact time she saw Frank8217s email firing her on her BlackBerry but not where she was 8220She was alone in her home yes but which one It was hard to keep them straight8221 So much for the PR war If defendant and claimant were pariahs the trial was a gift from the gods as the cream of US jurisprudence acknowledged their own clients8217 excesses secrets and lies It was Steve Susman Frank8217s lead attorney who asserted the McCourts put 8220not a penny of cash8221 in the purchase making the point that it was prudent for Jamie to trade her claim to the team for their other property Another of Frank8217s lawyers local divorce biggie Sorrell Trope Elin Nordegren Hugh Grant Cary Grant compared Jamie to Marie Antoinette after Jamie8217s attorney Dennis Wasser Tom Cruise Clint Eastwood Steven Spielberg set him up detailing the royal lifestyle to justify Jamie8217s request for 1 million a month 8220They lived in seven lavish homes 8230 flew in private jets 8230 had hairstylists come to their house every day8221 said Wasser8220Every need every want these people had was met 8230 8220It8217s not our province to say 8216That8217s too much that8217s too little who lives like that8217amp1608221 The hairstylists it was revealed cost 150000 a year Taking it on himself to say 8220Who lives like that8221 Judge Scott Gordon gave Jamie 637000 a month She8217s still getting it perhaps explaining why the most sensational war of attrition in divorce history was still going this week As Yogi Berra said it ain8217t over until it8217s over With the trial resuming after a twoweek break Yahoo8217s Tim Brown reported the two sides will begin settlement talks In other words having dined on each other for a year Frank and Jamie would now divide all they own as everyone knew they would have to all along Manager Joe Torre the team8217s professionalism totem had already resigned noting it wasn8217t necessarily a retirement In other words if the Mets want him he8217s there Ramirez the one Red Sox relic the McCourts brought from Boston who made a difference was recently waived Manny was Manny all right lighting up Dodger Stadium turned into Mannywood getting busted for steroids and noshowing in his farewell season People come people go but not systems Demands for meaningful federal financial reform in the wake of the economic meltdown perished in the political crossfire Selig has remained mum despite reports that he8217s fuming at the spectacle Too bad Frank and Jamie let Bud down after he escorted them to power vouching for the viability of their offer which turned out to have included 8220not a penny of cash8221 Of course baseball runs on hope which arises in spring Even if Frank keeps the team he8217d have to sell it to give Jamie half their estate unless of course she trusts him to run it for her In all likelihood Jamie will be as anxious to see Frank sell the team as its fans are Rupe II anybody

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<p>At first, Melva Aguirre didn&#8217;t take the report of floodwaters roaring down on her arid hometown seriously. &#8220;When they told us water was coming, we were laughing,&#8221; Aguirre said, recalling the afternoon of August 15, 2006, in the small southern New Mexico town of Hatch. &#8220;And then it came in&#8230;,&#8221; the restaurateur sighed, adding that the resultant damage forced her Pepper Pot Restaurant to undergo five weeks&#8217; worth of repairs.</p> <p>A homey place where Aguirre greets customers by name, the Pepper Pot is a good spot to hear about or glimpse a traumatic chapter in Hatch&#8217;s history. In addition to an American flag and the old vinyl records of Elvis Presley and other musical luminaries that line the walls, the eatery&#8217;s d&#233;cor features photos of the inundated Los Caballos Apartments and other scenes from flooding whose after effects ripple through the life of a rural community a decade later.</p> <p>August 15 was the first of three terrible Tuesdays that struck Hatch back in August 2006. On that fateful day, rainwater overflowed the Placitas Arroyo, submerging streets and properties in several feet of water. Two subsequent but smaller flooding events followed on August 22 and 29.</p> <p>Internationally known for its prized chile pepper crop, Hatch was slammed only days prior to the annual Hatch Chile Festival, an event that attracts thousands from throughout the region.</p> <p>James L. &#8220;Slim&#8221; Whitlock, proprietor of Jim&#8217;s Supermarket, was more fortunate than many others: only about four inches of water seeped into his store, Whitlock calculated. Still, &#8220;it was a scary night,&#8221; the grocer told Frontera NorteSur.</p> <p>Whitlock credits the rapid response of outside agencies like the New Mexico State Police and New Mexico National Guard for getting Hatch through a rough evening. &#8220;They were there doing their part. This community owns a debt to people we don&#8217;t even know. They set aside their lives to help us,&#8221; Whitlock said.</p> <p>Of Hatch&#8217;s estimated 1600 residents at the time, 500 were temporarily or permanently displaced and more than 400 homes and businesses suffered some degree of damage. &amp;#160;The public schools took a hit. Serving the Village of Hatch and surrounding rural communities, the Hatch Valley School District saw student enrollment drop from 1,556 pupils during the 2005-06 school year to 1,408 in the 2006-2007 academic year, according to New Mexico Public Education Department numbers.</p> <p>Student enrollment was up slightly to 1,440 for the 2007-08 school year but dropped again in succeeding calendar years, slipping to 1,308 by the 2013-14 school year, the Hatch Valley Public Schools Facilities Master Plan 2014-2019 reported, as the Great Recession, drought and changes in the chile industry interceded- almost as if the flood was a bad omen.</p> <p>Approximately 95 percent of Hatch&#8217;s residents did not carry flood insurance when Little Katrina hit, an Frontera NorteSur follow-up story reported a year later.</p> <p>In 2016 residents are still financially vulnerable. As of early August 2016, only 61 local policies, valued at $8,827,900 and costing annual premiums of $87,718 in total, were registered with the National Flood Insurance Program, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Overall, FEMA reports that $3,423,310 in flood insurance claims have been paid out by private insurers in Hatch since 1978.</p> <p>Almost all of the current flood insurance coverage is found in Hatch&#8217;s high-risk zone, as defined by the FEMA flood map currently in effect. Many of Hatch&#8217;s residents are low-income farmworkers or renters, and a policy with an annual starting price of about $700.00 can take a hefty bite out of a tight family budget.</p> <p>Based on U.S. Census figures, the Hatch Valley Public School&#8217;s most recent master plan reported that 30 percent of the local population lived below the poverty line at some point in recent years.</p> <p>If another flood disaster strikes, many locals would find themselves in a crunch even with FEMA assistance. Earl Armstrong, public affairs officer for FEMA&#8217;s Region 6, stressed that in the 2016 fiscal year his agency is limited to paying out a maximum of $33,000 in individual assistance, as set by Congress. FEMA&#8217;s role, Armstrong explained, is to supplement payments from private insurers. &#8220;It might get them into a house while they&#8217;re making repairs,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>The 2006 Hatch flooding was part of a series of floods that struck the greater Paso del Norte region from Hatch in the north to the Juarez Valley in the south during July and August of 2006. &amp;#160;Overall, thousands were displaced and property damage assessed in the hundreds of millions on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. The extreme weather events were collectively dubbed Little Katrina by Frontera NorteSur at the time.</p> <p>Although the particular flood experience touched a small of section the globe, its lessons and experiences have a national and international ring in a time of climate change, further illustrating how political and legal structures, community involvement and economic factors all influence the pace of recovery.</p> <p>Not waiting for officialdom, Hatch&#8217;s residents quickly got to work repairing the damage. Aguirre doesn&#8217;t forget the restaurant regulars who rolled up their sleeves to plaster and patch so the morning wake-up could get brewing and the vittles simmering again in the kitchen. &#8220;They needed a coffee shop,&#8221; she chuckled, &#8220;to have breakfast in the morning.&#8221; If it hadn&#8217;t been for the early bird farmers, the Pepper Pot would not have been able to reopen, Aguirre said.</p> <p>&#8220;It was a miracle nobody got killed,&#8221; said Rose Garcia, executive director of Tierra Del Sol, Inc., a non-profit housing development corporation active in New Mexico and Texas. Garcia was involved in a regional effort at reconstructing Hatch.</p> <p>&#8220;They&#8217;re a very resilient community. &amp;#160;I was amazed how they didn&#8217;t depend on government or anybody from outside,&#8221; Garcia told Frontera NorteSur. &#8220;I&#8217;m really proud. They improvised a lot with really limited resources&#8230;within three years it was totally transformed, the area,&#8221; Garcia added.</p> <p>The longtime housing advocate credited a hastily assembled community-based organization, the Hatch Area Recovery Team (HART) and its &#8220;spark plug,&#8221; Marcia Nordyke, for accelerating the flood relief by holding regular meetings and developing a data base.</p> <p>Now retired and the widow of former Hatch Mayor Judd Nordyke, Marcia Nordyke generally leads a private life these days but stays active in the community as a board member of the Hatch Public Library. In a phone interview, Nordyke said she and her late husband were having lunch in the Pepper Pot when Little Katrina came calling.</p> <p>&#8220;It was horrific. It was fast and furious, and it was something I hope to never see again,&#8221; Nordyke said. Rushing outside, the couple was soon confronted with knee-deep water and traffic entanglements. Nordyke said her husband, whom she called a &#8220;hands-on mayor,&#8221; went over to Los Caballos Apartments, the worst-hit property, where farmers employed tractors to get residents off the premises.</p> <p>For Nordyke, the response of both government and civil society stands out. She praised FEMA, the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, a Baptist group and others for rising to the occasion. Animal control personnel responded and removed stranded critters from yards.</p> <p>&#8220;It was absolutely amazing-our people,&#8221; the 46-year Hatch resident said.</p> <p>Hatch&#8217;s fame as the Chile Capital of the World paid off, with Texas&#8217; Central Market kicking in donations, Nordyke added. The grocery chain regularly promotes Hatch Valley-grown chile and even roasts peppers at its Lone Star state locations.</p> <p>After a required Presidential Disaster Declaration was issued for Hatch and other flooded New Mexico communities on August 30, 2006, FEMA stepped up assistance.</p> <p>Arriving in Hatch as a FEMA housing specialist, Isabella Solis was taken aback by the destruction. &#8220;I thought the damages were horrendous. It was really amazing,&#8221; Solis said during a phone interview. A year earlier, Solis had worked on Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana.</p> <p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t think there&#8217;s any comparison to the damages, but as far as the little town of Hatch, it was really devastating,&#8221; she judged.</p> <p>Solis said FEMA registered victims, even extending a hand to those who did not have flood insurance. Renters were compensated for the loss of personal belongings, while property owners got some financial help. &amp;#160;She said FEMA maintained an active project for Hatch until early 2011, after a new apartment complex for flood victims opened.</p> <p>According to FEMA&#8217;s Region 6 office in Texas, the agency provided $1, 266,297.86 in individual and housing assistance to eligible residents, while the U.S. Small Business Administration and the Disaster Unemployment Assistance Program also offered their services. At the time, FEMA&#8217;s maximum grant was limited to $28,500, with individual assistance checks to Hatch residents averaging $3,000-$5,000.</p> <p>Additionally, FEMA channeled $677,657.52 in public assistance for Hatch through the New Mexico state government. That money was allocated of removing debris, fixing roads, repairing water control facilities, restoring utilities and the like.</p> <p>Incorporated as a non-profit, HART raised about $30,000 that was spent on individual home repairs and other necessities like beds for flood victims, Nordyke estimated. Coming like a sucker punch, the flood left psychological scars in displaced children, who &#8220;got hysterical&#8221; and required counseling when storm clouds gathered. &#8220;They were scared to death,&#8221; she remembered.</p> <p>Given the legal caps on FEMA assistance, the lack of flood insurance and the displacement problem, was the flood relief adequate? For her part, Nordyke affirmed mostly yes. &#8220;Of course, there are things that money can&#8217;t replace, but those who wanted stayed and came back,&#8221; she added.</p> <p>For temporary shelter, FEMA supplied 75 trailers, which took longer than expected to erect because of the difficulty in finding a large, appropriate site with utility connections. Many displaced families, including former tenants of Los Caballos Apartments, were lodged by the end of 2006 at a new FEMA trailer park a few miles south of Hatch in Rincon.</p> <p>Originally, the word was that residents would be in the trailer park for 18 months while permanent housing was built. As it turned out, the last residents did not move out of the site until December 2010. Visible from Interstate 25, the old trailer park is nowadays an empty piece of land. &amp;#160;Mostly, the trailers were &#8220;sent back to staging areas and possibly sent to the General Services Administration for auction,&#8221; according to FEMA&#8217;s Earl Armstrong.</p> <p>Tierra del Sol got five FEMA trailers donated to flood victims, assisting some of the families in becoming homeowners. &amp;#160;Valued at $100,000, the transactions were financed by the New Mexico Mortgage Finance Authority and Federal Home Loan Bank Dallas to pay for the new homes, utility connections and extensions, according to Rose Garcia. &#8220;Everybody owns their lots. They hadn&#8217;t owned anything,&#8221; she said.</p> <p>&#8220;We have continued to provide housing rehab as we can access resources to address the many home owners that still need repairs,&#8221; Garcia added in an e-mail.</p> <p>In 2016 change is evident in Chile Capital of the World, though memories of the flood and loose ends from its fury linger on in the small town&#8217;s historical narrative. Their lives uprooted by a rude surprise, some people never came back. Hatch&#8217;s population creeped back upward, but growth was even faster in nearby rural communities outside the town flood plain.</p> <p>According to Mayor Andy Nunez, the flooding forced local government offices to relocate for a few months until repairs were made, while records were lost to mold. &amp;#160;Nunez, who also serves as state representative for the Hatch area, was in Nogales, Arizona, attending a border crossing dedication with Janet Napolitano and other officials when the flood slammed his town.</p> <p>An out-of-state friend called Nunez while he was having lunch and asked, &#8216;How is the flood going?&#8217;&#8221; Startled by the news, Nunez hightailed it back to Hatch and glimpsed a view from a mountain where &#8220;all you could see is mud.&#8221;</p> <p>Even to this day about fifteen, deteriorating properties sit abandoned in town, Nunez said. Getting the buildings properly taken care of has proven a major challenge due to the difficulty in tracking down owners, who often turn out to be of little means, he said.</p> <p>&#8220;We&#8217;ve got our legalities. We&#8217;ve got our attorneys..,&#8221; Nunez added. &#8220;We&#8217;re going to clean it up. It&#8217;s going to cost the village some money.&#8221;</p> <p>Marcia Nordyke agreed that the problem has persisted for years. She recalled her husband, who passed away in 2013, playing detective in attempting to untangle the web of genuine property owners and work out solutions, an undertaking she compared to researching genealogy.</p> <p>&#8220;It was a long process to find out who owned it,&#8221; she added. &#8220;A municipality can&#8217;t just go in and tear them down.&#8221;</p> <p>Although the Placitas Arroyo has been cleared of debris to keep it from overflowing, major flood control infrastructure projects are still pending.</p> <p>&#8220;I felt Hatch would get over it right away,&#8221; Whitlock reflected, referring to an over-optimistic conversation he had with a reporter during the flood days. &#8220;I remember telling him by the Chile Festival we&#8217;ll be okay, and here we are. It&#8217;s 10 years later.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;I think Hatch has stepped up and recovered and they are on their way. I don&#8217;t know if they will ever recovery mentally. It&#8217;s something that&#8217;s in the back of their minds,&#8221; Isabella Solis mused.</p> <p>Although a drive around Hatch reveals economic diversification, agriculture is still the heavy hitter and the summer and fall months are busy times for harvesting onions and then the emblematic chile crop.</p> <p>Constructed in 1928, the old elementary school was damaged in the flood but replaced by a new one in 2008. Once a popular hang-out, the old Dairy Queen is long gone, its building filled by a succession of businesses that in its latest incarnation is slated to be called Billy&#8217;s Chicken and Ice Cream. After a long hiatus, Hatch once again has a lone motel open, the King&#8217;s Pillow Inn. And in a sign of changing times, a small branch of Dona Ana Community College serves students.</p> <p>Teako Nunn, owner of Franciscan RV and the man responsible for putting up the 15 or so big character and Americana statutes in Hatch, perhaps personifies the new Hatch. A veteran antique dealer who looks like an old-time Westerner with his graying fluff and amiable, tall stride, Nunn and his wife, Josie, seized an opportunity when they purchased a flood-damaged building downtown.</p> <p>Opened in July 2008, Sparky&#8217;s BBQ and Espresso is today an undisputed Hatch landmark, its exterior flagged by an Uncle Sam statue flanked by a jalapeno and a red chile pepper, while a busy interior bustles with the flavor of barbecue and green chile cheeseburgers, the tricks of magicians and the tunes of blues and rock performers.</p> <p>&#8220;We totally remodeled everything,&#8221; Nunn said proudly during an interview with Frontera NorteSur earlier this summer. In fact, business became so good that Nunn said he bought the lot across the street for extra parking.</p> <p>Sparky&#8217;s is a nerve center of an emerging Hatch that&#8217;s taking advantage of its geographic location as a short-cut between the north-south Interstate 25 and the east-west corridor of Interstate 10. Travelers heading south on Interstate 25 from Denver or Albuquerque save time by avoiding the Interstate 10 junction in Las Cruces simply by turning off at Hatch and taking the road past Las Uvas Mountains to the junction of Interstate 10 in Deming.</p> <p>Although Hatch lost out to Truth or Consequences in the competition over a new visitor center for the nearby New Mexico Spaceport, tourism shines a bright light down on his town, Nunn affirmed. &amp;#160;&#8220;It&#8217;s becoming an energetic, vibrant city,&#8221; Sparky&#8217;s owner ventured. &#8220;It&#8217;s becoming interesting, more things to do. It used to be a by-pass.&#8221;</p> <p>But Nunn has decided to pull back a bit in his revitalization projects.</p> <p>Up New Mexico 187, a short jaunt from the chile capital&#8217;s downtown, surrounded by pecan trees and small apartments and almost across from a Family Dollar store, sit the remnants of Los Caballos Apartments, the poster child of Little Katrina.</p> <p>Mostly farmworkers and their families, the residents of Los Caballos&#8217; 72 apartments lost hearth and home. The majority of the units were subsequently razed, but three apartment buildings with a total of 24 units still stand, cracks sculpting the edifices. On a recent day a stray washing machine was plopped in front of one of the buildings. The complex&#8217;s old office and laundry building also survives.</p> <p>Easily imaginable as Hatch&#8217;s haunted house, the deserted grounds are seemingly ideal habitat for all manner of vermin. Nunn confirmed reports that he purchased Los Caballos Apartments about 18 months ago with the intention of refurbishing them.</p> <p>&#8220;We were planning to fix them up and rent them out, but my wife reminded me that I&#8217;m 66 years old and we&#8217;re gonna sell,&#8221; he said. Nunn insisted that the apartments are in decent condition with no appreciable damage or mold, adding that the remaining apartments were on higher ground and absorbed less water than the other structures.</p> <p>In terms of post-flood damage, he said the vandalism in which &#8220;kids knocked holes in the walls&#8221; happened years ago, as &#8220;people got it out of their system&#8221;. In preparation for remodeling, Nunn said he removed left-over appliances such as water heaters and stoves for the community&#8217;s free taking.</p> <p>The businessman&#8217;s asking price for the remaining, 24-unit complex? $200,000, with owner financing to boot. He predicted that any buyer who remodels the surviving apartments and puts them on the rental market could become a millionaire after 20 years.</p> <p>Is Nunn concerned about Los Caballos Apartments&#8217; location in the flood plain?</p> <p>&#8220;The whole town is on a flood plain. Sparky&#8217;s, our little caf&#233; is at ground zero,&#8221; he replied.</p> <p>While another chapter in the drawn out saga of Los Caballos Apartments remains to be written, a fresh monsoon season, a new green chile harvest, and an unexpected burst of violence, the August 12 murder of 33-year-old Hatch policeman Jose Chavez, set the mood in Hatch.</p> <p>According to Slim Whitlock, it&#8217;s the time of year- post Little Katrina- when the town folk pay closer attention to Las Uvas Mountains, where monsoon run-off forms and drains into the Placitas Arroyo. Nowadays, when the rain gods beat their drums, &#8220;Everybody looks back at the Uvas Mountains to see if there is a storm up there,&#8221; Whitlock said.</p> <p>This story was made possible in part by the Fund for Investigative Journalism</p>

The Chile Capital’s Long Road Back From Little Katrina

https://counterpunch.org/2016/08/15/the-chile-capitals-long-road-back-from-little-katrina/

2016-08-15

4left

At first Melva Aguirre didn8217t take the report of floodwaters roaring down on her arid hometown seriously 8220When they told us water was coming we were laughing8221 Aguirre said recalling the afternoon of August 15 2006 in the small southern New Mexico town of Hatch 8220And then it came in82308221 the restaurateur sighed adding that the resultant damage forced her Pepper Pot Restaurant to undergo five weeks8217 worth of repairs A homey place where Aguirre greets customers by name the Pepper Pot is a good spot to hear about or glimpse a traumatic chapter in Hatch8217s history In addition to an American flag and the old vinyl records of Elvis Presley and other musical luminaries that line the walls the eatery8217s d233cor features photos of the inundated Los Caballos Apartments and other scenes from flooding whose after effects ripple through the life of a rural community a decade later August 15 was the first of three terrible Tuesdays that struck Hatch back in August 2006 On that fateful day rainwater overflowed the Placitas Arroyo submerging streets and properties in several feet of water Two subsequent but smaller flooding events followed on August 22 and 29 Internationally known for its prized chile pepper crop Hatch was slammed only days prior to the annual Hatch Chile Festival an event that attracts thousands from throughout the region James L 8220Slim8221 Whitlock proprietor of Jim8217s Supermarket was more fortunate than many others only about four inches of water seeped into his store Whitlock calculated Still 8220it was a scary night8221 the grocer told Frontera NorteSur Whitlock credits the rapid response of outside agencies like the New Mexico State Police and New Mexico National Guard for getting Hatch through a rough evening 8220They were there doing their part This community owns a debt to people we don8217t even know They set aside their lives to help us8221 Whitlock said Of Hatch8217s estimated 1600 residents at the time 500 were temporarily or permanently displaced and more than 400 homes and businesses suffered some degree of damage amp160The public schools took a hit Serving the Village of Hatch and surrounding rural communities the Hatch Valley School District saw student enrollment drop from 1556 pupils during the 200506 school year to 1408 in the 20062007 academic year according to New Mexico Public Education Department numbers Student enrollment was up slightly to 1440 for the 200708 school year but dropped again in succeeding calendar years slipping to 1308 by the 201314 school year the Hatch Valley Public Schools Facilities Master Plan 20142019 reported as the Great Recession drought and changes in the chile industry interceded almost as if the flood was a bad omen Approximately 95 percent of Hatch8217s residents did not carry flood insurance when Little Katrina hit an Frontera NorteSur followup story reported a year later In 2016 residents are still financially vulnerable As of early August 2016 only 61 local policies valued at 8827900 and costing annual premiums of 87718 in total were registered with the National Flood Insurance Program according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency FEMA Overall FEMA reports that 3423310 in flood insurance claims have been paid out by private insurers in Hatch since 1978 Almost all of the current flood insurance coverage is found in Hatch8217s highrisk zone as defined by the FEMA flood map currently in effect Many of Hatch8217s residents are lowincome farmworkers or renters and a policy with an annual starting price of about 70000 can take a hefty bite out of a tight family budget Based on US Census figures the Hatch Valley Public School8217s most recent master plan reported that 30 percent of the local population lived below the poverty line at some point in recent years If another flood disaster strikes many locals would find themselves in a crunch even with FEMA assistance Earl Armstrong public affairs officer for FEMA8217s Region 6 stressed that in the 2016 fiscal year his agency is limited to paying out a maximum of 33000 in individual assistance as set by Congress FEMA8217s role Armstrong explained is to supplement payments from private insurers 8220It might get them into a house while they8217re making repairs8221 he said The 2006 Hatch flooding was part of a series of floods that struck the greater Paso del Norte region from Hatch in the north to the Juarez Valley in the south during July and August of 2006 amp160Overall thousands were displaced and property damage assessed in the hundreds of millions on both sides of the USMexico border The extreme weather events were collectively dubbed Little Katrina by Frontera NorteSur at the time Although the particular flood experience touched a small of section the globe its lessons and experiences have a national and international ring in a time of climate change further illustrating how political and legal structures community involvement and economic factors all influence the pace of recovery Not waiting for officialdom Hatch8217s residents quickly got to work repairing the damage Aguirre doesn8217t forget the restaurant regulars who rolled up their sleeves to plaster and patch so the morning wakeup could get brewing and the vittles simmering again in the kitchen 8220They needed a coffee shop8221 she chuckled 8220to have breakfast in the morning8221 If it hadn8217t been for the early bird farmers the Pepper Pot would not have been able to reopen Aguirre said 8220It was a miracle nobody got killed8221 said Rose Garcia executive director of Tierra Del Sol Inc a nonprofit housing development corporation active in New Mexico and Texas Garcia was involved in a regional effort at reconstructing Hatch 8220They8217re a very resilient community amp160I was amazed how they didn8217t depend on government or anybody from outside8221 Garcia told Frontera NorteSur 8220I8217m really proud They improvised a lot with really limited resources8230within three years it was totally transformed the area8221 Garcia added The longtime housing advocate credited a hastily assembled communitybased organization the Hatch Area Recovery Team HART and its 8220spark plug8221 Marcia Nordyke for accelerating the flood relief by holding regular meetings and developing a data base Now retired and the widow of former Hatch Mayor Judd Nordyke Marcia Nordyke generally leads a private life these days but stays active in the community as a board member of the Hatch Public Library In a phone interview Nordyke said she and her late husband were having lunch in the Pepper Pot when Little Katrina came calling 8220It was horrific It was fast and furious and it was something I hope to never see again8221 Nordyke said Rushing outside the couple was soon confronted with kneedeep water and traffic entanglements Nordyke said her husband whom she called a 8220handson mayor8221 went over to Los Caballos Apartments the worsthit property where farmers employed tractors to get residents off the premises For Nordyke the response of both government and civil society stands out She praised FEMA the Red Cross the Salvation Army a Baptist group and others for rising to the occasion Animal control personnel responded and removed stranded critters from yards 8220It was absolutely amazingour people8221 the 46year Hatch resident said Hatch8217s fame as the Chile Capital of the World paid off with Texas8217 Central Market kicking in donations Nordyke added The grocery chain regularly promotes Hatch Valleygrown chile and even roasts peppers at its Lone Star state locations After a required Presidential Disaster Declaration was issued for Hatch and other flooded New Mexico communities on August 30 2006 FEMA stepped up assistance Arriving in Hatch as a FEMA housing specialist Isabella Solis was taken aback by the destruction 8220I thought the damages were horrendous It was really amazing8221 Solis said during a phone interview A year earlier Solis had worked on Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana 8220I don8217t think there8217s any comparison to the damages but as far as the little town of Hatch it was really devastating8221 she judged Solis said FEMA registered victims even extending a hand to those who did not have flood insurance Renters were compensated for the loss of personal belongings while property owners got some financial help amp160She said FEMA maintained an active project for Hatch until early 2011 after a new apartment complex for flood victims opened According to FEMA8217s Region 6 office in Texas the agency provided 1 26629786 in individual and housing assistance to eligible residents while the US Small Business Administration and the Disaster Unemployment Assistance Program also offered their services At the time FEMA8217s maximum grant was limited to 28500 with individual assistance checks to Hatch residents averaging 30005000 Additionally FEMA channeled 67765752 in public assistance for Hatch through the New Mexico state government That money was allocated of removing debris fixing roads repairing water control facilities restoring utilities and the like Incorporated as a nonprofit HART raised about 30000 that was spent on individual home repairs and other necessities like beds for flood victims Nordyke estimated Coming like a sucker punch the flood left psychological scars in displaced children who 8220got hysterical8221 and required counseling when storm clouds gathered 8220They were scared to death8221 she remembered Given the legal caps on FEMA assistance the lack of flood insurance and the displacement problem was the flood relief adequate For her part Nordyke affirmed mostly yes 8220Of course there are things that money can8217t replace but those who wanted stayed and came back8221 she added For temporary shelter FEMA supplied 75 trailers which took longer than expected to erect because of the difficulty in finding a large appropriate site with utility connections Many displaced families including former tenants of Los Caballos Apartments were lodged by the end of 2006 at a new FEMA trailer park a few miles south of Hatch in Rincon Originally the word was that residents would be in the trailer park for 18 months while permanent housing was built As it turned out the last residents did not move out of the site until December 2010 Visible from Interstate 25 the old trailer park is nowadays an empty piece of land amp160Mostly the trailers were 8220sent back to staging areas and possibly sent to the General Services Administration for auction8221 according to FEMA8217s Earl Armstrong Tierra del Sol got five FEMA trailers donated to flood victims assisting some of the families in becoming homeowners amp160Valued at 100000 the transactions were financed by the New Mexico Mortgage Finance Authority and Federal Home Loan Bank Dallas to pay for the new homes utility connections and extensions according to Rose Garcia 8220Everybody owns their lots They hadn8217t owned anything8221 she said 8220We have continued to provide housing rehab as we can access resources to address the many home owners that still need repairs8221 Garcia added in an email In 2016 change is evident in Chile Capital of the World though memories of the flood and loose ends from its fury linger on in the small town8217s historical narrative Their lives uprooted by a rude surprise some people never came back Hatch8217s population creeped back upward but growth was even faster in nearby rural communities outside the town flood plain According to Mayor Andy Nunez the flooding forced local government offices to relocate for a few months until repairs were made while records were lost to mold amp160Nunez who also serves as state representative for the Hatch area was in Nogales Arizona attending a border crossing dedication with Janet Napolitano and other officials when the flood slammed his town An outofstate friend called Nunez while he was having lunch and asked 8216How is the flood going82178221 Startled by the news Nunez hightailed it back to Hatch and glimpsed a view from a mountain where 8220all you could see is mud8221 Even to this day about fifteen deteriorating properties sit abandoned in town Nunez said Getting the buildings properly taken care of has proven a major challenge due to the difficulty in tracking down owners who often turn out to be of little means he said 8220We8217ve got our legalities We8217ve got our attorneys8221 Nunez added 8220We8217re going to clean it up It8217s going to cost the village some money8221 Marcia Nordyke agreed that the problem has persisted for years She recalled her husband who passed away in 2013 playing detective in attempting to untangle the web of genuine property owners and work out solutions an undertaking she compared to researching genealogy 8220It was a long process to find out who owned it8221 she added 8220A municipality can8217t just go in and tear them down8221 Although the Placitas Arroyo has been cleared of debris to keep it from overflowing major flood control infrastructure projects are still pending 8220I felt Hatch would get over it right away8221 Whitlock reflected referring to an overoptimistic conversation he had with a reporter during the flood days 8220I remember telling him by the Chile Festival we8217ll be okay and here we are It8217s 10 years later8221 8220I think Hatch has stepped up and recovered and they are on their way I don8217t know if they will ever recovery mentally It8217s something that8217s in the back of their minds8221 Isabella Solis mused Although a drive around Hatch reveals economic diversification agriculture is still the heavy hitter and the summer and fall months are busy times for harvesting onions and then the emblematic chile crop Constructed in 1928 the old elementary school was damaged in the flood but replaced by a new one in 2008 Once a popular hangout the old Dairy Queen is long gone its building filled by a succession of businesses that in its latest incarnation is slated to be called Billy8217s Chicken and Ice Cream After a long hiatus Hatch once again has a lone motel open the King8217s Pillow Inn And in a sign of changing times a small branch of Dona Ana Community College serves students Teako Nunn owner of Franciscan RV and the man responsible for putting up the 15 or so big character and Americana statutes in Hatch perhaps personifies the new Hatch A veteran antique dealer who looks like an oldtime Westerner with his graying fluff and amiable tall stride Nunn and his wife Josie seized an opportunity when they purchased a flooddamaged building downtown Opened in July 2008 Sparky8217s BBQ and Espresso is today an undisputed Hatch landmark its exterior flagged by an Uncle Sam statue flanked by a jalapeno and a red chile pepper while a busy interior bustles with the flavor of barbecue and green chile cheeseburgers the tricks of magicians and the tunes of blues and rock performers 8220We totally remodeled everything8221 Nunn said proudly during an interview with Frontera NorteSur earlier this summer In fact business became so good that Nunn said he bought the lot across the street for extra parking Sparky8217s is a nerve center of an emerging Hatch that8217s taking advantage of its geographic location as a shortcut between the northsouth Interstate 25 and the eastwest corridor of Interstate 10 Travelers heading south on Interstate 25 from Denver or Albuquerque save time by avoiding the Interstate 10 junction in Las Cruces simply by turning off at Hatch and taking the road past Las Uvas Mountains to the junction of Interstate 10 in Deming Although Hatch lost out to Truth or Consequences in the competition over a new visitor center for the nearby New Mexico Spaceport tourism shines a bright light down on his town Nunn affirmed amp1608220It8217s becoming an energetic vibrant city8221 Sparky8217s owner ventured 8220It8217s becoming interesting more things to do It used to be a bypass8221 But Nunn has decided to pull back a bit in his revitalization projects Up New Mexico 187 a short jaunt from the chile capital8217s downtown surrounded by pecan trees and small apartments and almost across from a Family Dollar store sit the remnants of Los Caballos Apartments the poster child of Little Katrina Mostly farmworkers and their families the residents of Los Caballos8217 72 apartments lost hearth and home The majority of the units were subsequently razed but three apartment buildings with a total of 24 units still stand cracks sculpting the edifices On a recent day a stray washing machine was plopped in front of one of the buildings The complex8217s old office and laundry building also survives Easily imaginable as Hatch8217s haunted house the deserted grounds are seemingly ideal habitat for all manner of vermin Nunn confirmed reports that he purchased Los Caballos Apartments about 18 months ago with the intention of refurbishing them 8220We were planning to fix them up and rent them out but my wife reminded me that I8217m 66 years old and we8217re gonna sell8221 he said Nunn insisted that the apartments are in decent condition with no appreciable damage or mold adding that the remaining apartments were on higher ground and absorbed less water than the other structures In terms of postflood damage he said the vandalism in which 8220kids knocked holes in the walls8221 happened years ago as 8220people got it out of their system8221 In preparation for remodeling Nunn said he removed leftover appliances such as water heaters and stoves for the community8217s free taking The businessman8217s asking price for the remaining 24unit complex 200000 with owner financing to boot He predicted that any buyer who remodels the surviving apartments and puts them on the rental market could become a millionaire after 20 years Is Nunn concerned about Los Caballos Apartments8217 location in the flood plain 8220The whole town is on a flood plain Sparky8217s our little caf233 is at ground zero8221 he replied While another chapter in the drawn out saga of Los Caballos Apartments remains to be written a fresh monsoon season a new green chile harvest and an unexpected burst of violence the August 12 murder of 33yearold Hatch policeman Jose Chavez set the mood in Hatch According to Slim Whitlock it8217s the time of year post Little Katrina when the town folk pay closer attention to Las Uvas Mountains where monsoon runoff forms and drains into the Placitas Arroyo Nowadays when the rain gods beat their drums 8220Everybody looks back at the Uvas Mountains to see if there is a storm up there8221 Whitlock said This story was made possible in part by the Fund for Investigative Journalism

At/ADP first/ADJ Melva/PROPN Aguirre/PROPN didn8217/PROPN t/PROPN take/VERB the/DET report/NOUN of/ADP floodwaters/NOUN roaring/VERB down/ADP on/ADP her/PRON arid/ADJ hometown/NOUN seriously/ADV 8220When/ADV they/PRON told/VERB us/PRON water/NOUN was/AUX coming/VERB we/PRON were/AUX laughing8221/PROPN Aguirre/PROPN said/VERB recalling/VERB the/DET afternoon/NOUN of/ADP August/PROPN 15/NUM 2006/NUM in/ADP the/DET small/ADJ southern/ADJ New/PROPN Mexico/PROPN town/NOUN of/ADP Hatch/PROPN 8220And/NUM then/ADV it/PRON came/VERB in82308221/ADP the/DET restaurateur/NOUN sighed/VERB adding/VERB that/SCONJ the/DET resultant/ADJ damage/NOUN forced/VERB her/PRON Pepper/PROPN Pot/PROPN Restaurant/PROPN to/PART undergo/VERB five/NUM weeks8217/PROPN worth/NOUN of/ADP repairs/NOUN A/DET homey/ADJ place/NOUN where/SCONJ Aguirre/PROPN greets/VERB customers/NOUN by/ADP name/NOUN the/DET Pepper/PROPN Pot/PROPN is/AUX a/DET good/ADJ spot/NOUN to/PART hear/VERB about/ADP or/CCONJ glimpse/VERB a/DET 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<p>A casualty traditionally refers to anyone wounded or killed in combat, but this term doesn&#8217;t articulate the variety of war&#8217;s victims. In addition to premature death and mangled bodies, casualties include broken hearts, shattered minds, economic instability, traumatized families, and mental depression. These afflictions cross race and nationality. Since 2001, casualties of American, Afghan, European, Pakistani, Yemeni, Somali, Iraqi, and other nationalities have fallen in the so-called Global War on Terror. With the first of April marking the Global War on Terror&#8217;s 6,409th American fatality, we must remind ourselves of war&#8217;s true human cost.</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>United States&#8217; Loss</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>Juxtaposition provides insight into Pentagon delusion. Over 6,400 uniformed American service-members and 2,330 mercenaries have died in the Global War on Terror since 2001, but their corpses might end up in a landfill when they return to the United States. General John Allen acknowledges that Afghans are &#8220;fighting for their country,&#8221; but refuses to admit that the majority of Afghans do so against an occupying military force: the U.S. Armed Forces. After years of elective war, the United States military is exsanguinated, but Pentagon officials insist that &#8220;we have a military that&#8230; is stronger and more resilient and healthier as any armed force than during any previous conflict.&#8221;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>In the Pentagon&#8217;s bureaucracy, money is the ultimate indicator of priorities. Pentagon generals and senior officials consistently talk about &#8220;taking care of their people,&#8221; even dedicating a whole chapter of their budget requests to this topic. They then allocate only $415 million, out of the roughly $700 billion Pentagon FY 2012 budget, for &#8220;support of vital research involving psychological health, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, traumatic brain injuries,&#8221; prosthetics, and all other physical conditions resulting from the Pentagon&#8217;s War on Terror. Research for the benefit of wounded troops falls flat at $415 million, while research for advanced weaponry tops $3.2 billion. Apparently, support our troops never progressed beyond the yellow car decal on the Pentagon pickup truck.</p> <p>Pentagon officials soothe their qualms through issuing mindless propaganda, which the corporate media consume at a voracious pace. When facing the 47,740 American men and women who have been wounded in action since the War on Terror began, officials find solace in issuing articles like Amputee Runs on Inspiration. While this amputee is &#8220;at peace&#8221; with his amputation, propagandists never discuss how these wounds are entirely preventable. While many service-members are inspired to work harder when they realize how much this amputee has overcome, America can derive a different sort of inspiration from the amputee&#8217;s story. America can be inspired to prevent wars of choice from ever occurring in the first place. Americans can stand up and shake complacency from peers, family, and friends, letting them know that such tragedy can be averted entirely, given requisite political mobilization, non-violent direct action, and self-education.</p> <p>History is an ominous indicator of what is in store for this generation&#8217;s combatants. After decades in limbo, roughly 89,000 Vietnam veterans were recently paid more than $2.2 billion for exposure to Agent Orange. No Vietnamese victims were compensated in this settlement. Will the Pentagon neglect its Iraqi victims when divvying out compensation in forty years? Over 73,000 Americans from World War II are still unaccounted for. More than 7,500 Americans remain missing from the Korean War and 1,702 Americans are still listed as Missing in Action from the Vietnam War. Will MIAs from Iraq, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Yemen, the Horn of Africa, Latin America, Africa&#8217;s Sahel Region, and other misadventures in the War on Terror approach these figures?</p> <p>293 American service-members were killed and 467 wounded during the Gulf War (1990-1991). Over 168,011 soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines were ultimately classified as &#8220;disabled&#8221; from this conflict. Since then an additional 8,306 servicemen have died and 159,705 have been injured from Gulf War &#8220;exposures,&#8221; according to the Veterans Administration (Johnson: 100). Extrapolating these statistics in proportion to the duration and scope of the Global War on Terror leads one to the inevitable conclusion: With an estimated 500,000 disability claims already filed from the recent Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the Veterans Administration will not be able to compensate all future disability requests. Even worse, considering the bi-partisan neglect of fiscal responsibility, the future of all military healthcare is in jeopardy. In attempting to stave off this inevitable collapse, the Pentagon adopts the Costanza approach to medical care and couches healthcare &#8220;reform&#8221; as &#8220;holistic.&#8221;</p> <p>Suicide</p> <p>Suicides are one form of casualty that is often overlooked. Relationship troubles, financial problems, and legal difficulties, which are exacerbated during military deployments, contribute to the military&#8217;s high suicide rate. Accumulated, invisible wounds of war, including post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, anxiety, and depression, also contribute to this suicide epidemic. A testimony to the horror, 160 active duty soldiers and 52 Marines committed suicide during just one year. Military suicides are so widespread that they jeopardize the future of America&#8217;s all-voluntary military.</p> <p>Despite these &#8220;immense&#8221; tolls, it took the Pentagon a full decade of Global War to finally send condolence letters to families of troops who committed suicide while on deployment. As of last summer, 261 suicides of American servicemen and women have occurred in Afghanistan alone. Families of these victims likely did not receive letters, since their suicides occurred prior to the July 2011 policy change. Even more regrettably, no letter is mailed to service-members who commit suicide after returning home from deployment to a life in shambles. These military families receive no letter, but plenty of stigma, while the Pentagon continues to use and abuse the enlisted force and company-grade officer corps.</p> <p>Pentagon bean-counters play number games with suicide data by classifying suicides into multiple categories: potential, confirmed, and under investigation. Once the bureaucratic ball gets rolling, potential suicides can then be classified as confirmed suicides or suicides under investigation. For example, in February of this year, the Army still had 11 of 16 potential suicides from January classified as under investigation, leaving nearly a dozen families in a state of continual bereavement. Not only is this unacceptable from a moral standpoint, but it also allows the average bureaucratic general to appease his boss by stating that there were only five confirmed suicides in the month of January.</p> <p>To its credit, the Pentagon issued a public service announcement designed to help increase suicide prevention and commissioned a study to recommend improvements for suicide-prevention programs. The study, entitled The War Within: Suicide Prevention in the US Military, defined several ways to improve prevention programs, including implementing a tracking program for the entire American military, which would log suicides and suicide attempts comprehensively, making analysis of the bigger picture more efficient. America waits to see if the Pentagon affords service members recommendations. Dr. Jonathan Woodson, the Pentagon&#8217;s top medical professional, articulated the challenge well when he stated that changing the military&#8217;s culture is the main obstacle we face.</p> <p>Living Casualties</p> <p>The former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff views military recruitment through a distorted lens that glosses over such socio-economic discrepancies and the failure of the American education. The former Chairman remarks that this generation is &#8220;wired to serve, and we just have to figure out how to give them the paths to serve.&#8221; He affirms that &#8220;everyone is aware of the threat and yet they do sign up, they do raise their right hand and they come to serve because of [the 9/11 attacks].&#8221; Vice President Biden attributes participation in military service not to wiring or 9/11, but to &#8220;instinct.&#8221; Reality indicates that education and employment are by far the top reasons for enlisting in the United States military. Yet, according to the Chairman, it all boils down to a simple predisposition. Or maybe the &#8220;wiring&#8221; to which the Chairman referred was a subconscious nod to the inherently unequal wiring of American society. A struggling American economy and the largest wealth gap between minorities and Caucasians in generations means that the Pentagon will have plenty of fodder from which to recruit into the proletariat of the US Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps.</p> <p>Just as educational incentives (e.g. GI Bill, Tuition Assistance, College Loan Repayment Program) are a primary reason for joining the American Armed Forces, &#8220;the number one motivator to join the [Afghan] army and police is literacy,&#8221; according to the NATO Training Mission Afghanistan Commander&#8217;s deputy. US Army Sergeant Cheri Depenbrock explains that, prior to 9/11&#8217;s temporary impact on reasons for American enlistment, signing up was &#8220;almost always for college, for money, and for having a full-time job.&#8221; Army Master Sergeant Juan Dozier concurs, recalling that &#8220;There wasn&#8217;t so much of a sense of purpose, of &#8216;What can I do for my country?&#8217; It was more &#8216;I need the training or education money.&#8217;&#8221; Both Depenbrock and Dozier note that immediately after 9/11 Americans enlisted for &#8220;patriotic&#8221; reasons, but Depenbrock speculates that today, &#8220;when they come in now, they&#8217;re looking at benefits&#8230; they&#8217;re talking about a safety net.&#8221;</p> <p>Tragically, many service-members join or remain in uniform for the hyper-economic benefits associated with military service. While there ought to be non-violent alternatives, one cannot blame these men and women for looking out for themselves and their families. If that means multiple deployments to preventable wars, like Iraq, then they must do so to make ends meet. In this regard, US service members are victims upon enlistment; with jobs increasingly scarce in America&#8217;s corporate economy, more and more enlist just for the basic benefits.</p> <p>In this regard, the America and Afghanistan share similar a common bond &#8211; enlisting for educational reasons. Michelle Flournoy, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, asserts that fifty percent of Afghan security forces will achieve third-grade literacy sometime in 2012. Flournoy cites this as a &#8220;major accomplishment.&#8221; Far from a &#8220;major accomplishment,&#8221; the Pentagon arrogantly modifies Afghanistan&#8217;s educational structure and concordantly incentivizes violence through educational allure. Now, in Afghanistan and America, those who resist national militarization lose out on educational opportunity.</p> <p>While Washington policy-makers who send American troops into imperial misadventures relax in leather chairs in the Hart Office Building, drink scotch, and revel in their daily partisan assaults across the aisle, the American warfighter is absolutely drained. Suffering from multiple deployments, the likes of which few elected officials have experienced, Americans ache from unfathomable tragedies. No thoughtful composition about mismanaged, misguided American wars compares to the email that a close friend sent me regarding deployment:</p> <p>We&#8217;re never gonna &#8216;win&#8217; this &#8216;war.&#8217; &#8230; God willing, I will be able to separate after this deployment&#8230; but [my friends] are stuck doing this over and over; destroying their lives, families, chances at a real life&#8230; Please don&#8217;t thank me for what I&#8217;ve done out here&#8230; we aren&#8217;t achieving the hearts and minds of these people in this country, we&#8217;re breeding hate- in ourselves and the entire community here. Little taliban boys n girls watch us roll in and kill their dads, brothers and uncles&#8230; I&#8217;d hate us too. Please, please don&#8217;t thank me.</p> <p>Military friends of mine of all ages, both male and female, repeatedly express the same sentiments. Given the content of this email, one wonders: if junior enlisted personnel can see America&#8217;s damaging presence in Afghanistan so clearly, why do senior military officials ignore the obvious?&amp;#160;</p> <p>Native Casualties</p> <p>The Pentagon inflicts social and health casualties in every community where the Pentagon imposes its military bases. Domestic violence, traffic accidents, rape, murder, social dysfunction, explosive vestiges, heavy metals, and general environmental pollution ravage the landscapes around these bases. Since America doesn&#8217;t compensate the surrounding communities, local tax rates are increased to pay for these damages (Lutz: 32), harming the locals even further.</p> <p>Native casualties from direct military action are no less tragic. Trends are depressing. In the past two years, American operations have caused more than 850 civilian deaths in Afghanistan and at least 168 child deaths in Pakistan. This tradition of civilian casualties dates back to the early stages of the Afghanistan war, when over 3,700 victims perished from America&#8217;s high-altitude bombing campaign. A few months later, an American &#8220;Spooky&#8221; gunship attacked a wedding ceremony, killing over forty women and children. The Pentagon eventually admitted it was a targeting mistake (Johnson: 31).</p> <p>The Pentagon&#8217;s perfunctory responses aggravate these civilian deaths. In the spring of 2011, American military helicopters killed nine boys under the age of twelve, who were gathering firewood in Afghanistan&#8217;s northeast. General Petraeus&#8217; reaction was by the book. He apologized and then ordered an investigation, but neither of these actions has any true meaning. The apology means nothing, since words cannot resurrect lost loved ones and civilian deaths continue to rise, and his investigation was carried out by American military officials, ensuring the utmost bias. Petraeus then ordered all &#8220;helicopter crews to be re-briefed on the need to keep civilian casualties &#8216;to the absolute minimum.&#8217;&#8221; Orders like this beg inquiry into why NATO troops need to be told again that killing civilians is detrimental to &#8220;success.&#8221; Conspicuously, Petraeus didn&#8217;t order a review of America&#8217;s SIGINT failures, which often initiate the faulty intelligence-chain that ends with bombing from above. Two weeks prior to the firewood incident, NATO was accused of killing roughly 64 civilians, including women and children, in airstrikes in Kunar Province. Two weeks after the firewood incident, two Afghan children were killed in an American airstrike while watering their crops.</p> <p>In May 2011, a young Afghan girl was shot and killed in the Surkh Rod district of Nangarhar, Afghanistan. According to the US military&#8217;s press release:</p> <p>Troops were searching for a Taliban leader who they believe is planning a future attack in the district when an insurgent opened fire on the troops. Forces returned fire and killed the insurgent. The young girl was killed soon after when she attempted to run out the back entrance of the compound. Troops reported that they thought she was carrying a weapon, officials said.</p> <p>True to form, NATO spokesman Rear Admiral Hal Pottman cued the music and went through the motions, stating &#8220;We are deeply sorry for this tragedy and apologize to the members of the Afghan government, the people of Afghanistan and, most importantly, the surviving family members of those killed by our actions.&#8221; Rinse and repeat.</p> <p>The pattern continues. In August 2011, General John Allen &#8220;expressed his sincere condolences and apologized to Afghan family members&#8221; for an airstrike that killed numerous Afghan civilians. In the fall of 2011, NATO killed six children. NATO spokespersons called the incident &#8220;unfortunate.&#8221; Later that week, when NATO bombed 24 Pakistani troops on the Af-Pak border, Secretaries Clinton and Panetta offered their deepest condolences. Eloquent, moving, and devoid of all sincerity.</p> <p>In stark contrast to America&#8217;s pattern of collateral damage, American Vice Admiral David Dorsett affirms that &#8220;We&#8217;re great at strike warfare &#8211; dropping bombs.&#8221; Care to rephrase, Dave?</p> <p>When not bombing from above, Pentagon forces kill through night raids. This strategy has devastating effects:</p> <p>The US killing of civilians, combined with a widely held perception that the Afghan government exists only for facilitating the corruption of powerful warlords, drug dealers and war criminals, is producing a situation in which the Taliban and the Haqqani network are gaining support from the Pashtun heartland in communities that would not otherwise be backing them&#8230; The United States&#8217; own actions in Afghanistan seem to be delivering the most fatal blows to its counterinsurgency strategy and its goal of winning hearts and minds.</p> <p>Since Regional Commands use special operations forces to &#8220;shape operations&#8221; prior to the introduction of conventional forces in the area, every inch of Afghanistan is already lost. Any populations still open to America&#8217;s policy goals are eventually lost after enough special operations night raids and &#8220;collateral damage&#8221; from NATO aircraft ordnance. Sadly, General Allen asserts that counterterrorism operations and special operation missions will &#8220;become prominent&#8221; and occur &#8220;on a regular basis, both now and for the foreseeable future.&#8221; Michael Lumpkin, Assistant SECDEF for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict, predicts that the tempo and intensity of these special operations forces will be sustained for the next couple decades at least.</p> <p>Pentagon officials defend special operations night raids, claiming that they usually end without a shot fired, and state that counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan generally have &#8220;borne fruit,&#8221; but NATO&#8217;s own statistics indicate over 1,500 civilians have been killed in night raids during just ten months. Special operation night raids are a heated point of contention with Afghan President Karzai, who sees them as clearly detrimental and ineffective. Yet, in a clear indication of the delusional bubble within which the Pentagon operates, Defense Secretary Panetta states that he &#8220;was very taken by President Karzai&#8217;s clear admiration for the US military.&#8221;</p> <p>One special operations officer provides insight into the current pace of night raids. Analogizing the routine of evening special-operation raids to &#8220;mowing the lawn,&#8221; the officer tallied twelve missions on the night of 1 May 2011 alone. An average of ten raids per night results in dozens of family members victimized, abused, and deceased. With the United States relying increasingly on night raids, due to a shift in strategy, Afghan citizens will dislike NATO at increasing rates. Hearts and minds &#8211; the ones that make it out alive, anyways &#8211; are against America&#8217;s military.</p> <p>Live and Learn</p> <p>There are numerous lessons for policymakers and Pentagon generals. In Iraq, cessation of American combat activities led to a reduction by half in the number of monthly civilian deaths. Lesson learned: stop combat operations against a resistance force, and civilian deaths decline dramatically. Furthermore, no violence occurred at checkpoints in northern Iraq for weeks after American troops withdrew partially. Far from realizing these lessons, Pentagon brass instead points to an open-ended American presence in Afghanistan beyond 2014. White House officials acknowledge this as &#8220;an enduring presence force focused on counterterrorism.&#8221;</p> <p>The Pentagon designated 2011 as the Year of Change, otherwise deemed the Year of Casualties by conscientious observers. Sadly, tardy reflection on American war crimes will not resurrect the dead. Whether in the form of disfigurement, death, or trauma, casualties cross nationality and touch millions. Instead of apologizing civilian casualties on all sides, the Pentagon can make amends by leaving Afghanistan and finally learning history&#8217;s great lesson: to avoid casualties of all kinds, avoid wars of aggression.</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p>

Casualty Comprehension

https://counterpunch.org/2012/04/04/casualty-comprehension/

2012-04-04

4left

A casualty traditionally refers to anyone wounded or killed in combat but this term doesn8217t articulate the variety of war8217s victims In addition to premature death and mangled bodies casualties include broken hearts shattered minds economic instability traumatized families and mental depression These afflictions cross race and nationality Since 2001 casualties of American Afghan European Pakistani Yemeni Somali Iraqi and other nationalities have fallen in the socalled Global War on Terror With the first of April marking the Global War on Terror8217s 6409th American fatality we must remind ourselves of war8217s true human cost amp160 United States8217 Loss amp160 Juxtaposition provides insight into Pentagon delusion Over 6400 uniformed American servicemembers and 2330 mercenaries have died in the Global War on Terror since 2001 but their corpses might end up in a landfill when they return to the United States General John Allen acknowledges that Afghans are 8220fighting for their country8221 but refuses to admit that the majority of Afghans do so against an occupying military force the US Armed Forces After years of elective war the United States military is exsanguinated but Pentagon officials insist that 8220we have a military that8230 is stronger and more resilient and healthier as any armed force than during any previous conflict8221 amp160 In the Pentagon8217s bureaucracy money is the ultimate indicator of priorities Pentagon generals and senior officials consistently talk about 8220taking care of their people8221 even dedicating a whole chapter of their budget requests to this topic They then allocate only 415 million out of the roughly 700 billion Pentagon FY 2012 budget for 8220support of vital research involving psychological health Post Traumatic Stress Disorder traumatic brain injuries8221 prosthetics and all other physical conditions resulting from the Pentagon8217s War on Terror Research for the benefit of wounded troops falls flat at 415 million while research for advanced weaponry tops 32 billion Apparently support our troops never progressed beyond the yellow car decal on the Pentagon pickup truck Pentagon officials soothe their qualms through issuing mindless propaganda which the corporate media consume at a voracious pace When facing the 47740 American men and women who have been wounded in action since the War on Terror began officials find solace in issuing articles like Amputee Runs on Inspiration While this amputee is 8220at peace8221 with his amputation propagandists never discuss how these wounds are entirely preventable While many servicemembers are inspired to work harder when they realize how much this amputee has overcome America can derive a different sort of inspiration from the amputee8217s story America can be inspired to prevent wars of choice from ever occurring in the first place Americans can stand up and shake complacency from peers family and friends letting them know that such tragedy can be averted entirely given requisite political mobilization nonviolent direct action and selfeducation History is an ominous indicator of what is in store for this generation8217s combatants After decades in limbo roughly 89000 Vietnam veterans were recently paid more than 22 billion for exposure to Agent Orange No Vietnamese victims were compensated in this settlement Will the Pentagon neglect its Iraqi victims when divvying out compensation in forty years Over 73000 Americans from World War II are still unaccounted for More than 7500 Americans remain missing from the Korean War and 1702 Americans are still listed as Missing in Action from the Vietnam War Will MIAs from Iraq Afghanistan the Philippines Yemen the Horn of Africa Latin America Africa8217s Sahel Region and other misadventures in the War on Terror approach these figures 293 American servicemembers were killed and 467 wounded during the Gulf War 19901991 Over 168011 soldiers sailors airmen and Marines were ultimately classified as 8220disabled8221 from this conflict Since then an additional 8306 servicemen have died and 159705 have been injured from Gulf War 8220exposures8221 according to the Veterans Administration Johnson 100 Extrapolating these statistics in proportion to the duration and scope of the Global War on Terror leads one to the inevitable conclusion With an estimated 500000 disability claims already filed from the recent Iraq and Afghanistan wars the Veterans Administration will not be able to compensate all future disability requests Even worse considering the bipartisan neglect of fiscal responsibility the future of all military healthcare is in jeopardy In attempting to stave off this inevitable collapse the Pentagon adopts the Costanza approach to medical care and couches healthcare 8220reform8221 as 8220holistic8221 Suicide Suicides are one form of casualty that is often overlooked Relationship troubles financial problems and legal difficulties which are exacerbated during military deployments contribute to the military8217s high suicide rate Accumulated invisible wounds of war including posttraumatic stress disorder traumatic brain injury anxiety and depression also contribute to this suicide epidemic A testimony to the horror 160 active duty soldiers and 52 Marines committed suicide during just one year Military suicides are so widespread that they jeopardize the future of America8217s allvoluntary military Despite these 8220immense8221 tolls it took the Pentagon a full decade of Global War to finally send condolence letters to families of troops who committed suicide while on deployment As of last summer 261 suicides of American servicemen and women have occurred in Afghanistan alone Families of these victims likely did not receive letters since their suicides occurred prior to the July 2011 policy change Even more regrettably no letter is mailed to servicemembers who commit suicide after returning home from deployment to a life in shambles These military families receive no letter but plenty of stigma while the Pentagon continues to use and abuse the enlisted force and companygrade officer corps Pentagon beancounters play number games with suicide data by classifying suicides into multiple categories potential confirmed and under investigation Once the bureaucratic ball gets rolling potential suicides can then be classified as confirmed suicides or suicides under investigation For example in February of this year the Army still had 11 of 16 potential suicides from January classified as under investigation leaving nearly a dozen families in a state of continual bereavement Not only is this unacceptable from a moral standpoint but it also allows the average bureaucratic general to appease his boss by stating that there were only five confirmed suicides in the month of January To its credit the Pentagon issued a public service announcement designed to help increase suicide prevention and commissioned a study to recommend improvements for suicideprevention programs The study entitled The War Within Suicide Prevention in the US Military defined several ways to improve prevention programs including implementing a tracking program for the entire American military which would log suicides and suicide attempts comprehensively making analysis of the bigger picture more efficient America waits to see if the Pentagon affords service members recommendations Dr Jonathan Woodson the Pentagon8217s top medical professional articulated the challenge well when he stated that changing the military8217s culture is the main obstacle we face Living Casualties The former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff views military recruitment through a distorted lens that glosses over such socioeconomic discrepancies and the failure of the American education The former Chairman remarks that this generation is 8220wired to serve and we just have to figure out how to give them the paths to serve8221 He affirms that 8220everyone is aware of the threat and yet they do sign up they do raise their right hand and they come to serve because of the 911 attacks8221 Vice President Biden attributes participation in military service not to wiring or 911 but to 8220instinct8221 Reality indicates that education and employment are by far the top reasons for enlisting in the United States military Yet according to the Chairman it all boils down to a simple predisposition Or maybe the 8220wiring8221 to which the Chairman referred was a subconscious nod to the inherently unequal wiring of American society A struggling American economy and the largest wealth gap between minorities and Caucasians in generations means that the Pentagon will have plenty of fodder from which to recruit into the proletariat of the US Army Navy Air Force and Marine Corps Just as educational incentives eg GI Bill Tuition Assistance College Loan Repayment Program are a primary reason for joining the American Armed Forces 8220the number one motivator to join the Afghan army and police is literacy8221 according to the NATO Training Mission Afghanistan Commander8217s deputy US Army Sergeant Cheri Depenbrock explains that prior to 9118217s temporary impact on reasons for American enlistment signing up was 8220almost always for college for money and for having a fulltime job8221 Army Master Sergeant Juan Dozier concurs recalling that 8220There wasn8217t so much of a sense of purpose of 8216What can I do for my country8217 It was more 8216I need the training or education money82178221 Both Depenbrock and Dozier note that immediately after 911 Americans enlisted for 8220patriotic8221 reasons but Depenbrock speculates that today 8220when they come in now they8217re looking at benefits8230 they8217re talking about a safety net8221 Tragically many servicemembers join or remain in uniform for the hypereconomic benefits associated with military service While there ought to be nonviolent alternatives one cannot blame these men and women for looking out for themselves and their families If that means multiple deployments to preventable wars like Iraq then they must do so to make ends meet In this regard US service members are victims upon enlistment with jobs increasingly scarce in America8217s corporate economy more and more enlist just for the basic benefits In this regard the America and Afghanistan share similar a common bond 8211 enlisting for educational reasons Michelle Flournoy Undersecretary of Defense for Policy asserts that fifty percent of Afghan security forces will achieve thirdgrade literacy sometime in 2012 Flournoy cites this as a 8220major accomplishment8221 Far from a 8220major accomplishment8221 the Pentagon arrogantly modifies Afghanistan8217s educational structure and concordantly incentivizes violence through educational allure Now in Afghanistan and America those who resist national militarization lose out on educational opportunity While Washington policymakers who send American troops into imperial misadventures relax in leather chairs in the Hart Office Building drink scotch and revel in their daily partisan assaults across the aisle the American warfighter is absolutely drained Suffering from multiple deployments the likes of which few elected officials have experienced Americans ache from unfathomable tragedies No thoughtful composition about mismanaged misguided American wars compares to the email that a close friend sent me regarding deployment We8217re never gonna 8216win8217 this 8216war8217 8230 God willing I will be able to separate after this deployment8230 but my friends are stuck doing this over and over destroying their lives families chances at a real life8230 Please don8217t thank me for what I8217ve done out here8230 we aren8217t achieving the hearts and minds of these people in this country we8217re breeding hate in ourselves and the entire community here Little taliban boys n girls watch us roll in and kill their dads brothers and uncles8230 I8217d hate us too Please please don8217t thank me Military friends of mine of all ages both male and female repeatedly express the same sentiments Given the content of this email one wonders if junior enlisted personnel can see America8217s damaging presence in Afghanistan so clearly why do senior military officials ignore the obviousamp160 Native Casualties The Pentagon inflicts social and health casualties in every community where the Pentagon imposes its military bases Domestic violence traffic accidents rape murder social dysfunction explosive vestiges heavy metals and general environmental pollution ravage the landscapes around these bases Since America doesn8217t compensate the surrounding communities local tax rates are increased to pay for these damages Lutz 32 harming the locals even further Native casualties from direct military action are no less tragic Trends are depressing In the past two years American operations have caused more than 850 civilian deaths in Afghanistan and at least 168 child deaths in Pakistan This tradition of civilian casualties dates back to the early stages of the Afghanistan war when over 3700 victims perished from America8217s highaltitude bombing campaign A few months later an American 8220Spooky8221 gunship attacked a wedding ceremony killing over forty women and children The Pentagon eventually admitted it was a targeting mistake Johnson 31 The Pentagon8217s perfunctory responses aggravate these civilian deaths In the spring of 2011 American military helicopters killed nine boys under the age of twelve who were gathering firewood in Afghanistan8217s northeast General Petraeus8217 reaction was by the book He apologized and then ordered an investigation but neither of these actions has any true meaning The apology means nothing since words cannot resurrect lost loved ones and civilian deaths continue to rise and his investigation was carried out by American military officials ensuring the utmost bias Petraeus then ordered all 8220helicopter crews to be rebriefed on the need to keep civilian casualties 8216to the absolute minimum82178221 Orders like this beg inquiry into why NATO troops need to be told again that killing civilians is detrimental to 8220success8221 Conspicuously Petraeus didn8217t order a review of America8217s SIGINT failures which often initiate the faulty intelligencechain that ends with bombing from above Two weeks prior to the firewood incident NATO was accused of killing roughly 64 civilians including women and children in airstrikes in Kunar Province Two weeks after the firewood incident two Afghan children were killed in an American airstrike while watering their crops In May 2011 a young Afghan girl was shot and killed in the Surkh Rod district of Nangarhar Afghanistan According to the US military8217s press release Troops were searching for a Taliban leader who they believe is planning a future attack in the district when an insurgent opened fire on the troops Forces returned fire and killed the insurgent The young girl was killed soon after when she attempted to run out the back entrance of the compound Troops reported that they thought she was carrying a weapon officials said True to form NATO spokesman Rear Admiral Hal Pottman cued the music and went through the motions stating 8220We are deeply sorry for this tragedy and apologize to the members of the Afghan government the people of Afghanistan and most importantly the surviving family members of those killed by our actions8221 Rinse and repeat The pattern continues In August 2011 General John Allen 8220expressed his sincere condolences and apologized to Afghan family members8221 for an airstrike that killed numerous Afghan civilians In the fall of 2011 NATO killed six children NATO spokespersons called the incident 8220unfortunate8221 Later that week when NATO bombed 24 Pakistani troops on the AfPak border Secretaries Clinton and Panetta offered their deepest condolences Eloquent moving and devoid of all sincerity In stark contrast to America8217s pattern of collateral damage American Vice Admiral David Dorsett affirms that 8220We8217re great at strike warfare 8211 dropping bombs8221 Care to rephrase Dave When not bombing from above Pentagon forces kill through night raids This strategy has devastating effects The US killing of civilians combined with a widely held perception that the Afghan government exists only for facilitating the corruption of powerful warlords drug dealers and war criminals is producing a situation in which the Taliban and the Haqqani network are gaining support from the Pashtun heartland in communities that would not otherwise be backing them8230 The United States8217 own actions in Afghanistan seem to be delivering the most fatal blows to its counterinsurgency strategy and its goal of winning hearts and minds Since Regional Commands use special operations forces to 8220shape operations8221 prior to the introduction of conventional forces in the area every inch of Afghanistan is already lost Any populations still open to America8217s policy goals are eventually lost after enough special operations night raids and 8220collateral damage8221 from NATO aircraft ordnance Sadly General Allen asserts that counterterrorism operations and special operation missions will 8220become prominent8221 and occur 8220on a regular basis both now and for the foreseeable future8221 Michael Lumpkin Assistant SECDEF for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict predicts that the tempo and intensity of these special operations forces will be sustained for the next couple decades at least Pentagon officials defend special operations night raids claiming that they usually end without a shot fired and state that counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan generally have 8220borne fruit8221 but NATO8217s own statistics indicate over 1500 civilians have been killed in night raids during just ten months Special operation night raids are a heated point of contention with Afghan President Karzai who sees them as clearly detrimental and ineffective Yet in a clear indication of the delusional bubble within which the Pentagon operates Defense Secretary Panetta states that he 8220was very taken by President Karzai8217s clear admiration for the US military8221 One special operations officer provides insight into the current pace of night raids Analogizing the routine of evening specialoperation raids to 8220mowing the lawn8221 the officer tallied twelve missions on the night of 1 May 2011 alone An average of ten raids per night results in dozens of family members victimized abused and deceased With the United States relying increasingly on night raids due to a shift in strategy Afghan citizens will dislike NATO at increasing rates Hearts and minds 8211 the ones that make it out alive anyways 8211 are against America8217s military Live and Learn There are numerous lessons for policymakers and Pentagon generals In Iraq cessation of American combat activities led to a reduction by half in the number of monthly civilian deaths Lesson learned stop combat operations against a resistance force and civilian deaths decline dramatically Furthermore no violence occurred at checkpoints in northern Iraq for weeks after American troops withdrew partially Far from realizing these lessons Pentagon brass instead points to an openended American presence in Afghanistan beyond 2014 White House officials acknowledge this as 8220an enduring presence force focused on counterterrorism8221 The Pentagon designated 2011 as the Year of Change otherwise deemed the Year of Casualties by conscientious observers Sadly tardy reflection on American war crimes will not resurrect the dead Whether in the form of disfigurement death or trauma casualties cross nationality and touch millions Instead of apologizing civilian casualties on all sides the Pentagon can make amends by leaving Afghanistan and finally learning history8217s great lesson to avoid casualties of all kinds avoid wars of aggression amp160

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<p>In July 2004, only about a month after millions of the American People began flocking to movie theaters to see Michael Moore&#8217;s incendiary expos&#233; of the Bush administration, &#8220;Fahrenheit 9/11,&#8221; officials appointed by this administration floated a bizarre and unprecedented proposal. Because of the possibility of anticipated, unspecified &#8220;terrorist attacks&#8221; somewhere in America, they said it could become &#8220;necessary&#8221; to postpone (or even cancel?) the scheduled November 2004 presidential election.</p> <p>This has to be the final and irrefutable proof of this administration&#8217;s absolute lack of legitimacy. No such election has ever been postponed in American history, even during the darkest days of national emergencies during the civil war and the world wars of the last century! This latest outrage of the lawless Bush/Cheney regime has already met the widespread denunciation it richly deserves in many quarters. But that will not be enough. Even worldwide condemnation failed to prevent the Bush pirates&#8217; insane attack on Iraq in 2003. Only the full moral weight of &#8220;the other superpower&#8221; &#173; public opinion &#173; has any chance of affecting their last gasp attempts over the next few months to hold on to their power.</p> <p>There is absolutely no guarantee that opposition to their schemes will stop the likes of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft &amp;amp; Co. from continuing to act ruthlessly and without any principles whatsoever to preserve their grip on power. This crisis calls for a dramatic public response from the American People, demonstrating conclusively that we will not allow this illegitimate gang to destroy our democracy and our freedom. The Americans who made &#8220;Fahrenheit 9/11&#8221; a surprise hit movie, the same People who packed the streets of our cities on February 15, 2003, &#8220;the day the world said no to war&#8221; with Iraq, will have to come out again. On no account will we allow this government to perpetuate its illegitimate existence by using the excuse of terrorism to delay or prevent a lawful, democratic presidential election.</p> <p>Four years ago George W. Bush and Dick Cheney failed to receive a majority of the popular vote in the 2000 election. Racially discriminatory vote suppression in Jeb Bush&#8217;s Florida combined with at least two other key factors to deliver the White House to its current occupants. The balance of power in the electoral college unfairly favors the Republicans&#8217; fundamentalist, rural, western and southern base. And intervention by five of the Republican appointees to the US Supreme Court stopped an accurate count of the extraordinarily tight Florida race. In this important sense, they in fact did not win, but &#8220;stole&#8221; the 2000 election through a combination of legal and extra-legal maneuvers. 2004 is above all the first real opportunity the American People have to take back our country from the gang that stole America.</p> <p>Having &#8220;won&#8221; power in such a controversial, narrow, and borderline illegal manner, one might think they would seek to govern inclusively and responsibly, seeking to build and shore up their support and legitimacy. But that assumption contradicts the immoral and crass political nature of this criminal enterprise in the form of a presidential administration. Their cynical opportunism in responding to the historic crimes against humanity of September 11, 2001 apparently knows no bounds. Rather than seeking to unite all Americans for common goals, this government has shamelessly taken every opportunity to enrich their corporate supporters and project power by military attacks, racial profiling and threats of violence that have severely threatened the liberty and security of the USA and the entire world.</p> <p>A Program for Global Dominance</p> <p>In the aftermath of the 9/11 atrocities, George W. Bush cluelessly wondered why People in other countries hate US government policies that systematically destroy their freedoms, steal their resources, kill their brethren, and spread war and poverty throughout an unjust US corporate empire. It was because &#8220;they hate our freedoms,&#8221; he concluded, apparently based on his speechwriters&#8217; and handlers&#8217; instructions on the teleprompters. Meanwhile, his administration&#8217;s military, energy, tax, trade, environmental and economic policies fuel the hatred of unjust imperial domination, and threaten the peace, prosperity and security of the world in dramatic and unprecedented ways. For example:</p> <p>Afghanistan: Within less than a month of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, the US military struck the prostrate nation of Afghanistan, former US allies in the Taliban government, and Osama bin Laden&#8217;s jihadist terror network. Systematic human rights violations, widespread violence inflicted on innocent civilians caught in the chaos of war, intense human suffering throughout the winter of 2001-02, and the beginning of construction on long-sought lucrative natural gas and oil pipelines, accompanied the first round of their declared &#8220;Global War on Terrorism.&#8221; But even as the long term consequences of the September 11 terrorist attacks began to sink in, gradually displacing the shock and horror of Fall 2001, the illegitimate US government was only beginning its drive for total power through killing, domination and corporate oil politics.</p> <p>Iraq: The &#8220;National Security Strategy&#8221; of September 2002 spelled out this government&#8217;s imperial, militarist goals and its intention of waging perpetual aggressive wars to enrich its base, by capitalizing on the &#8220;vast, new opportunities&#8221; opened up for them by the September 11 crimes against humanity. Iraq would be the test case of their new &#8220;doctrine,&#8221; which failed spectacularly. The whole world now knows that the illegal invasion of Iraq in March 2003 was based on lies about alleged weapons and nonexistent connections to al-Quaida and other fake security threats. Bush and his chickenhawk advisors sent over 100,000 working class Americans to kill and die in the heart of the Middle East&#8217;s coveted oil reserves. They projected US military power into the world&#8217;s most strategic region for the benefit of their corporate funders. In the face of vocal warnings and opposition from around the planet and across the country, they created an obvious, bloody and ongoing disaster. By April 2004, seven months before the election, their project began to collapse in chaos, blood and fire. Suicide bombings, armed resistance, kidnappings, blackmail, beheadings, and the installation of a puppet government headed by a known CIA stooge &#173; &#8220;Saddam Hussein Lite&#8221; &#173; define the absurd, unstable, and completely insane second round of Bush&#8217;s fanatical and fraudulent &#8220;war on terror.&#8221;</p> <p>Israel/Palestine: In addition to the direct US military assaults of the last three years, the longstanding illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza by US ally Israel has intensified. It supports Islamic and Arab nationalist opposition and an escalating series of deadly attacks against foreign outposts of US empire. Like the Bush/Cheney gang, Ariel Sharon&#8217;s criminal government has blatantly used the aftermath of September 11 as an excuse to rewrite all the rules of international conduct, to kill its opponents and their fellows, and to grab power and land. US leaders have marched in lockstep with every one of these abuses, as Palestinians&#8217; homelands, livelihoods and their very lives are forfeit to Israeli aggression using US-supplied arms. Still, our official leaders ask plaintively &#8220;why they hate us.&#8221; Because we and our surrogates are stealing their lands, starving their children, and killing them with impunity!</p> <p>We the People, both as individuals and as a nation, must look into our own hearts and minds and determine who we are. Global dominance can sound tempting, especially when our nightmares are filled with the threat of terrorism. It&#8217;s easy for America to be the bully and it is easy for Americans to accept this role. In the eloquent words of singer/songwriter Jonatha Brooke:</p> <p>In the American day, you must give and I shall take, And I will tell you what is moral and what&#8217;s just Because I want, because I will, because I can, so will I kill.</p> <p>Former US Army Sergeant Stan Goff says, &#8220;The Army sent me to a kind of two-decade school, and in school I learned something. The world is not fundamentally safe.&#8221; This is undeniably true. The world is not safe, and that is a frightening thought to those Americans (such as Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld, etc.) who have lived their lives in privilege and comfort. But the inherent risk of living in the world does not compel us to become invaders and murderers. It does not compel us to abandon democracy or the rule of law. It does not compel us to give up civil liberties, or to abdicate our right to &#8220;dissolve the political bonds&#8221; which connect us to such a criminal administration. The very suggestion that the 2004 election could be postponed is itself a call to arms to defend the ideal of American democratic self-government.</p> <p>The Assault on Civil Liberty</p> <p>The Bush/Cheney administration has become identified with disdain for human rights and the rule of law itself. Consider only the most prominent examples: Withdrawing the US from the International Criminal Court (for fear of prosecutions of Americans for war crimes, including human rights violations and crimes against humanity), enacting the so-called &#8220;USA PATRIOT&#8221; Act (which violates basic human rights), illegally and indefinitely detaining alleged &#8220;enemy combatants&#8221; at Guantanamo Bay and in the U.S. (struck down in landmark decisions of the US Supreme Court this summer), the Abu Ghraib prison abuses and arbitrary mass arrests and prosecutions of protesters, activists, and even a defense attorney (Lynne Stewart). The so-called &#8220;war on terrorism&#8221; has caused more human rights abuses and less safety. Amnesty International reported recently that the US has set an example of disregard for human rights worldwide.</p> <p>The administration continues to label suspects as &#8220;enemies,&#8221; and uses that label as a political tool, even where such identification was not relevant to hunting down terrorists. For example, designating Iraq, Iran and North Korea as the &#8220;Axis of Evil,&#8221; and Bush&#8217;s assertion that &#8220;If you&#8217;re not with us; you&#8217;re against us!&#8221; Another example: while the &#8220;USA PATRIOT&#8221; Act specifically disclaims any bias against Muslims and Arabs, thousands of Arabic-speaking persons or followers of Islam were rounded up and detained after 9/11 without probable cause of criminal activity, solely on the basis of their ethnic origins and religious practices. It is virtually impossible to imagine a program that would be better calculated to drive People away from the kinds of cooperation with legitimate authorities that might help prevent future terrorist crimes!</p> <p>The current, unelected US government is cynically exploiting fear and extreme nationalist/ fundamentalist fervor, in an attempt to retain their illegitimate hold on power. In the name of &#8220;fighting terrorism,&#8221; and in reaction to vocal, worldwide demands for global justice, peace and democracy, they and their corporate and ideological supporters are pursuing a strategy of US empire-building through military force. They are counting on the fear of terrorism, war, and economic privation to whip people into line behind their leadership.</p> <p>There simply has to be a better alternative than this new American nightmare. We have to choose between the government of laws enshrined in our national charter and history, and that of unaccountable power, currently arising out of the &#8220;war against terrorism.&#8221; The recent suggestion that some unspecified terrorist attack could &#8220;force&#8221; the government to postpone the November 2004 presidential election, just as it appears to be slipping away from candidate Bush because of his unsurpassed record of lying and abuse, should be seen by all for exactly what it is: an admission of their failure and absolute moral bankruptcy.</p> <p>It&#8217;s the Torture, Stupid</p> <p>In late April and May 2004, with the military occupation of Iraq trying unsuccessfully to suppress a coordinated, violent uprising throughout the country, graphic images of the reality of US &#8220;liberation&#8221; and &#8220;freedom&#8221; for that nation burst into public view. The revelations of torture and abuse at Baghdad&#8217;s Abu Ghraib prison, Afghanistan&#8217;s Bagram air base, Guantanamo Bay and other secret US military torture centers, both exposed the reality of the &#8220;war on terror,&#8221; and laid the basis for the recent suggestion that it might cause the government to postpone the election.</p> <p>There has been a flood of shocking revelations: knowledge and approval of torture coming from the highest levels of the US government. The New York Times reported on a legal memorandum addressed to White House counsel Alberto Gonzalez, assessing the &#8220;issue&#8221; of how much pain constitutes &#8220;torture&#8221; under the law, and referring to the requirements of the Geneva Conventions as being &#8220;obsolete&#8221; and &#8220;quaint.&#8221; Even more stunning, the Wall Street Journal revealed a memo prepared by a team of administration lawyers, developing at length the arguments that &#8220;torture&#8221; is not &#8220;torture,&#8221; without &#8220;specific intent&#8221; to cause severe and long-lasting harm (i.e., if the torturer&#8217;s intent is to get information, and pain and suffering is an unfortunate collateral consequence, it&#8217;s not &#173; and can&#8217;t be &#8211; torture). Perhaps even more appalling from a purely legal point of view, this leaked internal Justice Department document that has become widely known as &#8220;the torture memo&#8221; argues for a quasi-royal prerogative, that the president as commander-in-chief of the military, is not bound by legal prohibitions on torture. Still, the leaks haven&#8217;t stopped. The Center for Constitutional Rights posted on their web site lengthy excerpts from an extensive Pentagon torture manual. Its official name is &#8220;Working Group Report on Detainee Interrogations in the Global War on Terrorism: Assessment of Legal, Historical, Policy, and Operational Considerations.&#8221; But Orwellian and Kafkaesque word games aside, it&#8217;s a torture manual. In light of what we now know from the offensive pictures taken inside Abu Ghraib, and also from the Bush/Cheney administration&#8217;s many coded admissions (for example, Bush&#8217;s own statement in his 2003 State of the Union Address: &#8220;[M]any others have met a different fate. Let&#8217;s put it his way. They are no longer a problem&#8221;) the leaked torture documents opened coast-to-coast floodgates of righteous democratic anger and opposition. San Diego University law professor Marjorie Cohn has written that these revelations mean it is now time to call for the impeachment of Bush. Former New York City Congresswoman and prosecutor Elizabeth Holtzman (who served on the House Judiciary Committee during the impeachment of Nixon) has called for appointment of a Special Prosecutor. Approximately 500 law professors signed a detailed, reasoned letter calling for impeachment. On June18 the National Lawyers Guild issued a press release demanding prosecution of Bush for war crimes and torture. NLG President Michael Avery aptly described the Justice Department&#8217;s torture memorandum as reading &#8220;like a pre-trial brief on behalf of the Nazi defendants in the Nuremberg trial.&#8221; Is it any wonder they want to cancel the election, under these extreme circumstances?</p> <p>The combined precedents set by the USA PATRIOT Act, Guantanamo, Iraq, and the withdrawal from ICC, amount to an attempted rolling coup-in-progress. Although the Bush/Cheney administration has pursued this coup in the name of freedom, compassionate conservatism, national security and the war on terror, the main features of it are exactly the opposite: dissolution of the rule of law, arbitrary arrests and detentions, violations and abuses of human rights and dignity, disregard for the sovereignty of other nations and even for the most basic principles of widely accepted international norms, and increasing forms of international terror and violence in many forms. Abu Ghraib should not shock those who have witnessed the repeated violations of domestic and international law committed by and for the Bush/Cheney Administration. It should not surprise those who noted how the Supreme Court put Bush into the presidency, or those who are aware of Bush&#8217;s family connections or business dealings before 2000. Nor should it shock those who followed events from 9/11 to the unlawful invasion of Iraq. A lawless administration cannot be expected to engender anything but lawless subordinates. As Human Rights Watch says:</p> <p>This pattern of abuse [at Abu Ghraib] did not result from the acts of individual soldiers who broke the rules. It resulted from decisions made by the Bush administration to bend, ignore, or cast rules aside.</p> <p>Abu Ghraib was not the beginning. Members of the Bush Administration showed a penchant for torture long before Abu Ghraib. The Administration recruited and elevated several previously indicted war criminals. Bush&#8217;s frequent use of the death penalty and his indifference to human suffering while he was governor of Texas are well-established. John Negroponte, who was implicated in systematic human rights abuses in Central America in the 1980&#8217;s, was appointed ambassador to Iraq. Bush even attempted to appoint Henry Kissinger, who is under indictment for war crimes in numerous countries, to head the 9/11 commission.</p> <p>Government of Laws, not of Corporate War Criminals</p> <p>Since September 11, 2001, our government has placed us in further danger with policies that inflame the conditions giving rise to terrorism. We must replace this regime, and continue to work for peace and social justice in order to create a brighter future for our children. The U.S. response to the September 11 crimes against humanity has led us into even greater peril. Under these crisis conditions, George W. Bush&#8217;s incompetence and Dick Cheney&#8217;s arrogance threaten our survival. We must start acting like self-governing adults who reject rule by the oil industry, military contractors, and other corporate profiteers. One of our best-loved artists sings in tribute to the unforgettable heroes of September 11, who bravely raced into the fire in service of others and died:</p> <p>May your strength give us strength May your faith give us faith May your hope give us hope May your love give us love</p> <p>George W. Bush and his government lack the moral strength to serve social justice and peace rather than big business. They lack faith in democracy. They lack hope for a better world for the masses of the world&#8217;s People, which is the only real answer to terrorism. And they lack the love of humanity. Their strength is killing, making money, and lying about it. Their faith is non-existent. They hope for apathy of the American People. They love only money and power. George W. Bush and his government lack legitimacy.</p> <p>Jennifer Van Bergen, J.D., is the author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1567512925/counterpunchmaga" type="external">The Twilight of Democracy: The Bush Plan for America</a>, coming out September 1, 2004, Common Courage Press. She is one of the foremost experts on the USA PATRIOT Act and has taught anti-terrorism law at the New School University.</p> <p>Tom Stephens is a lawyer and a member of the National Lawyers Guild in Detroit.</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p>

Surreal Political Theater

https://counterpunch.org/2004/07/31/surreal-political-theater/

2004-07-31

4left

In July 2004 only about a month after millions of the American People began flocking to movie theaters to see Michael Moore8217s incendiary expos233 of the Bush administration 8220Fahrenheit 9118221 officials appointed by this administration floated a bizarre and unprecedented proposal Because of the possibility of anticipated unspecified 8220terrorist attacks8221 somewhere in America they said it could become 8220necessary8221 to postpone or even cancel the scheduled November 2004 presidential election This has to be the final and irrefutable proof of this administration8217s absolute lack of legitimacy No such election has ever been postponed in American history even during the darkest days of national emergencies during the civil war and the world wars of the last century This latest outrage of the lawless BushCheney regime has already met the widespread denunciation it richly deserves in many quarters But that will not be enough Even worldwide condemnation failed to prevent the Bush pirates8217 insane attack on Iraq in 2003 Only the full moral weight of 8220the other superpower8221 173 public opinion 173 has any chance of affecting their last gasp attempts over the next few months to hold on to their power There is absolutely no guarantee that opposition to their schemes will stop the likes of Dick Cheney Donald Rumsfeld John Ashcroft ampamp Co from continuing to act ruthlessly and without any principles whatsoever to preserve their grip on power This crisis calls for a dramatic public response from the American People demonstrating conclusively that we will not allow this illegitimate gang to destroy our democracy and our freedom The Americans who made 8220Fahrenheit 9118221 a surprise hit movie the same People who packed the streets of our cities on February 15 2003 8220the day the world said no to war8221 with Iraq will have to come out again On no account will we allow this government to perpetuate its illegitimate existence by using the excuse of terrorism to delay or prevent a lawful democratic presidential election Four years ago George W Bush and Dick Cheney failed to receive a majority of the popular vote in the 2000 election Racially discriminatory vote suppression in Jeb Bush8217s Florida combined with at least two other key factors to deliver the White House to its current occupants The balance of power in the electoral college unfairly favors the Republicans8217 fundamentalist rural western and southern base And intervention by five of the Republican appointees to the US Supreme Court stopped an accurate count of the extraordinarily tight Florida race In this important sense they in fact did not win but 8220stole8221 the 2000 election through a combination of legal and extralegal maneuvers 2004 is above all the first real opportunity the American People have to take back our country from the gang that stole America Having 8220won8221 power in such a controversial narrow and borderline illegal manner one might think they would seek to govern inclusively and responsibly seeking to build and shore up their support and legitimacy But that assumption contradicts the immoral and crass political nature of this criminal enterprise in the form of a presidential administration Their cynical opportunism in responding to the historic crimes against humanity of September 11 2001 apparently knows no bounds Rather than seeking to unite all Americans for common goals this government has shamelessly taken every opportunity to enrich their corporate supporters and project power by military attacks racial profiling and threats of violence that have severely threatened the liberty and security of the USA and the entire world A Program for Global Dominance In the aftermath of the 911 atrocities George W Bush cluelessly wondered why People in other countries hate US government policies that systematically destroy their freedoms steal their resources kill their brethren and spread war and poverty throughout an unjust US corporate empire It was because 8220they hate our freedoms8221 he concluded apparently based on his speechwriters8217 and handlers8217 instructions on the teleprompters Meanwhile his administration8217s military energy tax trade environmental and economic policies fuel the hatred of unjust imperial domination and threaten the peace prosperity and security of the world in dramatic and unprecedented ways For example Afghanistan Within less than a month of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington the US military struck the prostrate nation of Afghanistan former US allies in the Taliban government and Osama bin Laden8217s jihadist terror network Systematic human rights violations widespread violence inflicted on innocent civilians caught in the chaos of war intense human suffering throughout the winter of 200102 and the beginning of construction on longsought lucrative natural gas and oil pipelines accompanied the first round of their declared 8220Global War on Terrorism8221 But even as the long term consequences of the September 11 terrorist attacks began to sink in gradually displacing the shock and horror of Fall 2001 the illegitimate US government was only beginning its drive for total power through killing domination and corporate oil politics Iraq The 8220National Security Strategy8221 of September 2002 spelled out this government8217s imperial militarist goals and its intention of waging perpetual aggressive wars to enrich its base by capitalizing on the 8220vast new opportunities8221 opened up for them by the September 11 crimes against humanity Iraq would be the test case of their new 8220doctrine8221 which failed spectacularly The whole world now knows that the illegal invasion of Iraq in March 2003 was based on lies about alleged weapons and nonexistent connections to alQuaida and other fake security threats Bush and his chickenhawk advisors sent over 100000 working class Americans to kill and die in the heart of the Middle East8217s coveted oil reserves They projected US military power into the world8217s most strategic region for the benefit of their corporate funders In the face of vocal warnings and opposition from around the planet and across the country they created an obvious bloody and ongoing disaster By April 2004 seven months before the election their project began to collapse in chaos blood and fire Suicide bombings armed resistance kidnappings blackmail beheadings and the installation of a puppet government headed by a known CIA stooge 173 8220Saddam Hussein Lite8221 173 define the absurd unstable and completely insane second round of Bush8217s fanatical and fraudulent 8220war on terror8221 IsraelPalestine In addition to the direct US military assaults of the last three years the longstanding illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza by US ally Israel has intensified It supports Islamic and Arab nationalist opposition and an escalating series of deadly attacks against foreign outposts of US empire Like the BushCheney gang Ariel Sharon8217s criminal government has blatantly used the aftermath of September 11 as an excuse to rewrite all the rules of international conduct to kill its opponents and their fellows and to grab power and land US leaders have marched in lockstep with every one of these abuses as Palestinians8217 homelands livelihoods and their very lives are forfeit to Israeli aggression using USsupplied arms Still our official leaders ask plaintively 8220why they hate us8221 Because we and our surrogates are stealing their lands starving their children and killing them with impunity We the People both as individuals and as a nation must look into our own hearts and minds and determine who we are Global dominance can sound tempting especially when our nightmares are filled with the threat of terrorism It8217s easy for America to be the bully and it is easy for Americans to accept this role In the eloquent words of singersongwriter Jonatha Brooke In the American day you must give and I shall take And I will tell you what is moral and what8217s just Because I want because I will because I can so will I kill Former US Army Sergeant Stan Goff says 8220The Army sent me to a kind of twodecade school and in school I learned something The world is not fundamentally safe8221 This is undeniably true The world is not safe and that is a frightening thought to those Americans such as Cheney Bush Rumsfeld etc who have lived their lives in privilege and comfort But the inherent risk of living in the world does not compel us to become invaders and murderers It does not compel us to abandon democracy or the rule of law It does not compel us to give up civil liberties or to abdicate our right to 8220dissolve the political bonds8221 which connect us to such a criminal administration The very suggestion that the 2004 election could be postponed is itself a call to arms to defend the ideal of American democratic selfgovernment The Assault on Civil Liberty The BushCheney administration has become identified with disdain for human rights and the rule of law itself Consider only the most prominent examples Withdrawing the US from the International Criminal Court for fear of prosecutions of Americans for war crimes including human rights violations and crimes against humanity enacting the socalled 8220USA PATRIOT8221 Act which violates basic human rights illegally and indefinitely detaining alleged 8220enemy combatants8221 at Guantanamo Bay and in the US struck down in landmark decisions of the US Supreme Court this summer the Abu Ghraib prison abuses and arbitrary mass arrests and prosecutions of protesters activists and even a defense attorney Lynne Stewart The socalled 8220war on terrorism8221 has caused more human rights abuses and less safety Amnesty International reported recently that the US has set an example of disregard for human rights worldwide The administration continues to label suspects as 8220enemies8221 and uses that label as a political tool even where such identification was not relevant to hunting down terrorists For example designating Iraq Iran and North Korea as the 8220Axis of Evil8221 and Bush8217s assertion that 8220If you8217re not with us you8217re against us8221 Another example while the 8220USA PATRIOT8221 Act specifically disclaims any bias against Muslims and Arabs thousands of Arabicspeaking persons or followers of Islam were rounded up and detained after 911 without probable cause of criminal activity solely on the basis of their ethnic origins and religious practices It is virtually impossible to imagine a program that would be better calculated to drive People away from the kinds of cooperation with legitimate authorities that might help prevent future terrorist crimes The current unelected US government is cynically exploiting fear and extreme nationalist fundamentalist fervor in an attempt to retain their illegitimate hold on power In the name of 8220fighting terrorism8221 and in reaction to vocal worldwide demands for global justice peace and democracy they and their corporate and ideological supporters are pursuing a strategy of US empirebuilding through military force They are counting on the fear of terrorism war and economic privation to whip people into line behind their leadership There simply has to be a better alternative than this new American nightmare We have to choose between the government of laws enshrined in our national charter and history and that of unaccountable power currently arising out of the 8220war against terrorism8221 The recent suggestion that some unspecified terrorist attack could 8220force8221 the government to postpone the November 2004 presidential election just as it appears to be slipping away from candidate Bush because of his unsurpassed record of lying and abuse should be seen by all for exactly what it is an admission of their failure and absolute moral bankruptcy It8217s the Torture Stupid In late April and May 2004 with the military occupation of Iraq trying unsuccessfully to suppress a coordinated violent uprising throughout the country graphic images of the reality of US 8220liberation8221 and 8220freedom8221 for that nation burst into public view The revelations of torture and abuse at Baghdad8217s Abu Ghraib prison Afghanistan8217s Bagram air base Guantanamo Bay and other secret US military torture centers both exposed the reality of the 8220war on terror8221 and laid the basis for the recent suggestion that it might cause the government to postpone the election There has been a flood of shocking revelations knowledge and approval of torture coming from the highest levels of the US government The New York Times reported on a legal memorandum addressed to White House counsel Alberto Gonzalez assessing the 8220issue8221 of how much pain constitutes 8220torture8221 under the law and referring to the requirements of the Geneva Conventions as being 8220obsolete8221 and 8220quaint8221 Even more stunning the Wall Street Journal revealed a memo prepared by a team of administration lawyers developing at length the arguments that 8220torture8221 is not 8220torture8221 without 8220specific intent8221 to cause severe and longlasting harm ie if the torturer8217s intent is to get information and pain and suffering is an unfortunate collateral consequence it8217s not 173 and can8217t be 8211 torture Perhaps even more appalling from a purely legal point of view this leaked internal Justice Department document that has become widely known as 8220the torture memo8221 argues for a quasiroyal prerogative that the president as commanderinchief of the military is not bound by legal prohibitions on torture Still the leaks haven8217t stopped The Center for Constitutional Rights posted on their web site lengthy excerpts from an extensive Pentagon torture manual Its official name is 8220Working Group Report on Detainee Interrogations in the Global War on Terrorism Assessment of Legal Historical Policy and Operational Considerations8221 But Orwellian and Kafkaesque word games aside it8217s a torture manual In light of what we now know from the offensive pictures taken inside Abu Ghraib and also from the BushCheney administration8217s many coded admissions for example Bush8217s own statement in his 2003 State of the Union Address 8220Many others have met a different fate Let8217s put it his way They are no longer a problem8221 the leaked torture documents opened coasttocoast floodgates of righteous democratic anger and opposition San Diego University law professor Marjorie Cohn has written that these revelations mean it is now time to call for the impeachment of Bush Former New York City Congresswoman and prosecutor Elizabeth Holtzman who served on the House Judiciary Committee during the impeachment of Nixon has called for appointment of a Special Prosecutor Approximately 500 law professors signed a detailed reasoned letter calling for impeachment On June18 the National Lawyers Guild issued a press release demanding prosecution of Bush for war crimes and torture NLG President Michael Avery aptly described the Justice Department8217s torture memorandum as reading 8220like a pretrial brief on behalf of the Nazi defendants in the Nuremberg trial8221 Is it any wonder they want to cancel the election under these extreme circumstances The combined precedents set by the USA PATRIOT Act Guantanamo Iraq and the withdrawal from ICC amount to an attempted rolling coupinprogress Although the BushCheney administration has pursued this coup in the name of freedom compassionate conservatism national security and the war on terror the main features of it are exactly the opposite dissolution of the rule of law arbitrary arrests and detentions violations and abuses of human rights and dignity disregard for the sovereignty of other nations and even for the most basic principles of widely accepted international norms and increasing forms of international terror and violence in many forms Abu Ghraib should not shock those who have witnessed the repeated violations of domestic and international law committed by and for the BushCheney Administration It should not surprise those who noted how the Supreme Court put Bush into the presidency or those who are aware of Bush8217s family connections or business dealings before 2000 Nor should it shock those who followed events from 911 to the unlawful invasion of Iraq A lawless administration cannot be expected to engender anything but lawless subordinates As Human Rights Watch says This pattern of abuse at Abu Ghraib did not result from the acts of individual soldiers who broke the rules It resulted from decisions made by the Bush administration to bend ignore or cast rules aside Abu Ghraib was not the beginning Members of the Bush Administration showed a penchant for torture long before Abu Ghraib The Administration recruited and elevated several previously indicted war criminals Bush8217s frequent use of the death penalty and his indifference to human suffering while he was governor of Texas are wellestablished John Negroponte who was implicated in systematic human rights abuses in Central America in the 19808217s was appointed ambassador to Iraq Bush even attempted to appoint Henry Kissinger who is under indictment for war crimes in numerous countries to head the 911 commission Government of Laws not of Corporate War Criminals Since September 11 2001 our government has placed us in further danger with policies that inflame the conditions giving rise to terrorism We must replace this regime and continue to work for peace and social justice in order to create a brighter future for our children The US response to the September 11 crimes against humanity has led us into even greater peril Under these crisis conditions George W Bush8217s incompetence and Dick Cheney8217s arrogance threaten our survival We must start acting like selfgoverning adults who reject rule by the oil industry military contractors and other corporate profiteers One of our bestloved artists sings in tribute to the unforgettable heroes of September 11 who bravely raced into the fire in service of others and died May your strength give us strength May your faith give us faith May your hope give us hope May your love give us love George W Bush and his government lack the moral strength to serve social justice and peace rather than big business They lack faith in democracy They lack hope for a better world for the masses of the world8217s People which is the only real answer to terrorism And they lack the love of humanity Their strength is killing making money and lying about it Their faith is nonexistent They hope for apathy of the American People They love only money and power George W Bush and his government lack legitimacy Jennifer Van Bergen JD is the author of The Twilight of Democracy The Bush Plan for America coming out September 1 2004 Common Courage Press She is one of the foremost experts on the USA PATRIOT Act and has taught antiterrorism law at the New School University Tom Stephens is a lawyer and a member of the National Lawyers Guild in Detroit amp160 amp160 amp160 amp160

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<p>TEESPORT, England (Reuters) - Britain wants to benefit from European Union trade deals and have a say over EU laws passed during its transition out of the bloc, Brexit minister David Davis said on Friday, seeking to defuse tension between senior ministers over the interim deal.</p> <p>Davis set out the government&#8217;s position on a transition period, looking to offer something for both those who want to keep close ties with the European Union after leaving and those who want a more radical break.</p> <p>The balancing act, designed to appease both business and Brexiteers, is a taste of things to come for Prime Minister Theresa May, who has been unable to prevent divisions in her party repeatedly spilling out into the open.</p> <p>On Thursday, finance minister Philip Hammond was rebuked by May&#8217;s office after saying he hoped Britain would diverge from the EU only &#8220;very modestly&#8221; after Brexit. He spoke hours before the head of a hardline group of Brexiteer lawmakers urged May to stop accepting negotiating terms set by the EU.</p> <p>&#8220;It&#8217;s only by being outside the EU but continuing with the existing structures of rules and regulation that we can meet the requirements for a smooth, orderly and successful exit,&#8221; Davis said in a speech at Teesport in northeast England.</p> <p>&#8220;The existing international agreements we are party to should continue to apply during this period. They are an important part of the existing EU structure of rules and regulations, to which we will remain a party during the implementation period.&#8221;</p> WAY TO RESOLVE CONCERNS <p>Davis also said there needed to be some mechanism for Britain to query new laws introduced during the transition period, which it would be duty-bound to follow, and that the future jurisdiction of regulators needed to be clarified.</p> <p>&#8220;We will have to find a way, to agree a way, of resolving concerns if laws that are deemed to run contrary to our interests, and we have not had our say,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>There is little distance between Britain and the EU to overcome to agree the transitional deal, which will give the two sides time to prepare for the far-reaching impact of the end of more than 40 years of union.</p> <p>Davis said he expected a political agreement on the transition deal at an EU summit on March 22-23 - a target Brussels is also working towards, with plans for fortnightly rounds of negotiations.</p> Britain's Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union David Davis delivers a speech during a visit to PD Ports at Teesport near Middlesborough, Britain, January 26, 2018. REUTERS/Ian Forsyth/Pool <p>The EU is willing to be flexible on the duration and other terms of a Brexit transition period, which could include letting London sign trade deals, according to a document due to be formally endorsed by EU ministers on Monday.</p> <p>Davis dismissed a question on whether he could really negotiate for Britain if senior members of the cabinet disagreed about what the transition deal should contain:</p> <p>&#8220;There is no difference between the chancellor and myself and indeed the prime minister in terms of that we both want a Brexit which serves the British economy and serves the British people,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>But May, who gambled on a snap election last year that cost her party its majority in parliament, is facing pressure from multiple angles: pro-EU lawmakers, hardline Brexiteers, and another contingent who question her leadership credentials and criticise a &#8220;dull dull dull&#8221; domestic agenda.</p> LETTERS OF NO CONFIDENCE <p>Several newspaper reports have said the number of letters expressing &#8216;No Confidence&#8217; in the party leader is approaching the threshold of 48 required to trigger a leadership contest. The actual number is not made public by the party committee that holds them.</p> <p>May is aware that the plan to change little of the current relationship immediately after Britain formally leaves on March 29, 2019, is fuelling anger among Brexit campaigners, who fear their mantra of &#8220;taking back control&#8221; is being sold out.</p> <p>Jacob Rees-Mogg, who heads a hardline group of pro-Brexit Conservative lawmakers that could have enough members to topple May, has said Britain must stop accepting negotiating terms set by the EU and that current transition plans would render it a &#8220;vassal state&#8221;.</p> <p>The febrile mood in the party is likely to linger; May has had to struggle to keep her lawmakers united over everything from transition to the future relationship to the so-called Brexit dividend - the funds that will be freed up when Britain stops paying into EU coffers.</p> <p>But Davis said the prospect of an independent trade policy was worth waiting for.</p> <p>&#8220;We must keep sight of the fact that this is a bridge to a new future partnership,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>&#8220;... where, crucially, the United Kingdom is outside of the single market, and outside of the customs union; where the United Kingdom courts are sovereign once more; and where the United Kingdom can take advantage of its status as an independent trading nation.&#8221;</p> <p>Additional reporting by William James; Editing by Kevin Liffey</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel for the first time admitted that it bombed a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007 and said on Wednesday the strike should be a warning to Iran that it would not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons.</p> <p>The military released previously classified cockpit footage, photographs and intelligence documents about its Sept. 6, 2007, air strike on the Al-Kubar facility near Deir al-Zor in eastern Syria.</p> <p>It said the reactor was being constructed with help from North Korea and had been months away from activation. Amos Yadlin, Israel&#8217;s military intelligence chief at the time, said on Israel Radio that even with a functioning reactor, it would have taken Syria years to build a nuclear weapon.</p> <p>Reuters has been unable to immediately verify the Israeli material.</p> <p>Israel&#8217;s decision to go public comes after repeated calls in recent months by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the United States and international community to take tougher action on Iran, Syria&#8217;s ally.</p> <p>Netanyahu said on Wednesday Israel was determined to prevent its enemies from obtaining nuclear weapons.</p> <p>&#8220;The Israeli government, the Israel Defense Forces and the Mossad prevented Syria from developing nuclear capability. They are worthy of full praise for this. Israel&#8217;s policy was and remains consistent - to prevent our enemies from arming themselves with nuclear weapons,&#8221; Netanyahu wrote on Twitter.</p> <p>Intelligence minister, Israel Katz, said earlier on Twitter: &#8220;The (2007) operation and its success made clear that Israel will never allow nuclear weaponry to be in the hands of those who threaten its existence - Syria then, and Iran today.&#8221;</p> <p>Iran, which says its nuclear program has only peaceful aims, signed a 2015 deal under which it accepted curbs on its nuclear program in return for sanctions relief. U.S. President Donald Trump and Netanyahu have both been critical of the deal.</p> <p>The Israeli military described in detail events leading up to the night of Sept 5-6, 2007, in which, it said, eight warplanes, F-16s and F-15s, carried out the mission after taking off from the Ramon and Hatzerim air bases.</p> <p>They flew to Deir al-Zor region, 450 km (270 miles) northwest of Damascus, and dropped 18 tonnes of munitions on the site, it said.</p> <p>Yadlin said Israel decided at the time against acknowledging the raid on the reactor so as not to provoke Syrian President Bashar al-Assad into retaliating. &#8220;No core. No war,&#8221; Yadlin said about Israel&#8217;s goal.</p> A still frame taken from video material released on March 21, 2018 shows a combination image of what the Israeli military describes is before and after an Israeli air strike on a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor site near Deir al-Zor on Sept 6, 2007. IDF/Handout via Reuters TV &#8220;TOP SECRET&#8221; <p>The Israeli military on Wednesday declassified internal &#8220;top secret&#8221; intelligence reports, in Hebrew, some of them partly redacted.</p> <p>One, dated March 30, 2007, said: &#8220;Syria has set up, within its territory, a nuclear reactor for the production of plutonium, through North Korea, which according to an (initial) worst-case assessment is liable to be activated in approximately another year. To our assessment [REDACTED] secretive and orderly [REDACTED] for achieving a nuclear weapon.&#8221;</p> <p>Israeli intelligence predicted that the suspected reactor &#8220;would turn operational by the end of 2007&#8221;.</p> Slideshow (17 Images) <p>The mission to destroy the reactor started at 10.30 p.m. on Sept. 5 and ended with the return of the warplanes at 2.30 a.m. the next day, the Israeli military said.</p> <p>The disclosure on Wednesday stemmed in part, Yadlin said, from years of pressure by the Israeli media on military censors to allow them to publish Israeli-sourced information about the raid and the release on Wednesday of memoirs by Ehud Olmert, the former prime minister who ordered the bombing.</p> <p>The event was first made public by Syria, which, as reported by Reuters at the time, said in the early hours of Sept. 6 that its air defenses had repelled an incursion by Israeli warplanes.</p> <p>Syria, a signatory of the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), has always denied that the site was a reactor or that Damascus engaged in nuclear cooperation with North Korea.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-israel-syria-nuclear-netanyahu/netanyahu-commenting-on-2007-bombing-in-syria-says-israel-wont-let-its-enemies-obtain-nuclear-arms-idUSKBN1GX24U" type="external">Netanyahu, commenting on 2007 bombing in Syria, says Israel won't let its enemies obtain nuclear arms</a> <p>In his 2010 memoir &#8220;Decision Points,&#8221; former U.S. President George W. Bush disclosed he discussed intelligence about the Syrian facility with Olmert before it was destroyed but did not give him the green light for the raid.</p> <p>In 2008 the United States presented what it described as intelligence showing that North Korea had helped Syria with &#8220;covert nuclear activities.&#8221; At the time Syria dismissed the accusations as part of a campaign to discredit the Damascus government.</p> <p>The Israeli release contains a black-and-white aerial photograph captioned &#8220;before the attack&#8221; and showing a box-like structure amid desert dunes with smaller outlying buildings.</p> <p>A series of black-and-white videos, taken above the target, shows the structure in cross-hairs. A male voice is heard counting down three seconds, a cloud of black smoke rises from the structure as it explodes. Other footage appears to show the aftermath - a smoldering hole in the ground.</p> <p>&#8220;Arizona&#8221;, one pilot radioed to military headquarters in Tel Aviv, giving the code word for a successful operation.</p> <p>Writing by Dan Williams and Stephen Farrell; Editing by Janet Lawrence</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>TAIPEI (Reuters) - The United States&#8217; commitment to Taiwan has never been stronger and the island is an inspiration to the rest of the Indo-Pacific region, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Alex Wong said on Wednesday, in comments certain to anger Beijing.</p> Alex Wong, U.S. deputy assistant secretary at the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, speaks at American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham)&#8217;s yearly dinner event, in Taipei, Taiwan March 21, 2018. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu <p>Wong was speaking during a visit to Taipei at a time of increased hostility between the self-ruled island and Beijing and just a day after Chinese President Xi Jinping issued his strongest warning against Taiwan separatism to date.</p> <p>China claims Taiwan as its own and considers the self-ruled island a wayward province, which Xi said on Tuesday would face the &#8220;punishment of history&#8221; for any attempt at separatism.</p> <p>The island is one of China&#8217;s most sensitive issues and a potential military flashpoint. Underlining that threat, Taiwan sent ships and aircraft earlier on Wednesday to shadow a Chinese aircraft carrier group through the narrow Taiwan Strait, its defense ministry said.</p> <p>&#8220;Taiwan can no longer be excluded unjustly from international fora. Taiwan has much to share with the world,&#8221; Wong said at a reception attended by Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, a member of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party.</p> <p>&#8220;I can assure you, the United States government and the United States private sector will do their part to ensure Taiwan&#8217;s stellar international example shines brightly.&#8221;</p> <p>Beijing is already furious over a law signed last week by U.S. President Donald Trump that encourages the United States to send senior officials to Taiwan to meet Taiwanese counterparts and vice versa.</p> <p>President Tsai welcomed the new law on Wednesday.</p> Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen and Alex Wong (R), U.S. deputy assistant secretary at the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, attend AmCham&#8217;s yearly dinner event, in Taipei, Taiwan March 21, 2018. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu <p>&#8220;We were pleased President Trump signed the Taiwan travel act into law. We are grateful to the Trump administration and to members of the congress for supporting this bill,&#8221; she said.</p> <p>Taiwan&#8217;s defense ministry said earlier that the Chinese carrier group, led by the mainland&#8217;s sole operational aircraft carrier the Liaoning, entered the Taiwan Strait late on Tuesday, but kept on its western side.</p> Slideshow (2 Images) <p>By midday on Wednesday it had left Taiwan&#8217;s air defense identification zone heading southwest, the ministry said, adding that it looked like China was conducting drills.</p> <p>Taiwan&#8217;s military sent ships and aircraft to shadow the carrier group the entire way but spotted nothing out of the ordinary and people in Taiwan should not be concerned, it added.</p> <p>China&#8217;s Defence Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.</p> Related Video <p>Taiwan says China has ramped up military exercises around the island in the past year or so.</p> <p>China suspects Taiwan&#8217;s Tsai wants to push for formal independence for the island, which would cross a red line for Communist Party leaders in Beijing. Tsai has said she wants to maintain the status quo and is committed to ensuring peace.</p> <p>Separately on Wednesday, China announced that a former ambassador to the United Nations, Liu Jieyi, has been appointed head of China&#8217;s Taiwan Affairs Office. Veteran diplomat Liu has been deputy head of the office since October last year.</p> <p>Reporting by Fabian Hamacher and Twinnie Siu; Writing by Ben Blanchard and Anne Marie Roantree; Editing by Himani Sarkar</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>LIMA (Reuters) - Peru&#8217;s center-right President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski announced his resignation on Wednesday after vote-buying allegations ensnared him in a fresh scandal on the eve of an impeachment vote, capping months of political turmoil in one of Latin America&#8217;s most stable economies.</p> <p>Kuczynski, a 79-year-old former Wall Street banker who once held U.S. citizenship, promised a &#8220;constitutional and orderly&#8221; transition of power to end what he described as a hostile political climate that had made governing nearly impossible.</p> <p>But Kuczynski, who is expected to be replaced by Vice President Martin Vizcarra on Friday, denied allegations of wrongdoing and blamed the premature end of his five-year term on the right-wing opposition party that controls Congress.</p> <p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve worked for nearly 60 years of my life with complete honesty. The opposition has tried to depict me as a corrupt person,&#8221; Kuczynski said in a pre-recorded video message to the nation that broadcast as he left the presidential palace.</p> <p>But Kuczynski added, &#8220;I think what&#8217;s best for the country is for me to resign...I don&#8217;t want to be an obstacle for the nation&#8217;s search for a path to unity and harmony.&#8221;</p> <p>Lawmakers agreed to accept Kuczynski&#8217;s resignation instead of moving forward with a vote scheduled for Thursday on whether to oust him on grounds he was &#8220;morally unfit&#8221; to govern, said the president of Congress, Luis Galarreta.</p> <p>Galarreta said he would swear Vizcarra in as president at around midday Friday.</p> <p>A former governor of a mining region who once helped secure community support for Anglo American Plc&#8217;s Quellaveco copper project, Vizcarra has served as Peru&#8217;s ambassador to Canada since September and is currently in Ottawa.</p> <p>In recent days, Vizcarra has received public assurances from opposition lawmakers that they will support his government. But he will take office amid a fractured party, widespread disgust for elected officials in Peru and inherit economic growth that slowed to 2.5 percent last year.</p> Peru's President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski is seen announcing his resignation at the Presidential Palace in Lima, Peru March 21, 2018 in this still image from video. PERU GOVERNMENT TV/AMERICA TV/Handout via REUTERS <p>Vizcarra, who turns 55 years old on Thursday, appealed to the public to pull through the crisis on Twitter. &#8220;I&#8217;m outraged by the current situation like the majority of Peruvians. But I&#8217;m convinced that together we can show that we can once more push forward.&#8221;</p> TRUMP HEADED TO PERU <p>Kuczynski had been scheduled to welcome Donald Trump on the U.S. president&#8217;s first visit to Latin America next month, where many of the region&#8217;s leaders plan to pressure Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to enact democratic reforms.</p> Slideshow (21 Images) <p>A White House official, speaking on background, said Trump still plans to attend the summit.</p> <p>Kuczynski&#8217;s resignation marked a spectacular downfall for a man who was elected less than two years ago amid hopes he would turbocharge growth while cleaning up government corruption and modernizing the Andean nation of some 30 million people.</p> <p>Markets that had cheered Kuczynski&#8217;s rise to power rallied on news of his resignation on Wednesday, amid expectations it would end the political uncertainty that has shadowed Peru since the opposition first sought to oust Kuczynski in December.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-peru-politics-security/peruvian-police-put-officers-on-high-alert-amid-political-crisis-idUSKBN1GX289" type="external">Peruvian police put officers on high alert amid political crisis</a> <a href="/article/us-peru-politics-vizcarra/perus-vizcarra-to-be-sworn-in-as-president-friday-president-of-congress-idUSKBN1GX3A5" type="external">Peru's Vizcarra to be sworn in as president Friday: president of Congress</a> <p>Popular Force - the country&#8217;s most powerful opposition party - tried to impeach Kuczynski in December after revealing his company received money from Odebrecht [ODBES.UL] - a Brazilian company at the center of Latin America&#8217;s biggest graft scandal - while he held public office more than a decade ago.</p> <p>Kuczynski unexpectedly stayed in power in December with the help of former autocratic Alberto Fujimori, whom he pardoned from a human rights sentence days later in what was widely seen as political payback.</p> <p>Ahead of the new impeachment vote on Thursday, Popular Force released a raft of video and audio that appeared to show Kuczynski&#8217;s allies offering lucrative public work contracts to lawmakers in exchange for political support.</p> <p>Kuczynski said the recordings had been edited unfairly as part of a campaign to discredit his government and stressed that no corruption allegation had been proven.</p> <p>Reporting by Mitra Taj and Teresa Cespedes; Additional Reporting by Marco Aquino and Maria Cervantes in Lima and Roberta Rampton in Washignton; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Lisa Shumaker</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

UK spells out Brexit transition demands as pressure mounts on May Israel admits bombing suspected Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007, warns Iran U.S. official says support of Taiwan has never been stronger Peru's president, ensnared in scandals, resigns on eve of impeachment vote

https://reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-davis/offering-brighter-future-uks-davis-tries-to-convince-on-eu-transition-idUSKBN1FE36J

2018-01-25

2least

TEESPORT England Reuters Britain wants to benefit from European Union trade deals and have a say over EU laws passed during its transition out of the bloc Brexit minister David Davis said on Friday seeking to defuse tension between senior ministers over the interim deal Davis set out the government8217s position on a transition period looking to offer something for both those who want to keep close ties with the European Union after leaving and those who want a more radical break The balancing act designed to appease both business and Brexiteers is a taste of things to come for Prime Minister Theresa May who has been unable to prevent divisions in her party repeatedly spilling out into the open On Thursday finance minister Philip Hammond was rebuked by May8217s office after saying he hoped Britain would diverge from the EU only 8220very modestly8221 after Brexit He spoke hours before the head of a hardline group of Brexiteer lawmakers urged May to stop accepting negotiating terms set by the EU 8220It8217s only by being outside the EU but continuing with the existing structures of rules and regulation that we can meet the requirements for a smooth orderly and successful exit8221 Davis said in a speech at Teesport in northeast England 8220The existing international agreements we are party to should continue to apply during this period They are an important part of the existing EU structure of rules and regulations to which we will remain a party during the implementation period8221 WAY TO RESOLVE CONCERNS Davis also said there needed to be some mechanism for Britain to query new laws introduced during the transition period which it would be dutybound to follow and that the future jurisdiction of regulators needed to be clarified 8220We will have to find a way to agree a way of resolving concerns if laws that are deemed to run contrary to our interests and we have not had our say8221 he said There is little distance between Britain and the EU to overcome to agree the transitional deal which will give the two sides time to prepare for the farreaching impact of the end of more than 40 years of union Davis said he expected a political agreement on the transition deal at an EU summit on March 2223 a target Brussels is also working towards with plans for fortnightly rounds of negotiations Britains Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union David Davis delivers a speech during a visit to PD Ports at Teesport near Middlesborough Britain January 26 2018 REUTERSIan ForsythPool The EU is willing to be flexible on the duration and other terms of a Brexit transition period which could include letting London sign trade deals according to a document due to be formally endorsed by EU ministers on Monday Davis dismissed a question on whether he could really negotiate for Britain if senior members of the cabinet disagreed about what the transition deal should contain 8220There is no difference between the chancellor and myself and indeed the prime minister in terms of that we both want a Brexit which serves the British economy and serves the British people8221 he said But May who gambled on a snap election last year that cost her party its majority in parliament is facing pressure from multiple angles proEU lawmakers hardline Brexiteers and another contingent who question her leadership credentials and criticise a 8220dull dull dull8221 domestic agenda LETTERS OF NO CONFIDENCE Several newspaper reports have said the number of letters expressing 8216No Confidence8217 in the party leader is approaching the threshold of 48 required to trigger a leadership contest The actual number is not made public by the party committee that holds them May is aware that the plan to change little of the current relationship immediately after Britain formally leaves on March 29 2019 is fuelling anger among Brexit campaigners who fear their mantra of 8220taking back control8221 is being sold out Jacob ReesMogg who heads a hardline group of proBrexit Conservative lawmakers that could have enough members to topple May has said Britain must stop accepting negotiating terms set by the EU and that current transition plans would render it a 8220vassal state8221 The febrile mood in the party is likely to linger May has had to struggle to keep her lawmakers united over everything from transition to the future relationship to the socalled Brexit dividend the funds that will be freed up when Britain stops paying into EU coffers But Davis said the prospect of an independent trade policy was worth waiting for 8220We must keep sight of the fact that this is a bridge to a new future partnership8221 he said 8220 where crucially the United Kingdom is outside of the single market and outside of the customs union where the United Kingdom courts are sovereign once more and where the United Kingdom can take advantage of its status as an independent trading nation8221 Additional reporting by William James Editing by Kevin Liffey Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles JERUSALEM Reuters Israel for the first time admitted that it bombed a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007 and said on Wednesday the strike should be a warning to Iran that it would not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons The military released previously classified cockpit footage photographs and intelligence documents about its Sept 6 2007 air strike on the AlKubar facility near Deir alZor in eastern Syria It said the reactor was being constructed with help from North Korea and had been months away from activation Amos Yadlin Israel8217s military intelligence chief at the time said on Israel Radio that even with a functioning reactor it would have taken Syria years to build a nuclear weapon Reuters has been unable to immediately verify the Israeli material Israel8217s decision to go public comes after repeated calls in recent months by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the United States and international community to take tougher action on Iran Syria8217s ally Netanyahu said on Wednesday Israel was determined to prevent its enemies from obtaining nuclear weapons 8220The Israeli government the Israel Defense Forces and the Mossad prevented Syria from developing nuclear capability They are worthy of full praise for this Israel8217s policy was and remains consistent to prevent our enemies from arming themselves with nuclear weapons8221 Netanyahu wrote on Twitter Intelligence minister Israel Katz said earlier on Twitter 8220The 2007 operation and its success made clear that Israel will never allow nuclear weaponry to be in the hands of those who threaten its existence Syria then and Iran today8221 Iran which says its nuclear program has only peaceful aims signed a 2015 deal under which it accepted curbs on its nuclear program in return for sanctions relief US President Donald Trump and Netanyahu have both been critical of the deal The Israeli military described in detail events leading up to the night of Sept 56 2007 in which it said eight warplanes F16s and F15s carried out the mission after taking off from the Ramon and Hatzerim air bases They flew to Deir alZor region 450 km 270 miles northwest of Damascus and dropped 18 tonnes of munitions on the site it said Yadlin said Israel decided at the time against acknowledging the raid on the reactor so as not to provoke Syrian President Bashar alAssad into retaliating 8220No core No war8221 Yadlin said about Israel8217s goal A still frame taken from video material released on March 21 2018 shows a combination image of what the Israeli military describes is before and after an Israeli air strike on a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor site near Deir alZor on Sept 6 2007 IDFHandout via Reuters TV 8220TOP SECRET8221 The Israeli military on Wednesday declassified internal 8220top secret8221 intelligence reports in Hebrew some of them partly redacted One dated March 30 2007 said 8220Syria has set up within its territory a nuclear reactor for the production of plutonium through North Korea which according to an initial worstcase assessment is liable to be activated in approximately another year To our assessment REDACTED secretive and orderly REDACTED for achieving a nuclear weapon8221 Israeli intelligence predicted that the suspected reactor 8220would turn operational by the end of 20078221 Slideshow 17 Images The mission to destroy the reactor started at 1030 pm on Sept 5 and ended with the return of the warplanes at 230 am the next day the Israeli military said The disclosure on Wednesday stemmed in part Yadlin said from years of pressure by the Israeli media on military censors to allow them to publish Israelisourced information about the raid and the release on Wednesday of memoirs by Ehud Olmert the former prime minister who ordered the bombing The event was first made public by Syria which as reported by Reuters at the time said in the early hours of Sept 6 that its air defenses had repelled an incursion by Israeli warplanes Syria a signatory of the 1970 nuclear NonProliferation Treaty NPT has always denied that the site was a reactor or that Damascus engaged in nuclear cooperation with North Korea Related Coverage Netanyahu commenting on 2007 bombing in Syria says Israel wont let its enemies obtain nuclear arms In his 2010 memoir 8220Decision Points8221 former US President George W Bush disclosed he discussed intelligence about the Syrian facility with Olmert before it was destroyed but did not give him the green light for the raid In 2008 the United States presented what it described as intelligence showing that North Korea had helped Syria with 8220covert nuclear activities8221 At the time Syria dismissed the accusations as part of a campaign to discredit the Damascus government The Israeli release contains a blackandwhite aerial photograph captioned 8220before the attack8221 and showing a boxlike structure amid desert dunes with smaller outlying buildings A series of blackandwhite videos taken above the target shows the structure in crosshairs A male voice is heard counting down three seconds a cloud of black smoke rises from the structure as it explodes Other footage appears to show the aftermath a smoldering hole in the ground 8220Arizona8221 one pilot radioed to military headquarters in Tel Aviv giving the code word for a successful operation Writing by Dan Williams and Stephen Farrell Editing by Janet Lawrence Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles TAIPEI Reuters The United States8217 commitment to Taiwan has never been stronger and the island is an inspiration to the rest of the IndoPacific region US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Alex Wong said on Wednesday in comments certain to anger Beijing Alex Wong US deputy assistant secretary at the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs speaks at American Chamber of Commerce AmCham8217s yearly dinner event in Taipei Taiwan March 21 2018 REUTERSTyrone Siu Wong was speaking during a visit to Taipei at a time of increased hostility between the selfruled island and Beijing and just a day after Chinese President Xi Jinping issued his strongest warning against Taiwan separatism to date China claims Taiwan as its own and considers the selfruled island a wayward province which Xi said on Tuesday would face the 8220punishment of history8221 for any attempt at separatism The island is one of China8217s most sensitive issues and a potential military flashpoint Underlining that threat Taiwan sent ships and aircraft earlier on Wednesday to shadow a Chinese aircraft carrier group through the narrow Taiwan Strait its defense ministry said 8220Taiwan can no longer be excluded unjustly from international fora Taiwan has much to share with the world8221 Wong said at a reception attended by Taiwan President Tsai Ingwen a member of the proindependence Democratic Progressive Party 8220I can assure you the United States government and the United States private sector will do their part to ensure Taiwan8217s stellar international example shines brightly8221 Beijing is already furious over a law signed last week by US President Donald Trump that encourages the United States to send senior officials to Taiwan to meet Taiwanese counterparts and vice versa President Tsai welcomed the new law on Wednesday Taiwans President Tsai Ingwen and Alex Wong R US deputy assistant secretary at the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs attend AmCham8217s yearly dinner event in Taipei Taiwan March 21 2018 REUTERSTyrone Siu 8220We were pleased President Trump signed the Taiwan travel act into law We are grateful to the Trump administration and to members of the congress for supporting this bill8221 she said Taiwan8217s defense ministry said earlier that the Chinese carrier group led by the mainland8217s sole operational aircraft carrier the Liaoning entered the Taiwan Strait late on Tuesday but kept on its western side Slideshow 2 Images By midday on Wednesday it had left Taiwan8217s air defense identification zone heading southwest the ministry said adding that it looked like China was conducting drills Taiwan8217s military sent ships and aircraft to shadow the carrier group the entire way but spotted nothing out of the ordinary and people in Taiwan should not be concerned it added China8217s Defence Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment Related Video Taiwan says China has ramped up military exercises around the island in the past year or so China suspects Taiwan8217s Tsai wants to push for formal independence for the island which would cross a red line for Communist Party leaders in Beijing Tsai has said she wants to maintain the status quo and is committed to ensuring peace Separately on Wednesday China announced that a former ambassador to the United Nations Liu Jieyi has been appointed head of China8217s Taiwan Affairs Office Veteran diplomat Liu has been deputy head of the office since October last year Reporting by Fabian Hamacher and Twinnie Siu Writing by Ben Blanchard and Anne Marie Roantree Editing by Himani Sarkar Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles LIMA Reuters Peru8217s centerright President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski announced his resignation on Wednesday after votebuying allegations ensnared him in a fresh scandal on the eve of an impeachment vote capping months of political turmoil in one of Latin America8217s most stable economies Kuczynski a 79yearold former Wall Street banker who once held US citizenship promised a 8220constitutional and orderly8221 transition of power to end what he described as a hostile political climate that had made governing nearly impossible But Kuczynski who is expected to be replaced by Vice President Martin Vizcarra on Friday denied allegations of wrongdoing and blamed the premature end of his fiveyear term on the rightwing opposition party that controls Congress 8220I8217ve worked for nearly 60 years of my life with complete honesty The opposition has tried to depict me as a corrupt person8221 Kuczynski said in a prerecorded video message to the nation that broadcast as he left the presidential palace But Kuczynski added 8220I think what8217s best for the country is for me to resignI don8217t want to be an obstacle for the nation8217s search for a path to unity and harmony8221 Lawmakers agreed to accept Kuczynski8217s resignation instead of moving forward with a vote scheduled for Thursday on whether to oust him on grounds he was 8220morally unfit8221 to govern said the president of Congress Luis Galarreta Galarreta said he would swear Vizcarra in as president at around midday Friday A former governor of a mining region who once helped secure community support for Anglo American Plc8217s Quellaveco copper project Vizcarra has served as Peru8217s ambassador to Canada since September and is currently in Ottawa In recent days Vizcarra has received public assurances from opposition lawmakers that they will support his government But he will take office amid a fractured party widespread disgust for elected officials in Peru and inherit economic growth that slowed to 25 percent last year Perus President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski is seen announcing his resignation at the Presidential Palace in Lima Peru March 21 2018 in this still image from video PERU GOVERNMENT TVAMERICA TVHandout via REUTERS Vizcarra who turns 55 years old on Thursday appealed to the public to pull through the crisis on Twitter 8220I8217m outraged by the current situation like the majority of Peruvians But I8217m convinced that together we can show that we can once more push forward8221 TRUMP HEADED TO PERU Kuczynski had been scheduled to welcome Donald Trump on the US president8217s first visit to Latin America next month where many of the region8217s leaders plan to pressure Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to enact democratic reforms Slideshow 21 Images A White House official speaking on background said Trump still plans to attend the summit Kuczynski8217s resignation marked a spectacular downfall for a man who was elected less than two years ago amid hopes he would turbocharge growth while cleaning up government corruption and modernizing the Andean nation of some 30 million people Markets that had cheered Kuczynski8217s rise to power rallied on news of his resignation on Wednesday amid expectations it would end the political uncertainty that has shadowed Peru since the opposition first sought to oust Kuczynski in December Related Coverage Peruvian police put officers on high alert amid political crisis Perus Vizcarra to be sworn in as president Friday president of Congress Popular Force the country8217s most powerful opposition party tried to impeach Kuczynski in December after revealing his company received money from Odebrecht ODBESUL a Brazilian company at the center of Latin America8217s biggest graft scandal while he held public office more than a decade ago Kuczynski unexpectedly stayed in power in December with the help of former autocratic Alberto Fujimori whom he pardoned from a human rights sentence days later in what was widely seen as political payback Ahead of the new impeachment vote on Thursday Popular Force released a raft of video and audio that appeared to show Kuczynski8217s allies offering lucrative public work contracts to lawmakers in exchange for political support Kuczynski said the recordings had been edited unfairly as part of a campaign to discredit his government and stressed that no corruption allegation had been proven Reporting by Mitra Taj and Teresa Cespedes Additional Reporting by Marco Aquino and Maria Cervantes in Lima and Roberta Rampton in Washignton Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Lisa Shumaker Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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mining/NOUN region/NOUN who/PRON once/ADV helped/VERB secure/VERB community/NOUN support/NOUN for/ADP Anglo/PROPN American/PROPN Plc8217s/PROPN Quellaveco/PROPN copper/NOUN project/NOUN Vizcarra/PROPN has/AUX served/VERB as/ADP Peru8217s/PROPN ambassador/NOUN to/ADP Canada/PROPN since/SCONJ September/PROPN and/CCONJ is/AUX currently/ADV in/ADP Ottawa/PROPN In/ADP recent/ADJ days/NOUN Vizcarra/PROPN has/AUX received/VERB public/ADJ assurances/NOUN from/ADP opposition/NOUN lawmakers/NOUN that/SCONJ they/PRON will/AUX support/VERB his/PRON government/NOUN But/CCONJ he/PRON will/AUX take/VERB office/NOUN amid/ADP a/DET fractured/ADJ party/NOUN widespread/ADJ disgust/NOUN for/ADP elected/VERB officials/NOUN in/ADP Peru/PROPN and/CCONJ inherit/VERB economic/ADJ growth/NOUN that/PRON slowed/VERB to/ADP 25/NUM percent/NOUN last/ADJ year/NOUN Perus/PROPN President/PROPN Pedro/PROPN Pablo/PROPN Kuczynski/PROPN is/AUX seen/VERB announcing/VERB his/PRON resignation/NOUN at/ADP the/DET Presidential/PROPN Palace/PROPN in/ADP Lima/PROPN Peru/PROPN March/PROPN 21/NUM 2018/NUM in/ADP this/DET still/ADV image/NOUN from/ADP video/NOUN PERU/PROPN GOVERNMENT/PROPN TVAMERICA/PROPN TVHandout/NOUN via/ADP REUTERS/PROPN Vizcarra/PROPN who/PRON turns/VERB 55/NUM years/NOUN old/ADJ on/ADP Thursday/PROPN appealed/VERB to/ADP the/DET public/NOUN to/PART pull/VERB through/ADP the/DET crisis/NOUN on/ADP Twitter/PROPN 8220I8217/PROPN m/VERB outraged/ADJ by/ADP the/DET current/ADJ situation/NOUN like/ADP the/DET majority/NOUN of/ADP Peruvians/PROPN But/CCONJ I8217/NOUN m/VERB convinced/ADJ that/SCONJ together/ADV we/PRON can/AUX show/VERB that/SCONJ we/PRON can/AUX once/ADV more/ADV push/VERB forward8221/NOUN TRUMP/PROPN HEADED/NOUN TO/ADP PERU/PROPN Kuczynski/PROPN had/AUX been/AUX scheduled/VERB to/PART welcome/VERB Donald/PROPN Trump/PROPN on/ADP the/DET US/PROPN president8217s/PROPN first/ADJ visit/NOUN to/ADP Latin/PROPN America/PROPN next/ADJ month/NOUN where/SCONJ many/ADJ of/ADP the/DET region8217s/NOUN leaders/NOUN plan/VERB to/PART pressure/VERB Venezuelan/ADJ President/PROPN Nicolas/PROPN Maduro/PROPN to/PART enact/VERB democratic/ADJ reforms/NOUN Slideshow/PROPN 21/NUM Images/NOUN A/DET White/PROPN House/PROPN official/NOUN speaking/VERB on/ADP background/NOUN said/VERB Trump/PROPN still/ADV plans/VERB to/PART attend/VERB the/DET summit/NOUN Kuczynski8217s/PROPN resignation/NOUN marked/VERB a/DET spectacular/ADJ downfall/NOUN for/ADP a/DET man/NOUN who/PRON was/AUX elected/VERB less/ADJ than/ADP two/NUM years/NOUN ago/ADV amid/ADP hopes/NOUN he/PRON would/AUX turbocharge/VERB growth/NOUN while/SCONJ cleaning/VERB up/ADP government/NOUN corruption/NOUN and/CCONJ modernizing/VERB the/DET Andean/ADJ nation/NOUN of/ADP some/DET 30/NUM million/NUM people/NOUN Markets/PROPN that/PRON had/AUX cheered/VERB Kuczynski8217s/PROPN rise/VERB to/ADP power/NOUN rallied/VERB on/ADP news/NOUN of/ADP his/PRON resignation/NOUN on/ADP Wednesday/PROPN amid/ADP expectations/NOUN it/PRON would/AUX end/VERB the/DET political/ADJ uncertainty/NOUN that/PRON has/AUX shadowed/VERB Peru/PROPN since/SCONJ the/DET opposition/NOUN first/ADV sought/VERB to/PART oust/VERB Kuczynski/PROPN in/ADP December/PROPN Related/PROPN Coverage/PROPN Peruvian/ADJ police/NOUN put/VERB officers/NOUN on/ADP high/ADJ alert/NOUN amid/ADP political/ADJ crisis/NOUN Perus/PROPN Vizcarra/PROPN to/PART be/AUX sworn/VERB in/ADP as/ADP president/PROPN Friday/PROPN president/NOUN of/ADP Congress/PROPN Popular/PROPN Force/PROPN the/DET country8217s/PROPN most/ADV powerful/ADJ opposition/NOUN party/NOUN tried/VERB to/PART impeach/VERB Kuczynski/PROPN in/ADP December/PROPN after/ADP revealing/VERB his/PRON company/NOUN received/VERB money/NOUN from/ADP Odebrecht/PROPN ODBESUL/VERB a/DET Brazilian/ADJ company/NOUN at/ADP the/DET center/NOUN of/ADP Latin/PROPN America8217s/CCONJ biggest/ADJ graft/NOUN scandal/NOUN while/SCONJ he/PRON held/VERB public/ADJ office/NOUN more/ADJ than/ADP a/PRON decade/NOUN ago/ADV Kuczynski/PROPN unexpectedly/ADV stayed/VERB in/ADP power/NOUN in/ADP December/PROPN with/ADP the/DET help/NOUN of/ADP former/ADJ autocratic/ADJ Alberto/PROPN Fujimori/PROPN whom/PRON he/PRON pardoned/VERB from/ADP a/DET human/ADJ rights/NOUN sentence/NOUN days/NOUN later/ADV in/ADP what/PRON was/AUX widely/ADV seen/VERB as/ADP political/ADJ payback/NOUN Ahead/ADV of/ADP the/DET new/ADJ impeachment/NOUN vote/NOUN on/ADP Thursday/PROPN Popular/PROPN Force/PROPN released/VERB a/DET raft/NOUN of/ADP video/NOUN and/CCONJ audio/NOUN that/PRON appeared/VERB to/PART show/VERB Kuczynski8217s/PROPN allies/NOUN offering/VERB lucrative/ADJ public/ADJ work/NOUN contracts/NOUN to/ADP lawmakers/NOUN in/ADP exchange/NOUN for/ADP political/ADJ support/NOUN Kuczynski/PROPN said/VERB the/DET recordings/NOUN had/AUX been/AUX edited/VERB unfairly/ADV as/ADP part/NOUN of/ADP a/DET campaign/NOUN to/PART discredit/VERB his/PRON government/NOUN and/CCONJ stressed/VERB that/SCONJ 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<p>There is not an industrial company on earth, not an institution of any kind &#8211; not mine, not yours, not anyone&#8217;s &#8211; that is sustainable. I stand convicted by me, myself alone, not by anyone else, as a plunderer of the earth. But not by our civilization&#8217;s definition. By our civilization&#8217;s definition, I&#8217;m a captain of industry and in the eyes of many, a kind of modern-day hero.</p> <p>&#8212; Ray Anderson, (1934-2011) CEO of Interface, Inc.</p> <p>We are living a collective illusion known as the civilized world. We feign concern for our horrendous conditions of poverty, socioeconomic inequality, deteriorating public health, and severe environmental degradation (to which climate change is merely one factor), but everything we do belies that distress. These issues comprise the largest risks to the survival of the human species, as well as the most significant amoral atrocities on the planet. Both individually and as a species, our health, safety, and ability to live a decent, dignified life have always been imperiled by these predicaments. Yet, we continue along with complete cognitive dissonance in that the crux of our lives &#8211; our jobs, our consumer culture &#8211; all contribute to, perpetuate, and exacerbate the unsustainable and morally reprehensible conditions of our existence. But while we are all marginally responsible for the multitude of calamities befalling us, the one group who bears the brunt of the blame for our social and ecological decay is the wealthy.</p> <p>Have you looked around and seen just what humanity has done to our stunning Earth? We&#8217;ve bulldozed the beauty for bucks. Far too much of what was once a glorious paradise is now a complete disaster of unfathomable proportions. A disaster wholly of our own making. In America, and in most places around the world, from the moment we are born we are preparing for a future career, and &amp;#160;more specifically, for the lifelong goal of making money. But on the whole, most of the jobs we do end up being more detrimental than beneficial to society and the environment. We characterize work through measures of productivity, but producing more and more unnecessary, meaningless, and often useless products compromises our physical environment, which in turn, compromises the health of humans, other beings, and our entire planetary ecosystem.</p> <p>So many of the things that form the basis of our civilization should not, and perhaps cannot, exist in a just and sustainable world. Items like arms and artillery, <a href="" type="internal">synthetic chemicals</a>, <a href="http://mtpr.org/post/trouble-cafos" type="external">concentrated animal feeding operations</a>, <a href="" type="internal">plastic</a>, <a href="smartphones" type="external">smartphones</a> and <a href="" type="internal">other electronic gadgetry</a> do not feed a sustainable and equitable world but create more needless havoc. The irony, though, is that the very people who run the systems that incessantly construct and promulgate these harmful, redundant, or unnecessary products are the richest and most successful people on earth.</p> <p>We define success in our society almost exclusively in terms of wealth, with its attendant power and sometimes, fame. Rich people are the recipients of adulation and reverence for nothing more than their accumulation of wealth and material products. We like to think that riches come by way of great intellect, talent, skill, and a strong work ethic, but in reality, monetary success is more a matter of inherited socioeconomic status, ambition, and determination, rather than ability and aptitude. Most of all, to achieve wealth means to have a myopic resolve, not only to look away from how the sausage is made, but to not care how the sausage is made.</p> <p>The wealthy in our society then become the people with the most power and influence. While ironically, they are the people least deserving of our respect. They are the exact people whom we should look upon with the utmost skepticism and even disdain. They should not be in the position to make decisions about our collective lives and the workings of our society, because their financial success is completely antithetical to societal justice and sustainability.</p> <p>It doesn&#8217;t take great acumen or diligence to make a lot of money; it takes a narrow-minded, insular, immoral, sometimes psychopathic view of life, in which personal pleasure and profit are the primary variables. It&#8217;s quite easy to do well financially and find personal satisfaction if the exploitation of humans, other animals, and the entire biosphere is left outside of the realm of your career consciousness. As <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9hetZuPzS4" type="external">Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface Carpet admitted,</a> &#8220;For 21 yearsI never gave a thought to what we were taking from the earth or doing to the earth in the making of our products.&#8221; He built his fortune without consideration to the effects of his enterprise until someone brought the deleterious consequences to his attention.</p> <p>We like to believe the cream rises to the top, but the truth is that the top is actually full of scum. We have seen in recent weeks, if we did not know already, that entertainment, politics, and indeed, all of the wealthiest industries are cesspools of moral depravity, especially at the apex.</p> <p>There may be some exceptions, but scum is the rule. Some might call these people ambitious, some might call them razor-focused, others would call them sociopathic. It takes a careful regimen of willful&amp;#160; ignorance and/or denial to not consider all the harms that directly and indirectly result from avenues toward career achievements in the process of our normal lives &#8211; harms such as exploitation of labor, torture of animals, and toxic contamination and of food, water, and natural resources.</p> <p>Material success requires rape and pillage, figuratively and literally. Donald Trump bragged that when you have the kind of wealth he has, you can treat women as objects and just &#8220;grab &#8217;em by the pussy.&#8221; You can also exploit resources, exploit labor, befoul the environment, and endanger public health with few or no consequences. On a purely moral basis, only scum could have the hubris to consider others as mere playthings for their own enjoyment, to feel superior enough to warrant their extreme wealth which they did not earn but stole from the commons, and to believe that they deserve obscene riches when the majority of others do not even have basic life necessities.</p> <p>How often have you heard the phrases &#8220;not that there is anything wrong with being rich,&#8221; or &#8220;I don&#8217;t begrudge him his wealth&#8221;? Wealth should be considered reprehensible. Wealth has always been in the hands of the few to the detriment of the many, and one&#8217;s access to it has always been almost wholly correlated with one&#8217;s socioeconomic status at birth. Yet we rationalize this immoral situation and pretend that the proverbial &#8220;pie,&#8221; of which we all need a slice, is infinite in size and that wealth is accessible to anyone. We assume that being rich is not only acceptable but aspirational. It is neither in a just and sustainable world.</p> <p>On a finite planet every excess dollar, every excess material good, every extra home, car, garment, trinket, piece of food, or beverage that one person possesses essentially correlates to an item that another person does not have. When we normalize one person having more than he/she needs in a world where billions have far less than the bare minimum required to meet their basic needs, then we are obliged to rethink our morality. When a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birkin_bag" type="external">simple handbag can cost between $12K and $300K</a> and we as a society see nothing wrong with that kind of excess in the face of poverty, hunger, homelessness, and disease, we are not only completely socially corrupt, we are spelling our own doom. Poverty only exists because excessive wealth exists and neither is compatible with a sustainable and humane civilization.</p> <p>To achieve a sustainable world, we must relinquish our use of non-renewable resources, we must utilize renewable resources at a level in which they have the time and ability to replenish, and we must leave no waste that is not regenerative. To achieve an equitable world, we must relinquish our greed and desire for opulence, excess, and disproportionate influence. In fact, sustainability is also a function of equity. However, our current society is predicated on the antithesis of all such requirements.</p> <p>Wealthy people gain their successes because they have tunnel vision. They are singularly focused on themselves, their careers, and/or on money. They do not take into consideration the externalities involved in their actions. They pay little mind to the exploitation involved in their pursuits. Ethics never supersedes ambition. Therefore, these are the exact people who should not be in charge of making policies for the benefit of society and should not be in charge of civic ventures. To be able to be so wealthy without shame, guilt, or acknowledgement that your own wealth impedes the lives of others is to be either ignorant or indifferent. We are facing global ecological and economic collapse. Who made this happen? The wealthiest people of the world. If you are rich you do not have the solution. You are the problem.</p> <p>The world is run on slave labor, indentured servitude, animal and natural resource exploitation, and endless generation of waste and contamination. Material success comes with adopting a shortsighted view of the world &#8211; closing yourself off to your own connection to global anthropogenic climate change, toxification, and inequality.</p> <p>So many of the wealthy who consider themselves socially and environmentally aware perceive no connection between their own wealth accumulation and the causes they claim to champion. Instead of curtailing their materialism, they rationalize it. Instead of acknowledging that their consumerism intensifies global resource extraction, they produce more products (often erroneously labeled &#8220;green&#8221;) to sustain their riches. When the wealthy are not hawking products for their for-profit activities, they have the audacity to solicit for charitable organizations that are only necessitated by the economic system that produces poverty and environmental devastation in the wake of their extravagant wealth. They ask donations from the majority of citizens who are barely making ends meet, when they themselves could surrender probably 90% of their accumulated wealth and not notice a marked change in their material status whatsoever. The elites who are not in denial about the problems we face want scientific and technological solutions &#8211; solutions that they can throw their money at and have others solve so they do not have to think about their own contribution to the problems.</p> <p>But there are no silver bullets to end inequality and environmental destruction, while continuing with business as usual in civilized society. Science cannot save us. Scientific research itself relies on the same unsustainable production, consumption, use of resources, and waste as every other industry.</p> <p>Technology mavens always tout the great social or biological service that their new technology will provide. Their innovations comes under the guise of helping the world, but the majority of the time, their creations are frivolous and do not do much more than use natural resources, create waste, and earn them exorbitant profit. At the university where I earned my doctoral degree there is a masters program in biotechnology and there&#8217;s a reason why their curriculum extends beyond just science, containing at least two required business courses. Of course, business is fundamental to their instruction because the principle purpose of our education, of our careers, is profit.</p> <p>All of the harmful products and practices in our civilization &#8211; military arms, sweatshops, low wages, pesticides, plastics, throw-away items, excess of products, animal cruelty, overuse of medicine and surgery &#8211; only exist to increase revenue for the rich. None are fair or just or equitable or sustainable. Our societal justification of the above items just marks our collective delusion. These products and practices persist in the name of profit, and we rationalize their continuation just as we rationalize extravagant wealth.</p> <p>When Senator Bernie Sanders was on TV decrying President Barack Obama&#8217;s half-million dollar speaking engagements on Wall Street, the anchors of the program said to him, &#8220;Wouldn&#8217;t you do it if you could?&#8221; Bernie replied, &#8220;I wouldn&#8217;t be asked.&#8221; Rather, he should have explained that anyone with integrity would not accept money they do not need for some sort of quid pro quo from a destructive and corrupt institution. The hosts of the show surmised that everyone would jump at the opportunity to earn money if they had the chance. It is precisely that sort of mindset that enables these broadcasters to inhabit their influential positions on a national television program and to earn millions of dollars. They demonstrate what unethical opportunists they, and most of the rich, actually are. Their lack of ethics is internalized and taken for granted by not only them, but most of the rest of our society. They are more than willing to be bought at whatever price for whatever service. &#8220;Just doing my job&#8221; does not serve as an excuse for immorality.</p> <p>Nevertheless, there are people who have chosen lives based on conviction rather than money. Former <a href="" type="internal">Uruguayan President Jose Mujica</a> and <a href="" type="internal">Seattle City Council member Kashama Sawant&amp;#160;</a>chose to earn the local average income for their official positions and donate the remainder of their salaries toward social justice work. Biologist and writer Sandra Steingraber donated a <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/anti-fracking-activist-sandra-steingrabers-pursuit-of-a-healthy-enviro-1881721593.html" type="external">portion of her $100K Heinz Award prize</a> toward the fight against hydraulic fracturing (fracking) rather than spend it on personal treats. Likewise, teacher Jesse Hagopian <a href="" type="internal">donated his $100K settlement</a> for being unjustly attacked with pepper-spray by Seattle police toward social justice action. Not everyone is looking to cash in, and not everyone is seeking the next, biggest profit-making endeavor.</p> <p>Living with integrity and simplicity is difficult. People do not choose to live this way because their personal sacrifice will change the world. They do so because it is the right thing to do. They do so because having too much means others don&#8217;t have enough. They do so because living by example allows others who care to see that a life of wealth and consumerism augments inequality and unsustainability; it is not the only way to live and need not be. They live this way because only by walking the walk rather than talking the talk will we ever start to achieve justice and sustainability to help preserve the future of our species.</p> <p>In recent years there have been waves and wave of protests throughout the country and the world in response to myriad societal maladies. The best protest we can do in America now is to reject the bourgeois life &#8211; reject excessive wealth and the material components that come with it, reject profligate consumption, reject consumerism, reject wasteful holidays, reject wasteful trinkets, &amp;#160;reject all that is incompatible with what we purport to champion. For example, retired talk-show host David Letterman appears sincere in his dedication toward helping combat climate change, while at the same time, he remains co-owner of an auto racing team. In the world in which we currently live, auto racing is completely incongruent with climate change mitigation. We can&#8217;t pretend to value matters like justice and sustainability unless the way we live upholds those values. We can&#8217;t decouple our livelihoods from our lives.</p> <p>The rich tend to ensconce themselves in their well-manicured communities, shop with abandon, and disregard the abject poverty, environmental degradation, and injustices all around them. They are in the process of spending small portions of their vast fortunes <a href="" type="internal">building survival bunkers</a> to withstand either the revolutionary upheaval that may soon come as a result of immeasurable socioeconomic inequality, or the catastrophic ecological collapse that may result from reckless resource extraction and expenditure. How misguided or cynical are they to not realize that by renouncing their extreme wealth, they would need no such provisions and could play a large part in salvaging our civilization?</p> <p>Need I even explain how the current tax scam pending on Capitol Hill will serve to enhance all of the socioeconomic, environmental, and public health calamities that are arising ever more rapidly and in quick succession? Need I elaborate on how our escalating climate-related weather catastrophes only reach the cataclysmic proportions they do because of the wealth disparities involved and because of the high-risk industrial components therein, that exist mainly to enrich the elite? Would these natural disasters be so disastrous if more people had the economic resilience that they deserve and if society took more precaution against the hazards of multibillion-dollar industries that manufacture products of questionable value while generating tremendous wealth to a select few?</p> <p>We live n a time of unprecedented social disarray, ecological disrepair, public health decay, and moral depravity. Nearly every aspect of the way we live in modern industrial societies is completely unsustainable. Even if we were to transition to 100% solar energy tomorrow throughout the planet, the worst effects of climate change might be averted, but the <a href="" type="internal">plastic pollution</a> that permeates the most <a href="" type="internal">far-reaching depths of the oceans</a> would still remain, the <a href="http://www.who.int/foodsafety/areas_work/chemical-risks/pops/en/" type="external">persistent organic pollutants</a> (POPs) and <a href="https://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/agents/endocrine/index.cfm" type="external">endocrine disrupting compounds</a> (EDCs) that harm our own health and the health of the entire global ecosystem remain. Not only do they remain, but they continue to be produced, not out of necessity, but for the financial profit of the privileged few. The production of, consumption of, and waste stream from our global industrial society continues unabated. This is the system that forms the foundation of all of our lives in the civilized world, and this is the system that bestows excessive wealth to some while leaving others fighting for survival.</p> <p>While it is indeed the system of capitalism that generates and sustains our societal injustice and ecological degradation, the system is comprised of people &#8211; people who could abdicate their fictional obligation to happiness via indefinitely-increasing earnings, people who can choose better, Without a preponderance of such people, no countervailing just and sustainable system can ever compete.</p> <p>In 1964, Uruguayan journalist Eduardo Galeano interviewed the famous Argentinean hero of the Cuban revolution Ernesto &#8220;Che&#8221; Guevara. In the midst of a comprehensive conversation, Che stated to Galeano, &#8221; <a href="" type="internal">I don&#8217;t want every Cuban to wish he were a Rockefeller</a>.&#8221; To be sure, if we are remotely interested in a sustainable and equitable world, the attainment of wealth must be transformed from admirable to contemptible. With regard to the multitude of obstacles we face, Ralph Nader once wrote &#8220;only the super-rich can save us.&#8221; He&#8217;s right. They can save us by not existing.</p>

Slaves and Bulldozers, Plutocrats and Widgets

https://counterpunch.org/2017/11/24/slaves-and-bulldozers-plutocrats-and-widgets/

2017-11-24

4left

There is not an industrial company on earth not an institution of any kind 8211 not mine not yours not anyone8217s 8211 that is sustainable I stand convicted by me myself alone not by anyone else as a plunderer of the earth But not by our civilization8217s definition By our civilization8217s definition I8217m a captain of industry and in the eyes of many a kind of modernday hero 8212 Ray Anderson 19342011 CEO of Interface Inc We are living a collective illusion known as the civilized world We feign concern for our horrendous conditions of poverty socioeconomic inequality deteriorating public health and severe environmental degradation to which climate change is merely one factor but everything we do belies that distress These issues comprise the largest risks to the survival of the human species as well as the most significant amoral atrocities on the planet Both individually and as a species our health safety and ability to live a decent dignified life have always been imperiled by these predicaments Yet we continue along with complete cognitive dissonance in that the crux of our lives 8211 our jobs our consumer culture 8211 all contribute to perpetuate and exacerbate the unsustainable and morally reprehensible conditions of our existence But while we are all marginally responsible for the multitude of calamities befalling us the one group who bears the brunt of the blame for our social and ecological decay is the wealthy Have you looked around and seen just what humanity has done to our stunning Earth We8217ve bulldozed the beauty for bucks Far too much of what was once a glorious paradise is now a complete disaster of unfathomable proportions A disaster wholly of our own making In America and in most places around the world from the moment we are born we are preparing for a future career and amp160more specifically for the lifelong goal of making money But on the whole most of the jobs we do end up being more detrimental than beneficial to society and the environment We characterize work through measures of productivity but producing more and more unnecessary meaningless and often useless products compromises our physical environment which in turn compromises the health of humans other beings and our entire planetary ecosystem So many of the things that form the basis of our civilization should not and perhaps cannot exist in a just and sustainable world Items like arms and artillery synthetic chemicals concentrated animal feeding operations plastic smartphones and other electronic gadgetry do not feed a sustainable and equitable world but create more needless havoc The irony though is that the very people who run the systems that incessantly construct and promulgate these harmful redundant or unnecessary products are the richest and most successful people on earth We define success in our society almost exclusively in terms of wealth with its attendant power and sometimes fame Rich people are the recipients of adulation and reverence for nothing more than their accumulation of wealth and material products We like to think that riches come by way of great intellect talent skill and a strong work ethic but in reality monetary success is more a matter of inherited socioeconomic status ambition and determination rather than ability and aptitude Most of all to achieve wealth means to have a myopic resolve not only to look away from how the sausage is made but to not care how the sausage is made The wealthy in our society then become the people with the most power and influence While ironically they are the people least deserving of our respect They are the exact people whom we should look upon with the utmost skepticism and even disdain They should not be in the position to make decisions about our collective lives and the workings of our society because their financial success is completely antithetical to societal justice and sustainability It doesn8217t take great acumen or diligence to make a lot of money it takes a narrowminded insular immoral sometimes psychopathic view of life in which personal pleasure and profit are the primary variables It8217s quite easy to do well financially and find personal satisfaction if the exploitation of humans other animals and the entire biosphere is left outside of the realm of your career consciousness As Ray Anderson CEO of Interface Carpet admitted 8220For 21 yearsI never gave a thought to what we were taking from the earth or doing to the earth in the making of our products8221 He built his fortune without consideration to the effects of his enterprise until someone brought the deleterious consequences to his attention We like to believe the cream rises to the top but the truth is that the top is actually full of scum We have seen in recent weeks if we did not know already that entertainment politics and indeed all of the wealthiest industries are cesspools of moral depravity especially at the apex There may be some exceptions but scum is the rule Some might call these people ambitious some might call them razorfocused others would call them sociopathic It takes a careful regimen of willfulamp160 ignorance andor denial to not consider all the harms that directly and indirectly result from avenues toward career achievements in the process of our normal lives 8211 harms such as exploitation of labor torture of animals and toxic contamination and of food water and natural resources Material success requires rape and pillage figuratively and literally Donald Trump bragged that when you have the kind of wealth he has you can treat women as objects and just 8220grab 8217em by the pussy8221 You can also exploit resources exploit labor befoul the environment and endanger public health with few or no consequences On a purely moral basis only scum could have the hubris to consider others as mere playthings for their own enjoyment to feel superior enough to warrant their extreme wealth which they did not earn but stole from the commons and to believe that they deserve obscene riches when the majority of others do not even have basic life necessities How often have you heard the phrases 8220not that there is anything wrong with being rich8221 or 8220I don8217t begrudge him his wealth8221 Wealth should be considered reprehensible Wealth has always been in the hands of the few to the detriment of the many and one8217s access to it has always been almost wholly correlated with one8217s socioeconomic status at birth Yet we rationalize this immoral situation and pretend that the proverbial 8220pie8221 of which we all need a slice is infinite in size and that wealth is accessible to anyone We assume that being rich is not only acceptable but aspirational It is neither in a just and sustainable world On a finite planet every excess dollar every excess material good every extra home car garment trinket piece of food or beverage that one person possesses essentially correlates to an item that another person does not have When we normalize one person having more than heshe needs in a world where billions have far less than the bare minimum required to meet their basic needs then we are obliged to rethink our morality When a simple handbag can cost between 12K and 300K and we as a society see nothing wrong with that kind of excess in the face of poverty hunger homelessness and disease we are not only completely socially corrupt we are spelling our own doom Poverty only exists because excessive wealth exists and neither is compatible with a sustainable and humane civilization To achieve a sustainable world we must relinquish our use of nonrenewable resources we must utilize renewable resources at a level in which they have the time and ability to replenish and we must leave no waste that is not regenerative To achieve an equitable world we must relinquish our greed and desire for opulence excess and disproportionate influence In fact sustainability is also a function of equity However our current society is predicated on the antithesis of all such requirements Wealthy people gain their successes because they have tunnel vision They are singularly focused on themselves their careers andor on money They do not take into consideration the externalities involved in their actions They pay little mind to the exploitation involved in their pursuits Ethics never supersedes ambition Therefore these are the exact people who should not be in charge of making policies for the benefit of society and should not be in charge of civic ventures To be able to be so wealthy without shame guilt or acknowledgement that your own wealth impedes the lives of others is to be either ignorant or indifferent We are facing global ecological and economic collapse Who made this happen The wealthiest people of the world If you are rich you do not have the solution You are the problem The world is run on slave labor indentured servitude animal and natural resource exploitation and endless generation of waste and contamination Material success comes with adopting a shortsighted view of the world 8211 closing yourself off to your own connection to global anthropogenic climate change toxification and inequality So many of the wealthy who consider themselves socially and environmentally aware perceive no connection between their own wealth accumulation and the causes they claim to champion Instead of curtailing their materialism they rationalize it Instead of acknowledging that their consumerism intensifies global resource extraction they produce more products often erroneously labeled 8220green8221 to sustain their riches When the wealthy are not hawking products for their forprofit activities they have the audacity to solicit for charitable organizations that are only necessitated by the economic system that produces poverty and environmental devastation in the wake of their extravagant wealth They ask donations from the majority of citizens who are barely making ends meet when they themselves could surrender probably 90 of their accumulated wealth and not notice a marked change in their material status whatsoever The elites who are not in denial about the problems we face want scientific and technological solutions 8211 solutions that they can throw their money at and have others solve so they do not have to think about their own contribution to the problems But there are no silver bullets to end inequality and environmental destruction while continuing with business as usual in civilized society Science cannot save us Scientific research itself relies on the same unsustainable production consumption use of resources and waste as every other industry Technology mavens always tout the great social or biological service that their new technology will provide Their innovations comes under the guise of helping the world but the majority of the time their creations are frivolous and do not do much more than use natural resources create waste and earn them exorbitant profit At the university where I earned my doctoral degree there is a masters program in biotechnology and there8217s a reason why their curriculum extends beyond just science containing at least two required business courses Of course business is fundamental to their instruction because the principle purpose of our education of our careers is profit All of the harmful products and practices in our civilization 8211 military arms sweatshops low wages pesticides plastics throwaway items excess of products animal cruelty overuse of medicine and surgery 8211 only exist to increase revenue for the rich None are fair or just or equitable or sustainable Our societal justification of the above items just marks our collective delusion These products and practices persist in the name of profit and we rationalize their continuation just as we rationalize extravagant wealth When Senator Bernie Sanders was on TV decrying President Barack Obama8217s halfmillion dollar speaking engagements on Wall Street the anchors of the program said to him 8220Wouldn8217t you do it if you could8221 Bernie replied 8220I wouldn8217t be asked8221 Rather he should have explained that anyone with integrity would not accept money they do not need for some sort of quid pro quo from a destructive and corrupt institution The hosts of the show surmised that everyone would jump at the opportunity to earn money if they had the chance It is precisely that sort of mindset that enables these broadcasters to inhabit their influential positions on a national television program and to earn millions of dollars They demonstrate what unethical opportunists they and most of the rich actually are Their lack of ethics is internalized and taken for granted by not only them but most of the rest of our society They are more than willing to be bought at whatever price for whatever service 8220Just doing my job8221 does not serve as an excuse for immorality Nevertheless there are people who have chosen lives based on conviction rather than money Former Uruguayan President Jose Mujica and Seattle City Council member Kashama Sawantamp160chose to earn the local average income for their official positions and donate the remainder of their salaries toward social justice work Biologist and writer Sandra Steingraber donated a portion of her 100K Heinz Award prize toward the fight against hydraulic fracturing fracking rather than spend it on personal treats Likewise teacher Jesse Hagopian donated his 100K settlement for being unjustly attacked with pepperspray by Seattle police toward social justice action Not everyone is looking to cash in and not everyone is seeking the next biggest profitmaking endeavor Living with integrity and simplicity is difficult People do not choose to live this way because their personal sacrifice will change the world They do so because it is the right thing to do They do so because having too much means others don8217t have enough They do so because living by example allows others who care to see that a life of wealth and consumerism augments inequality and unsustainability it is not the only way to live and need not be They live this way because only by walking the walk rather than talking the talk will we ever start to achieve justice and sustainability to help preserve the future of our species In recent years there have been waves and wave of protests throughout the country and the world in response to myriad societal maladies The best protest we can do in America now is to reject the bourgeois life 8211 reject excessive wealth and the material components that come with it reject profligate consumption reject consumerism reject wasteful holidays reject wasteful trinkets amp160reject all that is incompatible with what we purport to champion For example retired talkshow host David Letterman appears sincere in his dedication toward helping combat climate change while at the same time he remains coowner of an auto racing team In the world in which we currently live auto racing is completely incongruent with climate change mitigation We can8217t pretend to value matters like justice and sustainability unless the way we live upholds those values We can8217t decouple our livelihoods from our lives The rich tend to ensconce themselves in their wellmanicured communities shop with abandon and disregard the abject poverty environmental degradation and injustices all around them They are in the process of spending small portions of their vast fortunes building survival bunkers to withstand either the revolutionary upheaval that may soon come as a result of immeasurable socioeconomic inequality or the catastrophic ecological collapse that may result from reckless resource extraction and expenditure How misguided or cynical are they to not realize that by renouncing their extreme wealth they would need no such provisions and could play a large part in salvaging our civilization Need I even explain how the current tax scam pending on Capitol Hill will serve to enhance all of the socioeconomic environmental and public health calamities that are arising ever more rapidly and in quick succession Need I elaborate on how our escalating climaterelated weather catastrophes only reach the cataclysmic proportions they do because of the wealth disparities involved and because of the highrisk industrial components therein that exist mainly to enrich the elite Would these natural disasters be so disastrous if more people had the economic resilience that they deserve and if society took more precaution against the hazards of multibilliondollar industries that manufacture products of questionable value while generating tremendous wealth to a select few We live n a time of unprecedented social disarray ecological disrepair public health decay and moral depravity Nearly every aspect of the way we live in modern industrial societies is completely unsustainable Even if we were to transition to 100 solar energy tomorrow throughout the planet the worst effects of climate change might be averted but the plastic pollution that permeates the most farreaching depths of the oceans would still remain the persistent organic pollutants POPs and endocrine disrupting compounds EDCs that harm our own health and the health of the entire global ecosystem remain Not only do they remain but they continue to be produced not out of necessity but for the financial profit of the privileged few The production of consumption of and waste stream from our global industrial society continues unabated This is the system that forms the foundation of all of our lives in the civilized world and this is the system that bestows excessive wealth to some while leaving others fighting for survival While it is indeed the system of capitalism that generates and sustains our societal injustice and ecological degradation the system is comprised of people 8211 people who could abdicate their fictional obligation to happiness via indefinitelyincreasing earnings people who can choose better Without a preponderance of such people no countervailing just and sustainable system can ever compete In 1964 Uruguayan journalist Eduardo Galeano interviewed the famous Argentinean hero of the Cuban revolution Ernesto 8220Che8221 Guevara In the midst of a comprehensive conversation Che stated to Galeano 8221 I don8217t want every Cuban to wish he were a Rockefeller8221 To be sure if we are remotely interested in a sustainable and equitable world the attainment of wealth must be transformed from admirable to contemptible With regard to the multitude of obstacles we face Ralph Nader once wrote 8220only the superrich can save us8221 He8217s right They can save us by not existing

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<p>(Reuters) - The Weinstein Company has entered into exclusive negotiations to sell the studio with a group of investors led by former Obama administration official Maria Contreras-Sweet, a source familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.</p> FILE PHOTO: Maria Contreras-Sweet listens to remarks during her ceremonial swearing-in as Administrator of the Small Business Administration at the White House in Washington April 7, 2014. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque <p>The offer would assume all liabilities related to the business operations, inject new cash and pay down liabilities on the balance sheet, according to the source, who added that the new company would be led by a majority-female board of directors and team of investors. The company has $375 million in debt.</p> <p>The Wall Street Journal first reported the talks on Tuesday and that the company could be sold for around $500 million, citing people close to the negotiations. ( <a href="http://on.wsj.com/2Bop76v" type="external">on.wsj.com/2Bop76v</a>)</p> <p>The Weinstein Company has been looking for a buyer or rescue financing since late last year after accusations of sexual harassment against its former co-chairman, Harvey Weinstein. The company fired him in October following the allegations.</p> <p>In November, Contreras-Sweet assembled a consortium of investors who offered $275 million for company.</p> <p>Another source familiar with the talks told Reuters on Tuesday that the offer had been improved from the earlier one.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=LGFa.N" type="external">Lions Gate Entertainment Corp</a> 26.95 LGFa.N New York Stock Exchange -0.42 (-1.53%) LGFa.N <p>Earlier in January, Killer Content Inc, the movie producer that has partnered with philanthropist Abigail Disney in a consortium vying to acquire the Weinstein Company, said a bankruptcy may be the best way forward for the company.</p> <p>Lions Gate Entertainment Corp ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=LGFa.N" type="external">LGFa.N</a>) has also made an offer for some of the company&#8217;s assets, as has Qatar-owned film company Miramax, originally founded by Harvey Weinstein and his brother Bob Weinstein.</p> <p>Reporting by Jessica DiNapoli in New York and Arunima Banerjee in Bengaluru</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - Steve Wynn, the former chief executive of Wynn Resorts Ltd, is selling all his remaining 8 million shares in the firm in a dramatic exit of the casino and hotel company he founded over 16 years ago.</p> Steve Wynn, Chairman and CEO of Wynn Resorts, speaks during the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California, U.S., May 3, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake <p>Macau casino operator Galaxy Entertainment has agreed to buy 5.3 million shares of Wynn Resorts at $175 per share, giving them around a 5 percent stake in the operator which has resorts in Las Vegas and Macau.</p> <p>Galaxy is one of six licensed operators in the world&#8217;s largest gambling hub of Macau and competes with Wynn along with Sands China, MGM China and Melco Resorts.</p> <p>The casino mogul&#8217;s share sale comes a week after Wynn Resorts said Steve and Elaine Wynn, who has a 9.26 percent stake, had scrapped a shareholder agreement that prevented them from selling their stakes.</p> <p>Steve Wynn resigned as CEO of the Las Vegas-based company last month, following claims he subjected women who worked for him to unwanted advances. He has denied the accusations.</p> <p>In a joint statement by Galaxy and Wynn on Wednesday, Galaxy Vice Chairman Francis Lui said it was a unique opportunity to &#8220;acquire an investment in a globally recognized entertainment corporation with exceptionally high quality assets and a significant development pipeline.&#8221;</p> <p>A Galaxy spokeswoman could not comment further on whether Galaxy would look to increase its holding in the future.</p> <p>Wynn Resorts CEO Matt Maddox said Galaxy shared many of the same core &#8220;operating philosophies and values.&#8221;</p> <p>The announcement also follows the settlement two weeks ago of long standing litigation between Wynn Resorts and Universal Entertainment Corporation.</p> An exterior view Wynn hotel-casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., February 7, 2018. REUTERS/Steve Marcus WYNN IMPACT <p>Wynn, who started in Las Vegas casinos in the 1960s, created some of Las Vegas&#8217; most iconic landmarks &#8211; the Mirage, Bellagio and Treasure Island.</p> <p>He was forced to sell his multi-billion dollar operation Mirage Resorts to tycoon Kirk Kerkorian in a hostile takeover in 2000. Kerkorian then created MGM Mirage and Wynn went on to create Wynn Resorts with his ex-wife in 2002.</p> <p>The 76 year old businessman, whose signature denotes the company&#8217;s logo, had built two lavish resorts in the former Portuguese colony of Macau where only six firms have licenses to operate casinos.</p> <p>Vitaly Umansky, analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein in Hong Kong, said the implications of the Galaxy&#8217;s investment goes beyond what looks like a passive move at this stage.</p> <p>&#8220;Wynn and Galaxy may be looking at collaborating on future development opportunities in Asia, with Japan being the critical development initiative.&#8221;</p> <p>Galaxy&#8217;s octogenarian founder Lui Che Woo, one of Asia&#8217;s wealthiest billionaires, has a net wealth of $22 billion according to Forbes. Lui who started his career in construction has grown his casino company into one of Macau&#8217;s biggest operators over the past decade.</p> <p>&#8220;There are other large gaming companies who do not have a presence in Macau, but who desperately want to be in Macau, and we would not be surprised to see them angling for a seat at the acquisition table too,&#8221; said Grant Goverstsen, analyst at Union Gaming in Macau.</p> <p>Shares in Wynn Macau and Galaxy dropped 3.9 percent and 2.9 percent respectively on Friday against the benchmark Hang Seng Index which was down 3.1 percent.</p> <p>Reporting by Farah Master in Hong Kong and Philip George in Bengaluru; Editing by Shri Navaratnam</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BEIJING (Reuters) - China&#8217;s crude oil futures, to be launched on Monday, will be a major step in Beijing&#8217;s years-long push to win greater sway over oil pricing, but for western traders it will likely bring frustration as well as opportunity.</p> Workers are seen on an offshore oil platform surrounded by icy waters in Liaodong bay off Liaoning province, China January 18, 2018. REUTERS/Stringer <p>Shanghai Crude aims to rival the world&#8217;s two crude benchmarks, luring overseas traders with the promise of a deep pool of liquidity and the chance for arbitrage between Asian, U.S. and European markets.</p> <p>However, the contract will also come with quirks that traders used to London&#8217;s Brent or U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) may find less appealing, including shorter business hours, unique Chinese trading habits and extended holiday breaks.</p> <p>Yuan-denominated trading and a blend of new rules and regulatory burdens will also likely hamper initial take-up on the Shanghai International Energy Exchange (INE), executives at a dozen banks and brokers and experts involved in the launch told Reuters.</p> <p>&#8220;The rules around trading methodology will be unfamiliar for western houses,&#8221; said John Browning, chief operating officer of Hong Kong-based futures broker Bands Financial Ltd, which is an approved overseas intermediary for the INE.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-china-oil-futures-explainer/china-aims-to-challenge-brent-wti-oil-with-crude-futures-launch-idUSKBN1GY0S9" type="external">China aims to challenge Brent, WTI oil with crude futures launch</a> <p>&#8220;They&#8217;ll have to get to grips with a different set of trading parameters, including initial margin calculation, rolling between months, order cancellations ratios, etc. It&#8217;s all very different.&#8221;</p> <p>So far, China has opened more than 6,000 trading accounts, including the country&#8217;s oil majors and about 150 brokerages. Ten foreign intermediaries have registered, including J.P.Morgan, Bands Financial, Straits Financial Services and other Hong Kong based affiliates of domestic brokerages.</p> <p>Last-minute changes are still being made to entice overseas users. On Tuesday, the government said it would waive income taxes for foreign investors for the first three years.</p> CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS <p>Specific issues for traders include Shanghai&#8217;s shorter trading hours, split into three slots, with the afternoon session ending at 3:00 p.m. local time (0700 GMT), just before London ramps up.</p> <p>Although the exchange will have an overnight trading session to match late European and early U.S. trading, it will close for more than six hours before trade resumes in Beijing.</p> Slideshow (4 Images) <p>This could mean the contract risks having to play catch-up each morning to the moods and swings of Europe and America, rather than setting its own price, several senior futures traders said.</p> <p>Chinese trading habits may also be a shock to foreign users, they said.</p> <p>Chinese commodity futures investors do not typically trade steadily over the months, but instead pick specific months in which they deal, due to a different cost structure. That could complicate efforts to trade spreads between Brent, WTI and Shanghai.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=ICE.N" type="external">Intercontinental Exchange Inc</a> 71.73 ICE.N New York Stock Exchange -2.29 (-3.09%) ICE.N CME.O 601857.SS 600028.SS <p>These and other factors mean the contract may have a &#8220;hard time&#8221; building correlations with Brent and WTI that would make arbitrage possible, said Albert Helmig, chief executive of financial consultancy Grey House and a former vice chairman of NYMEX.</p> <p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a China market, with Chinese characteristics,&#8221; said Helmig.</p> FUTURE PLANS <p>Still, China offers the potential for a deep, liquid market, buoyed by an explosion of interest from mom-and-pop investors that has supported its vast commodities derivative markets from apples to iron ore in Shanghai, Zhengzhou and Dalian.</p> <p>In 2017, the total traded value of ShFE&#8217;s steel derivatives contracts was $4.4 trillion from domestic investors. This compares with global turnover of more than $10 trillion in international oil futures, the world&#8217;s biggest commodity market.</p> <p>Previous attempts at an Asia benchmark have foundered. Contracts set up by the Dubai Mercantile Exchange a decade ago have not matched Brent or WTI, traded on the Intercontinental Exchange ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=ICE.N" type="external">ICE.N</a>) and the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) owned by CME Group ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=CME.O" type="external">CME.O</a>).</p> <p>China hopes it can do better: with state-controlled oil majors like PetroChina ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=601857.SS" type="external">601857.SS</a>) and Sinopec ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=600028.SS" type="external">600028.SS</a>) expected to provide liquidity, analysts said the contract has a chance of succeeding even if it faces short-term caution.</p> <p>&#8220;Launching a new exchange is enormously complex, so if the initial uptake for the contract isn&#8217;t that strong, it isn&#8217;t necessarily a bad thing,&#8221; said Bands&#8217; Browning.</p> <p>Reporting by Josephine Mason, Meng Meng and Tom Daly in BEIJING and Henning Gloystein in SINGAPORE; editing by Richard Pullin</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China urged the United States on Friday to &#8220;pull back from the brink&#8221; as President Donald Trump&#8217;s plans for tariffs on up to $60 billion in Chinese goods brought the world&#8217;s two largest economies closer to a trade war.</p> <p>Trump is planning to impose the tariffs over what his administration says is misappropriation of U.S. intellectual property. A probe was launched last year under Section 301 of the 1974 U.S. Trade Act.</p> <p>&#8220;China doesn&#8217;t hope to be in a trade war, but is not afraid of engaging in one,&#8221; the Chinese commerce ministry said in a statement on Friday.</p> <p>&#8220;China hopes the United States will pull back from the brink, make prudent decisions, and avoid dragging bilateral trade relations to a dangerous place.&#8221;</p> <p>In a presidential memorandum signed by Trump on Thursday, there will be a 30-day consultation period that only starts once a list of Chinese goods is published.</p> <p>That effectively creates room for potential talks to address Trump&#8217;s allegations on intellectual property theft and forced technology transfers.</p> <p>Trump said he views the Chinese as &#8220;a friend&#8221;, and both sides are in the midst of negotiations.</p> <p>The prospect of a full-blown trade war between the United States and China has sent shivers through economies supplying them, as a fall in demand would be inescapable.</p> FILE PHOTO - A worker checks steel wires at a warehouse in Dalian, Liaoning province, China May 15, 2017. REUTERS/Stringer <p>Feeling the chill, stock markets fell, but perceived safe havens such as government bonds gained.</p> <p>Alarm mounted earlier this month after Trump imposed hefty import tariffs on steel and aluminum this month under Section 232 of the 1962 U.S. Trade Expansion Act, which allows safeguards based on &#8220;national security&#8221;, though that measure had not just targeted Chinese imports.</p> <p>In a separate statement, the Chinese commerce ministry unveiled plans to levy duties on up to $3 billion of U.S. imports in response to the steel and aluminum tariffs, which will go into effect on Friday.</p> <p>China was considering levying an additional 15 percent tariff on U.S. products including dried fruit, wine and steel pipes and an extra 25 percent duty on pork products and recycled aluminum.</p> <p>China has assembled a list of 128 U.S. products in total that could be targeted if the two countries are unable to reach an agreement on trade issues, the ministry said.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-usa-trade-china-relations/china-urges-u-s-against-taking-trade-relations-to-dangerous-place-idUSKBN1GZ05X" type="external">China urges U.S. against taking trade relations to 'dangerous place'</a> <a href="/article/us-usa-trade-japan/japans-aso-says-closely-watching-u-s-tariff-moves-against-china-idUSKBN1GZ004" type="external">Japan's Aso says closely watching U.S. tariff moves against China</a> <a href="/article/us-usa-trade-eu/eu-leaders-receive-positive-news-on-trump-tariffs-idUSKBN1GY02V" type="external">EU leaders receive positive news on Trump tariffs</a> <p>The commerce ministry said China would implement the measures in two stages: first the 15 percent tariff on 120 products including steel pipes and wine worth $977 million, and later, the higher 25 percent tariff on $1.99 billion of pork and aluminum.</p> <p>&#8220;We intend to impose tariffs on certain U.S. imports to balance out the losses caused to Chinese interests by the U.S. tariffs on imported steel and aluminum,&#8221; the ministry said.</p> <p>The ministry added it would take legal action under the framework of the World Trade Organization to maintain the stability of global trading rules. It added, however, it hoped it could resolve issues with the U.S. through dialogue.</p> <p>Reporting by Ryan Woo and Adam Jourdan; Additional reporting by Wang Jing and Lusha Zhang; Editing By Simon Cameron-Moore</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department squared off on Thursday with AT&amp;amp;T Inc in a long anticipated trial, as the two sides disputed whether AT&amp;amp;T&#8217;s $85 billion purchase of Time Warner Inc would be good for consumers or an expensive drag on innovation.</p> <p>During opening statements, Justice Department lawyer Craig Conrath asked for the deal to be blocked, saying it would hike prices for consumers by more than $400 million annually, or an average of $0.45 a month for pay TV subscribers, by making rival pay TV companies pay more for Time Warner content.</p> <p>&#8220;Time Warner would be a weapon for AT&amp;amp;T because AT&amp;amp;T&#8217;s competitors need Time Warner,&#8221; Conrath told U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, who will decide the case after a trial expected to last six to eight weeks.</p> <p>Conrath also said AT&amp;amp;T would be able to use content from movie and TV show maker Time Warner, including its Turner unit, to slow innovation in online video.</p> <p>In opening remarks, Daniel Petrocelli, speaking for AT&amp;amp;T and Time Warner, ridiculed the Justice Department&#8217;s case and suggested the government was &#8220;fundamentally stuck in the past&#8221; with arguments that were &#8220;divorced from reality.&#8221;</p> <p>Petrocelli said the deal would actually lead to a 50-cent decrease in prices for pay TV subscribers, citing what he said were errors in a government expert&#8217;s model of how the transaction would impact future prices.</p> <p>The Justice Department, Petrocelli said, &#8220;cannot meet their burden of proof. They cannot prove that this would lessen competition.&#8221;</p> <p>The merger is about the companies trying to better compete with technology businesses like Alphabet Inc and Amazon.com Inc, Petrocelli said.</p> <p>The internet companies, including Netflix Inc, pose two challenges to pay TV. They either compete with cable and satellite television for ad dollars or provide cheaper online video that has hurt pricey pay-TV. Some do both.</p> <p>Petrocelli added that the combined company would be better at using customer data to target advertising. Companies like General Motors Co and Mastercard In will pay more for higher quality advertising and consumers will pay less, he said.</p> <p>The Justice Department filed suit in November to stop AT&amp;amp;T, which has some 25 million pay-TV subscribers, from closing the deal. AT&amp;amp;T says a merger would benefit consumers by creating efficiencies. AT&amp;amp;T is the biggest pay-TV provider via subsidiary DirecTV.</p> Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes arrives ahead of arguments in the trial to determine if AT&amp;amp;T's merger with Time Warner is legal under antitrust law at U.S. District Court in Washington, U.S., March 22, 2018. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein <p>Conrath suggested that AT&amp;amp;T would be able to hike fees that Turner charges for its content by about 10 percent if the merger were approved and that the company could withhold content from rival distributors. He referenced an internal email from Turner executives that Dish Network Corp&#8217;s Sling service would be &#8220;crap&#8221; without Turner content, as he paraphrased the stronger language in the email.</p> <p>President Donald Trump publicly criticized the deal as a candidate and as president, and the Republican president often has excoriated Time Warner&#8217;s CNN news network.</p> <p>For its first witness, the Justice Department called Cox Communications content buyer Suzanne Fenwick, who described Time Warner&#8217;s movies, television shows and sports programming as &#8220;must-have content&#8221; for the cable TV provider.</p> <p>If the merger went through, she said, she feared the next negotiation. &#8220;We&#8217;re very concerned that we&#8217;re going to be presented with a horribly ugly deal,&#8221; she said.</p> Slideshow (4 Images) <p>Petrocelli, in response, pressed her in vain to show any analytics to prove that Cox needed Time Warner to prevent customers from moving to DirecTV. &#8220;You&#8217;ve never done a single bit of quantitative analysis,&#8221; he concluded.</p> GOVERNMENT LOSS MEANS MORE DEALS <p>If the government loses, that could open up the field for more tie-ups between distributors and content providers. But a win could strengthen the hand of antitrust regulators looking at other, similarly structured mergers.</p> <p>AT&amp;amp;T and Time Warner are not direct competitors, making the deal a so-called vertical merger between companies on the same supply chain. The vast majority of challenged mergers involve one rival buying another.</p> <p>The merger would hand AT&amp;amp;T, if it becomes the new owner of Time Warner, the motive and opportunity to refuse to license March Madness NCAA basketball tournament games, along with premium cable channel HBO and other content, to pay-TV rivals and online distributors, the Justice Department has said.</p> <p>Petrocelli had asked for access to communications between the White House and Justice Department about the deal, but the judge denied the request. Trump&#8217;s opposition to the merger did not come up during opening statements.</p> <p>If the government loses, Verizon Communications Inc and Charter Communications Inc could strike deals to buy movie or television makers and squeeze smaller pay-TV providers.</p> <p>AT&amp;amp;T has said the merger would result in more than $2.5 billion in annual cost savings by 2020.</p> <p>Reporting by Diane Bartz and David Shepardson in Washington; Editing by Will Dunham and Cynthia Osterman</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Ex-Obama administration official in exclusive talks with Weinstein Co: source Steve Wynn sells stake in company he founded, Macau casino Galaxy buys in China's oil futures: frazzle or dazzle for foreign traders? China urges U.S. to 'pull back from brink' as Trump unveils tariff plans U.S. Justice Department urges judge to block AT&T-Time Warner merger

https://reuters.com/article/us-weinstein-company-m-a-contrerassweet/ex-obama-administration-official-in-exclusive-talks-with-weinstein-co-source-idUSKBN1FD053

2018-01-24

2least

Reuters The Weinstein Company has entered into exclusive negotiations to sell the studio with a group of investors led by former Obama administration official Maria ContrerasSweet a source familiar with the matter said on Tuesday FILE PHOTO Maria ContrerasSweet listens to remarks during her ceremonial swearingin as Administrator of the Small Business Administration at the White House in Washington April 7 2014 REUTERSKevin Lamarque The offer would assume all liabilities related to the business operations inject new cash and pay down liabilities on the balance sheet according to the source who added that the new company would be led by a majorityfemale board of directors and team of investors The company has 375 million in debt The Wall Street Journal first reported the talks on Tuesday and that the company could be sold for around 500 million citing people close to the negotiations onwsjcom2Bop76v The Weinstein Company has been looking for a buyer or rescue financing since late last year after accusations of sexual harassment against its former cochairman Harvey Weinstein The company fired him in October following the allegations In November ContrerasSweet assembled a consortium of investors who offered 275 million for company Another source familiar with the talks told Reuters on Tuesday that the offer had been improved from the earlier one Lions Gate Entertainment Corp 2695 LGFaN New York Stock Exchange 042 153 LGFaN Earlier in January Killer Content Inc the movie producer that has partnered with philanthropist Abigail Disney in a consortium vying to acquire the Weinstein Company said a bankruptcy may be the best way forward for the company Lions Gate Entertainment Corp LGFaN has also made an offer for some of the company8217s assets as has Qatarowned film company Miramax originally founded by Harvey Weinstein and his brother Bob Weinstein Reporting by Jessica DiNapoli in New York and Arunima Banerjee in Bengaluru Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters Steve Wynn the former chief executive of Wynn Resorts Ltd is selling all his remaining 8 million shares in the firm in a dramatic exit of the casino and hotel company he founded over 16 years ago Steve Wynn Chairman and CEO of Wynn Resorts speaks during the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills California US May 3 2017 REUTERSMike Blake Macau casino operator Galaxy Entertainment has agreed to buy 53 million shares of Wynn Resorts at 175 per share giving them around a 5 percent stake in the operator which has resorts in Las Vegas and Macau Galaxy is one of six licensed operators in the world8217s largest gambling hub of Macau and competes with Wynn along with Sands China MGM China and Melco Resorts The casino mogul8217s share sale comes a week after Wynn Resorts said Steve and Elaine Wynn who has a 926 percent stake had scrapped a shareholder agreement that prevented them from selling their stakes Steve Wynn resigned as CEO of the Las Vegasbased company last month following claims he subjected women who worked for him to unwanted advances He has denied the accusations In a joint statement by Galaxy and Wynn on Wednesday Galaxy Vice Chairman Francis Lui said it was a unique opportunity to 8220acquire an investment in a globally recognized entertainment corporation with exceptionally high quality assets and a significant development pipeline8221 A Galaxy spokeswoman could not comment further on whether Galaxy would look to increase its holding in the future Wynn Resorts CEO Matt Maddox said Galaxy shared many of the same core 8220operating philosophies and values8221 The announcement also follows the settlement two weeks ago of long standing litigation between Wynn Resorts and Universal Entertainment Corporation An exterior view Wynn hotelcasino in Las Vegas Nevada US February 7 2018 REUTERSSteve Marcus WYNN IMPACT Wynn who started in Las Vegas casinos in the 1960s created some of Las Vegas8217 most iconic landmarks 8211 the Mirage Bellagio and Treasure Island He was forced to sell his multibillion dollar operation Mirage Resorts to tycoon Kirk Kerkorian in a hostile takeover in 2000 Kerkorian then created MGM Mirage and Wynn went on to create Wynn Resorts with his exwife in 2002 The 76 year old businessman whose signature denotes the company8217s logo had built two lavish resorts in the former Portuguese colony of Macau where only six firms have licenses to operate casinos Vitaly Umansky analyst at Sanford C Bernstein in Hong Kong said the implications of the Galaxy8217s investment goes beyond what looks like a passive move at this stage 8220Wynn and Galaxy may be looking at collaborating on future development opportunities in Asia with Japan being the critical development initiative8221 Galaxy8217s octogenarian founder Lui Che Woo one of Asia8217s wealthiest billionaires has a net wealth of 22 billion according to Forbes Lui who started his career in construction has grown his casino company into one of Macau8217s biggest operators over the past decade 8220There are other large gaming companies who do not have a presence in Macau but who desperately want to be in Macau and we would not be surprised to see them angling for a seat at the acquisition table too8221 said Grant Goverstsen analyst at Union Gaming in Macau Shares in Wynn Macau and Galaxy dropped 39 percent and 29 percent respectively on Friday against the benchmark Hang Seng Index which was down 31 percent Reporting by Farah Master in Hong Kong and Philip George in Bengaluru Editing by Shri Navaratnam Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BEIJING Reuters China8217s crude oil futures to be launched on Monday will be a major step in Beijing8217s yearslong push to win greater sway over oil pricing but for western traders it will likely bring frustration as well as opportunity Workers are seen on an offshore oil platform surrounded by icy waters in Liaodong bay off Liaoning province China January 18 2018 REUTERSStringer Shanghai Crude aims to rival the world8217s two crude benchmarks luring overseas traders with the promise of a deep pool of liquidity and the chance for arbitrage between Asian US and European markets However the contract will also come with quirks that traders used to London8217s Brent or US West Texas Intermediate WTI may find less appealing including shorter business hours unique Chinese trading habits and extended holiday breaks Yuandenominated trading and a blend of new rules and regulatory burdens will also likely hamper initial takeup on the Shanghai International Energy Exchange INE executives at a dozen banks and brokers and experts involved in the launch told Reuters 8220The rules around trading methodology will be unfamiliar for western houses8221 said John Browning chief operating officer of Hong Kongbased futures broker Bands Financial Ltd which is an approved overseas intermediary for the INE Related Coverage China aims to challenge Brent WTI oil with crude futures launch 8220They8217ll have to get to grips with a different set of trading parameters including initial margin calculation rolling between months order cancellations ratios etc It8217s all very different8221 So far China has opened more than 6000 trading accounts including the country8217s oil majors and about 150 brokerages Ten foreign intermediaries have registered including JPMorgan Bands Financial Straits Financial Services and other Hong Kong based affiliates of domestic brokerages Lastminute changes are still being made to entice overseas users On Tuesday the government said it would waive income taxes for foreign investors for the first three years CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS Specific issues for traders include Shanghai8217s shorter trading hours split into three slots with the afternoon session ending at 300 pm local time 0700 GMT just before London ramps up Although the exchange will have an overnight trading session to match late European and early US trading it will close for more than six hours before trade resumes in Beijing Slideshow 4 Images This could mean the contract risks having to play catchup each morning to the moods and swings of Europe and America rather than setting its own price several senior futures traders said Chinese trading habits may also be a shock to foreign users they said Chinese commodity futures investors do not typically trade steadily over the months but instead pick specific months in which they deal due to a different cost structure That could complicate efforts to trade spreads between Brent WTI and Shanghai Intercontinental Exchange Inc 7173 ICEN New York Stock Exchange 229 309 ICEN CMEO 601857SS 600028SS These and other factors mean the contract may have a 8220hard time8221 building correlations with Brent and WTI that would make arbitrage possible said Albert Helmig chief executive of financial consultancy Grey House and a former vice chairman of NYMEX 8220It8217s a China market with Chinese characteristics8221 said Helmig FUTURE PLANS Still China offers the potential for a deep liquid market buoyed by an explosion of interest from momandpop investors that has supported its vast commodities derivative markets from apples to iron ore in Shanghai Zhengzhou and Dalian In 2017 the total traded value of ShFE8217s steel derivatives contracts was 44 trillion from domestic investors This compares with global turnover of more than 10 trillion in international oil futures the world8217s biggest commodity market Previous attempts at an Asia benchmark have foundered Contracts set up by the Dubai Mercantile Exchange a decade ago have not matched Brent or WTI traded on the Intercontinental Exchange ICEN and the New York Mercantile Exchange NYMEX owned by CME Group CMEO China hopes it can do better with statecontrolled oil majors like PetroChina 601857SS and Sinopec 600028SS expected to provide liquidity analysts said the contract has a chance of succeeding even if it faces shortterm caution 8220Launching a new exchange is enormously complex so if the initial uptake for the contract isn8217t that strong it isn8217t necessarily a bad thing8221 said Bands8217 Browning Reporting by Josephine Mason Meng Meng and Tom Daly in BEIJING and Henning Gloystein in SINGAPORE editing by Richard Pullin Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BEIJINGSHANGHAI Reuters China urged the United States on Friday to 8220pull back from the brink8221 as President Donald Trump8217s plans for tariffs on up to 60 billion in Chinese goods brought the world8217s two largest economies closer to a trade war Trump is planning to impose the tariffs over what his administration says is misappropriation of US intellectual property A probe was launched last year under Section 301 of the 1974 US Trade Act 8220China doesn8217t hope to be in a trade war but is not afraid of engaging in one8221 the Chinese commerce ministry said in a statement on Friday 8220China hopes the United States will pull back from the brink make prudent decisions and avoid dragging bilateral trade relations to a dangerous place8221 In a presidential memorandum signed by Trump on Thursday there will be a 30day consultation period that only starts once a list of Chinese goods is published That effectively creates room for potential talks to address Trump8217s allegations on intellectual property theft and forced technology transfers Trump said he views the Chinese as 8220a friend8221 and both sides are in the midst of negotiations The prospect of a fullblown trade war between the United States and China has sent shivers through economies supplying them as a fall in demand would be inescapable FILE PHOTO A worker checks steel wires at a warehouse in Dalian Liaoning province China May 15 2017 REUTERSStringer Feeling the chill stock markets fell but perceived safe havens such as government bonds gained Alarm mounted earlier this month after Trump imposed hefty import tariffs on steel and aluminum this month under Section 232 of the 1962 US Trade Expansion Act which allows safeguards based on 8220national security8221 though that measure had not just targeted Chinese imports In a separate statement the Chinese commerce ministry unveiled plans to levy duties on up to 3 billion of US imports in response to the steel and aluminum tariffs which will go into effect on Friday China was considering levying an additional 15 percent tariff on US products including dried fruit wine and steel pipes and an extra 25 percent duty on pork products and recycled aluminum China has assembled a list of 128 US products in total that could be targeted if the two countries are unable to reach an agreement on trade issues the ministry said Related Coverage China urges US against taking trade relations to dangerous place Japans Aso says closely watching US tariff moves against China EU leaders receive positive news on Trump tariffs The commerce ministry said China would implement the measures in two stages first the 15 percent tariff on 120 products including steel pipes and wine worth 977 million and later the higher 25 percent tariff on 199 billion of pork and aluminum 8220We intend to impose tariffs on certain US imports to balance out the losses caused to Chinese interests by the US tariffs on imported steel and aluminum8221 the ministry said The ministry added it would take legal action under the framework of the World Trade Organization to maintain the stability of global trading rules It added however it hoped it could resolve issues with the US through dialogue Reporting by Ryan Woo and Adam Jourdan Additional reporting by Wang Jing and Lusha Zhang Editing By Simon CameronMoore Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters The US Justice Department squared off on Thursday with ATampampT Inc in a long anticipated trial as the two sides disputed whether ATampampT8217s 85 billion purchase of Time Warner Inc would be good for consumers or an expensive drag on innovation During opening statements Justice Department lawyer Craig Conrath asked for the deal to be blocked saying it would hike prices for consumers by more than 400 million annually or an average of 045 a month for pay TV subscribers by making rival pay TV companies pay more for Time Warner content 8220Time Warner would be a weapon for ATampampT because ATampampT8217s competitors need Time Warner8221 Conrath told US District Judge Richard Leon who will decide the case after a trial expected to last six to eight weeks Conrath also said ATampampT would be able to use content from movie and TV show maker Time Warner including its Turner unit to slow innovation in online video In opening remarks Daniel Petrocelli speaking for ATampampT and Time Warner ridiculed the Justice Department8217s case and suggested the government was 8220fundamentally stuck in the past8221 with arguments that were 8220divorced from reality8221 Petrocelli said the deal would actually lead to a 50cent decrease in prices for pay TV subscribers citing what he said were errors in a government expert8217s model of how the transaction would impact future prices The Justice Department Petrocelli said 8220cannot meet their burden of proof They cannot prove that this would lessen competition8221 The merger is about the companies trying to better compete with technology businesses like Alphabet Inc and Amazoncom Inc Petrocelli said The internet companies including Netflix Inc pose two challenges to pay TV They either compete with cable and satellite television for ad dollars or provide cheaper online video that has hurt pricey payTV Some do both Petrocelli added that the combined company would be better at using customer data to target advertising Companies like General Motors Co and Mastercard In will pay more for higher quality advertising and consumers will pay less he said The Justice Department filed suit in November to stop ATampampT which has some 25 million payTV subscribers from closing the deal ATampampT says a merger would benefit consumers by creating efficiencies ATampampT is the biggest payTV provider via subsidiary DirecTV Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes arrives ahead of arguments in the trial to determine if ATampampTs merger with Time Warner is legal under antitrust law at US District Court in Washington US March 22 2018 REUTERSAaron P Bernstein Conrath suggested that ATampampT would be able to hike fees that Turner charges for its content by about 10 percent if the merger were approved and that the company could withhold content from rival distributors He referenced an internal email from Turner executives that Dish Network Corp8217s Sling service would be 8220crap8221 without Turner content as he paraphrased the stronger language in the email President Donald Trump publicly criticized the deal as a candidate and as president and the Republican president often has excoriated Time Warner8217s CNN news network For its first witness the Justice Department called Cox Communications content buyer Suzanne Fenwick who described Time Warner8217s movies television shows and sports programming as 8220musthave content8221 for the cable TV provider If the merger went through she said she feared the next negotiation 8220We8217re very concerned that we8217re going to be presented with a horribly ugly deal8221 she said Slideshow 4 Images Petrocelli in response pressed her in vain to show any analytics to prove that Cox needed Time Warner to prevent customers from moving to DirecTV 8220You8217ve never done a single bit of quantitative analysis8221 he concluded GOVERNMENT LOSS MEANS MORE DEALS If the government loses that could open up the field for more tieups between distributors and content providers But a win could strengthen the hand of antitrust regulators looking at other similarly structured mergers ATampampT and Time Warner are not direct competitors making the deal a socalled vertical merger between companies on the same supply chain The vast majority of challenged mergers involve one rival buying another The merger would hand ATampampT if it becomes the new owner of Time Warner the motive and opportunity to refuse to license March Madness NCAA basketball tournament games along with premium cable channel HBO and other content to payTV rivals and online distributors the Justice Department has said Petrocelli had asked for access to communications between the White House and Justice Department about the deal but the judge denied the request Trump8217s opposition to the merger did not come up during opening statements If the government loses Verizon Communications Inc and Charter Communications Inc could strike deals to buy movie or television makers and squeeze smaller payTV providers ATampampT has said the merger would result in more than 25 billion in annual cost savings by 2020 Reporting by Diane Bartz and David Shepardson in Washington Editing by Will Dunham and Cynthia Osterman Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>I recently published a piece in Counterpunch and a couple other places that I titled &#8220; <a href="" type="internal">Keep It Radical!</a>&#8221; The essence of the piece was that it is important to develop and maintain a radical (in the fundamental sense of the word) analysis of the situation and that the best tactics are not always the nicest ones. I received several responses to the piece. One of them was from a hiphop artist and activist in California, who has also written pieces that appeared in <a href="" type="internal">Counterpunch</a>. After I listened to a couple of his songs (which can be found at this <a href="http://MadSevenRecords.com/" type="external">site</a>) and he and I traded some emails, I asked him a few questions. The transcript follows.</p> <p>Ron: Hi Nate. First, can you tell the readers who you are and what you do. Where are your roots?</p> <p>Nate: My name is Nate Mezmer. I&#8217;m a writer, a rapper and an activist. I&#8217;m interested in disturbing peoples senses and creating social change. I was born in Stockton, California. And I moved to the Bay Area when I was about 10 years old. I was raised in a suburban community that was influenced by an influx of people from across the tracks. Indeed the El Camino Real split the city in half and the high school I graduated from was the inspiration for the movie Dangerous Minds. Although I never had a teacher that looked like Michele Pfeifer&#8230;</p> <p>Ron: In terms of your project in schools, what does it involve? Do you have a sponsor or do you go it alone?</p> <p>Nate: I feel like kids growing up today are being cheated. When I was in middle school, I was lucky to be exposed to innovative hip-hop artists like KRS-One, Nas, Jeru tha Damaja, Public Enemy, Wu-Tang, Redman, Organized Konfusion and even Outkast and The Fugees. Then at the same time around 93, 94, 95 there were new underground folks making moves in the Bay Area like the Hieroglyphics crew and the Living Legends, and along with Company Flow (from NY) they began to push the independent envelope. Graffiti Art was also at its peak in San Francisco, San Mateo, Oakland and San Jose. Compared to now, it seems like there was simply a lot more innovative and creative stuff going on.</p> <p>Although now days everyone thinks they&#8217;re a rapper, most kids don&#8217;t really understand the art. But its not their fault. They are being inundated with a product that doesn&#8217;t challenge them to think outside the box! If kids were not just trying to act like rappers they see on TV, but also interested in understanding how to write rhymes, poetry, freestyle, DJing, scratching, mixing, producing beats, sampling, playing drums, piano, beat-box, drawing, painting, tagging, dance, break, pop, lock and most importantly if they were interested or inspirited to take control of there future with a sense of education and business, then the world would be a better place! Not because it would create some sort of authentic and respected legacy for hip-hop but because we would have educated and free-thinking young people running around! Educated, free-thinking young people can change the world! It doesn&#8217;t matter if you like Punk Rock or Pete Rock, as long as you find you&#8217;re passion.</p> <p>So as far as the project, I am in the process of organizing a group of accomplished hip-hop artists, dj&#8217;s, etc in attempts to tour public schools in the Bay Area and wherever else they&#8217;ll have us in hopes to expose the youth to these things. This venture will not be a preachy &#8220;Stay in School&#8221; type thing although besides showcasing the skills we will also speak to topics such as commercialization, censorship, &#8216;clear channel&#8217; and issues like payola. As of now, I do not have any sponsors however I have spoken with a handful of schools and they say they are interested. Apparently there is still a little funding out there available for kids. Hopefully, we can create some sort of buzz and get the ball rolling. Maybe Phil Angeledes can back us? Get himself some street cred in the process for his election bid. I think the kids are our most important natural resource, thats why I want to do this, and thats why I opposed the execution of Tookie Williams and thats why I hope &#8216;the Govenator&#8217; loses his upcoming campaign! Whats up Phil? Where you at?</p> <p>Ron: If you had to name your inspirations, who would be the first five on your list? Why?</p> <p>Nate: Woo..only 5 huh. Thats tough. Well in no particular order I&#8217;m gonna say Chris Rock, Saul Williams, Ani DiFranco, Kurt Vonnegut, and Cornel West.</p> <p>Chris Rock because although he is a comedian and a major star he isn&#8217;t afraid to be political and he isn&#8217;t afraid to take a stand. Saul Williams because he is never limited. Rap is limited. It doesn&#8217;t always convey they same kind of emotion as singing or acting, but Saul does it all. He writes, raps, rocks, whatever. He&#8217;s like a hip-hop preacher or some sort of prophetic creature sent to us by the spirit world! Ani DiFranco because she is a lyrical genius; as good as any hip-hop MC! And her song &#8216;To The Teeth&#8217; greatly inspired my thinking and writing for &#8216;Kill The Precedent.&#8217; Kurt Vonnegut, because every time I read his stuff I&#8217;m always amazed at how good he is at writing and how smart he is with politics, hypocrisy and human nature. And Cornel West because his vision and humility is unparalleled among political figures in this country. He understands the hip-hop generation, he is down with Christians, Jews, Muslims and Atheists. And he understands that race is the biggest problem that continues to divide us however he refuses to give up his fight! And I&#8217;m friends with his brother Clifton..whats up Cliff!! That&#8217;s 5&#8230;I&#8217;d rather do a top 10 though!</p> <p>Ron: You know, in the past hiphop had an explicitly political and popular element. Public Enemy and KRS-One come to mind first. Two questions: is there still such a thing as popular political hiphop and if not, why?</p> <p>Nate: Well there are some notable hip-hop artists today that are political &#8230; Immortal Technique, Dead Prez, Mos Def, The Coup and to a degree even Kanye West. But, unfortunately it does not receive much support from major labels and it definitely isnt supported by commercial radio or television. Remember when Kanye came out after Katrina and said on a live broadcast that &#8220;George Bush doesn&#8217;t care about black people.&#8221; That was very political. And Kanye is arguably the most popular rapper in the world. However, after he said that the networks threatened to take him off some sort of halftime show at an NFL game so he issued a statement through his people saying he was going to refrain from such comments and simply be an entertainer. Its crazy. You cant diss Bush, God forbid you show a womens nipple at the superbowl but hey the radio can broadcast mindless lyrics glorifying greed, misogyny and violence all day long on the airwaves to kids, virtually uncensored!</p> <p>Thats why political rap isnt popular. Nobody&#8217;s thinking! If your always listening to mindless music which is popularized in the club and on commercial radio then your never really thinking. I know this from experience. Indeed if I&#8217;m a few drinks deep, and a beautiful women wants to dance with me to some loud mindless rap music, I&#8217;m honestly not thinking about what the guy is rapping about or his politics or the fact that she may have a boyfriend or a husband! But thats the club. Leave it there. Expand your mind. I always tell people, if your mind is always in the club your never thinking. dare to listen to something other than &#8216;Shake That Ass For Me!&#8217; Get off your couch and make something happen! Take music lessons! Go to the gym! Read a book!</p> <p>Ron: I&#8217;m listening to your song &#8220;Bound for Glory&#8221; right now. It&#8217;s obviously about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the life of a vet. Why did you choose the title&#8211;which I assume you borrowed from Woody Guthrie?</p> <p>Nate: I actually got the idea for the title from listening to Phil Ochs. I think he was singing Guthrie&#8217;s song? Anyhow, I wrote the song a few years back when the war in Iraq was still new, and I began hearing that there were all these miscellaneous deaths. I came to find that this included soldiers who had committed suicide. I also found out that there were a lot of soldiers who took there lives after they had already returned from the war, of course this wasn&#8217;t being counted in the official death tolls. Anyway, I could see how someone could be easily inspired to fight in Iraq or Afghanistan thinking that it was a just and patriotic cause. In light of the bush Administrations claims that Saddam not only had WMD&#8217;s but also was linked to Al-Qaida and 9/11. If one was to go and fight for their country believing all of that to be true, only to find out that the war was waged on lies, such a person could become very troubled. Furthermore, many war vets return from Iraq with gulf war syndrome and other complications and do not receive proper treatment. The hypocrisy of all of this could drive somebody to kill themselves and that was what was happening. Thus, I felt that the story should be told.</p> <p>Ron: Have you listened to other recent antiwar songs, like Neil Young&#8217;s Living With War album and John Fogerty&#8217;s &#8220;Deja Vu All Over Again?&#8221; I know there&#8217;s others out there in the hiphop genre-the Coup comes to mind&#8211;the punk scene and even some country songs&#8211;mostly by Steve Earle. Do you think any of them have an effect? If so, how?</p> <p>Nate: I definitely listen to &#8216;The Coup.&#8217; Boots Riley is one of the few people in hip-hop I feel is really doing it right! His music is diverse and original and lyrically he is very bold. Plus he actually goes out and joins the public in the fight. He&#8217;s involved. A lot of dudes are talking loud about politics but they are simply studio revolutionaries. But yeah, I think musicians that involve themselves with politics can have an effect. However, they have to reach out and touch people too. If you simply perform music for people who are already down with what your saying the message doesn&#8217;t reach as far. We have to put ourselves in positions to garner new audiences and expose people who are not yet aware! Also, folks with big names are not stepping up enough. Someone like Jay-Z or E-40 or Eminem! If those types of figures took a stand and threw there weight into the political arena, a lot more people would take notice. Most importantly, Young People! Maybe they are worried about losing fans but they are already super rich so they can afford it! I heard Chuck D speak one time about how Eminem had said that he wasn&#8217;t really political. (this was before he released that anti bush video right before the 04 election) Chuck followed by saying, &#8220;your 30 years old when are you gonna start getting political?&#8221; But thats real. People like Jay-Z, E-40, Eminem. They make a lot of money off of people who are victims of this twisted system and I believe they have a greater responsibility to step up there game. As Boots says, &#8220;Pick A Bigger Weapon!&#8221;</p> <p>Ron: You mentioned to me something about the so-called Hyphy movement in hiphop. Can you tell the reader what that&#8217;s about? Also, in your explanation to me, you said it had some political potential. How do you mean that?</p> <p>Nate: The Hyphy movement evolved out of the Bay Area rap scene, kind of a mixing of gangster rap and party music. Hyphy is like the Northern California version of Crunk in the South. Get Hyphy, Get Crunk, Go Wild, Act Crazy. Hyphy has many elements too it but the most often associated thing with it is the phrase or action know as &#8220;going dumb.&#8221; Whether it be acting a fool on the dance floor or driving down the street with your doors open, pretending the car has a ghost rider, &#8220;going dumb,&#8221; seems like the thing to do among youth in the Bay Area and beyond. In fact the phenomenon was on the front page of the USA today, not long ago!</p> <p>The problem with the Hyphy Movement is that it doesn&#8217;t really have any substance. Indeed its not really a movement. There are a few people who are making a lot of quick cash off the endeavor but on the whole it is not building much that people can use for the future. It has not yet change the plight of people in the streets, thats for sure.</p> <p>However, looking at the positives of all this, it does have a lot of potential because there is so much energy involved. The kids are very much into its sound and fashion and if it could be harnessed or directed i think it could do a lot of good for people. But a lot of key players would have to come on board. If the main rappers in the Hyphy movement are saying its cool to go dumb by doing ecstacy and sniffing coke, then kids will have a hard time buying into anything else. Furthermore, I like to ask people &#8220;why are so down with the Hyphy Movement?&#8221; &#8220;What is it doing for you?&#8221; Indeed not many people are making money off it besides the heavy hitters and I don&#8217;t think its inspiring tons of folks to get good grades in school or to get up to go to work in the morning? Mostly its a release, something mindless to take your mind off reality and also its something to belong too! After all its entitled a Movement! People like to belong. Well why not belong to something smart. Not dumb. You can get Hyphy and still be smart. In fact my DJ Manny Black and I like to say, &#8220;We get Hyphy but we don&#8217;t go dumb.&#8221;</p> <p>Ron: I&#8217;m not certain of the terminology here, but do you perform? Is it mostly in the San Francisco area or do you go on the road?</p> <p>Nate: Yeah most of my shows have been in Northern California. Either San Francisco where my label is located or in the Davis/Sacramento area where I finished college. I&#8217;ve also done several shows in Southern California and as far up the coast as Portland. Opened for such people as Prince Poetry, the Living Legends, Grayskul and The Coup. So yeah, I&#8217;m always looking to perform but its a hustle! Often times promoters aren&#8217;t checking for new talent. They simply recycle acts that always perform or they just put on there own people. Slowly but surely though, I hope the music will speak for itself! Indeed I think my next album project I&#8217;m working on will help to do so. I hope to have it available to the masses by the beginning of next year!</p> <p>Ron: Do you go to protests? What&#8217;s your take on their effectiveness?</p> <p>Nate: The political scene lacks a lot of energy as far as youth and music. I go to rallies but I&#8217;m always disappointed. There is never enough young people involved and there is always way too many long winded speakers. Some of them do have very good things to say but a lot of the times they are not skilled public speakers! People like that need to put their ego aside and do whats best for the movement. I have a lyric in one of my songs &#8216;Talkin Loud, Sayin Nuthin,&#8217; that states, &#8220;Why is it so hard to get politically active/ I be the first one to march but half that shit is backwards/ Just another political game run by hypocritical chapters/ Delusional revolutionaries love to hear themselves speak/ But your message ain&#8217;t impressive if your delivery is weak.&#8221;</p> <p>So yes, I go. But no I don&#8217;t think they are effective. I think they could be effective but often times they are too exclusive and to stiff. No offense to old white people but its time to expand the movement or its going to die! How will the movement survive when you are too old to move?</p> <p>Ron: I notice that you sample the guitar lick from Jesus Christ Superstar in your tune &#8220;Kill the Precedent.&#8221; If I&#8217;m not mistaken, it&#8217;s the lick that&#8217;s playing when Jesus is either crucified or when Judas realizes what he is done? Any significance to that? If so, what is it?</p> <p>Nate: Wow! You are on top of it! Yes the loop is from Superstar and no the sample is not cleared! Tom C (TomC3) who produced that album for me created that beat especially for Kill The Precedent. It was the first song I wrote for the album. Initially we thought we were gonna get Zack De La Rocha on that track but the connection never panned out and I&#8217;m not even sure where he is these days? I hope he is planning on still making music and remaining involved! He is a very important voice. As far as significance, it is significant to me! I&#8217;m not sure what Tom was thinking however he is one of those people that sort of pretends to be non-political when in reality he is very opinionated and very interested in seeing the Walmarts and the war-mongers of the world removed from power!</p> <p>NATE MEZMER, is a hip-hop artist who stands for social change. His debut album &#8220;Kill the Precedent&#8221; was released on <a href="http://MadSevenRecords.com/" type="external">Mad 7 Records</a> in 2005. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:mezmerfmk@yahoo.com" type="external">mezmerfmk@yahoo.com</a></p> <p>RON JACOBS is author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1859841678/counterpunchmaga" type="external">The Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground</a>, which is just republished by Verso. Jacobs&#8217; essay on Big Bill Broonzy is featured in CounterPunch&#8217;s new collection on music, art and sex, <a href="http://www.easycarts.net/ecarts/CounterPunch/CP_Books.html" type="external">Serpents in the Garden</a>. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:rjacobs3625@charter.net" type="external">rjacobs3625@charter.net</a></p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p>

Kill the Precedent

https://counterpunch.org/2006/07/22/kill-the-precedent/

2006-07-22

4left

amp160 I recently published a piece in Counterpunch and a couple other places that I titled 8220 Keep It Radical8221 The essence of the piece was that it is important to develop and maintain a radical in the fundamental sense of the word analysis of the situation and that the best tactics are not always the nicest ones I received several responses to the piece One of them was from a hiphop artist and activist in California who has also written pieces that appeared in Counterpunch After I listened to a couple of his songs which can be found at this site and he and I traded some emails I asked him a few questions The transcript follows Ron Hi Nate First can you tell the readers who you are and what you do Where are your roots Nate My name is Nate Mezmer I8217m a writer a rapper and an activist I8217m interested in disturbing peoples senses and creating social change I was born in Stockton California And I moved to the Bay Area when I was about 10 years old I was raised in a suburban community that was influenced by an influx of people from across the tracks Indeed the El Camino Real split the city in half and the high school I graduated from was the inspiration for the movie Dangerous Minds Although I never had a teacher that looked like Michele Pfeifer8230 Ron In terms of your project in schools what does it involve Do you have a sponsor or do you go it alone Nate I feel like kids growing up today are being cheated When I was in middle school I was lucky to be exposed to innovative hiphop artists like KRSOne Nas Jeru tha Damaja Public Enemy WuTang Redman Organized Konfusion and even Outkast and The Fugees Then at the same time around 93 94 95 there were new underground folks making moves in the Bay Area like the Hieroglyphics crew and the Living Legends and along with Company Flow from NY they began to push the independent envelope Graffiti Art was also at its peak in San Francisco San Mateo Oakland and San Jose Compared to now it seems like there was simply a lot more innovative and creative stuff going on Although now days everyone thinks they8217re a rapper most kids don8217t really understand the art But its not their fault They are being inundated with a product that doesn8217t challenge them to think outside the box If kids were not just trying to act like rappers they see on TV but also interested in understanding how to write rhymes poetry freestyle DJing scratching mixing producing beats sampling playing drums piano beatbox drawing painting tagging dance break pop lock and most importantly if they were interested or inspirited to take control of there future with a sense of education and business then the world would be a better place Not because it would create some sort of authentic and respected legacy for hiphop but because we would have educated and freethinking young people running around Educated freethinking young people can change the world It doesn8217t matter if you like Punk Rock or Pete Rock as long as you find you8217re passion So as far as the project I am in the process of organizing a group of accomplished hiphop artists dj8217s etc in attempts to tour public schools in the Bay Area and wherever else they8217ll have us in hopes to expose the youth to these things This venture will not be a preachy 8220Stay in School8221 type thing although besides showcasing the skills we will also speak to topics such as commercialization censorship 8216clear channel8217 and issues like payola As of now I do not have any sponsors however I have spoken with a handful of schools and they say they are interested Apparently there is still a little funding out there available for kids Hopefully we can create some sort of buzz and get the ball rolling Maybe Phil Angeledes can back us Get himself some street cred in the process for his election bid I think the kids are our most important natural resource thats why I want to do this and thats why I opposed the execution of Tookie Williams and thats why I hope 8216the Govenator8217 loses his upcoming campaign Whats up Phil Where you at Ron If you had to name your inspirations who would be the first five on your list Why Nate Wooonly 5 huh Thats tough Well in no particular order I8217m gonna say Chris Rock Saul Williams Ani DiFranco Kurt Vonnegut and Cornel West Chris Rock because although he is a comedian and a major star he isn8217t afraid to be political and he isn8217t afraid to take a stand Saul Williams because he is never limited Rap is limited It doesn8217t always convey they same kind of emotion as singing or acting but Saul does it all He writes raps rocks whatever He8217s like a hiphop preacher or some sort of prophetic creature sent to us by the spirit world Ani DiFranco because she is a lyrical genius as good as any hiphop MC And her song 8216To The Teeth8217 greatly inspired my thinking and writing for 8216Kill The Precedent8217 Kurt Vonnegut because every time I read his stuff I8217m always amazed at how good he is at writing and how smart he is with politics hypocrisy and human nature And Cornel West because his vision and humility is unparalleled among political figures in this country He understands the hiphop generation he is down with Christians Jews Muslims and Atheists And he understands that race is the biggest problem that continues to divide us however he refuses to give up his fight And I8217m friends with his brother Cliftonwhats up Cliff That8217s 58230I8217d rather do a top 10 though Ron You know in the past hiphop had an explicitly political and popular element Public Enemy and KRSOne come to mind first Two questions is there still such a thing as popular political hiphop and if not why Nate Well there are some notable hiphop artists today that are political 8230 Immortal Technique Dead Prez Mos Def The Coup and to a degree even Kanye West But unfortunately it does not receive much support from major labels and it definitely isnt supported by commercial radio or television Remember when Kanye came out after Katrina and said on a live broadcast that 8220George Bush doesn8217t care about black people8221 That was very political And Kanye is arguably the most popular rapper in the world However after he said that the networks threatened to take him off some sort of halftime show at an NFL game so he issued a statement through his people saying he was going to refrain from such comments and simply be an entertainer Its crazy You cant diss Bush God forbid you show a womens nipple at the superbowl but hey the radio can broadcast mindless lyrics glorifying greed misogyny and violence all day long on the airwaves to kids virtually uncensored Thats why political rap isnt popular Nobody8217s thinking If your always listening to mindless music which is popularized in the club and on commercial radio then your never really thinking I know this from experience Indeed if I8217m a few drinks deep and a beautiful women wants to dance with me to some loud mindless rap music I8217m honestly not thinking about what the guy is rapping about or his politics or the fact that she may have a boyfriend or a husband But thats the club Leave it there Expand your mind I always tell people if your mind is always in the club your never thinking dare to listen to something other than 8216Shake That Ass For Me8217 Get off your couch and make something happen Take music lessons Go to the gym Read a book Ron I8217m listening to your song 8220Bound for Glory8221 right now It8217s obviously about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the life of a vet Why did you choose the title8211which I assume you borrowed from Woody Guthrie Nate I actually got the idea for the title from listening to Phil Ochs I think he was singing Guthrie8217s song Anyhow I wrote the song a few years back when the war in Iraq was still new and I began hearing that there were all these miscellaneous deaths I came to find that this included soldiers who had committed suicide I also found out that there were a lot of soldiers who took there lives after they had already returned from the war of course this wasn8217t being counted in the official death tolls Anyway I could see how someone could be easily inspired to fight in Iraq or Afghanistan thinking that it was a just and patriotic cause In light of the bush Administrations claims that Saddam not only had WMD8217s but also was linked to AlQaida and 911 If one was to go and fight for their country believing all of that to be true only to find out that the war was waged on lies such a person could become very troubled Furthermore many war vets return from Iraq with gulf war syndrome and other complications and do not receive proper treatment The hypocrisy of all of this could drive somebody to kill themselves and that was what was happening Thus I felt that the story should be told Ron Have you listened to other recent antiwar songs like Neil Young8217s Living With War album and John Fogerty8217s 8220Deja Vu All Over Again8221 I know there8217s others out there in the hiphop genrethe Coup comes to mind8211the punk scene and even some country songs8211mostly by Steve Earle Do you think any of them have an effect If so how Nate I definitely listen to 8216The Coup8217 Boots Riley is one of the few people in hiphop I feel is really doing it right His music is diverse and original and lyrically he is very bold Plus he actually goes out and joins the public in the fight He8217s involved A lot of dudes are talking loud about politics but they are simply studio revolutionaries But yeah I think musicians that involve themselves with politics can have an effect However they have to reach out and touch people too If you simply perform music for people who are already down with what your saying the message doesn8217t reach as far We have to put ourselves in positions to garner new audiences and expose people who are not yet aware Also folks with big names are not stepping up enough Someone like JayZ or E40 or Eminem If those types of figures took a stand and threw there weight into the political arena a lot more people would take notice Most importantly Young People Maybe they are worried about losing fans but they are already super rich so they can afford it I heard Chuck D speak one time about how Eminem had said that he wasn8217t really political this was before he released that anti bush video right before the 04 election Chuck followed by saying 8220your 30 years old when are you gonna start getting political8221 But thats real People like JayZ E40 Eminem They make a lot of money off of people who are victims of this twisted system and I believe they have a greater responsibility to step up there game As Boots says 8220Pick A Bigger Weapon8221 Ron You mentioned to me something about the socalled Hyphy movement in hiphop Can you tell the reader what that8217s about Also in your explanation to me you said it had some political potential How do you mean that Nate The Hyphy movement evolved out of the Bay Area rap scene kind of a mixing of gangster rap and party music Hyphy is like the Northern California version of Crunk in the South Get Hyphy Get Crunk Go Wild Act Crazy Hyphy has many elements too it but the most often associated thing with it is the phrase or action know as 8220going dumb8221 Whether it be acting a fool on the dance floor or driving down the street with your doors open pretending the car has a ghost rider 8220going dumb8221 seems like the thing to do among youth in the Bay Area and beyond In fact the phenomenon was on the front page of the USA today not long ago The problem with the Hyphy Movement is that it doesn8217t really have any substance Indeed its not really a movement There are a few people who are making a lot of quick cash off the endeavor but on the whole it is not building much that people can use for the future It has not yet change the plight of people in the streets thats for sure However looking at the positives of all this it does have a lot of potential because there is so much energy involved The kids are very much into its sound and fashion and if it could be harnessed or directed i think it could do a lot of good for people But a lot of key players would have to come on board If the main rappers in the Hyphy movement are saying its cool to go dumb by doing ecstacy and sniffing coke then kids will have a hard time buying into anything else Furthermore I like to ask people 8220why are so down with the Hyphy Movement8221 8220What is it doing for you8221 Indeed not many people are making money off it besides the heavy hitters and I don8217t think its inspiring tons of folks to get good grades in school or to get up to go to work in the morning Mostly its a release something mindless to take your mind off reality and also its something to belong too After all its entitled a Movement People like to belong Well why not belong to something smart Not dumb You can get Hyphy and still be smart In fact my DJ Manny Black and I like to say 8220We get Hyphy but we don8217t go dumb8221 Ron I8217m not certain of the terminology here but do you perform Is it mostly in the San Francisco area or do you go on the road Nate Yeah most of my shows have been in Northern California Either San Francisco where my label is located or in the DavisSacramento area where I finished college I8217ve also done several shows in Southern California and as far up the coast as Portland Opened for such people as Prince Poetry the Living Legends Grayskul and The Coup So yeah I8217m always looking to perform but its a hustle Often times promoters aren8217t checking for new talent They simply recycle acts that always perform or they just put on there own people Slowly but surely though I hope the music will speak for itself Indeed I think my next album project I8217m working on will help to do so I hope to have it available to the masses by the beginning of next year Ron Do you go to protests What8217s your take on their effectiveness Nate The political scene lacks a lot of energy as far as youth and music I go to rallies but I8217m always disappointed There is never enough young people involved and there is always way too many long winded speakers Some of them do have very good things to say but a lot of the times they are not skilled public speakers People like that need to put their ego aside and do whats best for the movement I have a lyric in one of my songs 8216Talkin Loud Sayin Nuthin8217 that states 8220Why is it so hard to get politically active I be the first one to march but half that shit is backwards Just another political game run by hypocritical chapters Delusional revolutionaries love to hear themselves speak But your message ain8217t impressive if your delivery is weak8221 So yes I go But no I don8217t think they are effective I think they could be effective but often times they are too exclusive and to stiff No offense to old white people but its time to expand the movement or its going to die How will the movement survive when you are too old to move Ron I notice that you sample the guitar lick from Jesus Christ Superstar in your tune 8220Kill the Precedent8221 If I8217m not mistaken it8217s the lick that8217s playing when Jesus is either crucified or when Judas realizes what he is done Any significance to that If so what is it Nate Wow You are on top of it Yes the loop is from Superstar and no the sample is not cleared Tom C TomC3 who produced that album for me created that beat especially for Kill The Precedent It was the first song I wrote for the album Initially we thought we were gonna get Zack De La Rocha on that track but the connection never panned out and I8217m not even sure where he is these days I hope he is planning on still making music and remaining involved He is a very important voice As far as significance it is significant to me I8217m not sure what Tom was thinking however he is one of those people that sort of pretends to be nonpolitical when in reality he is very opinionated and very interested in seeing the Walmarts and the warmongers of the world removed from power NATE MEZMER is a hiphop artist who stands for social change His debut album 8220Kill the Precedent8221 was released on Mad 7 Records in 2005 He can be reached at mezmerfmkyahoocom RON JACOBS is author of The Way the Wind Blew a history of the Weather Underground which is just republished by Verso Jacobs8217 essay on Big Bill Broonzy is featured in CounterPunch8217s new collection on music art and sex Serpents in the Garden He can be reached at rjacobs3625charternet amp160 amp160

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<p>Sometimes, in the process of covering so many things and in the attempt to provide as much information and commentary as possible, we simply are not able to provide all that we wish to do so to the public.</p> <p>However, that does not mean other stories and commentary are not important.&amp;#160; In fact, many things coming out of alternatives media today are vitally important for those coming off the government-controlled media.</p> <p>One of those items that didn&#8217;t hit the mainstream media, and sadly didn&#8217;t hit much of the alternative media, was the opening statement of Cliven Bundy&#8217;s son, Ryan, as the trial of the century began nearly two weeks ago.</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>In light of that, I&#8217;ve been meaning to post his opening statement because it is certainly on that Americans should familiarize themselves with and quite possibly, should a fair history book be written, may go down in a Patrick Henry-esque&amp;#160;fashion.</p> <p>So, without further ado, here&#8217;s Ryan Bundy&#8217;s opening statement (H/T <a href="http://canadafreepress.com/article/ryan-bundys-brilliant-opening-statement" type="external">Gary Hunt</a>) that was delivered to the jury in the <a href="https://freedomoutpost.com/?s=bundy+ranch+trials" type="external">Bundy Ranch trials</a> on November 15, 2017.&amp;#160; Read and remember.</p> <p>*&amp;#160; *&amp;#160; *</p> <p>Thanks to the jurors for being here. I told you a little about myself at voir dire, but I&#8217;d like to introduce myself a little more and tell you about my heritage and how that affects my case. (Projects a picture of his family &#8211; AND leaves it up throughout his statement!)</p> <p><a href="http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2017/11/25/20171126_bundy1.jpg" type="external">&amp;lt;img src="https://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2017/11/25/20171126_bundy1_0.jpg" alt="" /&amp;gt;</a></p> <p>[Note: the picture shown above.]</p> <p>This is my ID! Not my driver&#8217;s license. This is who I am, a man with a family and I&#8217;ll do whatever it takes to provide for them. I want you to picture in your minds&#8230;you&#8217;re out on the land&#8230; I&#8217;ll take you to our ranch, you can see all the beauty of the land, the fresh air, sunsets and sunrises, the brush, you&#8217;re on a horse in front of the cattle &#8211; place yourself there &#8211; feel the freedom &#8211; out of the congestion of the cars &#8211; that&#8217;s how I was raised, playing in the river, we were called river-rats and that is where my life began and I hope ends.</p> <p>My family has been on that land 141 years, my pioneer ancestors settled there in 1877 &#8211; there was nothing there. They carved out a living&#8230; they brought a horse and wagon and some provisions&#8230; this case, the government mentioned is &#8220;not about rights&#8221;, but it is &#8211; those rights do mean something &#8211; rights are created through beneficial use. When my ancestors arrived, undoubtedly the horse would need a drink, so they led him to the water and that is beneficial use. The horse and perhaps a cow that had been led behind the wagon need to eat some brush in the hills, that is beneficial use. That established rights. The water rights are real! So real, the State of Nevada has a water rights registry including livestock watering rights. A law was created to protect those rights. The water rights that my father owns were first registered in 1891 by the State of Nevada &#8211; the State of Nevada is important, a sovereign state, its own unit, which entered the union in 1864. It entered equal to the original states, it is its own entity and state laws are important.</p> <p>My family and I are charged with some grievous things and they are not true and evidence will show they are not; force, manipulation, extortion, violent&#8212;my family is not a violent family and I am not a violent man. For 20+ years we turned to local law enforcement. Rights are real property. The fact is that we create government to protect rights.</p> <p>To have rights you must claim, use and defend&#8230; man only has rights he is willing to claim, use and defend. There is a difference between rights and privileges. Rights you own. Privilege is afforded. Like renting or owning a house. The government asserts there are no rights, only privileges and unless we pay, we can&#8217;t be there. The State of Nevada says differently. These are my father&#8217;s rights. Everything we have comes from the land. That is wealth, not the dollar bill. The things we use all come from the land. Who controls the land, controls the wealth.</p> <p>We create government to preserve and serve us. These are some of the beliefs of my family. That we have said we will do whatever it takes to defend is not a threat, it is a statement. Being right here before you today is part of doing whatever it takes. The Founding Fathers pledged whatever it would take&#8230; their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, to defend rights. With the evidence you will see that is what we were doing; there was no conspiracy to impede, to harm&#8230; but, to protect our heritage that our pioneer ancestors established. We were attacked, surrounded by what appeared to be mercenaries, snipers pointed directly at me. You will hear a report from a sniper that he was keeping watch of me in my van, with my wife and two of my daughters with me.</p> <p>Our ranch &#8211; children are always welcome &#8211; it is a place to play, play in the river, the pond, chase or hunt rabbits, burn your toes in the hot sand in summer&#8212;always free. Never before did we feel like someone was always watching. In early spring of 2014, we felt like someone was always watching&#8230; the dogs were watching the hills when you are always with a dog you get to know what they are saying with their bark&#8230; you can tell by their bark what they are seeing&#8230; surveillance cameras on one hill, but the dog looking at another and growling&#8230; (tearfully) This is not what America is supposed to be. Supposed to be a land of liberty. The Founding Fathers fought and bled so we wouldn&#8217;t have to and now we find ourselves in a similar situation.</p> <p>They say this issue is over grazing fees&#8230; it&#8217;s terrible, terrible, he must be a freeloader &#8211; it&#8217;s only rhetoric &#8211; I&#8217;ll tell you why &#8211; You don&#8217;t pay rent when you own your home! We own those rights! Not the land, I know we don&#8217;t own the land, but access&#8230;you and others have rights to that land. We own water and grazing rights. We don&#8217;t pay rent for something we own.</p> <p>The BLM was formed in 1960. Our rights were established in 1877, long before BLM. The original states own 100% of their land and all states were to come in on equal footing. The crux of the issue is,&amp;#160; are we a state or not? They say grazing is a privilege they can revoke and charge fees. If it is only a matter of money it is no problem. In fact, Mr. Whipple showed a copy of a check made out to Clark County. If the whole purpose is to show we owe a fee, then we&#8217;ll pay to the proper owner of the land. That was not the only check written to Clark County, we sent several. Also, in Clark County, there were 53 ranchers who owned rights. There is only a single one still out on the range. The BLM is not gaining revenue, it&#8217;s not important to them. My father could see they were there to manage him out of business. It&#8217;s not about grazing fees. In the BLM office, there were signs that read: No more Moo by &#8216;92 and Cattle Free by &#8216;93! If it were only about the grazing fees, the fees would have been under $100,000 over 25 years. It is rumored, it may not be seen in evidence, but it is rumored that they spent $6 million on the operation. Who spends that and court costs rumored to be over $100 million to collect $100,000?</p> <p>What is this about? The court orders. They say my father had an opportunity in the courts. The court wouldn&#8217;t consider states rights. They have forgotten they are servants of the people. We the people are the sovereign and ultimately, we the people are the government formed to meet needs that are better met by a group than by individuals. We are not slaves. We need to remember that. I think that&#8217;s forgotten. The definition of freedom is lost in America. When we have to have a license or ask permission to do everything, we are subjects.</p> <p>Back to the charges &#8211; they claimed I went to Richfield and that the sheriff had to be called because we were causing such a ruckus&#8212;evidence will show otherwise&#8212;we boycott to influence to change ways &#8211; we protest to cause a change &#8211; these are first amendment rights &#8211; we do not get rights from the Bill of Rights &#8211; we have rights, to begin with &#8211; it should be called the Prohibition of Government &#8211; we have freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, we can petition for a redress of grievances&#8212;rights we don&#8217;t want the government to mess with.</p> <p>A redress is to find an answer, find a solution &#8211; one way to protest. The BLM put up first amendment zones &#8211; not much bigger than this courtroom &#8211; we called them pig pens &#8211; by creating that area, they were denying our right everywhere else &#8211; that&#8217;s what they used to arrest my brother &#8211; he was outside the pig pens. The first amendment has been protected over and over again in our history. There are lots of media in the gallery today, they wouldn&#8217;t be happy to have their right to free speech taken. First amendment was put in the Supreme Law of the land, the Constitution &#8211; they shall make no law restricting these things&#8230; as you saw in the video yesterday, my brother was not impeding, not blocking, he was on a state road, on its right-of-way, simply to take pictures with his iPad of them stealing our cattle &#8211; they attacked him, threw him to the ground, rubbed his face in the ground. (emotional) The American public saw this and came not to impede or do harm. They came because they felt the spirit of the Lord, spirit of freedom and felt &#8220;we the people are not going to put up with that behavior&#8221;. It was not pointed out there were snipers on the hill, I witnessed that through binoculars and the evidence will show this.</p> <p>Back to Richfield, Utah, evidence and witness testimony will show there was not a ruckus there that disrupted or shut down that auction. I called the sheriff &#8211; that&#8217;s the pattern &#8211; the local law enforcement and state brand inspectors in Nevada, Arizona, and Utah and I had to contact the highway patrol, county commissioners in several counties and state officials &#8211; not all face to face, but some through phone calls. Is this what a criminal does? No. We were there protecting life, liberty, property. You saw the video of them hip chucking my Aunt Margaret, 50+ years of and just finished with cancer treatments, the mother of 11 children. They call these BLM guys law enforcement, but they are just BLM employees. All authority comes from we the people, we delegate authority to the county sheriff who we elect and he hires deputies and we then have a sheriff&#8217;s department to protect our life, our liberty, our property. Choosing for yourself is freedom and we have no right to impede or harm others. That&#8217;s God&#8217;s law. Man-made law is to follow that. Man is supposed to be free, not controlled, serfs or slaves. Government is to be our servant. The government went in and shut down 600,000 acres &#8211; not one of us ever went into their enclosed area and never impeded them. Even my brother driving into the dump truck&#8230; isn&#8217;t that impediment? The court order did not allow the destruction of water infrastructure. What was a dump truck doing out there? Since that was beyond the scope of the supposed court order, we had a right to know. They could have stopped and answered our questions, but no, they set out attack dogs and tazers and threw Aunt Margaret to the ground. Every incident they are charging us with happened on property that belonged to the State of Nevada. Even if BLM had authority to close public land, they have no authority to close State of Nevada public land. The fence was in the State of Nevada land. Except by invitation, you will not see one of us breach that fence or impede the gather. We did not violate the court order. Dave went over the fence by the invitation of Dan Love and then the sheriff took over and asked for our help to take down the fence and then the Cowboys, led by sheriffs squad cars went to release the cattle. The sheriff honored his oath and did his job. He should have done it sooner.</p> <p>I love my family. I love them. I love this land. I love freedom. I am from the State of Nevada. I&#8217;m a true Nevadan. I mentioned before that Nevada became a state on Oct. 31st and we always got out of school on that day&#8230; I always thought we got out because it was my birthday. I&#8217;m a true Nevadan. I believe you are, too, and love freedom as much as I do. Freedom&#8217;s not being lost overseas &#8211; it&#8217;s lost right here at home in our backyards, our front yards. Until we are willing to do whatever it takes, liberty will be, is being lost. We are not anti-government! The government has its proper place and duties to perform. I want the government to do its job. Nothing more. Nothing less. When government does more or less than its job, it becomes the criminal. When government damages our rights, it becomes the criminal. When someone harms or damages another&#8217;s life, liberty or property that is the definition of a criminal. Extortion, violence, pointing guns &#8211; everything we are charged with, they were doing and thousands of people came running &#8211; the world knew about this &#8211; China, Ireland (they sent us a flag), New Zealand and other countries &#8211; why? Because America stood for freedom and has for years and the world is interested in seeing how America (emotional) will deal with freedom. The world wants to know. The American people said, &#8220;yes, we will stand for freedom. Government, you&#8217;ve gone too far and we will put a stop to it.&#8221;</p> <p>The courts have a place. It is said that We the People are the fourth branch of government. I say we are the first. The legislature to make laws, the executive to execute laws and the judicial to judge. All three branches are to protect your rights, our rights, freedom, liberty. The government does not have the authority in and of itself &#8211; man creates government to fulfill and protect rights. We the people give the government the authority through the Constitution. The tenth amendment ensures state&#8217;s rights.</p> <p>Evidence will show my father and my brothers are innocent men. We need you to put on that paper that we are not guilty. You are the twelve to represent us, peers, equals, people&#8230;we the People.</p> <p>Guns&#8230;lots of guns&#8230;scary&#8230;camo&#8230;freedom of speech&#8230;also, the right to bear arms, the second amendment&#8230;a militia was necessary. What is a militia? It is defined in the law. U.S. Code defines militia: &#8220;all able-bodied men 17-45 years of age&#8221;. How many of you are a member of the militia? The State of Nevada extended that and includes men up to the age of 64. How many of you now are a member of the Nevada militia? There is the organized militia, the National Guard, and the unorganized militia &#8211; everyone else. Why did the Founding Fathers include the second amendment? Was it for duck hunting? No&#8230;no! The militia is mentioned six times in the Constitution. Such a small document and few things are mentioned more than the militia; the central government of this union and yet media or whatever wants to put a bad face on the militia. Why did militia come to Bundy Ranch? To peacefully assemble, redress of grievances. No one was harmed except Davey, Ammon, and Margaret. You will not see in evidence that we ever harmed anyone! They attack and we turned the other cheek. We were peaceful&#8212;insistent? Yes! And, Yes! Demanding. These men, these people did not come to seek an opportunity to point guns at the government. Hundreds, even thousands of people we didn&#8217;t know. That&#8217;s exemplary. These people came to do good. To protect me, to save my life. I had a sniper pointing at me, 200 armed men surrounding my home, my family (tearfully) Ryan Payne has been portrayed as a bad man. Evidence will show otherwise. He saved my life. He saved my life. Others came. I didn&#8217;t even meet most of them until I was in jail with them, may have seen them in passing, but I didn&#8217;t know them until jail. I honor and thank them now! I thank all who came. We only have rights we are willing to fight for. You&#8217;ll see evidence that I was nearly always with the sheriff or a deputy &#8211; always in communication with them &#8211; I was side-by-side with Lombardo.</p> <p>Thank you for coming, for being here. I will still do whatever it takes. This is not a threat, it is determination. I love my freedom. Listen to the still small voice to discern between truth and error. The indictment and grand jury testimony is full of lies. Truth has been blocked in previous trials. Listen closely &#8211; we will try to get you the truth. The truth will set me free and I&#8217;m counting on you to help me see that.</p> <p>I invite you to our ranch. I recognize your right to use the land. We want you to come and enjoy it. I thank you for this time. Please find me not guilty and these other men not guilty. Stand up for freedom. Thank you.</p>

Ryan Bundy’s Opening Statement: “This Is Not What America Is Supposed To Be…”

https://studionewsnetwork.com/articles/ryan-bundys-opening-statement-not-america-supposed/

2017-11-27

3left-center

Sometimes in the process of covering so many things and in the attempt to provide as much information and commentary as possible we simply are not able to provide all that we wish to do so to the public However that does not mean other stories and commentary are not importantamp160 In fact many things coming out of alternatives media today are vitally important for those coming off the governmentcontrolled media One of those items that didn8217t hit the mainstream media and sadly didn8217t hit much of the alternative media was the opening statement of Cliven Bundy8217s son Ryan as the trial of the century began nearly two weeks ago amp160 In light of that I8217ve been meaning to post his opening statement because it is certainly on that Americans should familiarize themselves with and quite possibly should a fair history book be written may go down in a Patrick Henryesqueamp160fashion So without further ado here8217s Ryan Bundy8217s opening statement HT Gary Hunt that was delivered to the jury in the Bundy Ranch trials on November 15 2017amp160 Read and remember amp160 amp160 Thanks to the jurors for being here I told you a little about myself at voir dire but I8217d like to introduce myself a little more and tell you about my heritage and how that affects my case Projects a picture of his family 8211 AND leaves it up throughout his statement ampltimg srchttpswwwzerohedgecomsitesdefaultfilesimagesuser3303imageroot2017112520171126_bundy1_0jpg alt ampgt Note the picture shown above This is my ID Not my driver8217s license This is who I am a man with a family and I8217ll do whatever it takes to provide for them I want you to picture in your minds8230you8217re out on the land8230 I8217ll take you to our ranch you can see all the beauty of the land the fresh air sunsets and sunrises the brush you8217re on a horse in front of the cattle 8211 place yourself there 8211 feel the freedom 8211 out of the congestion of the cars 8211 that8217s how I was raised playing in the river we were called riverrats and that is where my life began and I hope ends My family has been on that land 141 years my pioneer ancestors settled there in 1877 8211 there was nothing there They carved out a living8230 they brought a horse and wagon and some provisions8230 this case the government mentioned is 8220not about rights8221 but it is 8211 those rights do mean something 8211 rights are created through beneficial use When my ancestors arrived undoubtedly the horse would need a drink so they led him to the water and that is beneficial use The horse and perhaps a cow that had been led behind the wagon need to eat some brush in the hills that is beneficial use That established rights The water rights are real So real the State of Nevada has a water rights registry including livestock watering rights A law was created to protect those rights The water rights that my father owns were first registered in 1891 by the State of Nevada 8211 the State of Nevada is important a sovereign state its own unit which entered the union in 1864 It entered equal to the original states it is its own entity and state laws are important My family and I are charged with some grievous things and they are not true and evidence will show they are not force manipulation extortion violent8212my family is not a violent family and I am not a violent man For 20 years we turned to local law enforcement Rights are real property The fact is that we create government to protect rights To have rights you must claim use and defend8230 man only has rights he is willing to claim use and defend There is a difference between rights and privileges Rights you own Privilege is afforded Like renting or owning a house The government asserts there are no rights only privileges and unless we pay we can8217t be there The State of Nevada says differently These are my father8217s rights Everything we have comes from the land That is wealth not the dollar bill The things we use all come from the land Who controls the land controls the wealth We create government to preserve and serve us These are some of the beliefs of my family That we have said we will do whatever it takes to defend is not a threat it is a statement Being right here before you today is part of doing whatever it takes The Founding Fathers pledged whatever it would take8230 their lives their fortunes and their sacred honor to defend rights With the evidence you will see that is what we were doing there was no conspiracy to impede to harm8230 but to protect our heritage that our pioneer ancestors established We were attacked surrounded by what appeared to be mercenaries snipers pointed directly at me You will hear a report from a sniper that he was keeping watch of me in my van with my wife and two of my daughters with me Our ranch 8211 children are always welcome 8211 it is a place to play play in the river the pond chase or hunt rabbits burn your toes in the hot sand in summer8212always free Never before did we feel like someone was always watching In early spring of 2014 we felt like someone was always watching8230 the dogs were watching the hills when you are always with a dog you get to know what they are saying with their bark8230 you can tell by their bark what they are seeing8230 surveillance cameras on one hill but the dog looking at another and growling8230 tearfully This is not what America is supposed to be Supposed to be a land of liberty The Founding Fathers fought and bled so we wouldn8217t have to and now we find ourselves in a similar situation They say this issue is over grazing fees8230 it8217s terrible terrible he must be a freeloader 8211 it8217s only rhetoric 8211 I8217ll tell you why 8211 You don8217t pay rent when you own your home We own those rights Not the land I know we don8217t own the land but access8230you and others have rights to that land We own water and grazing rights We don8217t pay rent for something we own The BLM was formed in 1960 Our rights were established in 1877 long before BLM The original states own 100 of their land and all states were to come in on equal footing The crux of the issue isamp160 are we a state or not They say grazing is a privilege they can revoke and charge fees If it is only a matter of money it is no problem In fact Mr Whipple showed a copy of a check made out to Clark County If the whole purpose is to show we owe a fee then we8217ll pay to the proper owner of the land That was not the only check written to Clark County we sent several Also in Clark County there were 53 ranchers who owned rights There is only a single one still out on the range The BLM is not gaining revenue it8217s not important to them My father could see they were there to manage him out of business It8217s not about grazing fees In the BLM office there were signs that read No more Moo by 821692 and Cattle Free by 821693 If it were only about the grazing fees the fees would have been under 100000 over 25 years It is rumored it may not be seen in evidence but it is rumored that they spent 6 million on the operation Who spends that and court costs rumored to be over 100 million to collect 100000 What is this about The court orders They say my father had an opportunity in the courts The court wouldn8217t consider states rights They have forgotten they are servants of the people We the people are the sovereign and ultimately we the people are the government formed to meet needs that are better met by a group than by individuals We are not slaves We need to remember that I think that8217s forgotten The definition of freedom is lost in America When we have to have a license or ask permission to do everything we are subjects Back to the charges 8211 they claimed I went to Richfield and that the sheriff had to be called because we were causing such a ruckus8212evidence will show otherwise8212we boycott to influence to change ways 8211 we protest to cause a change 8211 these are first amendment rights 8211 we do not get rights from the Bill of Rights 8211 we have rights to begin with 8211 it should be called the Prohibition of Government 8211 we have freedom of speech freedom of the press freedom of religion freedom of assembly we can petition for a redress of grievances8212rights we don8217t want the government to mess with A redress is to find an answer find a solution 8211 one way to protest The BLM put up first amendment zones 8211 not much bigger than this courtroom 8211 we called them pig pens 8211 by creating that area they were denying our right everywhere else 8211 that8217s what they used to arrest my brother 8211 he was outside the pig pens The first amendment has been protected over and over again in our history There are lots of media in the gallery today they wouldn8217t be happy to have their right to free speech taken First amendment was put in the Supreme Law of the land the Constitution 8211 they shall make no law restricting these things8230 as you saw in the video yesterday my brother was not impeding not blocking he was on a state road on its rightofway simply to take pictures with his iPad of them stealing our cattle 8211 they attacked him threw him to the ground rubbed his face in the ground emotional The American public saw this and came not to impede or do harm They came because they felt the spirit of the Lord spirit of freedom and felt 8220we the people are not going to put up with that behavior8221 It was not pointed out there were snipers on the hill I witnessed that through binoculars and the evidence will show this Back to Richfield Utah evidence and witness testimony will show there was not a ruckus there that disrupted or shut down that auction I called the sheriff 8211 that8217s the pattern 8211 the local law enforcement and state brand inspectors in Nevada Arizona and Utah and I had to contact the highway patrol county commissioners in several counties and state officials 8211 not all face to face but some through phone calls Is this what a criminal does No We were there protecting life liberty property You saw the video of them hip chucking my Aunt Margaret 50 years of and just finished with cancer treatments the mother of 11 children They call these BLM guys law enforcement but they are just BLM employees All authority comes from we the people we delegate authority to the county sheriff who we elect and he hires deputies and we then have a sheriff8217s department to protect our life our liberty our property Choosing for yourself is freedom and we have no right to impede or harm others That8217s God8217s law Manmade law is to follow that Man is supposed to be free not controlled serfs or slaves Government is to be our servant The government went in and shut down 600000 acres 8211 not one of us ever went into their enclosed area and never impeded them Even my brother driving into the dump truck8230 isn8217t that impediment The court order did not allow the destruction of water infrastructure What was a dump truck doing out there Since that was beyond the scope of the supposed court order we had a right to know They could have stopped and answered our questions but no they set out attack dogs and tazers and threw Aunt Margaret to the ground Every incident they are charging us with happened on property that belonged to the State of Nevada Even if BLM had authority to close public land they have no authority to close State of Nevada public land The fence was in the State of Nevada land Except by invitation you will not see one of us breach that fence or impede the gather We did not violate the court order Dave went over the fence by the invitation of Dan Love and then the sheriff took over and asked for our help to take down the fence and then the Cowboys led by sheriffs squad cars went to release the cattle The sheriff honored his oath and did his job He should have done it sooner I love my family I love them I love this land I love freedom I am from the State of Nevada I8217m a true Nevadan I mentioned before that Nevada became a state on Oct 31st and we always got out of school on that day8230 I always thought we got out because it was my birthday I8217m a true Nevadan I believe you are too and love freedom as much as I do Freedom8217s not being lost overseas 8211 it8217s lost right here at home in our backyards our front yards Until we are willing to do whatever it takes liberty will be is being lost We are not antigovernment The government has its proper place and duties to perform I want the government to do its job Nothing more Nothing less When government does more or less than its job it becomes the criminal When government damages our rights it becomes the criminal When someone harms or damages another8217s life liberty or property that is the definition of a criminal Extortion violence pointing guns 8211 everything we are charged with they were doing and thousands of people came running 8211 the world knew about this 8211 China Ireland they sent us a flag New Zealand and other countries 8211 why Because America stood for freedom and has for years and the world is interested in seeing how America emotional will deal with freedom The world wants to know The American people said 8220yes we will stand for freedom Government you8217ve gone too far and we will put a stop to it8221 The courts have a place It is said that We the People are the fourth branch of government I say we are the first The legislature to make laws the executive to execute laws and the judicial to judge All three branches are to protect your rights our rights freedom liberty The government does not have the authority in and of itself 8211 man creates government to fulfill and protect rights We the people give the government the authority through the Constitution The tenth amendment ensures state8217s rights Evidence will show my father and my brothers are innocent men We need you to put on that paper that we are not guilty You are the twelve to represent us peers equals people8230we the People Guns8230lots of guns8230scary8230camo8230freedom of speech8230also the right to bear arms the second amendment8230a militia was necessary What is a militia It is defined in the law US Code defines militia 8220all ablebodied men 1745 years of age8221 How many of you are a member of the militia The State of Nevada extended that and includes men up to the age of 64 How many of you now are a member of the Nevada militia There is the organized militia the National Guard and the unorganized militia 8211 everyone else Why did the Founding Fathers include the second amendment Was it for duck hunting No8230no The militia is mentioned six times in the Constitution Such a small document and few things are mentioned more than the militia the central government of this union and yet media or whatever wants to put a bad face on the militia Why did militia come to Bundy Ranch To peacefully assemble redress of grievances No one was harmed except Davey Ammon and Margaret You will not see in evidence that we ever harmed anyone They attack and we turned the other cheek We were peaceful8212insistent Yes And Yes Demanding These men these people did not come to seek an opportunity to point guns at the government Hundreds even thousands of people we didn8217t know That8217s exemplary These people came to do good To protect me to save my life I had a sniper pointing at me 200 armed men surrounding my home my family tearfully Ryan Payne has been portrayed as a bad man Evidence will show otherwise He saved my life He saved my life Others came I didn8217t even meet most of them until I was in jail with them may have seen them in passing but I didn8217t know them until jail I honor and thank them now I thank all who came We only have rights we are willing to fight for You8217ll see evidence that I was nearly always with the sheriff or a deputy 8211 always in communication with them 8211 I was sidebyside with Lombardo Thank you for coming for being here I will still do whatever it takes This is not a threat it is determination I love my freedom Listen to the still small voice to discern between truth and error The indictment and grand jury testimony is full of lies Truth has been blocked in previous trials Listen closely 8211 we will try to get you the truth The truth will set me free and I8217m counting on you to help me see that I invite you to our ranch I recognize your right to use the land We want you to come and enjoy it I thank you for this time Please find me not guilty and these other men not guilty Stand up for freedom Thank you

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<p>BRUSSELS, Jan 24 (Reuters) - European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager will hold a news conference at 1130 CET (1030 GMT) on Wednesday on a case involving anti-competitive practices.</p> <p>The Commission, which announced the news conference in a statement, did not give further details.</p> <p>The Financial Times reported on Tuesday that U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm was set to be fined for taking advantage of its dominance when it paid Apple to use its chips exclusively in Apple mobile devices. (Reporting by Philip Blenkinsop; editing by Robert-Jan Bartunek)</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>LAS VEGAS/HONG KONG (Reuters) - Best Buy Co Inc, the largest U.S. consumer electronics retailer, will cut ties with China&#8217;s Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, a person familiar with the matter said, amid heightened scrutiny on Chinese tech firms in the United States.</p> FILE PHOTO: A Best Buy store is seen in Los Angeles, California, U.S., March 13, 2017. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson/File Photo <p>Best Buy will stop selling Huawei&#8217;s devices over the next few weeks, according to the person with knowledge of the matter, a setback for the Chinese telecommunications giant as it looks to expand in the U.S. market.</p> <p>The move, after similar actions from U.S. carriers including AT&amp;amp;T Inc, comes as U.S. scrutiny of Chinese tech firms grows amid simmering tensions over U.S.-China trade and concerns of security.</p> <p>A Best Buy spokesman told Reuters the firm could not comment on specific contracts with vendors. &#8220;We make decisions to change what we sell for a variety of reasons,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>Huawei said in emailed comments on Thursday that it valued its relationship with Best Buy but could not discuss details of its partnership with the U.S. firm.</p> The Huawei logo is seen during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, February 26, 2018. REUTERS/Yves Herman <p>&#8220;Huawei currently sells its products through a range of leading consumer electronics retailers in the U.S.,&#8221; the firm said, adding its products met the &#8220;highest security, privacy and engineering standards in the industry&#8221;.</p> <p>Earlier this year, AT&amp;amp;T was forced to scrap a plan to offer Huawei handsets after some members of Congress lobbied against the idea with federal regulators, sources told Reuters. Verizon Communications Inc also ended its plans to sell Huawei phones last year, according to media reports.</p> <p>Last month two Republican Senators introduced legislation that would block the U.S. government from buying or leasing telecommunications equipment from Huawei or Chinese peer ZTE Corp, citing concern the firms would use their access to spy on U.S. officials.</p> <p>The tougher climate in the United States has forced Huawei to sell its flagship smartphone Mate 10 Pro - its challenger to the iPhone - in the United States only through open channels.</p> <p>U.S tech and electronics website CNET.com first reported the termination of the agreement on Wednesday.</p> <p>Reporting by Nandita Bose in LAS VEGAS and Sijia Jiang in HONG KONG; additional reporting by Abinaya Vijayaraghavan in Bengaluru; Writing by Adam Jourdan; Editing by Sunil Nair &amp;amp; Shri Navaratnam</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>PFLUGERVILLE, Texas (Reuters) - The serial bomber whose deadly attacks terrorized Austin, Texas, for weeks left a 25-minute video &#8220;confession&#8221; on a cell phone found after he blew himself up on Wednesday as officers closed in to make an arrest, police said.</p> <p>Mark Conditt, 23, an unemployed man from the suburb of Pflugerville, detailed how he made all seven bombs that have been accounted for - five that exploded, one that was recovered before it went off and a seventh that he detonated as officers rushed his vehicle early on Wednesday.</p> <p>But the video failed to reveal a coherent motive for the attacks spread over the past three weeks, police said.</p> <p>&#8220;He does not at all mention anything about terrorism, nor does he mention anything about hate, but instead it is the outcry of a very challenged young man, talking about challenges in his personal life,&#8221; Austin Police Chief Brian Manley told reporters.</p> <p>&#8220;I would classify this as a confession,&#8221; Manley said.</p> <p>Conditt, who had never before been in trouble with the law, killed two people and wounded five with a campaign of violence that began on March 2, authorities said.</p> <p>Based on their search of the suspect&#8217;s home and his video statement, authorities said they felt confident that there were no other bombs and that the public was safe from further harm.</p> <p>FBI special agent Christopher Combs said investigators believe the suspect would have continued his attacks had he not been apprehended.</p> <p>Police recovered a &#8220;target list&#8221; of addresses for future bombings, the Los Angeles Times reported, citing U.S. Representative Michael McCaul of Texas, the Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.</p> <p>Even so, the video gave no explanation for the individuals and addresses singled out as recipients of the bombs that were planted or shipped, Manley said.</p> <p>Police previously said they had considered the possibility that the attacks were racially motivated, noting that the first several victims, including the two who died, were either African-American or Hispanic.</p> <p>Conditt likely recorded the video between 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. on Tuesday. According to Manley, Conditt said he believed police &#8220;were getting very close to him,&#8221; and he was right. Authorities filed a criminal complaint and issued an arrest warrant around that time.</p> <p>By Wednesday morning, police had tracked Conditt to a hotel and were waiting for the arrival of tactical units and equipment before they planned to make an arrest, Manley said. But then Conditt drove away.</p> <p>Police followed and decided to stop him before he got on the highway. Just as officers approached the vehicle, the explosion went off, Manley said. There was also some police shooting.</p> Texas blast suspect Mark Anthony Conditt is seen in this undated handout photo released by Austin Community College in Austin, Texas, U.S. March 21, 2018. Austin Community College/Handout via REUTERS <p>&#8220;This can never be called a happy ending, but it&#8217;s a damn good one for the people of this community, the people of the state of Texas,&#8221; Travis County District Attorney Margaret Moore told reporters.</p> <p>Residents in Austin, a city of 1 million people and a liberal enclave of university students and tech companies, voiced relief that the hunt for the serial bomber was over.</p> <p>&#8220;I am going to be leery and extra careful tomorrow at work, but I feel relieved now,&#8221; said Jesus Borjon, 44, an employee of parcel delivery firm UPS, who lives in Pflugerville.</p> <p>Austin was hosting thousands of out-of-town visitors for its annual South by Southwest festival of music, film and technology when the first bombings occurred.</p> Slideshow (24 Images) TRAIL OF CLUES <p>The trail of clues leading hundreds of investigators to the serial bomber ranged from store receipts and fragments of booby-trapped packages to surveillance video of the suspect in a hat and wig.</p> <p>Experts scoured the suspect&#8217;s home for further evidence on Wednesday, removing explosive materials and bomb components.</p> <p>&#8220;I wouldn&#8217;t call it a bomb-making factory, but there&#8217;s definitely components consistent with what we&#8217;ve seen in all these other devices,&#8221; Fred Milanowski, special agent in charge of Houston office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, told reporters.</p> <p>Investigators evacuated a four-block radius around Conditt&#8217;s house while they searched the home, which Conditt shared with two roommates who had been detained for questioning. Conditt moved in a year ago after leaving his parents&#8217; home about a mile (1.6 km) away, public records showed.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-texas-blast-fedex/fbi-reminds-couriers-on-suspicious-package-protocols-after-texas-bombings-idUSKBN1GX2AR" type="external">FBI reminds couriers on suspicious package protocols after Texas bombings</a> <p>One law enforcement official involved in the investigation but speaking on condition of anonymity told Reuters that some of the materials found in remnants of the bombs were traced back to where they had been sold.</p> <p>The source also said investigators, once they had identified Conditt as a potential suspect, obtained a warrant to monitor his Google search history.</p> <p>Surveillance video showed the suspect in a hat and a blond wig, as he prepared to ship one of two booby-trapped packages he was known to have sent through FedEx Corp&#8217;s delivery service, according to the source.</p> <p>He used the alias &#8220;Kelly Killmore&#8221; to ship those packages, ABC News reported, citing unnamed law enforcement sources.</p> <p>Conditt, who was home-schooled, described himself as a conservative but said he was not politically inclined, according to blog posts he wrote as part of a U.S. politics class at Austin Community College. He attended from 2010 to 2012 and had no record of any disciplinary actions, the school said.</p> <p>Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Additional reporting by Jim Forsyth in San Antonio, Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee, Mark Hosenball in Washington, Jonathan Allen and Gina Cherelus in New York and Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Writing by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Rosalba O'Brien, Peter Cooney &amp;amp; Simon Cameron-Moore</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>TOKYO (Reuters) - The U.S. dollar slipped on Thursday after the Federal Reserve did not signal a faster pace of rate hikes this year while worries about a coming announcement on tariffs from U.S. President Donald Trump dented Asian shares.</p> U.S. Dollar banknotes are seen in this photo illustration taken February 12, 2018. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez/Illustration <p>MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS fell 0.1 percent, erasing earlier gains of up to 0.7 pct, which were led by South Korea <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.KS11" type="external">.KS11</a> and Taiwan <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.TWII" type="external">.TWII</a> hitting six-week highs. Japan's Nikkei <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.N225" type="external">.N225</a> gained 0.4 percent.</p> <p>Wall Street stock indexes ended the day lower, with the S&amp;amp;P 500 <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.SPX" type="external">.SPX</a> losing 0.18 percent and the Nasdaq Composite <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.IXIC" type="external">.IXIC</a> 0.26 percent.</p> <p>The U.S. Federal Reserve raised interest rates on Wednesday and forecast two more hikes for 2018 in its first policy meeting under Chairman Jerome Powell.</p> <p>Given that some investors had expected it to project three more rate hikes, the guidance was perceived by some as less hawkish than anticipated, a positive factor for risk assets in general, though analysts noted the Fed was upbeat on the economy overall.</p> <p>Fed policymakers notched up rate projections for 2019 and 2020 and also raised the estimated longer-term &#8220;neutral&#8221; interest rate a touch, suggesting the current tightening cycle could go on longer than previously thought.</p> <p>&#8220;They also forecast three hikes next year and two more in 2020 and clearly revised up the growth forecast as well,&#8221; said Norihiro Fujito, senior investment strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities.</p> <p>&#8220;So the picture looks different when you look at longer-term projections. That explains the complicated reaction by markets. The prospects of continued rate hikes may cap shares,&#8221; he added.</p> <p>The yield on two-year U.S. notes yield slipped back to 2.299 percent US2YT=RR from 9 1/2-year high of 2.366 percent hit on Wednesday while the 10-year yield dipped to 2.872 percent US10YT=RR after an initial spike to 2.936 percent.</p> <p>That pushed the U.S. dollar lower in the currency market, with the dollar index .DXY =USD testing this month&#8217;s low after suffering its biggest fall in two months on Wednesday.</p> <p>The euro <a href="/finance/currencies/quote?srcCurr=EUR&amp;amp;destCurr=USD" type="external">EUR=</a> gained 0.2 percent to $1.2363, extending its recovery from a near three-week low of $1.2240 touched earlier in the week.</p> <p>The dollar shed 0.4 percent to 105.66 yen <a href="/finance/currencies/quote?srcCurr=JPY&amp;amp;destCurr=USD" type="external">JPY=</a>, turning down on the week to edge closer to its 16-month low of 105.24 on March 2.</p> <p>The British pound hit a 1 1/2-month high of $1.4171, building on Wednesday&#8217;s one-percent gains.</p> A man walks past an electronic stock quotation board outside a brokerage in Tokyo, Japan, February 9, 2018. REUTERS/Toru Hanai <p>Strong UK wage data published on Wednesday cemented expectations that the Bank of England will likely signal a May rate hike later in the day at a monetary policy meeting.</p> <p>Bucking the trend, the Hong Kong dollar <a href="/finance/currencies/quote?srcCurr=HKD&amp;amp;destCurr=USD" type="external">HKD=D4</a> hit a 33-year low of 7.8469 per U.S. dollar, inching closer to the lower end of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority's targeted trading band of 7.75-7.85.</p> <p>But most market participants do not see this bout of weakness as a threat or attack on Hong Kong&#8217;s dollar peg, unlike instances in the past.</p> <p>With the Fed meeting over, investors are watching Trump, who is due to sign a memo on imposing tariffs on Chinese imports at 1630 GMT on Thursday.</p> <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.KS11" type="external">Korea Exchange</a> 2505.57 .KS11 Korea Stock Exchange +20.60 (+0.83%) .KS11 .TWII .N225 .SPX .IXIC <p>Concerns about a trade war between the world&#8217;s two largest economies have kept many investors on guard.</p> <p>U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said on Wednesday the tariffs would target China&#8217;s high-technology sector and could also include restrictions on Chinese investments in the United States.</p> <p>Investors worry such a move could trigger countermeasures by China, possibly causing a vicious cycle of escalating retaliation.</p> <p>Shares on China's exchanges were lower, the with Shanghai Composite Index <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.SSEC" type="external">.SSEC</a> slipping 0.8 percent to two-week lows.</p> <p>&#8220;China&#8217;s equity market is relatively domestic. We estimate that on average more than 80 percent of revenues are generated in China while only a marginal share comes from the U.S. Still, there would be first-order casualties if trade tensions escalated. In the front line would be firms with significant exposure to the US, mostly in the tech and consumer</p> <p>sectors,&#8221; wrote analysts at Societe Generale.</p> <p>In the energy market, oil prices stood near six-week highs and closed in on a 3-year peak set in late January, helped by a surprise decline in U.S. inventories, strong compliance on OPEC production cuts, and persistent concerns on the nuclear pact with Iran.</p> <p>U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures CLc1 rose to as high as $65.74 per barrel CLc1, not far from its January peak of $66.66, having gained almost five percent so far this week.</p> <p>In contrast, copper fell to three-month low of $6,702 per tonne CMCU3 the previous day before bouncing back to $6,817.</p> <p>Reporting by Hideyuki Sano; Editing by Eric Meijer and Richard Borsuk</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump defended his congratulations to Vladimir Putin on the Russian president&#8217;s disputed re-election victory on Wednesday, saying he wants Putin&#8217;s help in solving crises from North Korea to Syria and beyond.</p> White House Chief of Staff John Kelly sits at the end of the table as U.S. President Donald Trump and Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sit down to a working lunch with their delegations at the White House in Washington, U.S. March 20, 2018. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst <p>Trump drew fire from Republicans and Democrats alike for telling reporters on Tuesday that he had congratulated Putin on his re-election and that the two leaders had made tentative plans to meet in the &#8220;not too distant future.&#8221;</p> <p>The Washington Post reported that Trump, in his briefing papers to prepare for the phone call with Putin on Tuesday, was specifically warned &#8220;DO NOT CONGRATULATE&#8221; the Russian president. White House officials did not dispute the report, but said whoever leaked it could be subject to dismissal.</p> <p>A Trump confidant who asked not to be named said Trump was angry about the leak, and a White House official said John Kelly, Trump&#8217;s chief of staff, was &#8220;frustrated and deeply disappointed.&#8221;</p> <p>In a pair of tweets on his call with Putin, Trump said U.S. news organizations &#8220;wanted me to excoriate him. They are wrong! Getting along with Russia (and others) is a good thing, not a bad thing.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;They can help solve problems with North Korea, Syria, Ukraine, ISIS, Iran and even the coming Arms Race,&#8221; Trump said.</p> <p>Trump&#8217;s congratulations to Putin, which came shortly after he joined Britain in blaming Russia for a poison nerve gas attack against a former Russian spy in southern England, has revived criticism that Trump has been too tolerant of the Russian leader.</p> <p>Trump is under investigation by U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller on whether he or his aides colluded with Russia during the 2016 presidential election that Trump won. Trump calls the probe a political witch hunt.</p> <p>Trump&#8217;s overture to Putin has drawn heavy fire by critics who called Sunday&#8217;s election rigged.</p> <p>Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said there was a &#8220;lack of credibility in tallying the result.&#8221; Senator John McCain, a longtime Putin critic, was even blunter, saying: &#8220;An American president does not lead the Free World by congratulating dictators on winning sham elections.&#8221;</p> <p>Administration officials said it was unclear if the president had seen the briefing memo that was leaked to the Post.</p> <p>&#8220;If this story is accurate, that means someone leaked the president&#8217;s briefing papers. Leaking such information is a fireable offense and likely illegal,&#8221; said a senior White House official, who requested anonymity.</p> <p>Republican Senator Marco Rubio said he did not like Trump&#8217;s congratulations to Putin but thought the leak was worse.</p> <p>&#8220;If you don&#8217;t like the guy, quit. But to be this duplicitous and continue to leak things out, it&#8217;s dangerous,&#8221; Rubio told reporters.</p> <p>White House officials have said that Trump is less trusting of Putin because of Russian activities in Ukraine, Syria and elsewhere.</p> <p>Last week, after initially equivocating about the chemical attack on the former Russian double agent in Salisbury, England, the White House joined a statement by the leaders of Britain, France and Germany in which they said they &#8220;abhor the attack&#8221; and blamed it on Moscow.</p> <p>Moscow has denied any involvement in the poisoning.</p> <p>The issue came up on Wednesday in a telephone call between Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron, who is scheduled to visit the White House in late April, according to a White House statement.</p> <p>&#8220;The presidents reiterated their solidarity with the United Kingdom in the wake of Russia&#8217;s use of chemical weapons against private citizens on British soil and agreed on the need to take action to hold Russia accountable,&#8221; it said.</p> <p>But the poisoning incident did not appear to come up in Trump&#8217;s call with Putin.</p> <p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t believe that was discussed in today&#8217;s call,&#8221; White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters on Tuesday.</p> <p>The leak incident was likely to revive questions about whether Trump would embark on more turnover in his senior staff after the departure of Rex Tillerson as secretary of state.</p> <p>Trump&#8217;s national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, is widely seen as likely to leave at some point, and Kelly himself is said by Trump confidants to have tested the nerves of the president.</p> <p>Reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Toni Reinhold and Leslie Adler</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

EU competition chief to hold news conference at 1030 GMT U.S. retailer Best Buy cuts ties with China's Huawei: source Texas serial bomber made video confession before blowing himself up: police Dollar on defensive after Fed, trade worries hit shares Trump defends congratulatory phone call to Putin

https://reuters.com/article/eu-antitrust/eu-competition-chief-to-hold-news-conference-at-1030-gmt-idUSL8N1PJ1NZ

2018-01-24

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BRUSSELS Jan 24 Reuters European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager will hold a news conference at 1130 CET 1030 GMT on Wednesday on a case involving anticompetitive practices The Commission which announced the news conference in a statement did not give further details The Financial Times reported on Tuesday that US chipmaker Qualcomm was set to be fined for taking advantage of its dominance when it paid Apple to use its chips exclusively in Apple mobile devices Reporting by Philip Blenkinsop editing by RobertJan Bartunek Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles LAS VEGASHONG KONG Reuters Best Buy Co Inc the largest US consumer electronics retailer will cut ties with China8217s Huawei Technologies Co Ltd a person familiar with the matter said amid heightened scrutiny on Chinese tech firms in the United States FILE PHOTO A Best Buy store is seen in Los Angeles California US March 13 2017 REUTERSLucy NicholsonFile Photo Best Buy will stop selling Huawei8217s devices over the next few weeks according to the person with knowledge of the matter a setback for the Chinese telecommunications giant as it looks to expand in the US market The move after similar actions from US carriers including ATampampT Inc comes as US scrutiny of Chinese tech firms grows amid simmering tensions over USChina trade and concerns of security A Best Buy spokesman told Reuters the firm could not comment on specific contracts with vendors 8220We make decisions to change what we sell for a variety of reasons8221 he said Huawei said in emailed comments on Thursday that it valued its relationship with Best Buy but could not discuss details of its partnership with the US firm The Huawei logo is seen during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona Spain February 26 2018 REUTERSYves Herman 8220Huawei currently sells its products through a range of leading consumer electronics retailers in the US8221 the firm said adding its products met the 8220highest security privacy and engineering standards in the industry8221 Earlier this year ATampampT was forced to scrap a plan to offer Huawei handsets after some members of Congress lobbied against the idea with federal regulators sources told Reuters Verizon Communications Inc also ended its plans to sell Huawei phones last year according to media reports Last month two Republican Senators introduced legislation that would block the US government from buying or leasing telecommunications equipment from Huawei or Chinese peer ZTE Corp citing concern the firms would use their access to spy on US officials The tougher climate in the United States has forced Huawei to sell its flagship smartphone Mate 10 Pro its challenger to the iPhone in the United States only through open channels US tech and electronics website CNETcom first reported the termination of the agreement on Wednesday Reporting by Nandita Bose in LAS VEGAS and Sijia Jiang in HONG KONG additional reporting by Abinaya Vijayaraghavan in Bengaluru Writing by Adam Jourdan Editing by Sunil Nair ampamp Shri Navaratnam Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles PFLUGERVILLE Texas Reuters The serial bomber whose deadly attacks terrorized Austin Texas for weeks left a 25minute video 8220confession8221 on a cell phone found after he blew himself up on Wednesday as officers closed in to make an arrest police said Mark Conditt 23 an unemployed man from the suburb of Pflugerville detailed how he made all seven bombs that have been accounted for five that exploded one that was recovered before it went off and a seventh that he detonated as officers rushed his vehicle early on Wednesday But the video failed to reveal a coherent motive for the attacks spread over the past three weeks police said 8220He does not at all mention anything about terrorism nor does he mention anything about hate but instead it is the outcry of a very challenged young man talking about challenges in his personal life8221 Austin Police Chief Brian Manley told reporters 8220I would classify this as a confession8221 Manley said Conditt who had never before been in trouble with the law killed two people and wounded five with a campaign of violence that began on March 2 authorities said Based on their search of the suspect8217s home and his video statement authorities said they felt confident that there were no other bombs and that the public was safe from further harm FBI special agent Christopher Combs said investigators believe the suspect would have continued his attacks had he not been apprehended Police recovered a 8220target list8221 of addresses for future bombings the Los Angeles Times reported citing US Representative Michael McCaul of Texas the Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee Even so the video gave no explanation for the individuals and addresses singled out as recipients of the bombs that were planted or shipped Manley said Police previously said they had considered the possibility that the attacks were racially motivated noting that the first several victims including the two who died were either AfricanAmerican or Hispanic Conditt likely recorded the video between 9 pm and 11 pm on Tuesday According to Manley Conditt said he believed police 8220were getting very close to him8221 and he was right Authorities filed a criminal complaint and issued an arrest warrant around that time By Wednesday morning police had tracked Conditt to a hotel and were waiting for the arrival of tactical units and equipment before they planned to make an arrest Manley said But then Conditt drove away Police followed and decided to stop him before he got on the highway Just as officers approached the vehicle the explosion went off Manley said There was also some police shooting Texas blast suspect Mark Anthony Conditt is seen in this undated handout photo released by Austin Community College in Austin Texas US March 21 2018 Austin Community CollegeHandout via REUTERS 8220This can never be called a happy ending but it8217s a damn good one for the people of this community the people of the state of Texas8221 Travis County District Attorney Margaret Moore told reporters Residents in Austin a city of 1 million people and a liberal enclave of university students and tech companies voiced relief that the hunt for the serial bomber was over 8220I am going to be leery and extra careful tomorrow at work but I feel relieved now8221 said Jesus Borjon 44 an employee of parcel delivery firm UPS who lives in Pflugerville Austin was hosting thousands of outoftown visitors for its annual South by Southwest festival of music film and technology when the first bombings occurred Slideshow 24 Images TRAIL OF CLUES The trail of clues leading hundreds of investigators to the serial bomber ranged from store receipts and fragments of boobytrapped packages to surveillance video of the suspect in a hat and wig Experts scoured the suspect8217s home for further evidence on Wednesday removing explosive materials and bomb components 8220I wouldn8217t call it a bombmaking factory but there8217s definitely components consistent with what we8217ve seen in all these other devices8221 Fred Milanowski special agent in charge of Houston office of the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives told reporters Investigators evacuated a fourblock radius around Conditt8217s house while they searched the home which Conditt shared with two roommates who had been detained for questioning Conditt moved in a year ago after leaving his parents8217 home about a mile 16 km away public records showed Related Coverage FBI reminds couriers on suspicious package protocols after Texas bombings One law enforcement official involved in the investigation but speaking on condition of anonymity told Reuters that some of the materials found in remnants of the bombs were traced back to where they had been sold The source also said investigators once they had identified Conditt as a potential suspect obtained a warrant to monitor his Google search history Surveillance video showed the suspect in a hat and a blond wig as he prepared to ship one of two boobytrapped packages he was known to have sent through FedEx Corp8217s delivery service according to the source He used the alias 8220Kelly Killmore8221 to ship those packages ABC News reported citing unnamed law enforcement sources Conditt who was homeschooled described himself as a conservative but said he was not politically inclined according to blog posts he wrote as part of a US politics class at Austin Community College He attended from 2010 to 2012 and had no record of any disciplinary actions the school said Reporting by Jon Herskovitz Additional reporting by Jim Forsyth in San Antonio Brendan OBrien in Milwaukee Mark Hosenball in Washington Jonathan Allen and Gina Cherelus in New York and Steve Gorman in Los Angeles Writing by Daniel Trotta Editing by Rosalba OBrien Peter Cooney ampamp Simon CameronMoore Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles TOKYO Reuters The US dollar slipped on Thursday after the Federal Reserve did not signal a faster pace of rate hikes this year while worries about a coming announcement on tariffs from US President Donald Trump dented Asian shares US Dollar banknotes are seen in this photo illustration taken February 12 2018 REUTERSJose Luis GonzalezIllustration MSCIs broadest index of AsiaPacific shares outside Japan MIAPJ0000PUS fell 01 percent erasing earlier gains of up to 07 pct which were led by South Korea KS11 and Taiwan TWII hitting sixweek highs Japans Nikkei N225 gained 04 percent Wall Street stock indexes ended the day lower with the SampampP 500 SPX losing 018 percent and the Nasdaq Composite IXIC 026 percent The US Federal Reserve raised interest rates on Wednesday and forecast two more hikes for 2018 in its first policy meeting under Chairman Jerome Powell Given that some investors had expected it to project three more rate hikes the guidance was perceived by some as less hawkish than anticipated a positive factor for risk assets in general though analysts noted the Fed was upbeat on the economy overall Fed policymakers notched up rate projections for 2019 and 2020 and also raised the estimated longerterm 8220neutral8221 interest rate a touch suggesting the current tightening cycle could go on longer than previously thought 8220They also forecast three hikes next year and two more in 2020 and clearly revised up the growth forecast as well8221 said Norihiro Fujito senior investment strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities 8220So the picture looks different when you look at longerterm projections That explains the complicated reaction by markets The prospects of continued rate hikes may cap shares8221 he added The yield on twoyear US notes yield slipped back to 2299 percent US2YTRR from 9 12year high of 2366 percent hit on Wednesday while the 10year yield dipped to 2872 percent US10YTRR after an initial spike to 2936 percent That pushed the US dollar lower in the currency market with the dollar index DXY USD testing this month8217s low after suffering its biggest fall in two months on Wednesday The euro EUR gained 02 percent to 12363 extending its recovery from a near threeweek low of 12240 touched earlier in the week The dollar shed 04 percent to 10566 yen JPY turning down on the week to edge closer to its 16month low of 10524 on March 2 The British pound hit a 1 12month high of 14171 building on Wednesday8217s onepercent gains A man walks past an electronic stock quotation board outside a brokerage in Tokyo Japan February 9 2018 REUTERSToru Hanai Strong UK wage data published on Wednesday cemented expectations that the Bank of England will likely signal a May rate hike later in the day at a monetary policy meeting Bucking the trend the Hong Kong dollar HKDD4 hit a 33year low of 78469 per US dollar inching closer to the lower end of the Hong Kong Monetary Authoritys targeted trading band of 775785 But most market participants do not see this bout of weakness as a threat or attack on Hong Kong8217s dollar peg unlike instances in the past With the Fed meeting over investors are watching Trump who is due to sign a memo on imposing tariffs on Chinese imports at 1630 GMT on Thursday Korea Exchange 250557 KS11 Korea Stock Exchange 2060 083 KS11 TWII N225 SPX IXIC Concerns about a trade war between the world8217s two largest economies have kept many investors on guard US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said on Wednesday the tariffs would target China8217s hightechnology sector and could also include restrictions on Chinese investments in the United States Investors worry such a move could trigger countermeasures by China possibly causing a vicious cycle of escalating retaliation Shares on Chinas exchanges were lower the with Shanghai Composite Index SSEC slipping 08 percent to twoweek lows 8220China8217s equity market is relatively domestic We estimate that on average more than 80 percent of revenues are generated in China while only a marginal share comes from the US Still there would be firstorder casualties if trade tensions escalated In the front line would be firms with significant exposure to the US mostly in the tech and consumer sectors8221 wrote analysts at Societe Generale In the energy market oil prices stood near sixweek highs and closed in on a 3year peak set in late January helped by a surprise decline in US inventories strong compliance on OPEC production cuts and persistent concerns on the nuclear pact with Iran US West Texas Intermediate WTI crude futures CLc1 rose to as high as 6574 per barrel CLc1 not far from its January peak of 6666 having gained almost five percent so far this week In contrast copper fell to threemonth low of 6702 per tonne CMCU3 the previous day before bouncing back to 6817 Reporting by Hideyuki Sano Editing by Eric Meijer and Richard Borsuk Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters US President Donald Trump defended his congratulations to Vladimir Putin on the Russian president8217s disputed reelection victory on Wednesday saying he wants Putin8217s help in solving crises from North Korea to Syria and beyond White House Chief of Staff John Kelly sits at the end of the table as US President Donald Trump and Saudi Arabias Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sit down to a working lunch with their delegations at the White House in Washington US March 20 2018 REUTERSJonathan Ernst Trump drew fire from Republicans and Democrats alike for telling reporters on Tuesday that he had congratulated Putin on his reelection and that the two leaders had made tentative plans to meet in the 8220not too distant future8221 The Washington Post reported that Trump in his briefing papers to prepare for the phone call with Putin on Tuesday was specifically warned 8220DO NOT CONGRATULATE8221 the Russian president White House officials did not dispute the report but said whoever leaked it could be subject to dismissal A Trump confidant who asked not to be named said Trump was angry about the leak and a White House official said John Kelly Trump8217s chief of staff was 8220frustrated and deeply disappointed8221 In a pair of tweets on his call with Putin Trump said US news organizations 8220wanted me to excoriate him They are wrong Getting along with Russia and others is a good thing not a bad thing8221 8220They can help solve problems with North Korea Syria Ukraine ISIS Iran and even the coming Arms Race8221 Trump said Trump8217s congratulations to Putin which came shortly after he joined Britain in blaming Russia for a poison nerve gas attack against a former Russian spy in southern England has revived criticism that Trump has been too tolerant of the Russian leader Trump is under investigation by US Special Counsel Robert Mueller on whether he or his aides colluded with Russia during the 2016 presidential election that Trump won Trump calls the probe a political witch hunt Trump8217s overture to Putin has drawn heavy fire by critics who called Sunday8217s election rigged Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said there was a 8220lack of credibility in tallying the result8221 Senator John McCain a longtime Putin critic was even blunter saying 8220An American president does not lead the Free World by congratulating dictators on winning sham elections8221 Administration officials said it was unclear if the president had seen the briefing memo that was leaked to the Post 8220If this story is accurate that means someone leaked the president8217s briefing papers Leaking such information is a fireable offense and likely illegal8221 said a senior White House official who requested anonymity Republican Senator Marco Rubio said he did not like Trump8217s congratulations to Putin but thought the leak was worse 8220If you don8217t like the guy quit But to be this duplicitous and continue to leak things out it8217s dangerous8221 Rubio told reporters White House officials have said that Trump is less trusting of Putin because of Russian activities in Ukraine Syria and elsewhere Last week after initially equivocating about the chemical attack on the former Russian double agent in Salisbury England the White House joined a statement by the leaders of Britain France and Germany in which they said they 8220abhor the attack8221 and blamed it on Moscow Moscow has denied any involvement in the poisoning The issue came up on Wednesday in a telephone call between Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron who is scheduled to visit the White House in late April according to a White House statement 8220The presidents reiterated their solidarity with the United Kingdom in the wake of Russia8217s use of chemical weapons against private citizens on British soil and agreed on the need to take action to hold Russia accountable8221 it said But the poisoning incident did not appear to come up in Trump8217s call with Putin 8220I don8217t believe that was discussed in today8217s call8221 White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters on Tuesday The leak incident was likely to revive questions about whether Trump would embark on more turnover in his senior staff after the departure of Rex Tillerson as secretary of state Trump8217s national security adviser HR McMaster is widely seen as likely to leave at some point and Kelly himself is said by Trump confidants to have tested the nerves of the president Reporting by Steve Holland Editing by Toni Reinhold and Leslie Adler Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>Coexistence seems to be the new bling for environmentalists and bureaucrats making money and careers from wolves and grizzly bears, especially in the mayhem surrounding recent removals of federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) protection for both species. The by-now old saw is that it doesn&#8217;t really matter whether these species are protected or not. In the end, it comes down to whether &#8220;people&#8221; accept these large carnivores, and whether there are on-the-ground measures to promote coexistence&#8212;which is fine at face value. But, in practice, there is more arm waving than substance and ample trite platitudes in lieu of sophisticated understanding when it comes to the contingencies of cohabiting with grizzlies and wolves. In fact, increasingly weak-kneed groups such as Defenders of Wildlife and the Greater Yellowstone Coalition seem to substitute platitudinous exertions and the rhetoric of coexistence for the kind of activism that actually requires a spine.</p> <p>At one level, the art of coexisting with large carnivores such as bears, wolves, and cougars is not rocket science. The key ingredients are well known. Reduced to its essentials, cohabitation with large predators comes down to the skill and diligence with which involved people deploy available tools, whether they have sufficient monetary and material resources, and whether there is aid from knowledgeable coexistence professionals when needed.</p> <p>But attitudes and worldviews are also critically important, especially to the extent that they affect whether people are motivated to even minimally exert themselves on behalf of coexisting with large carnivores, which is the main focus of this piece. That having been said, peoples&#8217; perspectives can be overwhelmingly complex, which is why I also emphasize in this blog and the one next after some basic rubrics or categories that I&#8217;ve found useful for thinking about relations among people, landscapes, and coexistence challenges.</p> <p>Some Tools</p> <p>However, before I get into all of that, it&#8217;s probably useful to offer a high-altitude high-speed survey of the coexistence tools we have, starting with those designed to reduce conflicts with bears in our backyards&#8230;</p> <p>Garbage Tools</p> <p>The presence of foods near people is an enduring challenge with bruins, but one for which the solutions are in a category of no-brainers. Don&#8217;t leave dog food out on the porch. Don&#8217;t put out bird feeders. Get rid of garbage or put it in bear-proof containers, of which there are now many effective designs. If you don&#8217;t want bears in your yard, don&#8217;t plant fruit-producing shrubs and trees. If you care about your domesticated animals, bring them inside at night or, if you are raising chickens, pigs, or goats, make sure they are in a barn or stout electrified enclosure. And so on.</p> <p>Examples of success on this front are legion. Conflicts between bears and people over human-associated foods have been reduced to nil in many places simply because private citizens or public lands managers deployed known tools. You need look no farther than Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks, areas such as the Blackfoot River Valley, or towns such as Big Sky, West Yellowstone, and Cooke City. National Forests have contributed by providing bear-proof food storage boxes and garbage containers in campgrounds and backcountry campsites. Such places were once the locus of escalating and unnecessary conflicts between people and bears but, in many places, no longer.</p> <p>Even so, despite lots of progress dealing with conflicts organized around food in peoples&#8217; literal or figurative backyards, other conflicts between bears and people have escalated. Predation on livestock by grizzly bears has skyrocketed in the Yellowstone ecosystem, as have encounters with big game hunters over hunter-killed carrion or simply by chance with hunters out stalking their prey. Grizzlies along the East Front of the Rockies in north-central Montana are increasingly trampling through fields eating oats, wheat, and corn, as are grizzlies farther west in the Mission Valley. Many of these conflicts are on public land grazing allotments, others on public lands used for hunting, and some on private agricultural lands. Some involve crops, but most organize around bears competing with people for meat.</p> <p>Livestock Tools</p> <p>As with foods in peoples&#8217; yards, there is no shortage of methods for reducing conflicts with bears over livestock, crops, or even animals killed by hunters. Electric fencing can work wonders protecting beehives, sheep, newborn calves, and corn fields. Collecting and composting the remains of livestock dying for all the reasons they do, rather than simply dumping them in a ditch behind the ranch house, can prevent bears developing a cow or sheep habit. Guard dogs and protective herding can help, as can making sure that livestock don&#8217;t bed down at night near the kind of cover used by bears for ambush. Low-stress herding also helps prevent the kind of bawling and bellowing that is tantamount to a dinner bell for bears and wolves. Being especially attentive to and protective of lambing ewes and calving cows is another no-brainer. And so forth.</p> <p>Hunter Tools</p> <p>For hunters, carry capsaicin bear spray, keep a clean camp, don&#8217;t dump carcasses nearby, and sure as hell don&#8217;t leave recent kills out&#8212;especially overnight&#8212;for a bear to find while you futz around getting friends to help cart it out. Moreover, expect to bump into bears if you sneak around in the woods or blunder down a path in the dark. To expect otherwise is just plain dumb. Et cetera&#8230;</p> <p>Again, the basic point is that we don&#8217;t lack tools or even people trying to think of yet more clever non-lethal ways to promote cohabitation of people and carnivores.</p> <p>The Problem of Attitudes and Motivation</p> <p>What we do have are shortages of experts, accessible information, resources, law enforcement, and people willing to make meaningful efforts to prevent conflicts, accommodate predators, and accept residual risks. And, as it turns out, assiduous skillful effort never eliminates risk, whether of human injury or loss of livestock. Somebody will eventually get mauled; sheep and cow calves will get killed. The question is, how often and how seriously? In the end, people living among large carnivores need to abide some level of risk if meaningful coexistence of any sort is to occur&#8212;much like people driving 140 mph at each other on two-lane highways in Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho, not knowing whether the other person is DUI or on their smart phone texting a message.</p> <p>Circling back to where I started, a nub issue when it comes to coexistence is what goes on between peoples&#8217; ears&#8212;basically, their worldviews and attitudes. Just how motivated are people to implement the requisite coexistence practices versus complaining about the inconvenience and cost of living with predators while picking up the phone to avail themselves of predator-killers employed by the taxpayer-funded federal agency named Wildlife Services?</p> <p>But &#8220;people&#8221; are not just one big smoosh, which is what&#8217;s so often implied when wildlife managers talk about &#8220;peoples&#8217;&#8221; or &#8220;the publics&#8217;&#8221; attitudes, usually when advocating the presumed necessity of killing predators paradoxically to recruit &#8220;peoples&#8217;&#8221; support for predators. In fact, even allowing for the fuzziness and complexity of perspectives, &#8220;people&#8221; not only can be usefully lumped into a few broad categories relevant to understanding on-the-ground practical problems of coexistence&#8212;but also need to be lumped if useful orientation to coexistence challenges is to occur, especially at broad scales. And, yes, this still allows for the necessity of dealing with individual humans at some point in the process.</p> <p>With broad categories in mind, a handful have emerged from my several decades of observing people and human-wildlife conflicts in the northern Rockies of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. One schematic that I use at the broadest scale is comprised of four bins: Regressive Reprobates; Reluctant Pragmatists, Uninformed Innocents; and Affirmative Innovators. There are other categories that could be imagined, but I find that these four capture much of the relevant variation among people when diagnosing the main coexistence challenges at a regional scale; say, differentiating the East Front of the Yellowstone ecosystem in Wyoming from the Flathead Valley in northwestern Montana, or the rangeland of the High Divide in southwestern Montana from the dark forests of the Cabinet-Yaak in the far northwestern corner of the same state.</p> <p>So, briefly&#8230;</p> <p>Regressive Reprobates</p> <p>Regressive Reprobates are those people devoted to the original ethos of subjugation that accompanied settlement of the West by Europeans. Nature is to be used and dominated, as are the wild animals therein. Wildlife is to be managed and controlled, with a key distinction made between &#8220;useful&#8221; wildlife such as elk or deer that are to be &#8220;harvested,&#8221; in the agricultural sense of the word, versus &#8220;useless&#8221; or harmful wildlife such as toads or wolves that are to be disregarded or even eliminated, with reluctant provision for persistence in the small postage stamps that we call National Parks.</p> <p>Regressive Reprobates are well-represented among agricultural producers and in industries devoted to extraction of so-called natural resources, notably timber and mining. They have little or no interest in coexisting with large carnivores and are, in fact, often influential advocates for the elimination of wolves or even grizzly bears. They are often in positions of power. They typically see large carnivores as competitors for harvestable game and an economic cost. The last perspective is a bit ironic in that most of these peoples&#8217; land-based incomes in the northern Rockies are heavily subsidized in one way or another by American taxpayers&#8212;including our classic welfare ranchers who benefit from cut-rate grazing on public lands and other substantial economic subsidies.</p> <p>An aside on Wannabe Cowboys</p> <p>One subset of Regressive Reprobates is worth noting given that much of the ranchland in the northern Rockies is owned by very wealthy people who are either largely absentee or, if in residence, removed by only a few generations from rich ancestors who bought their spread. This holds, for example, for most of the Red Rocks Valley, Madison Valley, Beaverhead-Ruby-Jefferson Valley, flanks of the Crazy Mountains, Boulder River Valley, Beartooth Front and upper reaches of the Clark&#8217;s Fork and Green River Valleys surrounding the Yellowstone ecosystem.</p> <p>These people are not hard-scrabble ranchers barely surviving the rigors of raising livestock in this part of the world. Most have money to burn. Most can easily afford the costs of cohabiting with large carnivores. But there is a disturbingly large contingent of these rich folk, most of whom I call Wannabe Cowboys, that don&#8217;t want to make the effort. In fact, they seem to want to be more Cowboy than the cowboys, which often manifests as thuggish intolerance of predators. Less egregiously, some are also suckered by the perverse tax incentives propagated by state legislatures to keep people slaved to agricultural land uses. Having cattle not only justifies trotting around in cowboy paraphernalia; it also gets you an attractive tax break. For all of these reasons, rich Wannabe Cowboys are an interesting, distinguishable, perhaps sleazy, but not wholly overlapping subset of Regressive Reprobates.</p> <p>Reluctant Pragmatists</p> <p>Reluctant Pragmatists probably account for the majority of ranchers and farmers in the northern Rocky Mountains, which is a good thing when it comes to coexisting with large carnivores. Reluctant Pragmatists are typically not strident ideologues like Regressive Reprobates. Most of them reluctantly allow a place for large carnivores such as grizzly bears, wolves, and cougars in the landscapes where they live&#8212;hence reluctant pragmatists. At the very least, they grudgingly acknowledge that these animals and the people who love them are probably not going away any time soon. The derivative conclusion for most Reluctant Pragmatists is that they need to figure out the least costly but most effective ways to cohabit with wolves, grizzly bears, or even mountain lions. They often take pride in their skill at such endeavors. They are, in fact, the kinds of people that we tend to idealize as iconic Americans: mostly civil and pretty good at solving practical problems.</p> <p>Uninformed Innocents</p> <p>This group of people is a hodgepodge insofar as background, circumstances, and even worldviews are concerned. What they do share is substantial ignorance about carnivores, even to the extent of not knowing whether such animals roam where they live or recreate. They are innocents only in the sense that they have little in the way of prior intentions or motivation with respect to large potentially dangerous carnivores, including the potential rigors of coexistence. All of this usually changes with information or upon encountering creatures such as wolves or grizzly bears in the literal or figurative backyard, revealing perhaps a Recalcitrant Reprobate, a Reluctant Pragmatist, or even an Affirmative Innovator. But, until such transactions occur, Uninformed Innocents typically live their lives in blissful even careless ignorance&#8212;which creates its own set of problems.</p> <p>Uninformed Innocents comprise many of those flocking to the northern Rockies from other regions, or even from urban areas such as Missoula or Spokane, to settle on exurban and suburban ranchettes where they then often haphazardly deal with garbage and domestic animals. These are the folks that end up with grizzlies on their porch eating dog food, cougars in the pen eating pet goats or pigs, or every sort of predator among&amp;#160;the chickens eating them. These are the folks who call game wardens in a panic when they actually see an omnipresent mountain lion. This is the group that includes rich Clueless Urbanites who buy literal ranches, staffed by faux cowboys, imagining some sort of ensuing Disneyland full of fun and horseback riding up until &#8220;problems&#8221; occur, which may simply entail a long-range encounter with a grizzly bear.</p> <p>An aside on Clueless Wimps</p> <p>As a category, Uninformed Innocents also awkwardly includes a strange subset of largely out-of-state hunters who venture into grizzly bear habitat either not knowing that grizzlies are there, or so afraid, so unprepared, so ignorant of basic precautions and bear behavior as to guarantee hazardous encounters or inappropriate responses once one happens. A former boss of mine referred to them as Clueless Wimps. These are the ignoramuses from Nebraska who venture back in the dark from a hunt without carrying bear spray and, upon encountering a bear at some distance, can only think to &#8220;sling lead&#8221;&#8212;which often simply makes a tolerable situation into a bad one. These are the yahoos from Pennsylvania who gut-shoot an elk near dark, come back the next morning to find their presumed kill, and then decide any grizzly that&#8217;s appropriated the then-dead elk is a mortal threat. As often as not, these bad behaviors are aided and abetted by Recalcitrant Reprobates operating as local guides for such hunters. Clueless Wimps are perhaps a bit less innocent than other Uninformed Innocents, but certainly every bit as ignorant.</p> <p>Affirmative Innovators</p> <p>Affirmative Innovators are perhaps the most invested of any on the ground in developing, perfecting, and promoting practices that foster coexistence between people and carnivores. These are the folks that actually want large carnivores in the neighborhood, usually because they think it&#8217;s morally correct, but also because the presence of such animals invigorates and enriches their lives. This doesn&#8217;t mean that the presence of large potentially hazardous animals poses no challenges. Rather, Affirmative Innovators typically respond to challenges with commonsense and proven tools. The most creative and motivated of the lot innovate new methods and technologies. Some reach out to neighbors to cultivate tolerance and promote the adoption of preventative practices. Affirmative Innovators combine the virtues of pragmatism with a gift for creativity, nurtured by an expansive moral universe that accommodates wild animals and all of the accompanying richness, inconvenience, and even hazards.</p> <p>An aside on Coexistence Professionals</p> <p>Among Affirmative Innovators is an uncommon breed that identifies as Coexistence Professionals. These folks devote their professional lives to fostering the closest approximation we can hope for to peaceful coexistence between people and large carnivores. Coexistence Professionals typically focus on wolves and grizzly bears partly because these large carnivores are charismatic, endangered, yet colonizing new country; but more pragmatically, derivatively, because what little money there is to support coexistence work typically gets dumped on these two species.</p> <p>Coexistence Professionals are rare enough, but effective Coexistence Professionals are rarer still. Not only are resources limited, so too are qualifying personalities. A truly effective professional needs to be highly skilled in coexistence techniques and, in addition, motivated, creative, modest, and respectful&#8212;on top of being knit-in to sustainable funding sources. Sustained motivation is needed simply because the work is hard, unending, and sometimes thankless. Modesty and respectfulness are requisite primarily because much of the work entails interaction with cantankerous people who easily take offense. And without obvious skill in the promulgated techniques, a Coexistence Professional is unlikely to be respected in turn. All-in-all, this combination of talents and traits is so scarce as to make numbers of effective Coexistence Professionals a major limiting factor.</p> <p>An aside on Conscientious Conservationists</p> <p>In keeping with a focus on rich land-owners, a final subpopulation of Affirmative Innovators is worth differentiating comprised of wealthy people I call Conscientious Conservationists. These folks stand in contrast too, although not exclusive of, Wannabe Cowboys. Unlike most Wannabe Cowboys, Conscientious Conservationists exert considerable effort and deploy substantial resources to foster coexistence with large predators. They are among the only livestock owners I know who have seriously considered getting rid of cows or sheep in places where landscape conditions guarantee chronic conflict, despite the most innovative of husbandry practices. But, then, most of these ostensible ranchers are so little dependent on income from livestock and so wealthy from other sources that they can afford such a move&#8212;one could argue, should consider such a move.</p> <p>But There&#8217;s More</p> <p>I&#8217;ve provided here a way of parsing out participants in the drama of people coexisting with large carnivores&#8230;at least according to a schematic that makes sense to me, with potential application to the northern US Rocky Mountains. But the real meat of the issue is then recognizing that these different participants respond differently to different modes of engagement, and that all of this coalesces in diagnostic ways to characterize specific landscapes.</p> <p>In the second part of this series on contingencies of coexistence&#8212;to follow next week&#8212;I talk a bit more about relations between thematic participants and various broadly defined motivators, and how this maps onto literal landscapes, featuring the Cabinet-Yaak ecosystem, the Flathead-Mission Valleys, the East Front of the Montana Rockies, the Blackfoot Valley, the High Divide, and the east front of the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem.</p>

Contingencies of Coexistence: Parsing the Participants

https://counterpunch.org/2017/10/31/contingencies-of-coexistence-parsing-the-participants/

2017-10-31

4left

Coexistence seems to be the new bling for environmentalists and bureaucrats making money and careers from wolves and grizzly bears especially in the mayhem surrounding recent removals of federal Endangered Species Act ESA protection for both species The bynow old saw is that it doesn8217t really matter whether these species are protected or not In the end it comes down to whether 8220people8221 accept these large carnivores and whether there are ontheground measures to promote coexistence8212which is fine at face value But in practice there is more arm waving than substance and ample trite platitudes in lieu of sophisticated understanding when it comes to the contingencies of cohabiting with grizzlies and wolves In fact increasingly weakkneed groups such as Defenders of Wildlife and the Greater Yellowstone Coalition seem to substitute platitudinous exertions and the rhetoric of coexistence for the kind of activism that actually requires a spine At one level the art of coexisting with large carnivores such as bears wolves and cougars is not rocket science The key ingredients are well known Reduced to its essentials cohabitation with large predators comes down to the skill and diligence with which involved people deploy available tools whether they have sufficient monetary and material resources and whether there is aid from knowledgeable coexistence professionals when needed But attitudes and worldviews are also critically important especially to the extent that they affect whether people are motivated to even minimally exert themselves on behalf of coexisting with large carnivores which is the main focus of this piece That having been said peoples8217 perspectives can be overwhelmingly complex which is why I also emphasize in this blog and the one next after some basic rubrics or categories that I8217ve found useful for thinking about relations among people landscapes and coexistence challenges Some Tools However before I get into all of that it8217s probably useful to offer a highaltitude highspeed survey of the coexistence tools we have starting with those designed to reduce conflicts with bears in our backyards8230 Garbage Tools The presence of foods near people is an enduring challenge with bruins but one for which the solutions are in a category of nobrainers Don8217t leave dog food out on the porch Don8217t put out bird feeders Get rid of garbage or put it in bearproof containers of which there are now many effective designs If you don8217t want bears in your yard don8217t plant fruitproducing shrubs and trees If you care about your domesticated animals bring them inside at night or if you are raising chickens pigs or goats make sure they are in a barn or stout electrified enclosure And so on Examples of success on this front are legion Conflicts between bears and people over humanassociated foods have been reduced to nil in many places simply because private citizens or public lands managers deployed known tools You need look no farther than Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks areas such as the Blackfoot River Valley or towns such as Big Sky West Yellowstone and Cooke City National Forests have contributed by providing bearproof food storage boxes and garbage containers in campgrounds and backcountry campsites Such places were once the locus of escalating and unnecessary conflicts between people and bears but in many places no longer Even so despite lots of progress dealing with conflicts organized around food in peoples8217 literal or figurative backyards other conflicts between bears and people have escalated Predation on livestock by grizzly bears has skyrocketed in the Yellowstone ecosystem as have encounters with big game hunters over hunterkilled carrion or simply by chance with hunters out stalking their prey Grizzlies along the East Front of the Rockies in northcentral Montana are increasingly trampling through fields eating oats wheat and corn as are grizzlies farther west in the Mission Valley Many of these conflicts are on public land grazing allotments others on public lands used for hunting and some on private agricultural lands Some involve crops but most organize around bears competing with people for meat Livestock Tools As with foods in peoples8217 yards there is no shortage of methods for reducing conflicts with bears over livestock crops or even animals killed by hunters Electric fencing can work wonders protecting beehives sheep newborn calves and corn fields Collecting and composting the remains of livestock dying for all the reasons they do rather than simply dumping them in a ditch behind the ranch house can prevent bears developing a cow or sheep habit Guard dogs and protective herding can help as can making sure that livestock don8217t bed down at night near the kind of cover used by bears for ambush Lowstress herding also helps prevent the kind of bawling and bellowing that is tantamount to a dinner bell for bears and wolves Being especially attentive to and protective of lambing ewes and calving cows is another nobrainer And so forth Hunter Tools For hunters carry capsaicin bear spray keep a clean camp don8217t dump carcasses nearby and sure as hell don8217t leave recent kills out8212especially overnight8212for a bear to find while you futz around getting friends to help cart it out Moreover expect to bump into bears if you sneak around in the woods or blunder down a path in the dark To expect otherwise is just plain dumb Et cetera8230 Again the basic point is that we don8217t lack tools or even people trying to think of yet more clever nonlethal ways to promote cohabitation of people and carnivores The Problem of Attitudes and Motivation What we do have are shortages of experts accessible information resources law enforcement and people willing to make meaningful efforts to prevent conflicts accommodate predators and accept residual risks And as it turns out assiduous skillful effort never eliminates risk whether of human injury or loss of livestock Somebody will eventually get mauled sheep and cow calves will get killed The question is how often and how seriously In the end people living among large carnivores need to abide some level of risk if meaningful coexistence of any sort is to occur8212much like people driving 140 mph at each other on twolane highways in Montana Wyoming and Idaho not knowing whether the other person is DUI or on their smart phone texting a message Circling back to where I started a nub issue when it comes to coexistence is what goes on between peoples8217 ears8212basically their worldviews and attitudes Just how motivated are people to implement the requisite coexistence practices versus complaining about the inconvenience and cost of living with predators while picking up the phone to avail themselves of predatorkillers employed by the taxpayerfunded federal agency named Wildlife Services But 8220people8221 are not just one big smoosh which is what8217s so often implied when wildlife managers talk about 8220peoples82178221 or 8220the publics82178221 attitudes usually when advocating the presumed necessity of killing predators paradoxically to recruit 8220peoples82178221 support for predators In fact even allowing for the fuzziness and complexity of perspectives 8220people8221 not only can be usefully lumped into a few broad categories relevant to understanding ontheground practical problems of coexistence8212but also need to be lumped if useful orientation to coexistence challenges is to occur especially at broad scales And yes this still allows for the necessity of dealing with individual humans at some point in the process With broad categories in mind a handful have emerged from my several decades of observing people and humanwildlife conflicts in the northern Rockies of Wyoming Montana and Idaho One schematic that I use at the broadest scale is comprised of four bins Regressive Reprobates Reluctant Pragmatists Uninformed Innocents and Affirmative Innovators There are other categories that could be imagined but I find that these four capture much of the relevant variation among people when diagnosing the main coexistence challenges at a regional scale say differentiating the East Front of the Yellowstone ecosystem in Wyoming from the Flathead Valley in northwestern Montana or the rangeland of the High Divide in southwestern Montana from the dark forests of the CabinetYaak in the far northwestern corner of the same state So briefly8230 Regressive Reprobates Regressive Reprobates are those people devoted to the original ethos of subjugation that accompanied settlement of the West by Europeans Nature is to be used and dominated as are the wild animals therein Wildlife is to be managed and controlled with a key distinction made between 8220useful8221 wildlife such as elk or deer that are to be 8220harvested8221 in the agricultural sense of the word versus 8220useless8221 or harmful wildlife such as toads or wolves that are to be disregarded or even eliminated with reluctant provision for persistence in the small postage stamps that we call National Parks Regressive Reprobates are wellrepresented among agricultural producers and in industries devoted to extraction of socalled natural resources notably timber and mining They have little or no interest in coexisting with large carnivores and are in fact often influential advocates for the elimination of wolves or even grizzly bears They are often in positions of power They typically see large carnivores as competitors for harvestable game and an economic cost The last perspective is a bit ironic in that most of these peoples8217 landbased incomes in the northern Rockies are heavily subsidized in one way or another by American taxpayers8212including our classic welfare ranchers who benefit from cutrate grazing on public lands and other substantial economic subsidies An aside on Wannabe Cowboys One subset of Regressive Reprobates is worth noting given that much of the ranchland in the northern Rockies is owned by very wealthy people who are either largely absentee or if in residence removed by only a few generations from rich ancestors who bought their spread This holds for example for most of the Red Rocks Valley Madison Valley BeaverheadRubyJefferson Valley flanks of the Crazy Mountains Boulder River Valley Beartooth Front and upper reaches of the Clark8217s Fork and Green River Valleys surrounding the Yellowstone ecosystem These people are not hardscrabble ranchers barely surviving the rigors of raising livestock in this part of the world Most have money to burn Most can easily afford the costs of cohabiting with large carnivores But there is a disturbingly large contingent of these rich folk most of whom I call Wannabe Cowboys that don8217t want to make the effort In fact they seem to want to be more Cowboy than the cowboys which often manifests as thuggish intolerance of predators Less egregiously some are also suckered by the perverse tax incentives propagated by state legislatures to keep people slaved to agricultural land uses Having cattle not only justifies trotting around in cowboy paraphernalia it also gets you an attractive tax break For all of these reasons rich Wannabe Cowboys are an interesting distinguishable perhaps sleazy but not wholly overlapping subset of Regressive Reprobates Reluctant Pragmatists Reluctant Pragmatists probably account for the majority of ranchers and farmers in the northern Rocky Mountains which is a good thing when it comes to coexisting with large carnivores Reluctant Pragmatists are typically not strident ideologues like Regressive Reprobates Most of them reluctantly allow a place for large carnivores such as grizzly bears wolves and cougars in the landscapes where they live8212hence reluctant pragmatists At the very least they grudgingly acknowledge that these animals and the people who love them are probably not going away any time soon The derivative conclusion for most Reluctant Pragmatists is that they need to figure out the least costly but most effective ways to cohabit with wolves grizzly bears or even mountain lions They often take pride in their skill at such endeavors They are in fact the kinds of people that we tend to idealize as iconic Americans mostly civil and pretty good at solving practical problems Uninformed Innocents This group of people is a hodgepodge insofar as background circumstances and even worldviews are concerned What they do share is substantial ignorance about carnivores even to the extent of not knowing whether such animals roam where they live or recreate They are innocents only in the sense that they have little in the way of prior intentions or motivation with respect to large potentially dangerous carnivores including the potential rigors of coexistence All of this usually changes with information or upon encountering creatures such as wolves or grizzly bears in the literal or figurative backyard revealing perhaps a Recalcitrant Reprobate a Reluctant Pragmatist or even an Affirmative Innovator But until such transactions occur Uninformed Innocents typically live their lives in blissful even careless ignorance8212which creates its own set of problems Uninformed Innocents comprise many of those flocking to the northern Rockies from other regions or even from urban areas such as Missoula or Spokane to settle on exurban and suburban ranchettes where they then often haphazardly deal with garbage and domestic animals These are the folks that end up with grizzlies on their porch eating dog food cougars in the pen eating pet goats or pigs or every sort of predator amongamp160the chickens eating them These are the folks who call game wardens in a panic when they actually see an omnipresent mountain lion This is the group that includes rich Clueless Urbanites who buy literal ranches staffed by faux cowboys imagining some sort of ensuing Disneyland full of fun and horseback riding up until 8220problems8221 occur which may simply entail a longrange encounter with a grizzly bear An aside on Clueless Wimps As a category Uninformed Innocents also awkwardly includes a strange subset of largely outofstate hunters who venture into grizzly bear habitat either not knowing that grizzlies are there or so afraid so unprepared so ignorant of basic precautions and bear behavior as to guarantee hazardous encounters or inappropriate responses once one happens A former boss of mine referred to them as Clueless Wimps These are the ignoramuses from Nebraska who venture back in the dark from a hunt without carrying bear spray and upon encountering a bear at some distance can only think to 8220sling lead82218212which often simply makes a tolerable situation into a bad one These are the yahoos from Pennsylvania who gutshoot an elk near dark come back the next morning to find their presumed kill and then decide any grizzly that8217s appropriated the thendead elk is a mortal threat As often as not these bad behaviors are aided and abetted by Recalcitrant Reprobates operating as local guides for such hunters Clueless Wimps are perhaps a bit less innocent than other Uninformed Innocents but certainly every bit as ignorant Affirmative Innovators Affirmative Innovators are perhaps the most invested of any on the ground in developing perfecting and promoting practices that foster coexistence between people and carnivores These are the folks that actually want large carnivores in the neighborhood usually because they think it8217s morally correct but also because the presence of such animals invigorates and enriches their lives This doesn8217t mean that the presence of large potentially hazardous animals poses no challenges Rather Affirmative Innovators typically respond to challenges with commonsense and proven tools The most creative and motivated of the lot innovate new methods and technologies Some reach out to neighbors to cultivate tolerance and promote the adoption of preventative practices Affirmative Innovators combine the virtues of pragmatism with a gift for creativity nurtured by an expansive moral universe that accommodates wild animals and all of the accompanying richness inconvenience and even hazards An aside on Coexistence Professionals Among Affirmative Innovators is an uncommon breed that identifies as Coexistence Professionals These folks devote their professional lives to fostering the closest approximation we can hope for to peaceful coexistence between people and large carnivores Coexistence Professionals typically focus on wolves and grizzly bears partly because these large carnivores are charismatic endangered yet colonizing new country but more pragmatically derivatively because what little money there is to support coexistence work typically gets dumped on these two species Coexistence Professionals are rare enough but effective Coexistence Professionals are rarer still Not only are resources limited so too are qualifying personalities A truly effective professional needs to be highly skilled in coexistence techniques and in addition motivated creative modest and respectful8212on top of being knitin to sustainable funding sources Sustained motivation is needed simply because the work is hard unending and sometimes thankless Modesty and respectfulness are requisite primarily because much of the work entails interaction with cantankerous people who easily take offense And without obvious skill in the promulgated techniques a Coexistence Professional is unlikely to be respected in turn Allinall this combination of talents and traits is so scarce as to make numbers of effective Coexistence Professionals a major limiting factor An aside on Conscientious Conservationists In keeping with a focus on rich landowners a final subpopulation of Affirmative Innovators is worth differentiating comprised of wealthy people I call Conscientious Conservationists These folks stand in contrast too although not exclusive of Wannabe Cowboys Unlike most Wannabe Cowboys Conscientious Conservationists exert considerable effort and deploy substantial resources to foster coexistence with large predators They are among the only livestock owners I know who have seriously considered getting rid of cows or sheep in places where landscape conditions guarantee chronic conflict despite the most innovative of husbandry practices But then most of these ostensible ranchers are so little dependent on income from livestock and so wealthy from other sources that they can afford such a move8212one could argue should consider such a move But There8217s More I8217ve provided here a way of parsing out participants in the drama of people coexisting with large carnivores8230at least according to a schematic that makes sense to me with potential application to the northern US Rocky Mountains But the real meat of the issue is then recognizing that these different participants respond differently to different modes of engagement and that all of this coalesces in diagnostic ways to characterize specific landscapes In the second part of this series on contingencies of coexistence8212to follow next week8212I talk a bit more about relations between thematic participants and various broadly defined motivators and how this maps onto literal landscapes featuring the CabinetYaak ecosystem the FlatheadMission Valleys the East Front of the Montana Rockies the Blackfoot Valley the High Divide and the east front of the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem

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<p>Noel Lyons, a member of the <a href="http://usskiteam.com/%20" type="external">U.S. Ski Team</a> from 1976 to 1981 and once one of the country&#8217;s top professional skiers, found herself in a Vail, Colo., hospital in the spring of 2010 after another round of binge drinking. &#8220;I had given up on myself,&#8221; she would say later. Her boyfriend and sister decided she needed rehabilitative help. Because their resources were limited, they turned to the free <a href="http://totalfreedomprogram.org%20" type="external">Total Freedom Program</a>, a Florida ministry for women and men that identifies itself as Christian.</p> <p>Cate Iannello, the wife of the leader of Total Freedom Program, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIvIcBx41SM" type="external">&#8220;Pastor Guy,&#8221;</a> met Lyons in July 2010 at the Orlando airport and drove her to what she called &#8220;the girls&#8217; house,&#8221; a yellow ranch house in a nondescript neighborhood of nearby Ocoee. Lyons says she arrived &#8220;scared out of my mind&#8221; and holding a decorative pillow with the image of a buffalo on it. Because the pillow had &#8220;past associations&#8221; that could evoke demons, she was soon told to put it in the trash.</p> <p>Lyons walked into the living room with the pastor&#8217;s wife. She met a woman there who introduced herself as Connie Prince, &#8220;the house mom&#8221; &#8212; a position Lyons herself would assume eventually. She was introduced to about five other &#8220;girls,&#8221; all white and ranging in age from the 20s into the 50s, who lived in the house.</p> <p>The house mom rifled through Lyons&#8217; bag of clothes. She pulled out particular garments and told her, &#8220;Well, you won&#8217;t be wearing that.&#8221; Prince confiscated the small amount of money Lyons had, her Ambien sleeping pills, cellphone and phone card.</p> <p /> <p>&#8220;Later on I found out it was inappropriate or had accursed symbols,&#8221; Lyons said of the confiscated clothes when we met at the home of a friend outside Philadelphia where she was staying.</p> <p>Lyons, now 50, toured the group house with a woman named Susan. Susan, in her early 20s, showed Lyons the bedroom the two women would share. It had bare walls and three beds with mismatched sheets, three dilapidated dressers and one closet. Lyons was then taken to the kitchen, where she sat with other women at a table for prayers and dinner. Afterward the women went into the living room for Lyons&#8217; &#8220;praying in&#8221; ceremony. She was instructed to sit on the floor. The women sat in a circle around her.</p> <p>&#8220;Then they make sure I had no tattoos, which are accursed items,&#8221; Lyons said. New arrivals with tattoos had to be specially anointed to excise the demons that the ministry claimed were embedded in tattoos.</p> <p>The circle of women prayed over her, including in the gibberish of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossolalia" type="external">&#8220;tongues,&#8221;</a> and anointed her with oil. The women walked through the house after the ceremony. They said more prayers in tongues to rid the house of demons. They dipped their fingers in oil and marked the doorjambs with the sign of the cross to drive out evil spirits. &#8220;It&#8217;s called the Housecleaning Prayer,&#8221; Lyons said. &#8220;And a lot of times they&#8217;ll put a cross over the beds where our heads rest.&#8221;</p> <p>Lyons began to speak to me in a stream of nonsensical sounds to imitate praying in tongues. She instinctively crossed her arms over her chest. &#8220;It&#8217;s like in chanting,&#8221; she said. &#8220;I&#8217;m holding my heart because I believed that the enemy was trying to get my heart. So I&#8217;m always covering my heart.&#8221;</p> <p>She was given a rules handbook and told she had to sign an &#8220;intake form&#8221; promising to obey the community&#8217;s edicts. She read in the handbook that she would be forbidden to contact anyone except her immediate family for nine months, which distressed her because of her relationship with her boyfriend in Vail. The form said she would forfeit the right to sue the ministry, which she found odd. She refused to sign the form without a lawyer. She went to her room distraught and frightened, unsure of what to do. She could not sleep. In the middle of the night she went outside and thought about hotwiring one of the cars in order to leave, but, she said, &#8220;I had nowhere to go, and I had no money. I had no contact with anyone.&#8221; At 5:30 a.m. she was told it was time for the ritual morning prayers.</p> <p>&#8220;The house mom leads the prayers and everyone has to be in unison with the prayers.&#8221; She called these &#8220;the paper prayers&#8221; because they were printed out on sheets.</p> <p>&#8220;You say your warfare prayer, your deliverance prayer, your third dimensional warrior prayer, it&#8217;ll make sense to you later on,&#8221; she explained. &#8220;It&#8217;s all warfare praying.&#8221;</p> <p>Lyons was told to go to a designated spot in the house &#8220;where you&#8217;re supposed to communicate with God and have your &#8216;David cave time&#8217; with him.&#8221; Before the start of her &#8220;David cave time,&#8221; Lyons, frustrated by being unable to do her normal physical workout, did sit-ups and push-ups in the living room. As she exercised, &#8220;people are just walking by, not talking to me,&#8221; she said.</p> <p>Lyons was told she was allowed only one cup of coffee a day. She was told that she was permitted to speak by phone only with immediate family members and only when a person of the community monitored the conversation.</p> <p>Every resident, she found, was expected to be an informant if she or he saw someone break the rules. Many of those at the ministry compound had recently come out of prison and were in the facility as a halfway house requirement.</p> <p>The female residents &#8220;become a posse,&#8221; Lyons said. &#8220;Remember, a lot of these people came from prison. None of the people are qualified to do anything. A lot of these people are supposed to be in a house that transitions them to the real world.&#8221; Breakfast was served at 6:30. And on her first morning in Ocoee she was taken to &#8220;morning intercession,&#8221; which would occur every day for the three months of Lyons&#8217; initial indoctrination. It was held in a place called the &#8220;war room&#8221; in another house on the cul-de-sac where the group owns four or five houses. The war room was open and lined on two sides by single rows of folding chairs. The men sat on one side. The women sat on the other. Lyons was told when she entered the war room that she was not permitted to talk to or have eye contact with the men either there or outside. Segregation of the sexes was rigidly enforced. Courtship and relationships could be carried out within the community only if they were approved and mediated by the pastor. Relationships outside the community were forbidden.</p> <p>All new arrivals during their first three months spent every morning and every afternoon in the war room &#8220;doing teachings,&#8221; which consisted of listening to recordings from Pastor Guy Iannello&#8217;s <a href="https://www.facebook.com/EternalLibrary?filter=1%20" type="external">Eternal Library of 800 Teachings</a>. They were required to take copious notes. Lyons showed me a stack of about a dozen white legal pads filled with her notes. After three months, if program approval was granted, a resident was permitted to get an outside job to help support the ministry. By that time, residents typically had severed ties with most friends and relatives.</p> <p>The morning routine included recorded religious music followed by prayer. There were prayers for orphans, single mothers or fathers and those who had been abandoned. Then the group prayed in tongues. She wondered: &#8220;What does this have to do with helping me with my problem?&#8221;</p> <p>At 8:30 a.m. on her first full day at the compound she was taken to the office to see &#8220;Mom,&#8221; the pastor&#8217;s mother-in-law. She was given a lengthy form and told to circle all her &#8220;sins,&#8221; such as sex before marriage, lesbianism, sodomy, masturbation, adultery, oral sex, abortion, vanity, self-pity, swearing or cursing. She circled the words that applied to her. It was only later, she said, that she was told that each of these sins was &#8220;identified as a demon.&#8221;</p> <p>Lyons, who during our meeting had a box of literature, videos and other materials of the ministry, handed me a tattered red book titled &#8220;Prayers.&#8221; She opened the book to Page 36. I read the four pages known as the &#8220;Sin List.&#8221; It included hundreds of sins, among them &#8220;loving to curse,&#8221; &#8220;killing,&#8221; &#8220;Baal worship&#8221; and &#8220;sacrificing children to demons.&#8221;</p> <p>Lyons complained to Mom that she could not speak in tongues, to which Mom replied: &#8220;Yabba dabba doo. Just start saying, &#8216;Yabba dabba doo,&#8217; and the Holy Spirit will help you. Fake it until you make it.&#8221; Mom told Lyons she was &#8220;being rebellious&#8221; and that &#8220;rebellion is witchcraft.&#8221; &#8220;That was a huge thing that they played on,&#8221; Lyons said, &#8220;that whole rebellion thing.&#8221;</p> <p>She still refused to sign the forms. She was ushered into the pastor&#8217;s office to see <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;amp;v=PAl5R2N0es4#at=25%20" type="external">a video</a> called &#8220;You Can&#8217;t Fight What You Can&#8217;t See.&#8221; All who were inducted into the community were required to watch it. She met with Iannello on the second day. He told her to sign the forms and give the program two weeks. She signed.</p> <p>Because Lyons&#8217; second night at the compound was a Tuesday, she was taken with the other members of the community to Way of Grace Church in Ocoee. The eight female residents of the Total Freedom Program community sat on one side of the church, and the 20 male residents sat on the other. About 15 outsiders joined them. Lyons listened to a sermon on obedience to God. Mom told her later that God had put the message in the preacher&#8217;s heart to address Lyons&#8217; rebelliousness.</p> <p>On Friday nights the group held services in the sanctuary of the Ocoee Oaks Church.</p> <p>During the daily indoctrination Lyons sat in the war room from 8:30 to noon listening to recordings and taking notes. She went back after lunch to sit there from 1 to 4. During the rest of the day she was confined to her house.</p> <p>&#8220;I was trying to do some [physical] exercise,&#8221; Lyons said. &#8220;They&#8217;re like, &#8216;You can&#8217;t do that. You have to put God first. If you get done with God, then you can exercise.&#8217;&amp;#160;&#8220;</p> <p>She repeated to me the core of the pastor&#8217;s message: &#8220;You came here thinking you had a problem with drugs and alcohol, but this is a Holy Spirit stickup and this is Holy Spirit boot camp. You&#8217;re going to find the Holy Spirit. You&#8217;re going to find your hope and your faith. You&#8217;re going to find God. You&#8217;re going to find that which you didn&#8217;t have. You&#8217;re going to be disciples of God.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;The constant theme is a chain of command, of authority, God being the ultimate authority,&#8221; Lyons said, &#8220;and that he [God] assigned people to you to watch over you, your spiritual father.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;It&#8217;s very much like boot camp in the Army,&#8221; she said. &#8220;Pastor Guy used to be in the [Navy]. He also used to be a big drug lord. Then he got saved, supposedly. So now he has this ministry on the cul-de-sac. A lot of the programming is to get you thinking there&#8217;s obedience and there&#8217;s rebellion &#8212; [and rebellion] is what caused your problems in the first place. They get you hooked into a different way of thinking that your problem is demons.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;They made me get a food stamp card,&#8221; she said, handing me a copy of her application for food stamps. &#8220;Then when I got my food stamp card it went to the house mom. The house mom who bought the groceries used all of our food stamp cards.&#8221;</p> <p>By the end of the three months Lyons was broken and obedient. She was permitted to look for an outside job. She wanted nothing to do with those who had been her friends before she went to Florida. She believed they were heathens and conduits of demons into her life. She was assigned to work in the group&#8217;s office promoting ministry events. She called merchants and asked them to donate items or services for silent auctions. She worked in the office for two months. She then took a job at a Dillard&#8217;s Department store. She would work there for more than two years. The ministry took rent, her tithe &#8212; 10 percent of her income &#8212; and utility costs from her pay. She also had to pay the ministry $5 a day to be driven to Dillard&#8217;s, four miles away. &#8220;They [were] nickel-and-diming me to death,&#8221; Lyons said.</p> <p>Lyons said that those who did not work at outside jobs worked for the ministry as &#8220;slave labor&#8221; and never could save &#8220;enough money to leave.&#8221;</p> <p>During her time in Total Freedom Program she saw herself as a part of the ministry. She dutifully confessed all urges, defined as sins, to her prayer group. She was given greater responsibilities within the ministry, including being a house mom. She was filled with self-loathing for &#8220;everything that was natural in me.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;Anything that comes before God is an idol,&#8221; she said. &#8220;Exercise, my whole past experience, friends. I started to feel like I had this <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Job+1%3A13-22&amp;amp;version=CEV%20" type="external">Job experience</a>, this lose-everything experience.&#8221;</p> <p>Lyons had been turned. She was terrified of demons, which other church members said they could see around her in the form of lizards. She fervently recited the litany of required prayers. She dutifully attended the meetings and services. She imposed the rules on others. At night, during her required <a href="http://eternallibrary.org/Prayers/Bedtime_Warfare_Prayer.pdf" type="external">&#8220;Bedtime Warfare Prayer,&#8221;</a> she would repeat to herself:</p> <p>Father, I come to you in the name of Jesus and repent every thought, spoken word, deed, that was displeasing to You and any uncompleted vow that I committed to.</p> <p>I break every curse that was placed on me either self-imposed or put by any demonic source and anything spoken over me that was not from You.</p> <p>I curse every corruptible seed that was implanted in me and I command them to wither and die and I loose myself from every spirit associated with those seeds. Allow your righteous seeds to grow and bear fruit for Your glory.</p> <p>I apply the blood of Jesus over my house upon the roof, walls and floors, upon all members, possessions, automobiles, and my spirit, soul body and dreams in Jesus Name.</p> <p>I bind up any spirits of terror, fear, nightmares, or torment, every mind-binding, evil, foul, lying and unclean spirit that may try to come and torment me in any way tonight and I muzzle the voice of the stranger. Satan, you and any evil spirit in your kingdom that could be in or around our properties, I bind you and drive you out in the Name of Jesus. Any astral projections or soul travel spirits that could be in or around our property, I command you, in the Name of Jesus, to go back where you came from.</p> <p>Father, please send Your warring angels to watch over me and to hold back the forces of Satan and his kingdom while I sleep. Send your ministering angels to come and minister to me as I sleep. Holy Spirit please come and flow though me, giving me dreams, visions, health, supernatural rest and let me wake up refreshed. I pray all this in Jesus name.</p> <p>Patrice, a woman who had left the community, began to talk to Lyons outside the compound. She urged Lyons to get out of the group because it was &#8220;unhealthy.&#8221; Lyons during a visit from her sister managed to pack her belongings and flee the compound. The group, unable now to hold her, told her she could leave but would fail in the outside world.</p> <p>After she moved out, Lyons&#8217; job went sour because she failed to make sales quotas. She had few friends at work because her indoctrination had made her &#8220;a freak,&#8221; she said. She did not engage in what the ministry called &#8220;secular talk.&#8221;</p> <p>She gravitated to Christian megachurches that she now calls &#8220;sub-cults.&#8221; The trauma, emotional abuse and manipulation Lyons suffered at the hands of Total Freedom Program were familiar to me because of the two years I spent investigating the Christian right for <a href="http://www.amazon.com/American-Fascists-Christian-Right-America/dp/0743284461/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;amp;ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1374456154&amp;amp;sr=1-1&amp;amp;keywords=american+fascist%20" type="external">my book</a> &#8220;American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.&#8221; In the closed world of the Christian right, pastors, &#8220;disciplers&#8221; and &#8220;prayer partners&#8221; define all doubt, questioning or &#8220;backsliding&#8221; as a sin and the work of Satan. Submission to authority becomes the only proper way to serve God. Critical judgment is abolished. Religious clich&#233;s shut down independent thought. All other ways of living become a compact with the demonic. A persecution mentality is pounded into adherents, making them deeply distrustful of outsiders. It is an ideology of fear and abject obedience to authority. And all those who walk away are condemned and branded as apostates. Lyons&#8217; story is the story of millions of Americans who live or have lived inside these hermetically sealed systems of &#8220;Christian&#8221; indoctrination.</p> <p>Eventually, Lyons recovered enough of herself to leave Florida. Before she departed she packed documentation of her stay at the Iannello complex, hoping some reporter would tell her story as a warning to others. Through friends she contacted me.</p> <p>When Lyons drove out of the Ocoee area last week &#8212; in her 1991 Honda Civic, with some 236,000 miles on it and duct tape holding up the dashboard &#8212; it was emotionally wrenching for her. She repeated over and over to herself in the car: &#8220;I&#8217;ve got to keep going, I&#8217;ve got to keep going. I gotta get out of here now. I gotta get out of here now.&#8221;</p> <p>She continues to be haunted by the indoctrination. She is struggling to shake off a belief system that defined as evil her natural instincts, her thoughts, and her desires for personal happiness and independence. Her speech remains infected with the jargon of the ministry. She says her fight now is to become whole.</p> <p>The experience with the program &#8220;sucker-punched me,&#8221; she said. &#8220;They took away my self-respect and my self-esteem. They eviscerated me. They took the life out of me. Any natural instinct I had was condemned. I&#8217;m doing better [now], but I maintain a certain numbness because of the damage. I never fought so hard, once I realized my predicament, to get myself back.&#8221;</p>

Mind Rape and the Christian Right

https://truthdig.com/articles/mind-rape-and-the-christian-right/

2013-07-22

4left

Noel Lyons a member of the US Ski Team from 1976 to 1981 and once one of the country8217s top professional skiers found herself in a Vail Colo hospital in the spring of 2010 after another round of binge drinking 8220I had given up on myself8221 she would say later Her boyfriend and sister decided she needed rehabilitative help Because their resources were limited they turned to the free Total Freedom Program a Florida ministry for women and men that identifies itself as Christian Cate Iannello the wife of the leader of Total Freedom Program 8220Pastor Guy8221 met Lyons in July 2010 at the Orlando airport and drove her to what she called 8220the girls8217 house8221 a yellow ranch house in a nondescript neighborhood of nearby Ocoee Lyons says she arrived 8220scared out of my mind8221 and holding a decorative pillow with the image of a buffalo on it Because the pillow had 8220past associations8221 that could evoke demons she was soon told to put it in the trash Lyons walked into the living room with the pastor8217s wife She met a woman there who introduced herself as Connie Prince 8220the house mom8221 8212 a position Lyons herself would assume eventually She was introduced to about five other 8220girls8221 all white and ranging in age from the 20s into the 50s who lived in the house The house mom rifled through Lyons8217 bag of clothes She pulled out particular garments and told her 8220Well you won8217t be wearing that8221 Prince confiscated the small amount of money Lyons had her Ambien sleeping pills cellphone and phone card 8220Later on I found out it was inappropriate or had accursed symbols8221 Lyons said of the confiscated clothes when we met at the home of a friend outside Philadelphia where she was staying Lyons now 50 toured the group house with a woman named Susan Susan in her early 20s showed Lyons the bedroom the two women would share It had bare walls and three beds with mismatched sheets three dilapidated dressers and one closet Lyons was then taken to the kitchen where she sat with other women at a table for prayers and dinner Afterward the women went into the living room for Lyons8217 8220praying in8221 ceremony She was instructed to sit on the floor The women sat in a circle around her 8220Then they make sure I had no tattoos which are accursed items8221 Lyons said New arrivals with tattoos had to be specially anointed to excise the demons that the ministry claimed were embedded in tattoos The circle of women prayed over her including in the gibberish of 8220tongues8221 and anointed her with oil The women walked through the house after the ceremony They said more prayers in tongues to rid the house of demons They dipped their fingers in oil and marked the doorjambs with the sign of the cross to drive out evil spirits 8220It8217s called the Housecleaning Prayer8221 Lyons said 8220And a lot of times they8217ll put a cross over the beds where our heads rest8221 Lyons began to speak to me in a stream of nonsensical sounds to imitate praying in tongues She instinctively crossed her arms over her chest 8220It8217s like in chanting8221 she said 8220I8217m holding my heart because I believed that the enemy was trying to get my heart So I8217m always covering my heart8221 She was given a rules handbook and told she had to sign an 8220intake form8221 promising to obey the community8217s edicts She read in the handbook that she would be forbidden to contact anyone except her immediate family for nine months which distressed her because of her relationship with her boyfriend in Vail The form said she would forfeit the right to sue the ministry which she found odd She refused to sign the form without a lawyer She went to her room distraught and frightened unsure of what to do She could not sleep In the middle of the night she went outside and thought about hotwiring one of the cars in order to leave but she said 8220I had nowhere to go and I had no money I had no contact with anyone8221 At 530 am she was told it was time for the ritual morning prayers 8220The house mom leads the prayers and everyone has to be in unison with the prayers8221 She called these 8220the paper prayers8221 because they were printed out on sheets 8220You say your warfare prayer your deliverance prayer your third dimensional warrior prayer it8217ll make sense to you later on8221 she explained 8220It8217s all warfare praying8221 Lyons was told to go to a designated spot in the house 8220where you8217re supposed to communicate with God and have your 8216David cave time8217 with him8221 Before the start of her 8220David cave time8221 Lyons frustrated by being unable to do her normal physical workout did situps and pushups in the living room As she exercised 8220people are just walking by not talking to me8221 she said Lyons was told she was allowed only one cup of coffee a day She was told that she was permitted to speak by phone only with immediate family members and only when a person of the community monitored the conversation Every resident she found was expected to be an informant if she or he saw someone break the rules Many of those at the ministry compound had recently come out of prison and were in the facility as a halfway house requirement The female residents 8220become a posse8221 Lyons said 8220Remember a lot of these people came from prison None of the people are qualified to do anything A lot of these people are supposed to be in a house that transitions them to the real world8221 Breakfast was served at 630 And on her first morning in Ocoee she was taken to 8220morning intercession8221 which would occur every day for the three months of Lyons8217 initial indoctrination It was held in a place called the 8220war room8221 in another house on the culdesac where the group owns four or five houses The war room was open and lined on two sides by single rows of folding chairs The men sat on one side The women sat on the other Lyons was told when she entered the war room that she was not permitted to talk to or have eye contact with the men either there or outside Segregation of the sexes was rigidly enforced Courtship and relationships could be carried out within the community only if they were approved and mediated by the pastor Relationships outside the community were forbidden All new arrivals during their first three months spent every morning and every afternoon in the war room 8220doing teachings8221 which consisted of listening to recordings from Pastor Guy Iannello8217s Eternal Library of 800 Teachings They were required to take copious notes Lyons showed me a stack of about a dozen white legal pads filled with her notes After three months if program approval was granted a resident was permitted to get an outside job to help support the ministry By that time residents typically had severed ties with most friends and relatives The morning routine included recorded religious music followed by prayer There were prayers for orphans single mothers or fathers and those who had been abandoned Then the group prayed in tongues She wondered 8220What does this have to do with helping me with my problem8221 At 830 am on her first full day at the compound she was taken to the office to see 8220Mom8221 the pastor8217s motherinlaw She was given a lengthy form and told to circle all her 8220sins8221 such as sex before marriage lesbianism sodomy masturbation adultery oral sex abortion vanity selfpity swearing or cursing She circled the words that applied to her It was only later she said that she was told that each of these sins was 8220identified as a demon8221 Lyons who during our meeting had a box of literature videos and other materials of the ministry handed me a tattered red book titled 8220Prayers8221 She opened the book to Page 36 I read the four pages known as the 8220Sin List8221 It included hundreds of sins among them 8220loving to curse8221 8220killing8221 8220Baal worship8221 and 8220sacrificing children to demons8221 Lyons complained to Mom that she could not speak in tongues to which Mom replied 8220Yabba dabba doo Just start saying 8216Yabba dabba doo8217 and the Holy Spirit will help you Fake it until you make it8221 Mom told Lyons she was 8220being rebellious8221 and that 8220rebellion is witchcraft8221 8220That was a huge thing that they played on8221 Lyons said 8220that whole rebellion thing8221 She still refused to sign the forms She was ushered into the pastor8217s office to see a video called 8220You Can8217t Fight What You Can8217t See8221 All who were inducted into the community were required to watch it She met with Iannello on the second day He told her to sign the forms and give the program two weeks She signed Because Lyons8217 second night at the compound was a Tuesday she was taken with the other members of the community to Way of Grace Church in Ocoee The eight female residents of the Total Freedom Program community sat on one side of the church and the 20 male residents sat on the other About 15 outsiders joined them Lyons listened to a sermon on obedience to God Mom told her later that God had put the message in the preacher8217s heart to address Lyons8217 rebelliousness On Friday nights the group held services in the sanctuary of the Ocoee Oaks Church During the daily indoctrination Lyons sat in the war room from 830 to noon listening to recordings and taking notes She went back after lunch to sit there from 1 to 4 During the rest of the day she was confined to her house 8220I was trying to do some physical exercise8221 Lyons said 8220They8217re like 8216You can8217t do that You have to put God first If you get done with God then you can exercise8217amp1608220 She repeated to me the core of the pastor8217s message 8220You came here thinking you had a problem with drugs and alcohol but this is a Holy Spirit stickup and this is Holy Spirit boot camp You8217re going to find the Holy Spirit You8217re going to find your hope and your faith You8217re going to find God You8217re going to find that which you didn8217t have You8217re going to be disciples of God8221 8220The constant theme is a chain of command of authority God being the ultimate authority8221 Lyons said 8220and that he God assigned people to you to watch over you your spiritual father8221 8220It8217s very much like boot camp in the Army8221 she said 8220Pastor Guy used to be in the Navy He also used to be a big drug lord Then he got saved supposedly So now he has this ministry on the culdesac A lot of the programming is to get you thinking there8217s obedience and there8217s rebellion 8212 and rebellion is what caused your problems in the first place They get you hooked into a different way of thinking that your problem is demons8221 8220They made me get a food stamp card8221 she said handing me a copy of her application for food stamps 8220Then when I got my food stamp card it went to the house mom The house mom who bought the groceries used all of our food stamp cards8221 By the end of the three months Lyons was broken and obedient She was permitted to look for an outside job She wanted nothing to do with those who had been her friends before she went to Florida She believed they were heathens and conduits of demons into her life She was assigned to work in the group8217s office promoting ministry events She called merchants and asked them to donate items or services for silent auctions She worked in the office for two months She then took a job at a Dillard8217s Department store She would work there for more than two years The ministry took rent her tithe 8212 10 percent of her income 8212 and utility costs from her pay She also had to pay the ministry 5 a day to be driven to Dillard8217s four miles away 8220They were nickelanddiming me to death8221 Lyons said Lyons said that those who did not work at outside jobs worked for the ministry as 8220slave labor8221 and never could save 8220enough money to leave8221 During her time in Total Freedom Program she saw herself as a part of the ministry She dutifully confessed all urges defined as sins to her prayer group She was given greater responsibilities within the ministry including being a house mom She was filled with selfloathing for 8220everything that was natural in me8221 8220Anything that comes before God is an idol8221 she said 8220Exercise my whole past experience friends I started to feel like I had this Job experience this loseeverything experience8221 Lyons had been turned She was terrified of demons which other church members said they could see around her in the form of lizards She fervently recited the litany of required prayers She dutifully attended the meetings and services She imposed the rules on others At night during her required 8220Bedtime Warfare Prayer8221 she would repeat to herself Father I come to you in the name of Jesus and repent every thought spoken word deed that was displeasing to You and any uncompleted vow that I committed to I break every curse that was placed on me either selfimposed or put by any demonic source and anything spoken over me that was not from You I curse every corruptible seed that was implanted in me and I command them to wither and die and I loose myself from every spirit associated with those seeds Allow your righteous seeds to grow and bear fruit for Your glory I apply the blood of Jesus over my house upon the roof walls and floors upon all members possessions automobiles and my spirit soul body and dreams in Jesus Name I bind up any spirits of terror fear nightmares or torment every mindbinding evil foul lying and unclean spirit that may try to come and torment me in any way tonight and I muzzle the voice of the stranger Satan you and any evil spirit in your kingdom that could be in or around our properties I bind you and drive you out in the Name of Jesus Any astral projections or soul travel spirits that could be in or around our property I command you in the Name of Jesus to go back where you came from Father please send Your warring angels to watch over me and to hold back the forces of Satan and his kingdom while I sleep Send your ministering angels to come and minister to me as I sleep Holy Spirit please come and flow though me giving me dreams visions health supernatural rest and let me wake up refreshed I pray all this in Jesus name Patrice a woman who had left the community began to talk to Lyons outside the compound She urged Lyons to get out of the group because it was 8220unhealthy8221 Lyons during a visit from her sister managed to pack her belongings and flee the compound The group unable now to hold her told her she could leave but would fail in the outside world After she moved out Lyons8217 job went sour because she failed to make sales quotas She had few friends at work because her indoctrination had made her 8220a freak8221 she said She did not engage in what the ministry called 8220secular talk8221 She gravitated to Christian megachurches that she now calls 8220subcults8221 The trauma emotional abuse and manipulation Lyons suffered at the hands of Total Freedom Program were familiar to me because of the two years I spent investigating the Christian right for my book 8220American Fascists The Christian Right and the War on America8221 In the closed world of the Christian right pastors 8220disciplers8221 and 8220prayer partners8221 define all doubt questioning or 8220backsliding8221 as a sin and the work of Satan Submission to authority becomes the only proper way to serve God Critical judgment is abolished Religious clich233s shut down independent thought All other ways of living become a compact with the demonic A persecution mentality is pounded into adherents making them deeply distrustful of outsiders It is an ideology of fear and abject obedience to authority And all those who walk away are condemned and branded as apostates Lyons8217 story is the story of millions of Americans who live or have lived inside these hermetically sealed systems of 8220Christian8221 indoctrination Eventually Lyons recovered enough of herself to leave Florida Before she departed she packed documentation of her stay at the Iannello complex hoping some reporter would tell her story as a warning to others Through friends she contacted me When Lyons drove out of the Ocoee area last week 8212 in her 1991 Honda Civic with some 236000 miles on it and duct tape holding up the dashboard 8212 it was emotionally wrenching for her She repeated over and over to herself in the car 8220I8217ve got to keep going I8217ve got to keep going I gotta get out of here now I gotta get out of here now8221 She continues to be haunted by the indoctrination She is struggling to shake off a belief system that defined as evil her natural instincts her thoughts and her desires for personal happiness and independence Her speech remains infected with the jargon of the ministry She says her fight now is to become whole The experience with the program 8220suckerpunched me8221 she said 8220They took away my selfrespect and my selfesteem They eviscerated me They took the life out of me Any natural instinct I had was condemned I8217m doing better now but I maintain a certain numbness because of the damage I never fought so hard once I realized my predicament to get myself back8221

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<p>Jan 25 (Reuters) - EZDAN HOLDING GROUP:</p> <p>* BOARD DECIDES TO RETAIN 2017 PROFIT AND NOT TO DISTRIBUTE DIVIDENDS FOR THE YEAR&#8205;&#8203; Source:( <a href="http://bit.ly/2FcBiW4" type="external">bit.ly/2FcBiW4</a>) Further company coverage:</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>LONDON (Reuters) - Britain, the United States, Germany and France jointly called on Russia on Thursday to explain a military-grade nerve toxin attack in England on a former Russian double agent, which they said threatened Western security.</p> <p>After the first known offensive use of such a weapon on European soil since World War Two, Britain has pinned the blame on Moscow and given 23 Russians who it said were spies working under diplomatic cover at the London embassy a week to leave.</p> <p>Moscow has denied any involvement in the poisoning. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused London of behaving in a &#8220;boorish&#8221; way and suggested this was partly due to the problems Britain faces over its planned exit from the European Union next year.</p> <p>Russia has refused Britain&#8217;s demands to explain how Novichok, a nerve agent first developed by the Soviet military, was used to strike down Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the southern English city of Salisbury.</p> <p>&#8220;We call on Russia to address all questions related to the attack,&#8221; U.S. President Donald Trump, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Theresa May said in their joint statement.</p> <p>&#8220;It is an assault on UK sovereignty,&#8221; the leaders said. &#8220;It threatens the security of us all.&#8221;</p> <p>While the statement signals a more coordinated response from Britain&#8217;s closest allies, it lacked any details about specific measures the West would take if Russia failed to comply.</p> BREACH OF CONVENTION <p>The Western leaders said the use of the toxin was a clear breach of the Chemical Weapons Convention and international law.</p> <p>They called on Russia to provide a complete disclosure of the Novichok program to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague.</p> <p>Russia has repeatedly asked Britain to supply a sample of the nerve agent. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said neither Russia nor the Soviet Union had run a program to develop Novichok.</p> <p>Separately, Washington on Thursday slapped sanctions on two of Russia&#8217;s biggest intelligence agencies, the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the GRU military intelligence service, in response to Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and malicious cyber attacks.</p> Security cameras are seen, and a flag flies outside the consular section of Russia's embassy in London, Britain, March 15, 2018. REUTERS/Hannah McKay <p>Skripal, a former colonel in the GRU who betrayed dozens of Russian agents to British intelligence, and his daughter have been critically ill since March 4, when they were found unconscious on a bench in Salisbury, an elegant cathedral city.</p> <p>A British policeman who was also poisoned when he went to help them is in a serious but stable condition.</p> <p>May has directly accused President Vladimir Putin, poised to win a fourth term in an election on Sunday, of being behind the attack. In Washington, Trump said: &#8220;It looks like the Russians were behind it.&#8221;</p> Slideshow (10 Images) LOST INFLUENCE <p>Putin, who took over as Kremlin chief from Boris Yeltsin on the last day of 1999, has tried to claw back some of the clout that Moscow lost when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. He says the West has repeatedly tried to undermine Russia.</p> <p>Lavrov said Russia would respond &#8220;very soon&#8221; to Britain&#8217;s decision to expel 23 Russian diplomats. Putin discussed relations with Britain at a meeting of Russia&#8217;s Security Council.</p> <p>Skripal, who was turned by Britain&#8217;s MI6 agency while serving in Spain, was arrested in Moscow in 2004 and convicted in 2006 of treason. But in 2010 he was given refuge in Britain after being exchanged for Russian spies.</p> <p>May on Thursday visited Salisbury, a normally sedate city where police investigators in chemical protection suits and the army have been collecting evidence of the poisoning.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-britain-russia-may-salisbury/uk-pm-may-visits-city-where-russian-double-agent-was-poisoned-idUSKCN1GR1TH" type="external">UK PM May visits city where Russian double agent was poisoned</a> <a href="/article/us-britain-russia-nato/after-nerve-agent-attack-nato-sees-pattern-of-russian-interference-idUSKCN1GR1O0" type="external">After nerve agent attack, NATO sees pattern of Russian interference</a> <a href="/article/us-britain-russia-johnson/britain-to-let-international-body-check-its-poison-findings-idUSKCN1GR2RC" type="external">Britain to let international body check its poison findings</a> <p>NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Britain could count on NATO&#8217;s solidarity, but that it had not invoked the alliance&#8217;s mutual defense clause.</p> <p>In London, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson defended the government&#8217;s response and suggested the authorities might also go after assets held in Britain by Russians close to Putin, though he gave no specific details.</p> <p>Lavrov suggested that the poisoning might have motivated by a desire to complicate Russia&#8217;s hosting of this summer&#8217;s soccer World Cup.</p> <p>In a sign of just how tense relations have become, British Defence Secretary said: &#8220;Russia should go away, it should shut up.&#8221;</p> <p>Additional reporting by Elizabeth Piper, Michael Holden, Elisabeth O'Leary and Costas Pitas in London and Edinburgh, William James in Salisbury, England; Robin Emmott in Brussels; Denis Pinchuk and Andrew Osborn in Moscow; and Steve Holland, James Oliphant and Doina Chiacu in Washington; Writing by Guy Faulconbridge; editing by Gareth Jones</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States slapped sanctions on Russian individuals and entities for U.S. election meddling and cyber attacks but put off targeting oligarchs and government officials close to President Vladimir Putin, prompting lawmakers in both parties to say President Donald Trump needs to do much more.</p> <p>With the United States under pressure to act, the steps announced by the U.S. Treasury Department represented the most significant taken against Moscow since Trump assumed office in January 2017.</p> <p>Along with imposing sanctions on 19 individuals and five entities including Russian intelligence services, Trump&#8217;s administration blamed Moscow for a campaign of cyber attacks stretching back at least two years that targeted the U.S. power grid including nuclear facilities.</p> <p>The United States also joined Britain, Germany and France in demanding that Russia explain a military-grade nerve toxin attack in England on a former Russian double agent, and Trump said &#8220;it certainly looks like the Russians were behind&#8221; the incident.</p> <p>But congressional critics called the administration&#8217;s action a woefully inadequate retaliation for Russia interference in the 2016 U.S. election and other actions.</p> <p>&#8220;The sanctions today are a grievous disappointment and fall far short of what is needed to respond to that attack on our democracy let alone deter Russia&#8217;s escalating aggression, which now includes a chemical weapons attack on the soil of our closest ally,&#8221; said Adam Schiff, top Democrat on the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee.</p> <p>&#8220;Today&#8217;s action, using authorities provided by Congress, is an important step by the administration. But more must be done,&#8221; Republican House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce added.</p> <p>Trump has faced fierce criticism in the United States for doing too little to punish Russia for the election meddling and other actions, and Special Counsel Robert Mueller is looking into whether Trump&#8217;s campaign colluded with the Russians, an allegation the president denies.</p> <p>Sixteen of the Russian individuals and entities sanctioned were indicted on Feb. 16 as part of Mueller&#8217;s criminal investigation.</p> <p>&#8220;They didn&#8217;t hit Putin&#8217;s power structure and they didn&#8217;t team up with Europe,&#8221; Brian O&#8217;Toole, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank and a former senior adviser at the Treasury Department&#8217;s Office of Foreign Assets Control, said of the administration&#8217;s actions.</p> <p>A senior administration official told Reuters that Trump, who campaigned on warmer ties with Putin, has grown exasperated with Russian activity. &#8220;A classic bully,&#8221; the official said of Putin.</p> <p>White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders, asked if Russia is a friend or foe, told reporters, &#8220;Russia is going to have to make that determination. They&#8217;re going to have to decide whether they want to be a good actor or a bad actor.&#8221;</p> <p>In Moscow, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Russia was preparing retaliatory measures, as U.S.-Russian relations plunged again.</p> <p>Thursday&#8217;s announcement marked the first time that the U.S. government stated publicly that Russia had attempted to break into the American energy grid, which U.S. security officials have longed warned may be vulnerable to debilitating cyber attacks from hostile adversaries.</p> FILE PHOTO: U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin discusses the Trump administration's tax reform proposal in the White House briefing room in Washington, U.S, April 26, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File photo <p>The Treasury Department said the sanctions were also meant to counter cyber attacks including the NotPetya attack that cost billions of dollars in damage across Europe, Asia and the United States. The United States and Britain last month blamed Russian military for that attack.</p> <p>Trump has frequently questioned a January 2017 finding by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the 2016 campaign using hacking and propaganda in an effort eventually aimed at tilting the race in Trump&#8217;s favor. Russia denies interfering in the election.</p> <p>But Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was unequivocal in saying that Thursday&#8217;s action by his department &#8220;counters Russia&#8217;s continuing destabilizing activities, ranging from interference in the 2016 election to conducting destructive cyber-attacks.&#8221;</p> &#8216;GET SMART&#8217; <p>&#8220;Putin constantly attacks our friends. So, President Trump, are you going to get smart about the threat Russia poses to the United States and our allies?&#8221; Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer asked.</p> FILE PHOTO: Voters cast their votes during the U.S. presidential election in Elyria, Ohio, U.S. November 8, 2016. REUTERS/Aaron Josefczyk/File Photo <p>Mnuchin said there would be additional sanctions against Russian government officials and oligarchs &#8220;for their destabilizing activities.&#8221; Mnuchin did not give a time frame for those sanctions, which he said would sever the individuals&#8217; access to the U.S. financial system.</p> <p>Democratic Senator Robert Menendez said he was glad to see the administration act but noted that Democratic former President Barack Obama&#8217;s administration had already imposed sanctions on many of the people and entities targeted on Thursday.</p> <p>Russian government hackers since at least March 2016 &#8220;have also targeted U.S. government entities and multiple U.S. critical infrastructure sectors, including the energy, nuclear, commercial facilities, water, aviation, and critical manufacturing sectors,&#8221; a Treasury Department statement said.</p> <p>A senior administration told reporters on a conference call that Russian actors infiltrated parts of the U.S. energy sector.</p> <p>&#8220;We were able to identify where they were located within those business systems and remove them from those business systems,&#8221; the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-usa-russia-sanctions-whitehouse/white-house-will-remain-tough-on-russia-until-its-behavior-changes-idUSKCN1GR313" type="external">White House: will remain tough on Russia until its behavior changes</a> <a href="/article/us-usa-russia-sanctions-energygrid/in-a-first-u-s-blames-russia-for-cyber-attacks-on-energy-grid-idUSKCN1GR2G3" type="external">In a first, U.S. blames Russia for cyber attacks on energy grid</a> <a href="/article/us-usa-russia-sanctions-prigozhin/russian-businessman-prigozhin-dismisses-new-u-s-sanctions-ria-idUSKCN1GR2G7" type="external">Russian businessman Prigozhin dismisses new U.S. sanctions: RIA</a> <p>Trump told reporters during a White House event with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar that &#8220;it certainly looks like the Russians were behind&#8221; the use of a nerve agent to attack Sergei Skripal, a former Russian double agent in England. Trump called it &#8220;something that should never, ever happen, and we&#8217;re taking it very seriously, as I think are many others.&#8221;</p> <p>The new sanctions include Russian intelligence services, the Federal Security Service (FSB) and Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), and six individuals working on behalf of the GRU.</p> <p>Thursday&#8217;s action blocks all property of those targeted that is subject to U.S. jurisdiction and prohibits American citizens from engaging in transactions with them.</p> <p>Russian businessman Evgeny Prigozhin, one of those indicted by Mueller and hit with sanctions on Thursday, said in comments cited by RIA news agency that he already had been hit with U.S. sanctions &#8220;maybe three or four times - I&#8217;m tired of counting.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not worried by this,&#8221; Prigozhin was quoted as saying. &#8220;Except that now I will stop going to McDonald&#8217;s.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Steve Holland and Doina Chiacu; Additional reporting by Dustin Volz, Timothy Gardner, Lesley Wroughton, Warren Strobel and James Oliphant in Washington, Guy Faulconbridge and Estelle Shirbon in London and Polina Ivanova in Moscow; Editing by Mary Milliken and Will Dunham</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - A new pedestrian walkway that collapsed onto traffic at Florida International University on Thursday, killing several people, was erected in only six hours using a technique called &#8220;Accelerated Bridge Construction,&#8221; according to the school.</p> Emergency crews work at the scene of a collapsed pedestrian bridge at Florida International University in Miami, Florida March 15, 2018 in this still image obtained from social media video. Instagram/ @BRANDONX868 via REUTERS <p>Here are a few facts about the project and Accelerated Bridge Construction:</p> <p>* The bridge was designed to withstand a Category 5 hurricane, the most dangerous measure by the National Hurricane Center, and last 100 years, according to the university. ( <a href="http://bit.ly/2tQ2ARg" type="external">bit.ly/2tQ2ARg</a>)</p> <p>* To keep the disruption of traffic to a minimum, a 174-foot (53-meter) portion of the bridge was built adjacent to the street and was driven into its perpendicular position across the road by a rig in only six hours on Saturday, according to the university.</p> <p>* Accelerated Bridge Construction, or ABC, is a technique in which bridges can be replaced in 48 to 72 hours, reducing planning and work time by years and cutting traffic delays.</p> <p>* Accelerated Bridge Construction uses different methods, designs and materials that are intended to produce safer, more durable bridges with longer service lives than conventional bridges, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation and Federal Highway Administration.</p> <p>* The three leading ABC technologies being promoted under the Federal Highway Administration&#8217;s &#8220;Every Day Counts&#8221; initiative include Prefabricated Bridge Elements and Systems, Slide-In Bridge Construction, and Geosynthetic Reinforced Soil &#8211; Integrated Bridge System (GRS-IBS).</p> <p>* Funding for the $14.2 million bridge is part of a $19.4 million U.S. Transportation Department grant through the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) program, according to the university.</p> <p>* The bridge was the first in the world to be constructed entirely of self-cleaning concrete, according to the university. Titanium dioxide used in its construction, when exposed to sunlight, captures air pollutants and keeps the surface white.</p> <p>Reporting by Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Editing by Lisa Shumaker</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>MIAMI (Reuters) - Six to 10 people were killed when a newly erected pedestrian bridge spanning several lanes of traffic collapsed at Florida International University on Thursday, U.S. Senator Bill Nelson of Florida told TV station CBS Miami.</p> <p>Emergency personnel with sniffer dogs searched for signs of life amid the wreckage of concrete and twisted metal that rained from the collapsed structure and crushed vehicles on one of the busiest roads in South Florida.</p> <p>At least eight vehicles were trapped in the wreckage of the 950-ton bridge and at least 10 people have been transported to hospitals, officials and doctors told news conferences.</p> <p>Witnesses told local media the vehicles were stopped at a traffic light when the bridge collapsed, and authorities said there still may be more vehicles trapped underneath.</p> <p>&#8220;We&#8217;re working our way into the pile trying to create holes that we can actually physically see,&#8221; Miami-Dade Fire Department Division Chief Paul Estopian told reporters.</p> <p>The Florida Highway Patrol has said several people were killed but did not release a figure on fatalities.</p> <p>At one point, police requested television helicopters to leave the area so rescuers could hear for any sounds of people crying for help from beneath the collapsed structure, CBS Miami television said.</p> <p>Complicating the rescue effort was the uncertainty about the integrity of the bridge, parts of which remained off the ground, much of it inclined, local media reported.</p> <p>The 174-feet (53-meter) long bridge connects the university with the city of Sweetwater and was installed on Saturday in six hours over the eight-lane highway, according to a story that was posted on the university&#8217;s website.</p> <p>The bridge was intended to provide a walkway over the busy street where an 18-year-old female FIU student from San Diego was killed while trying to cross last August, according to local media reports.</p> <p>Students at FIU are currently on their spring break vacation, which runs from March 12 to March 17.</p> Emergency crews work at the scene of a collapsed pedestrian bridge at Florida International University in Miami, Florida March 15, 2018 in this still image obtained from social media video. Instagram/ @BRANDONX868 via REUTERS &#8216;A MIRACLE&#8217; <p>Student Aura Martinez was having lunch in a nearby restaurant with her mother when a waitress told her the bridge had collapsed. She ran outside and helped pull a woman out her car, most of which was flattened by the bridge.</p> <p>&#8220;Her car, it was literally a miracle of God, her car got squished by the bridge from the back, so she was able to get out and she was on the floor and it was just very traumatic,&#8221; she told the local CBS affiliate.</p> <p>To keep the inevitable disruption of traffic associated with bridge construction to a minimum, the 174-foot portion of the bridge was built adjacent to Southwest 8th Street using a method called Accelerated Bridge Construction (ABC). It was driven into its perpendicular position across the road by a rig in only six hours on Saturday, according to a statement released by the university.</p> Slideshow (10 Images) <p>The $14.2 million bridge was designed to withstand a Category 5 hurricane, the most dangerous measure by the National Hurricane Center, and built to last 100 years, the university said. ( <a href="http://bit.ly/2tQ2ARg" type="external">bit.ly/2tQ2ARg</a>)</p> <p>The National Transportation Safety Board was sending a team to investigate why it collapsed.</p> <p>White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said President Donald Trump is aware of the collapse.</p> <p>Florida Governor Rick Scott will head to the scene later in the day, his office said.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-florida-bridge-construction-factbox/factbox-how-the-collapsed-florida-bridge-was-erected-in-six-hours-idUSKCN1GR3AM" type="external">Factbox: How the collapsed Florida bridge was erected in six hours</a> <p>Munilla Construction Management, which installed the bridge was founded in 1983 and owned by five brothers, according to its website. In addition to its Florida operations, the company also has divisions in Texas and Panama and employs 500 people.</p> <p>&#8220;Munilla Construction Management is a family business and we are all devastated and doing everything we can to assist,&#8221; the company said in a statement.</p> <p>FIGG Engineering said it took part in the bridge project and the collapse was a first in its 40-year history.</p> <p>Both companies said they would cooperate fully with investigators.</p> <p>Reporting by Zachary Fagenson; Additional reporting by Gina Cherelus, Joseph Ax, Daniel Wallis and Andrew Hay in New York, Scott Malone in Boston, Bernie Woodall in Fort Lauderdale, James Oliphant in Washington and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Writing by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Lisa Shumaker</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

BRIEF-Qatar's Ezdan Holding Board Says No Dividend For 2017 West calls on Russia to explain nerve toxin attack on former double agent U.S. sanctions Russians for meddling, but not Putin's oligarchs Factbox: How the collapsed Florida bridge was erected in six hours Six to 10 people killed in Florida foot bridge collapse: senator

https://reuters.com/article/brief-qatars-ezdan-holding-board-says-no/brief-qatars-ezdan-holding-board-says-no-dividend-for-2017-idUSL4N1PK1XY

2018-01-25

2least

Jan 25 Reuters EZDAN HOLDING GROUP BOARD DECIDES TO RETAIN 2017 PROFIT AND NOT TO DISTRIBUTE DIVIDENDS FOR THE YEAR82058203 Source bitly2FcBiW4 Further company coverage Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles LONDON Reuters Britain the United States Germany and France jointly called on Russia on Thursday to explain a militarygrade nerve toxin attack in England on a former Russian double agent which they said threatened Western security After the first known offensive use of such a weapon on European soil since World War Two Britain has pinned the blame on Moscow and given 23 Russians who it said were spies working under diplomatic cover at the London embassy a week to leave Moscow has denied any involvement in the poisoning Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused London of behaving in a 8220boorish8221 way and suggested this was partly due to the problems Britain faces over its planned exit from the European Union next year Russia has refused Britain8217s demands to explain how Novichok a nerve agent first developed by the Soviet military was used to strike down Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the southern English city of Salisbury 8220We call on Russia to address all questions related to the attack8221 US President Donald Trump German Chancellor Angela Merkel French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Theresa May said in their joint statement 8220It is an assault on UK sovereignty8221 the leaders said 8220It threatens the security of us all8221 While the statement signals a more coordinated response from Britain8217s closest allies it lacked any details about specific measures the West would take if Russia failed to comply BREACH OF CONVENTION The Western leaders said the use of the toxin was a clear breach of the Chemical Weapons Convention and international law They called on Russia to provide a complete disclosure of the Novichok program to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons OPCW in The Hague Russia has repeatedly asked Britain to supply a sample of the nerve agent Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said neither Russia nor the Soviet Union had run a program to develop Novichok Separately Washington on Thursday slapped sanctions on two of Russia8217s biggest intelligence agencies the Federal Security Service FSB and the GRU military intelligence service in response to Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and malicious cyber attacks Security cameras are seen and a flag flies outside the consular section of Russias embassy in London Britain March 15 2018 REUTERSHannah McKay Skripal a former colonel in the GRU who betrayed dozens of Russian agents to British intelligence and his daughter have been critically ill since March 4 when they were found unconscious on a bench in Salisbury an elegant cathedral city A British policeman who was also poisoned when he went to help them is in a serious but stable condition May has directly accused President Vladimir Putin poised to win a fourth term in an election on Sunday of being behind the attack In Washington Trump said 8220It looks like the Russians were behind it8221 Slideshow 10 Images LOST INFLUENCE Putin who took over as Kremlin chief from Boris Yeltsin on the last day of 1999 has tried to claw back some of the clout that Moscow lost when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 He says the West has repeatedly tried to undermine Russia Lavrov said Russia would respond 8220very soon8221 to Britain8217s decision to expel 23 Russian diplomats Putin discussed relations with Britain at a meeting of Russia8217s Security Council Skripal who was turned by Britain8217s MI6 agency while serving in Spain was arrested in Moscow in 2004 and convicted in 2006 of treason But in 2010 he was given refuge in Britain after being exchanged for Russian spies May on Thursday visited Salisbury a normally sedate city where police investigators in chemical protection suits and the army have been collecting evidence of the poisoning Related Coverage UK PM May visits city where Russian double agent was poisoned After nerve agent attack NATO sees pattern of Russian interference Britain to let international body check its poison findings NATO SecretaryGeneral Jens Stoltenberg said Britain could count on NATO8217s solidarity but that it had not invoked the alliance8217s mutual defense clause In London Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson defended the government8217s response and suggested the authorities might also go after assets held in Britain by Russians close to Putin though he gave no specific details Lavrov suggested that the poisoning might have motivated by a desire to complicate Russia8217s hosting of this summer8217s soccer World Cup In a sign of just how tense relations have become British Defence Secretary said 8220Russia should go away it should shut up8221 Additional reporting by Elizabeth Piper Michael Holden Elisabeth OLeary and Costas Pitas in London and Edinburgh William James in Salisbury England Robin Emmott in Brussels Denis Pinchuk and Andrew Osborn in Moscow and Steve Holland James Oliphant and Doina Chiacu in Washington Writing by Guy Faulconbridge editing by Gareth Jones Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters The United States slapped sanctions on Russian individuals and entities for US election meddling and cyber attacks but put off targeting oligarchs and government officials close to President Vladimir Putin prompting lawmakers in both parties to say President Donald Trump needs to do much more With the United States under pressure to act the steps announced by the US Treasury Department represented the most significant taken against Moscow since Trump assumed office in January 2017 Along with imposing sanctions on 19 individuals and five entities including Russian intelligence services Trump8217s administration blamed Moscow for a campaign of cyber attacks stretching back at least two years that targeted the US power grid including nuclear facilities The United States also joined Britain Germany and France in demanding that Russia explain a militarygrade nerve toxin attack in England on a former Russian double agent and Trump said 8220it certainly looks like the Russians were behind8221 the incident But congressional critics called the administration8217s action a woefully inadequate retaliation for Russia interference in the 2016 US election and other actions 8220The sanctions today are a grievous disappointment and fall far short of what is needed to respond to that attack on our democracy let alone deter Russia8217s escalating aggression which now includes a chemical weapons attack on the soil of our closest ally8221 said Adam Schiff top Democrat on the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee 8220Today8217s action using authorities provided by Congress is an important step by the administration But more must be done8221 Republican House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce added Trump has faced fierce criticism in the United States for doing too little to punish Russia for the election meddling and other actions and Special Counsel Robert Mueller is looking into whether Trump8217s campaign colluded with the Russians an allegation the president denies Sixteen of the Russian individuals and entities sanctioned were indicted on Feb 16 as part of Mueller8217s criminal investigation 8220They didn8217t hit Putin8217s power structure and they didn8217t team up with Europe8221 Brian O8217Toole a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank and a former senior adviser at the Treasury Department8217s Office of Foreign Assets Control said of the administration8217s actions A senior administration official told Reuters that Trump who campaigned on warmer ties with Putin has grown exasperated with Russian activity 8220A classic bully8221 the official said of Putin White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders asked if Russia is a friend or foe told reporters 8220Russia is going to have to make that determination They8217re going to have to decide whether they want to be a good actor or a bad actor8221 In Moscow Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Russia was preparing retaliatory measures as USRussian relations plunged again Thursday8217s announcement marked the first time that the US government stated publicly that Russia had attempted to break into the American energy grid which US security officials have longed warned may be vulnerable to debilitating cyber attacks from hostile adversaries FILE PHOTO US Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin discusses the Trump administrations tax reform proposal in the White House briefing room in Washington US April 26 2017 REUTERSCarlos BarriaFile photo The Treasury Department said the sanctions were also meant to counter cyber attacks including the NotPetya attack that cost billions of dollars in damage across Europe Asia and the United States The United States and Britain last month blamed Russian military for that attack Trump has frequently questioned a January 2017 finding by US intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the 2016 campaign using hacking and propaganda in an effort eventually aimed at tilting the race in Trump8217s favor Russia denies interfering in the election But Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was unequivocal in saying that Thursday8217s action by his department 8220counters Russia8217s continuing destabilizing activities ranging from interference in the 2016 election to conducting destructive cyberattacks8221 8216GET SMART8217 8220Putin constantly attacks our friends So President Trump are you going to get smart about the threat Russia poses to the United States and our allies8221 Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer asked FILE PHOTO Voters cast their votes during the US presidential election in Elyria Ohio US November 8 2016 REUTERSAaron JosefczykFile Photo Mnuchin said there would be additional sanctions against Russian government officials and oligarchs 8220for their destabilizing activities8221 Mnuchin did not give a time frame for those sanctions which he said would sever the individuals8217 access to the US financial system Democratic Senator Robert Menendez said he was glad to see the administration act but noted that Democratic former President Barack Obama8217s administration had already imposed sanctions on many of the people and entities targeted on Thursday Russian government hackers since at least March 2016 8220have also targeted US government entities and multiple US critical infrastructure sectors including the energy nuclear commercial facilities water aviation and critical manufacturing sectors8221 a Treasury Department statement said A senior administration told reporters on a conference call that Russian actors infiltrated parts of the US energy sector 8220We were able to identify where they were located within those business systems and remove them from those business systems8221 the official said speaking on condition of anonymity Related Coverage White House will remain tough on Russia until its behavior changes In a first US blames Russia for cyber attacks on energy grid Russian businessman Prigozhin dismisses new US sanctions RIA Trump told reporters during a White House event with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar that 8220it certainly looks like the Russians were behind8221 the use of a nerve agent to attack Sergei Skripal a former Russian double agent in England Trump called it 8220something that should never ever happen and we8217re taking it very seriously as I think are many others8221 The new sanctions include Russian intelligence services the Federal Security Service FSB and Main Intelligence Directorate GRU and six individuals working on behalf of the GRU Thursday8217s action blocks all property of those targeted that is subject to US jurisdiction and prohibits American citizens from engaging in transactions with them Russian businessman Evgeny Prigozhin one of those indicted by Mueller and hit with sanctions on Thursday said in comments cited by RIA news agency that he already had been hit with US sanctions 8220maybe three or four times I8217m tired of counting8221 8220I8217m not worried by this8221 Prigozhin was quoted as saying 8220Except that now I will stop going to McDonald8217s8221 Reporting by Steve Holland and Doina Chiacu Additional reporting by Dustin Volz Timothy Gardner Lesley Wroughton Warren Strobel and James Oliphant in Washington Guy Faulconbridge and Estelle Shirbon in London and Polina Ivanova in Moscow Editing by Mary Milliken and Will Dunham Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters A new pedestrian walkway that collapsed onto traffic at Florida International University on Thursday killing several people was erected in only six hours using a technique called 8220Accelerated Bridge Construction8221 according to the school Emergency crews work at the scene of a collapsed pedestrian bridge at Florida International University in Miami Florida March 15 2018 in this still image obtained from social media video Instagram BRANDONX868 via REUTERS Here are a few facts about the project and Accelerated Bridge Construction The bridge was designed to withstand a Category 5 hurricane the most dangerous measure by the National Hurricane Center and last 100 years according to the university bitly2tQ2ARg To keep the disruption of traffic to a minimum a 174foot 53meter portion of the bridge was built adjacent to the street and was driven into its perpendicular position across the road by a rig in only six hours on Saturday according to the university Accelerated Bridge Construction or ABC is a technique in which bridges can be replaced in 48 to 72 hours reducing planning and work time by years and cutting traffic delays Accelerated Bridge Construction uses different methods designs and materials that are intended to produce safer more durable bridges with longer service lives than conventional bridges according to the US Department of Transportation and Federal Highway Administration The three leading ABC technologies being promoted under the Federal Highway Administration8217s 8220Every Day Counts8221 initiative include Prefabricated Bridge Elements and Systems SlideIn Bridge Construction and Geosynthetic Reinforced Soil 8211 Integrated Bridge System GRSIBS Funding for the 142 million bridge is part of a 194 million US Transportation Department grant through the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery TIGER program according to the university The bridge was the first in the world to be constructed entirely of selfcleaning concrete according to the university Titanium dioxide used in its construction when exposed to sunlight captures air pollutants and keeps the surface white Reporting by Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles Editing by Lisa Shumaker Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles MIAMI Reuters Six to 10 people were killed when a newly erected pedestrian bridge spanning several lanes of traffic collapsed at Florida International University on Thursday US Senator Bill Nelson of Florida told TV station CBS Miami Emergency personnel with sniffer dogs searched for signs of life amid the wreckage of concrete and twisted metal that rained from the collapsed structure and crushed vehicles on one of the busiest roads in South Florida At least eight vehicles were trapped in the wreckage of the 950ton bridge and at least 10 people have been transported to hospitals officials and doctors told news conferences Witnesses told local media the vehicles were stopped at a traffic light when the bridge collapsed and authorities said there still may be more vehicles trapped underneath 8220We8217re working our way into the pile trying to create holes that we can actually physically see8221 MiamiDade Fire Department Division Chief Paul Estopian told reporters The Florida Highway Patrol has said several people were killed but did not release a figure on fatalities At one point police requested television helicopters to leave the area so rescuers could hear for any sounds of people crying for help from beneath the collapsed structure CBS Miami television said Complicating the rescue effort was the uncertainty about the integrity of the bridge parts of which remained off the ground much of it inclined local media reported The 174feet 53meter long bridge connects the university with the city of Sweetwater and was installed on Saturday in six hours over the eightlane highway according to a story that was posted on the university8217s website The bridge was intended to provide a walkway over the busy street where an 18yearold female FIU student from San Diego was killed while trying to cross last August according to local media reports Students at FIU are currently on their spring break vacation which runs from March 12 to March 17 Emergency crews work at the scene of a collapsed pedestrian bridge at Florida International University in Miami Florida March 15 2018 in this still image obtained from social media video Instagram BRANDONX868 via REUTERS 8216A MIRACLE8217 Student Aura Martinez was having lunch in a nearby restaurant with her mother when a waitress told her the bridge had collapsed She ran outside and helped pull a woman out her car most of which was flattened by the bridge 8220Her car it was literally a miracle of God her car got squished by the bridge from the back so she was able to get out and she was on the floor and it was just very traumatic8221 she told the local CBS affiliate To keep the inevitable disruption of traffic associated with bridge construction to a minimum the 174foot portion of the bridge was built adjacent to Southwest 8th Street using a method called Accelerated Bridge Construction ABC It was driven into its perpendicular position across the road by a rig in only six hours on Saturday according to a statement released by the university Slideshow 10 Images The 142 million bridge was designed to withstand a Category 5 hurricane the most dangerous measure by the National Hurricane Center and built to last 100 years the university said bitly2tQ2ARg The National Transportation Safety Board was sending a team to investigate why it collapsed White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said President Donald Trump is aware of the collapse Florida Governor Rick Scott will head to the scene later in the day his office said Related Coverage Factbox How the collapsed Florida bridge was erected in six hours Munilla Construction Management which installed the bridge was founded in 1983 and owned by five brothers according to its website In addition to its Florida operations the company also has divisions in Texas and Panama and employs 500 people 8220Munilla Construction Management is a family business and we are all devastated and doing everything we can to assist8221 the company said in a statement FIGG Engineering said it took part in the bridge project and the collapse was a first in its 40year history Both companies said they would cooperate fully with investigators Reporting by Zachary Fagenson Additional reporting by Gina Cherelus Joseph Ax Daniel Wallis and Andrew Hay in New York Scott Malone in Boston Bernie Woodall in Fort Lauderdale James Oliphant in Washington and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles Writing by Jon Herskovitz Editing by Lisa Shumaker Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>People anxious to watch oral arguments in Ashcroft v. Raich started arriving outside the U.S. Supreme Court at 5 a.m on Monday, Nov. 29. Frank Lucido, MD, Angel Raich&#8217;s doctor, and Jeff Jones of the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Co-op were second and third. By 9:00 more than 200 concerned citizens had formed an L-shaped line across the wide plaza and then east on Constitution Avenue. What once would have been an unobstructed view of the Capitol (with symbolic meaning, since the Court rules on the legality of what Congress does) now consists of backhoes, trucks, ditch-witches, porta-potties, barricades (huge round tubs of concrete), cyclone fencing, wooden fencing, and non-union construction workers and rent-a-guards milling about. The sun was bright, the temperature around 400; the heavy equipment was kicking fine sand into the air as the line began to move.</p> <p>More than 100 media types and others with connections had guaranteed seats. Reporters who cover the court regularly get box seats along one side of the courtroom (stage left); we in the overflow were seated behind them and behind a wall with arched openings. Not all the Justices could be seen through the arches. Your correspondent had an excellent view of Justice Stephen Breyer (thin, bald, sepulchral) and Clarence Thomas (he looked positively bored and was the only judge who asked no questions). A public information officer gave out a scorecard with pictures of the Justices, numbered 1-9, and she held up fingers to indicate who was speaking. Scalia was #4, the clean-up hitter.</p> <p>Justice Stevens presided because Chief Justice Rehnquist is undergoing treatment for thyroid cancer. Stevens announced that Rehnquist intends to read the transcript and vote on Ashcroft v. Raich. Activists are spinning fantasies about Rehnquist, unable to bear the nausea of chemotherapy, obtaining relief from cannabis and turning into an advocate. I heard versions of this inane riff from half a dozen seemingly intelligent people. It&#8217;s more likely that William H. Rehnquist would cast a vote against Raich with his last bit of mortal energy. The Controlled Substances Act -which this case is really all about- was his work product. He helped draft it as a young lawyer in the Nixon White House (having gotten the job for, among other services rendered, hassling black voters in Arizona). If Rehnquist were, in his hour of need, to use cannabis as an anti-emetic, he would undoubtedly figure out why it was righteous for him (but not you) to do so. For years he has taken strong painkillers on a daily basis to cope with back pain. He doesn&#8217;t define himself as an addict because he checks into treatment periodically, i.e., he&#8217;s in control of the situation!</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>The Petitioner&#8217;s Case</p> <p>Each side gets half an hour to restate and defend the arguments made in written briefs that the judges have already read. The petitioner goes first. The Department of Justice and the Drug Enforcement Administration are petitioning the Court to invalidate an injunction, issued by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeal in October 2003, allowing Angel Raich and Diane Monson to obtain and use cannabis in accordance with California law. Acting Solicitor General Paul Clement re-made the key points: Congress is entitled to enforce the Controlled Substances Act. Californians growing and using cannabis within the state will inevitably have an impact on interstate commerce. The relevant precedent was set by Wickard v. Filburn, a 1942 case upholding the federal government&#8217;s right to limit the amount of wheat a farmer could grow for home consumption.</p> <p>O&#8217;Connor interrupted Clement to ask why the Lopez and Morrison rulings shouldn&#8217;t apply. In Lopez (1995) the Court struck down a federal law banning possession of a gun within 1,000 feet of a school because it didn&#8217;t involve economic activity. Morrison (2000), similarly, struck down a law entitling rape victims to sue assailants in federal court. The Lopez and Morrison rulings were said to reflect the Court&#8217;s &#8220;new federalism,&#8221; a tilt towards states&#8217; rights.</p> <p>Lopez and Morrison didn&#8217;t undo Wickard, said Clement. O&#8217;Connor noted that the marijuana used by Raich and Monson did not involve interstate commerce. But undoubtedly some marijuana would, said Clement, &#8220;diversion would be inevitable&#8221; if all California&#8217;s medical users and their growers became legal. O&#8217;Connor&#8217;s tone implied that she was trying to poke holes in the government&#8217;s position, but she could have been trying to elicit winning arguments to employ on behalf of the government in the Supremes&#8217; internal debate.</p> <p>O&#8217;Connor asked whether California law enforcement wouldn&#8217;t suffice to ban diversion to the non-medical market. &#8220;Marijuana is a fungible product,&#8221; said Clement, meaning there&#8217;s no way to distinguish &#8220;medical&#8221; marijuana from the non-medical kind; one could be sold instead of the other.</p> <p>In response to questions by Scalia and Kennedy, Clement repeated that diversion of marijuana was inevitable in an annual national market of $10.5 billion. Any &#8220;island of lawful possession&#8221; would undermine regulation by Congress. (These gentlemen try to avoid saying &#8220;Prohibition.&#8221;) Clement falsely stated that any beneficial effects of marijuana could be obtained legally via Marinol. Marinol is synthetic THC in pill form. Herbal cannabis contains hundreds of other compounds, some of which exert modulating effects. Precise dosage and immediate onset can be achieved by smoking.</p> <p>Justice Kennedy asked about the impact on price if Californians were allowed to grow their own marijuana for medical use. Clement said the price would go down, the opposite of what Congress wants. Congress is trying to increase the price of marijuana on the black market. Also, sales of Marinol would be affected if people could grow and use cannabis -an obvious impact on interstate commerce. And the CSA trumps a doctor&#8217;s opinion that marijuana is medically necessary. [Next time you&#8217;re sick, call a Congressman.]</p> <p>Stevens asked if a District Court could find, contrary to Congress, that marijuana is effective medicine. Only if the case involved a review of the scheduling decision, according to Clement. The FDA is not anti-THC, he said, witness Marinol being moved from Schedule 2 to Schedule 3. [Which actually shows that the FDA is not anti-corporate.]</p> <p>Ginsburg and Souter asked about challenges to marijuana&#8217;s Schedule l status and its alleged benefits. Clement said that the Institute of Medicine Report released in 2000 found that smoked marijuana &#8220;has no future as medicine.&#8221; Science [i.e, the drug companies] will find and synthesize the good components of the plant minus the bad components. Smoking is harmful per se. [The Institute of Medicine Report is like the Bible, you can quote it to make any point.] The Court should not second-guess Congress.</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>The Respondent&#8217;s Case</p> <p>Randy Barnett, a libertarian professor of constitutional law, argued for Raich-Monson that their activity -growing and using cannabis as medicine- had been entirely intrastate and non-economic. The feds need not ban such activity in order to regulate illicit drugs.</p> <p>In response to questions from Kennedy, Barnett said that the fungibility of marijuana does not mean possession for personal medical use is economic activity.</p> <p>Scalia compared possessing marijuana for medical use to owning a plant or animal protected by the Endangered Species Act. Barnett said that banning ownership of endanged species &#8220;might be essential to a broader regulatory scheme,&#8221; but owning marijuana for personal medical use was distinguished by state law. Scalia was skeptical that that California could narrow the scope of the activity to medical users. He invoked &#8220;reports of whole communes with lots of people in them&#8221; growing marijuana.</p> <p>Justices Breyer and Souter pursued the point that California couldn&#8217;t effectively limit the set of medical users. Breyer foresaw large numbers of cannabis consumers resulting in lowered prices, thus undermining the feds&#8217; ability to control contraband. Barnett implied that the government&#8217;s figure of 100,000 overestimated the number of medical users in California. [That estimate appeared in the Spring &#8217;04 O&#8217;Shaughnessy&#8217;s and may be an underestimate today.] Souter speculated about &#8220;millions of medical users buying marijuana on the street.&#8221;</p> <p>Ginsburg asked whether a ruling for Raich-Monson would authorize cultivation of marijuana by medical users in states that hadn&#8217;t legalized it. Barnett said it depended on how the Court&#8217;s ruling was crafted. If the activity is non-economic, Congress can regulate only as needed &#8220;to enforce a broader regulatory scheme.&#8221; Congress doesn&#8217;t have to ban medical use of cannabis in order to limit interstate commerce in contraband.</p> <p>Scalia asked how the Raich case differed from Wickard v. Filburn, in which a family was eating their homegrown wheat. Barnett said Filburn was feeding wheat to livestock that were sold on the market, not just eating it. &#8220;The wheat was grown as part of a commercial enterprise.&#8221;</p> <p>Stevens asked about the likely effect on the price of marijuana on the interstate market (if Raich prevailed). Barnett, not sounding totally sure, predicted &#8220;a trivial reduction.&#8221; Stevens disagreed. There followed an exchange it which Barnett was asked about the population of California and couldn&#8217;t provide the answer. (Kennedy did: 34 million.) Souter tried to estimate how many might be in chemotherapy -100,000? His point was, &#8220;isn&#8217;t it economic activity if it has a sizeable effect on the market?&#8221;</p> <p>Barnett differentiated economic activity from personal activity by using prostitution as an example of the former. &#8220;Substitution effects between prostitution and sex within marriage does not make sex within marriage economic activity. The nature of the activity determines if it is economic.&#8221;</p> <p>At this point Breyer suggested that Raich-Monson hadn&#8217;t exhausted their administrative options. &#8220;Can&#8217;t your clients go to the FDA and get it rescheduled? Then if the FDA rules against them&#8221; he sounded like a civics teacher explaining how (and that) the system works &#8220;they can go to court and the FDA ruling can be reviewed for abuse of discretion. And if there is no abuse of discretion, then wouldn&#8217;t I believe as a judge that it is doubtful there is a medical benefit? After all, medicine by regulation is better than medicine by referendum.&#8221; This last phrase was quoted by every reporter who filed a story. It echoes the enlightened-sounding comment of Breyer&#8217;s friend Harold Varmus, former director of the National Institutes of Health, after Prop 215 passed: &#8220;Nobody wants to settle medical issues by plebiscite.&#8221; Varmus convened a panel of &#8220;experts&#8221; to settle the issue. That was back in &#8217;97.</p> <p>Barnett urged Breyer to read the amicus brief written by Rick Doblin, PhD, describing the endless runaround that would-be researchers have gotten over the years from FDA, DEA, NIDA, and HHS. He also pointed out that the Institute of Medicine Report acknowledges that some people benefit even from smoked marijuana. Barnett&#8217;s tone was slightly apologetic (smoking, the sin of all time!) and he missed an opportunity to inform the Justices that for nausea there is no better drug and delivery system than herbal cannabis and inhalation. Nor is there any other drug to enhance appetite.</p> <p>Kennedy asked if prescriptions were limited to cases where marijuana saved lives. &#8220;It is limited to a list of illnesses,&#8221; said Barnett, instead of acknowledging the open-ended wording of the California law and the doctors&#8217; gatekeeping role.</p> <p>Ginsburg asked a final procedural question: can you enjoin criminal prosecutions? Barnett said Raich-Monson were seeking to enjoin the seizure of marijuana, which had already occurred.</p> <p>Clement, in the few minutes he had reserved for rebuttal, emphasized that the case wasn&#8217;t about two individuals. He repeated estimates of 100,000 to 170,000 medical users in California. He quoted the broad definition of illness that can be treated by cannabis under California law. He cited a California case (Rutherford) in which the defendant, caught with 19 separately packed ounces of marijuana and a scale, was allowed to present a &#8220;medical-user&#8221; defense. Clement also cited the WAMM case, in which 250 cannabis users -a veritable hoard- claimed protection under the law.</p> <p>Assessment</p> <p>Those who have been following Ashcroft v. Raich in the media know that most learned observers think the Justices&#8217; questions implied a looming victory for the federal government. Linda Greenhouse of the NY Times, in the press room after the hearing, predicted a 9-0 vote. However, Pebbles Trippet of the Medical Marijuana Patients Union expects support for Raich from Ginsburg, Thomas (&#8220;the commerce clause scholar on this court&#8221;), Stevens, and O&#8217;Connor (who is often a swing vote). &#8220;Anything can happen,&#8221; says Trippet.</p> <p>Whatever happens, coverage of the Supreme Court hearing has made the American people even more aware that marijuana is safe and effective medicine. Angel Raich and Diane Monson, although opposites in many ways, are both convincing advocates. There is a desperate edge to Angel, who looks emaciated and says urgently that she would die without cannabis (from which she derives no pleasure except pain relief). Monson is calm and businesslike -an accountant, she is living proof that cannabis use doesn&#8217;t undermine one&#8217;s ability to do meticulous work that requires sustained attention to detail. Her claim isn&#8217;t that cannabis is keeping her alive, only that it enables her to function.</p> <p>More commentary and analysis in the days and weeks ahead. Some of our shrewder sources are among the 120 lawyers in Key West, Fla., attending NORML&#8217;s 21st annual marijuana-defense-specialists&#8217; conference&#8230; In D.C. We learned that the NORML Board has selected Allen St. Pierre to succeed Keith Stroup as the new director. St. Pierre graduated from UMass/Amherst in 1989 and moved to Washington, intending to go to law school. Instead he went to work for NORML as communications director in &#8217;91 and has been there ever since (as deputy director since &#8217;93). In recent years NORML has been out-fundraised by the slicker, smoother Marijuana Policy Project. St. Pierre may be too serious and straightforward to reverse this trend. Good luck!</p> <p>Hoopla</p> <p>The recent brawl involving players and fans in Detroit has evoked countless calls for &#8220;more security,&#8221; but you don&#8217;t hear too many for &#8220;less alcohol&#8230;&#8221; San Francisco Chronicle sportswriter Bruce Jenkins asserted 11/27, &#8220;This is a young man&#8217;s league, the province of teenagers coming straight out of high school, and they represent an angry, anti-establishment generation consumed with rebellion, the strident lyrics of rap songs and the price to pay for being &#8216;disrespected.'&#8221; The NBA is a rich man&#8217;s league, the province of multimillionaires. The gifted young giants who get NBA salaries don&#8217;t &#8220;represent&#8221; anybody. They form a small, unique subset of individuals who, after growing up in black urban ghettos, acquire sudden wealth and fame. The result is a fractured class identity. There is no evidence that the generation of 20-somethings, white or black, is &#8220;consumed with rebellion.&#8221; Nor do &#8220;the strident lyrics of rap songs&#8221; equate with rebellion. Commercial hip-hop culture is all about militant stance without corresponding political content. &#8220;As people lament the decidedly weak security around the league,&#8221; writes Jenkins, &#8220;we can only recall the Warriors&#8217; glory days in Oakland, when some massive, fearsome-looking security types patrolled the scene. They always offered a striking contrast to the sight (and scent) of people blatantly smoking weed in the Coliseum corridors. Somehow, there always was a sense of order&#8230;&#8221; Well, of course things were orderly: it was weed, not alcohol. And those fearsome-looking security types had the good sense to tolerate it. [Is it simply coincidence that &#8220;the Warriors&#8217; glory days&#8221; ended when the Coliseum cracked down on the doobie section? Or could it be&#8230; the curse of the Zig-Zag man?]</p> <p>The punishment of Ron Artest et al is playing in the same theater as the purification of Carmelo Athony. &#8216;Melo is a beautiful 20-year-old who played one year of college basketball (leading Syracuse to the national championship) and one year as a pro in Denver (turning a losing franchise into a winner). Before this season began &#8216;Melo was arrested for marijuana possession; a small amount was found in his backpack as the team waited to board a flight. A friend named James Cunningham then said in an affidavit that he&#8217;d stayed at Carmelo Anthony&#8217;s house and borrowed the backpack and left his marijuana in it. Denver police figured they couldn&#8217;t get a conviction and didn&#8217;t charge &#8216;Melo.</p> <p>Nike is now running an ad campaign designed to polish &#8216;Melo&#8217;s image. A hip black poet -very intelligent, charismatic face and delivery- reminds us that &#8216;Melo is a lovable kid from a tough part of Baltimore, and that he drinks milk. Apparently a group of &#8220;creative&#8221; types employed by Nike sat around a table coming up with lines like, &#8220;Should we fire him or admire him?,&#8221; reflecting their own conflicts&#8230; Too bad they couldn&#8217;t come out and say that Carmelo Anthony gets migraine headaches and self-medicates with cannabis. Not even the great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar could get away with such a direct truth.</p> <p>Jabbar got busted for possession (6 grams!) at the Toronto airport in &#8217;98, said it was for medical use, and was humiliated in the media and blacklisted as a coach. &#8220;It was a slow week for the NBA&#8217;S active miscreants,&#8221; wrote David Steele of the Chronicle, &#8220;so like the Hall of Famer he is, Abdul-Jabbar stepped into the breach and got himself busted. The six-time MVP, six-time championship winner and (naturally) the league&#8217;s all-time leading scorer surrendered what was described as a small amount of marijuana. A Customs spokesman said that Abdul-Jabbar told the officials at the airport that his doctors had recommended his using marijuana to combat migraines. Must have been a doctor in our own fine state, home of Proposition 215&#8230;&#8221; Steele went on to make light of the fact that Chris Webber and Robert Parish had been busted for marijuana, too. These busts were humiliating and costly for the people involved. Where was the humor? Wittingly or not, Steele was serving the interests of the team owners, who wanted the NBA players to agree, in the upcoming contract, to be tested for marijuana. And the players did indeed capitulate.</p> <p>The implication of the Carmelo Anthony bust -like the Abdul-Jabbar bust and the Webber bust and the Parish bust- is that marijuana use doesn&#8217;t prevent one from being a great athlete. Parish was the most durable player in the history of the league. &#8220;David Steele must never have had a migraine,&#8221; commented a migraine sufferer of my acquaintance. &#8220;I don&#8217;t know what the worst pain in the world is, but it must be the second.&#8221;</p> <p>FRED GARDNER can be reached at <a href="mailto:journal@ccrmg.org" type="external">journal@ccrmg.org</a></p> <p>&amp;#160;</p>

Supreme Court Hears Raich Case

https://counterpunch.org/2004/12/04/supreme-court-hears-raich-case/

2004-12-04

4left

People anxious to watch oral arguments in Ashcroft v Raich started arriving outside the US Supreme Court at 5 am on Monday Nov 29 Frank Lucido MD Angel Raich8217s doctor and Jeff Jones of the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Coop were second and third By 900 more than 200 concerned citizens had formed an Lshaped line across the wide plaza and then east on Constitution Avenue What once would have been an unobstructed view of the Capitol with symbolic meaning since the Court rules on the legality of what Congress does now consists of backhoes trucks ditchwitches portapotties barricades huge round tubs of concrete cyclone fencing wooden fencing and nonunion construction workers and rentaguards milling about The sun was bright the temperature around 400 the heavy equipment was kicking fine sand into the air as the line began to move More than 100 media types and others with connections had guaranteed seats Reporters who cover the court regularly get box seats along one side of the courtroom stage left we in the overflow were seated behind them and behind a wall with arched openings Not all the Justices could be seen through the arches Your correspondent had an excellent view of Justice Stephen Breyer thin bald sepulchral and Clarence Thomas he looked positively bored and was the only judge who asked no questions A public information officer gave out a scorecard with pictures of the Justices numbered 19 and she held up fingers to indicate who was speaking Scalia was 4 the cleanup hitter Justice Stevens presided because Chief Justice Rehnquist is undergoing treatment for thyroid cancer Stevens announced that Rehnquist intends to read the transcript and vote on Ashcroft v Raich Activists are spinning fantasies about Rehnquist unable to bear the nausea of chemotherapy obtaining relief from cannabis and turning into an advocate I heard versions of this inane riff from half a dozen seemingly intelligent people It8217s more likely that William H Rehnquist would cast a vote against Raich with his last bit of mortal energy The Controlled Substances Act which this case is really all about was his work product He helped draft it as a young lawyer in the Nixon White House having gotten the job for among other services rendered hassling black voters in Arizona If Rehnquist were in his hour of need to use cannabis as an antiemetic he would undoubtedly figure out why it was righteous for him but not you to do so For years he has taken strong painkillers on a daily basis to cope with back pain He doesn8217t define himself as an addict because he checks into treatment periodically ie he8217s in control of the situation amp160 The Petitioner8217s Case Each side gets half an hour to restate and defend the arguments made in written briefs that the judges have already read The petitioner goes first The Department of Justice and the Drug Enforcement Administration are petitioning the Court to invalidate an injunction issued by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeal in October 2003 allowing Angel Raich and Diane Monson to obtain and use cannabis in accordance with California law Acting Solicitor General Paul Clement remade the key points Congress is entitled to enforce the Controlled Substances Act Californians growing and using cannabis within the state will inevitably have an impact on interstate commerce The relevant precedent was set by Wickard v Filburn a 1942 case upholding the federal government8217s right to limit the amount of wheat a farmer could grow for home consumption O8217Connor interrupted Clement to ask why the Lopez and Morrison rulings shouldn8217t apply In Lopez 1995 the Court struck down a federal law banning possession of a gun within 1000 feet of a school because it didn8217t involve economic activity Morrison 2000 similarly struck down a law entitling rape victims to sue assailants in federal court The Lopez and Morrison rulings were said to reflect the Court8217s 8220new federalism8221 a tilt towards states8217 rights Lopez and Morrison didn8217t undo Wickard said Clement O8217Connor noted that the marijuana used by Raich and Monson did not involve interstate commerce But undoubtedly some marijuana would said Clement 8220diversion would be inevitable8221 if all California8217s medical users and their growers became legal O8217Connor8217s tone implied that she was trying to poke holes in the government8217s position but she could have been trying to elicit winning arguments to employ on behalf of the government in the Supremes8217 internal debate O8217Connor asked whether California law enforcement wouldn8217t suffice to ban diversion to the nonmedical market 8220Marijuana is a fungible product8221 said Clement meaning there8217s no way to distinguish 8220medical8221 marijuana from the nonmedical kind one could be sold instead of the other In response to questions by Scalia and Kennedy Clement repeated that diversion of marijuana was inevitable in an annual national market of 105 billion Any 8220island of lawful possession8221 would undermine regulation by Congress These gentlemen try to avoid saying 8220Prohibition8221 Clement falsely stated that any beneficial effects of marijuana could be obtained legally via Marinol Marinol is synthetic THC in pill form Herbal cannabis contains hundreds of other compounds some of which exert modulating effects Precise dosage and immediate onset can be achieved by smoking Justice Kennedy asked about the impact on price if Californians were allowed to grow their own marijuana for medical use Clement said the price would go down the opposite of what Congress wants Congress is trying to increase the price of marijuana on the black market Also sales of Marinol would be affected if people could grow and use cannabis an obvious impact on interstate commerce And the CSA trumps a doctor8217s opinion that marijuana is medically necessary Next time you8217re sick call a Congressman Stevens asked if a District Court could find contrary to Congress that marijuana is effective medicine Only if the case involved a review of the scheduling decision according to Clement The FDA is not antiTHC he said witness Marinol being moved from Schedule 2 to Schedule 3 Which actually shows that the FDA is not anticorporate Ginsburg and Souter asked about challenges to marijuana8217s Schedule l status and its alleged benefits Clement said that the Institute of Medicine Report released in 2000 found that smoked marijuana 8220has no future as medicine8221 Science ie the drug companies will find and synthesize the good components of the plant minus the bad components Smoking is harmful per se The Institute of Medicine Report is like the Bible you can quote it to make any point The Court should not secondguess Congress amp160 The Respondent8217s Case Randy Barnett a libertarian professor of constitutional law argued for RaichMonson that their activity growing and using cannabis as medicine had been entirely intrastate and noneconomic The feds need not ban such activity in order to regulate illicit drugs In response to questions from Kennedy Barnett said that the fungibility of marijuana does not mean possession for personal medical use is economic activity Scalia compared possessing marijuana for medical use to owning a plant or animal protected by the Endangered Species Act Barnett said that banning ownership of endanged species 8220might be essential to a broader regulatory scheme8221 but owning marijuana for personal medical use was distinguished by state law Scalia was skeptical that that California could narrow the scope of the activity to medical users He invoked 8220reports of whole communes with lots of people in them8221 growing marijuana Justices Breyer and Souter pursued the point that California couldn8217t effectively limit the set of medical users Breyer foresaw large numbers of cannabis consumers resulting in lowered prices thus undermining the feds8217 ability to control contraband Barnett implied that the government8217s figure of 100000 overestimated the number of medical users in California That estimate appeared in the Spring 821704 O8217Shaughnessy8217s and may be an underestimate today Souter speculated about 8220millions of medical users buying marijuana on the street8221 Ginsburg asked whether a ruling for RaichMonson would authorize cultivation of marijuana by medical users in states that hadn8217t legalized it Barnett said it depended on how the Court8217s ruling was crafted If the activity is noneconomic Congress can regulate only as needed 8220to enforce a broader regulatory scheme8221 Congress doesn8217t have to ban medical use of cannabis in order to limit interstate commerce in contraband Scalia asked how the Raich case differed from Wickard v Filburn in which a family was eating their homegrown wheat Barnett said Filburn was feeding wheat to livestock that were sold on the market not just eating it 8220The wheat was grown as part of a commercial enterprise8221 Stevens asked about the likely effect on the price of marijuana on the interstate market if Raich prevailed Barnett not sounding totally sure predicted 8220a trivial reduction8221 Stevens disagreed There followed an exchange it which Barnett was asked about the population of California and couldn8217t provide the answer Kennedy did 34 million Souter tried to estimate how many might be in chemotherapy 100000 His point was 8220isn8217t it economic activity if it has a sizeable effect on the market8221 Barnett differentiated economic activity from personal activity by using prostitution as an example of the former 8220Substitution effects between prostitution and sex within marriage does not make sex within marriage economic activity The nature of the activity determines if it is economic8221 At this point Breyer suggested that RaichMonson hadn8217t exhausted their administrative options 8220Can8217t your clients go to the FDA and get it rescheduled Then if the FDA rules against them8221 he sounded like a civics teacher explaining how and that the system works 8220they can go to court and the FDA ruling can be reviewed for abuse of discretion And if there is no abuse of discretion then wouldn8217t I believe as a judge that it is doubtful there is a medical benefit After all medicine by regulation is better than medicine by referendum8221 This last phrase was quoted by every reporter who filed a story It echoes the enlightenedsounding comment of Breyer8217s friend Harold Varmus former director of the National Institutes of Health after Prop 215 passed 8220Nobody wants to settle medical issues by plebiscite8221 Varmus convened a panel of 8220experts8221 to settle the issue That was back in 821797 Barnett urged Breyer to read the amicus brief written by Rick Doblin PhD describing the endless runaround that wouldbe researchers have gotten over the years from FDA DEA NIDA and HHS He also pointed out that the Institute of Medicine Report acknowledges that some people benefit even from smoked marijuana Barnett8217s tone was slightly apologetic smoking the sin of all time and he missed an opportunity to inform the Justices that for nausea there is no better drug and delivery system than herbal cannabis and inhalation Nor is there any other drug to enhance appetite Kennedy asked if prescriptions were limited to cases where marijuana saved lives 8220It is limited to a list of illnesses8221 said Barnett instead of acknowledging the openended wording of the California law and the doctors8217 gatekeeping role Ginsburg asked a final procedural question can you enjoin criminal prosecutions Barnett said RaichMonson were seeking to enjoin the seizure of marijuana which had already occurred Clement in the few minutes he had reserved for rebuttal emphasized that the case wasn8217t about two individuals He repeated estimates of 100000 to 170000 medical users in California He quoted the broad definition of illness that can be treated by cannabis under California law He cited a California case Rutherford in which the defendant caught with 19 separately packed ounces of marijuana and a scale was allowed to present a 8220medicaluser8221 defense Clement also cited the WAMM case in which 250 cannabis users a veritable hoard claimed protection under the law Assessment Those who have been following Ashcroft v Raich in the media know that most learned observers think the Justices8217 questions implied a looming victory for the federal government Linda Greenhouse of the NY Times in the press room after the hearing predicted a 90 vote However Pebbles Trippet of the Medical Marijuana Patients Union expects support for Raich from Ginsburg Thomas 8220the commerce clause scholar on this court8221 Stevens and O8217Connor who is often a swing vote 8220Anything can happen8221 says Trippet Whatever happens coverage of the Supreme Court hearing has made the American people even more aware that marijuana is safe and effective medicine Angel Raich and Diane Monson although opposites in many ways are both convincing advocates There is a desperate edge to Angel who looks emaciated and says urgently that she would die without cannabis from which she derives no pleasure except pain relief Monson is calm and businesslike an accountant she is living proof that cannabis use doesn8217t undermine one8217s ability to do meticulous work that requires sustained attention to detail Her claim isn8217t that cannabis is keeping her alive only that it enables her to function More commentary and analysis in the days and weeks ahead Some of our shrewder sources are among the 120 lawyers in Key West Fla attending NORML8217s 21st annual marijuanadefensespecialists8217 conference8230 In DC We learned that the NORML Board has selected Allen St Pierre to succeed Keith Stroup as the new director St Pierre graduated from UMassAmherst in 1989 and moved to Washington intending to go to law school Instead he went to work for NORML as communications director in 821791 and has been there ever since as deputy director since 821793 In recent years NORML has been outfundraised by the slicker smoother Marijuana Policy Project St Pierre may be too serious and straightforward to reverse this trend Good luck Hoopla The recent brawl involving players and fans in Detroit has evoked countless calls for 8220more security8221 but you don8217t hear too many for 8220less alcohol82308221 San Francisco Chronicle sportswriter Bruce Jenkins asserted 1127 8220This is a young man8217s league the province of teenagers coming straight out of high school and they represent an angry antiestablishment generation consumed with rebellion the strident lyrics of rap songs and the price to pay for being 8216disrespected8221 The NBA is a rich man8217s league the province of multimillionaires The gifted young giants who get NBA salaries don8217t 8220represent8221 anybody They form a small unique subset of individuals who after growing up in black urban ghettos acquire sudden wealth and fame The result is a fractured class identity There is no evidence that the generation of 20somethings white or black is 8220consumed with rebellion8221 Nor do 8220the strident lyrics of rap songs8221 equate with rebellion Commercial hiphop culture is all about militant stance without corresponding political content 8220As people lament the decidedly weak security around the league8221 writes Jenkins 8220we can only recall the Warriors8217 glory days in Oakland when some massive fearsomelooking security types patrolled the scene They always offered a striking contrast to the sight and scent of people blatantly smoking weed in the Coliseum corridors Somehow there always was a sense of order82308221 Well of course things were orderly it was weed not alcohol And those fearsomelooking security types had the good sense to tolerate it Is it simply coincidence that 8220the Warriors8217 glory days8221 ended when the Coliseum cracked down on the doobie section Or could it be8230 the curse of the ZigZag man The punishment of Ron Artest et al is playing in the same theater as the purification of Carmelo Athony 8216Melo is a beautiful 20yearold who played one year of college basketball leading Syracuse to the national championship and one year as a pro in Denver turning a losing franchise into a winner Before this season began 8216Melo was arrested for marijuana possession a small amount was found in his backpack as the team waited to board a flight A friend named James Cunningham then said in an affidavit that he8217d stayed at Carmelo Anthony8217s house and borrowed the backpack and left his marijuana in it Denver police figured they couldn8217t get a conviction and didn8217t charge 8216Melo Nike is now running an ad campaign designed to polish 8216Melo8217s image A hip black poet very intelligent charismatic face and delivery reminds us that 8216Melo is a lovable kid from a tough part of Baltimore and that he drinks milk Apparently a group of 8220creative8221 types employed by Nike sat around a table coming up with lines like 8220Should we fire him or admire him8221 reflecting their own conflicts8230 Too bad they couldn8217t come out and say that Carmelo Anthony gets migraine headaches and selfmedicates with cannabis Not even the great Kareem AbdulJabbar could get away with such a direct truth Jabbar got busted for possession 6 grams at the Toronto airport in 821798 said it was for medical use and was humiliated in the media and blacklisted as a coach 8220It was a slow week for the NBA8217S active miscreants8221 wrote David Steele of the Chronicle 8220so like the Hall of Famer he is AbdulJabbar stepped into the breach and got himself busted The sixtime MVP sixtime championship winner and naturally the league8217s alltime leading scorer surrendered what was described as a small amount of marijuana A Customs spokesman said that AbdulJabbar told the officials at the airport that his doctors had recommended his using marijuana to combat migraines Must have been a doctor in our own fine state home of Proposition 21582308221 Steele went on to make light of the fact that Chris Webber and Robert Parish had been busted for marijuana too These busts were humiliating and costly for the people involved Where was the humor Wittingly or not Steele was serving the interests of the team owners who wanted the NBA players to agree in the upcoming contract to be tested for marijuana And the players did indeed capitulate The implication of the Carmelo Anthony bust like the AbdulJabbar bust and the Webber bust and the Parish bust is that marijuana use doesn8217t prevent one from being a great athlete Parish was the most durable player in the history of the league 8220David Steele must never have had a migraine8221 commented a migraine sufferer of my acquaintance 8220I don8217t know what the worst pain in the world is but it must be the second8221 FRED GARDNER can be reached at journalccrmgorg amp160

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<p>As thousands head to the South Carolina state Capitol to honor church victim massacre Rev. Clementa Pinckney, a new study finds white supremacists and other non-Muslim fanatics have killed far more people in the United States since 9/11 than Muslim extremists. According to the research center New America, 26 people have been killed in jihadist violence in the U.S. since 9/11, but 48 people have been killed in attacks by right-wing groups. Despite the intense focus by the Obama administration on Muslim communities, non-Muslims have carried out 19 terrorist attacks since September 11, 2001, while Muslims have been responsible for only seven. We are joined by two guests: Mike German, a fellow at NYU&#8217;s Brennan Center for Justice and former FBI agent specializing in domestic counterterrorism; and Bud Welch, whose daughter, Julie Marie Welch, was killed in the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building on April 19, 1995.</p> <p>Below is an interview with German and Welch below, followed by a transcript:</p> <p /> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>NERMEEN SHAIKH: In South Carolina, thousands of mourners lined up at the state House to pay tribute to the Reverend Clementa Pinckney, a state senator and the Emanuel AME Church pastor, who was among the nine victims killed last week at Bible study in Charleston. Pinckney&#8217;s body lay in state ahead of his funeral on Friday. Pinckney is the first African American since Reconstruction to lie in honor in the state rotunda. This comes as a new <a href="//securitydata.newamerica.net/extremists/deadly-attacks.html" type="external">report</a> finds white supremacists and other non-Muslim fanatics have killed nearly twice as many people as Muslim extremists since 9/11.</p> <p>AMY GOODMAN: According to the report by the research center New America, 26 people have been killed in jihadist violence in the U.S. since 9/11, but 48 people have been killed in attacks by right-wing groups. Despite the intense focus by the Obama administration on Muslim communities, non-Muslims have carried out 19 terrorist attacks since September 11, 2001, while Muslims have been responsible for only seven.</p> <p>To talk more about the findings, we&#8217;re joined now by Mike German, a fellow at New York University&#8217;s Brennan Center for Justice. From 1988 to 2004, he served as an FBI agent specializing in domestic counterterrorism. He left after reporting continuing deficiencies in FBI counterterrorism operations in Congress. He&#8217;s the author of Thinking Like a Terrorist: Insights of a Former FBI Undercover Agent.</p> <p>Still with us in Oklahoma City, Bud Welch, his daughter the victim of a white supremacist. Julie Marie Welch was his daughter. She was killed in the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building April 19, 1995, blown up by Timothy McVeigh, who was put to death in 2001.</p> <p>Mike German, just talk about what might surprise many, given the bent and the focus in at least the public comments of the government.</p> <p>MIKE GERMAN: Well, I think there are a couple of things that are surprising. One is that this threat from far-right extremists is a persistent threat that has been here for a long time and continues, despite the lack of media coverage of most of those events.</p> <p>The second is that the numbers are very fluid. Different groups count different events. So the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, for example, put out a report in 2012 that had a far higher number of fatalities as a result of far-right violence. So, rather than the government keeping accurate records based on a specific standard, we have private organizations collecting the numbers under their own standards, so we don&#8217;t have a clear picture of the nature and scope of this threat.</p> <p>NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, I want to turn to comments made by FBI Director James Comey following the Charleston massacre last week. Speaking at a news conference in Baltimore Friday, Comey said the massacre would be investigated as a hate crime but ruled out the term "terrorism."</p> <p>JAMES COMEY: I wouldn&#8217;t, because of the way we define terrorism under the law. Terrorism is an act of violence done or threatened to&#8212;in order to try to influence a public body or the citizenry, so it&#8217;s more of a political act. And again, based on what I know so far, I don&#8217;t see it as a political act.</p> <p>NERMEEN SHAIKH: That was James Comey speaking on Friday, one day before Dylann Roof&#8217;s manifesto came to light. So could you talk specifically about what Comey said in light of what you criticize in the FBI&#8217;s methodology when they compare Islamist or Muslim extremists and white supremacist violence in the U.S.?</p> <p>MIKE GERMAN: Sure. So you can imagine the different reaction that would have occurred if Dylann Roof was wearing an ISIS flag on his jacket rather than a Rhodesia flag. And for somebody like me who knows a lot about the white supremacist movement and having been undercover in it, seeing those symbols, seeing the target&#8212;you know, the Emanuel AME Church, like many AME churches, isn&#8217;t just the spiritual center of the black community, it&#8217;s the political center, it&#8217;s the social center, so the fact that it&#8217;s targeted fits the FBI definition, which is an act of violence intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population. And the political purpose is obvious. One of the victims, who was specifically picked out, was a state legislator. So the idea that somehow this wasn&#8217;t political, I think, says a lot about the way the FBI views terrorism.</p> <p>AMY GOODMAN: Were you shocked by James Comey&#8217;s comments? I mean, yes, it was a day before we see this manifesto.</p> <p>MIKE GERMAN: Right.</p> <p>AMY GOODMAN: But we knew at that point that he said, "I&#8217;m going to kill you because you&#8217;re black." We knew that he said to a woman who was lying on the floor, "I&#8217;m not going to kill you because I want you to tell everyone else," which is terrorizing the rest of the community.</p> <p>MIKE GERMAN: Exactly.</p> <p>AMY GOODMAN: So he laid it all out right there. The Justice Department said they were weighing whether it was terrorist, but Comey came right out, FBI director, and has not retracted that statement, even since the manifesto.</p> <p>MIKE GERMAN: And that is unusual. I mean, usually in an investigation, you wait until the evidence is brought forth. You don&#8217;t make a claim about the evidence long before there has been time to investigate it. So it is surprising, but I think, again, reflects this idea that the government has that if you&#8217;re using violence to challenge the establishment, to challenge government policy, you&#8217;re more dangerous than if you&#8217;re using violence in a way that affects minority communities or reinforces establishment status quo. As the Church Committee found, the FBI in the Hoover era saw themselves not as law enforcers but as the guardians of the status quo. And that seems to be&#8212;that thinking seems to be reflected in the statement that this act wasn&#8217;t political.</p> <p>NERMEEN SHAIKH: So could you say a little bit more about how the West Point center that you talked about, Combating Terrorism Center, how it compiles these statistics and how the FBI does? And what interests are served by the FBI or the government in downplaying hate crimes?</p> <p>MIKE GERMAN: It&#8217;s hard to understand. Congress mandated that the Department of Justice publish the number of hate crimes. Now, the domestic terrorism events that the Combating Terrorism Center talks about are not necessarily the same. There&#8217;s sort of a Venn diagram, some of the same of what we would call hate crimes. But the FBI publishes an annual report that says there are about 6,000 to 7,000 hate crimes each year, roughly. I think the last time, which was 2013, the last data published was about 6,000. But the National Institute of Justice, also part of the Justice Department, did an examination and&#8212;using a different methodology, and found up to 190,000 hate crimes in a year. So, that disparity is inexplicable, and it definitely shows that the FBI&#8217;s methodology doesn&#8217;t show the scope of the threat.</p> <p>AMY GOODMAN: So let&#8217;s talk about the problem with not overtly taking this as seriously or counting the numbers of cases there are. You went undercover yourself. Explain what you did.</p> <p>MIKE GERMAN: So, in 1992, I was asked to go undercover into a group of neo-Nazis who we had some evidence had been engaging in some weapons transactions. So, the investigation started with informants introducing me, and lasted, from start to finish, about 14 months of my involvement, and&#8212;</p> <p>AMY GOODMAN: As an undercover FBI agent.</p> <p>MIKE GERMAN: As an undercover agent&#8212;identified numerous instances of weapons trafficking, manufacture of explosives, use of explosives and conspiracy to do further bombings, including an AME church in Los Angeles. So, at the end of that investigation, we went through the trials. I think there were about eight or 10 people tried, total. And at the end of it, I called the FBI&#8217;s domestic terrorism unit and said, "When are we going to have a debriefing, so I can explain everything I learned about how these groups work?" And they said they didn&#8217;t need one, that they felt they understood this issue well enough.</p> <p>AMY GOODMAN: This was when?</p> <p>MIKE GERMAN: This would have been 1994, after the trials in 1993. So then, after the Oklahoma City bombing, I went back undercover in antigovernment groups, used the same methodology that I had used in the previous investigation, also in a shorter period of time because I didn&#8217;t make as many mistakes, was able to basically identify the same criminal activities within the groups. Again, after the trials, I reached out to the domestic terrorism unit, and they told me they didn&#8217;t want to debrief me. So part of the problem is that the FBI doesn&#8217;t capture the information it knows. I think Sandy Berger, during the 9/11 hearings, said the FBI&#8217;s problem isn&#8217;t what it doesn&#8217;t know, it&#8217;s that it doesn&#8217;t know what it does know. And so, there isn&#8217;t an effort to capture the information agents learn during these investigations. And to this day, the FBI&#8217;s domestic terrorism unit has never interviewed me.</p> <p>AMY GOODMAN: I just want to bring Bud Welch into this conversation, back in. As you listen to Mike German talk about going undercover in white supremacist groups in 1994, asking for a debriefing, they saying they didn&#8217;t know it&#8212;they didn&#8217;t want it, and then, in 1995, Oklahoma City bombing happens&#8212;Timothy McVeigh, antigovernment white supremacist, anti-Muslim. Your feelings?</p> <p>BUD WELCH: Well, I mean, my feelings are very simply that, you know, Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols came back from the&#8212;from Desert Storm, and when they came back, they were ill, they had PTSD, and the government failed to give them the proper treatment that they should have received. And so, we see those kinds of failures in different branches of government having to do with terrorists. And I think the federal government many times is reluctant to admit that we have homegrown terrorists in the United States. And I think that was the case with McVeigh and Nichols, and that&#8217;s why Julie is dead today. And it&#8217;s complicated, but it doesn&#8217;t have to be that complicated.</p> <p>NERMEEN SHAIKH: I want to go back to another incident in August 2012, the massacre at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin in which six people were killed. In August, Democracy Now!&#8212;of 2012, Democracy Now! spoke to a former senior analyst at the Department of Homeland Security, <a href="//www.democracynow.org/2012/8/9/former_dhs_analyst_daryl_johnson_on" type="external">Daryl Johnson</a>. In 2009, he had called attention to the threat of far-right extremist groups and sparked a political firestorm in the process. The report warned that the election of the first African-American president, combined with economic anxieties, could fuel a rise in far-right violence. Johnson described the fallout from his research, speaking to Democracy Now!</p> <p>DARYL JOHNSON: I never anticipated that, you know, the Department of Homeland Security, my employer, would actually clamp down on the unit and stop all of the valuable work we were doing. Leading up to this report&#8212;and I&#8217;ll talk about this at length in my book&#8212;my team was doing a lot of good things throughout the country. We received numerous accolades from law enforcement, intelligence officials, talking about the great work we were doing in the fight against domestic terrorism. And then, in lieu of the political backlash, the department decided to not only stop all of our work, stop all of the training and briefings that we were scheduled to give, but they also disbanded the unit, reassigned us to other areas within the office, and then made life increasingly difficult for us. Not only did they stop the work that we were doing, but they also tried to blame us for some of the attacks that were occurring.</p> <p>NERMEEN SHAIKH: That was Daryl Johnson speaking to Democracy Now! in August 2012. In a New York Times <a href="//www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/06/24/charleston-and-the-threat-of-homegrown-hate-groups/for-domestic-hate-apply-the-vigor-and-strategy-used-for-muslim-terror" type="external">piece</a> Wednesday headlined "For Domestic Hate, Apply the Vigor and Strategy Used for Muslim Terror," Daryl Johnson wrote, quote, "Domestic terrorism is the national security threat whose name we dare not speak. The numbers of both extremists and the radical movements that spur them to violence are soaring, and coalescing, in alarming ways. Yet through reckless neglect at nearly all levels of government, domestic terrorism not tied to Islam has become a cancer with no diagnosis or plan to address it." Mike German, can you respond to that?</p> <p>MIKE GERMAN: Sure. I think there are a couple of issues. One, while the number of far-right&#8212;the fatalities from far-right attacks is higher than any other group, it&#8217;s still relatively small compared to the 14,000 murders that happen each year. So, we have to keep this in context.</p> <p>AMY GOODMAN: And on that, we should talk about gun violence, but we don&#8217;t have time today.</p> <p>MIKE GERMAN: Exactly, exactly. And the second point is, is there&#8217;s an issue in the study of terrorism, whether it&#8217;s far-right violence, like the DHS study, or Muslim terrorism&#8212;</p> <p>AMY GOODMAN: And weren&#8217;t they forced to revoke that study, to take it back, there was such an outcry?</p> <p>MIKE GERMAN: Yes. And I criticized the study, as well, because it made a simple causal connection between holding particular ideas and becoming violent. And if you look at the actual empirical studies of people who commit terrorism, there is no simple connection. The ideology is neither necessary&#8212;there are plenty of people committing violence without it&#8212;nor sufficient&#8212;it&#8217;s not the only thing. Many thousands of people hold these ideologies, join these groups, who don&#8217;t act out. And I knew from my undercover work that many were actually opposed to violence, even though they held abhorrent views that would shock many people. They would tell me, "Do not engage with those knuckleheads over there that you&#8217;re hanging out with. You&#8217;re just going to get in trouble and make the movement look bad." So we have to be very clear that people need to be able to express their views without being suppressed by government surveillance, and government needs to study the violence rather than the ideologies.</p> <p>NERMEEN SHAIKH: But, of course, as you know, the government and those who support the government&#8217;s policies following 9/11 make the argument that the government&#8217;s counterterrorism strategy has been successful, and the best proof of that is that there has not been an attack in the U.S. like what occurred on September 11, 2001.</p> <p>MIKE GERMAN: So, one of the first things you learn as an FBI agent is the absence of evidence is not evidence. And, you know, unfortunately, we have seen far too many people slipping through the cracks. Every death from terrorism is a tragedy, and government needs to understand it. So the last thing that we&#8217;d want to see is the excess and abuse used in counterterrorism operations now being brought to domestic terrorism.</p> <p>AMY GOODMAN: Your final comment, as we head down to Charleston today&#8212;we&#8217;ll be there tomorrow for the funeral of Reverend Pinckney and the memorial for the Emanuel Nine&#8212;who Dylann Storm Roof is, what he was a part of, and the significance of these flags, one of these magic moments in history people fight for for so long? It&#8217;s not the particular governors who are actually doing this, because it was a foundation of social activism of years, for example, to take down the flags. But the flags are an integral part of this ideology.</p> <p>MIKE GERMAN: Absolutely. And one of the things you have to keep in mind is, the flags give aid and comfort to the people who have this hateful, racist ideology. So even if you think it doesn&#8217;t represent that, when they see the flag rising, they think that far more people support their ideas and are just more quiet about it, and it gives them comfort that if they just do this one violent act, that will start the revolution. And that&#8217;s why you hear them talking about race wars and triggering the race war through an act of violence, is because they think there is this tacit support behind them.</p> <p>AMY GOODMAN: Do you think it&#8217;s possible that Dylann might have shot the roof off of the Confederacy?</p> <p>MIKE GERMAN: Interesting way to put it. It&#8217;s sad that it took a tragedy like this to look at this problem and to recognize how this was hurting society and keeping us back. So, it&#8217;s good to see that it&#8217;s now happening, but that&#8217;s really only part of the problem. I mean, we really have to have the government focus on violence rather than ideology, and truly try to understand how terrorism works, so they can develop measures that are narrowly targeted to the people who are actually causing harm.</p> <p>AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you very much for being with us, Mike German, fellow at NYU&#8217;s Brennan Center for Justice. From 1988 to 2004, he served as an FBI agent specializing in domestic counterterrorism, author of Thinking Like a Terrorist: Insights of a Former FBI Undercover Agent. And thanks to Bud Welch in Oklahoma City. And even 20 years later, as we pass this 20th anniversary, our condolences on the death of Julie, your daughter, killed in the Oklahoma City bombing April 19, 1995.</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p>

Does U.S. Ignore Right-Wing Terror? More Killed by White Extremists Than Jihadists Since 9/11

http://alternet.org/news-amp-politics/does-us-ignore-right-wing-terror-more-killed-white-extremists-jihadists-911?sc%3Dfb

2015-06-26

4left

As thousands head to the South Carolina state Capitol to honor church victim massacre Rev Clementa Pinckney a new study finds white supremacists and other nonMuslim fanatics have killed far more people in the United States since 911 than Muslim extremists According to the research center New America 26 people have been killed in jihadist violence in the US since 911 but 48 people have been killed in attacks by rightwing groups Despite the intense focus by the Obama administration on Muslim communities nonMuslims have carried out 19 terrorist attacks since September 11 2001 while Muslims have been responsible for only seven We are joined by two guests Mike German a fellow at NYU8217s Brennan Center for Justice and former FBI agent specializing in domestic counterterrorism and Bud Welch whose daughter Julie Marie Welch was killed in the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building on April 19 1995 Below is an interview with German and Welch below followed by a transcript amp160 NERMEEN SHAIKH In South Carolina thousands of mourners lined up at the state House to pay tribute to the Reverend Clementa Pinckney a state senator and the Emanuel AME Church pastor who was among the nine victims killed last week at Bible study in Charleston Pinckney8217s body lay in state ahead of his funeral on Friday Pinckney is the first African American since Reconstruction to lie in honor in the state rotunda This comes as a new report finds white supremacists and other nonMuslim fanatics have killed nearly twice as many people as Muslim extremists since 911 AMY GOODMAN According to the report by the research center New America 26 people have been killed in jihadist violence in the US since 911 but 48 people have been killed in attacks by rightwing groups Despite the intense focus by the Obama administration on Muslim communities nonMuslims have carried out 19 terrorist attacks since September 11 2001 while Muslims have been responsible for only seven To talk more about the findings we8217re joined now by Mike German a fellow at New York University8217s Brennan Center for Justice From 1988 to 2004 he served as an FBI agent specializing in domestic counterterrorism He left after reporting continuing deficiencies in FBI counterterrorism operations in Congress He8217s the author of Thinking Like a Terrorist Insights of a Former FBI Undercover Agent Still with us in Oklahoma City Bud Welch his daughter the victim of a white supremacist Julie Marie Welch was his daughter She was killed in the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building April 19 1995 blown up by Timothy McVeigh who was put to death in 2001 Mike German just talk about what might surprise many given the bent and the focus in at least the public comments of the government MIKE GERMAN Well I think there are a couple of things that are surprising One is that this threat from farright extremists is a persistent threat that has been here for a long time and continues despite the lack of media coverage of most of those events The second is that the numbers are very fluid Different groups count different events So the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point for example put out a report in 2012 that had a far higher number of fatalities as a result of farright violence So rather than the government keeping accurate records based on a specific standard we have private organizations collecting the numbers under their own standards so we don8217t have a clear picture of the nature and scope of this threat NERMEEN SHAIKH Well I want to turn to comments made by FBI Director James Comey following the Charleston massacre last week Speaking at a news conference in Baltimore Friday Comey said the massacre would be investigated as a hate crime but ruled out the term terrorism JAMES COMEY I wouldn8217t because of the way we define terrorism under the law Terrorism is an act of violence done or threatened to8212in order to try to influence a public body or the citizenry so it8217s more of a political act And again based on what I know so far I don8217t see it as a political act NERMEEN SHAIKH That was James Comey speaking on Friday one day before Dylann Roof8217s manifesto came to light So could you talk specifically about what Comey said in light of what you criticize in the FBI8217s methodology when they compare Islamist or Muslim extremists and white supremacist violence in the US MIKE GERMAN Sure So you can imagine the different reaction that would have occurred if Dylann Roof was wearing an ISIS flag on his jacket rather than a Rhodesia flag And for somebody like me who knows a lot about the white supremacist movement and having been undercover in it seeing those symbols seeing the target8212you know the Emanuel AME Church like many AME churches isn8217t just the spiritual center of the black community it8217s the political center it8217s the social center so the fact that it8217s targeted fits the FBI definition which is an act of violence intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population And the political purpose is obvious One of the victims who was specifically picked out was a state legislator So the idea that somehow this wasn8217t political I think says a lot about the way the FBI views terrorism AMY GOODMAN Were you shocked by James Comey8217s comments I mean yes it was a day before we see this manifesto MIKE GERMAN Right AMY GOODMAN But we knew at that point that he said I8217m going to kill you because you8217re black We knew that he said to a woman who was lying on the floor I8217m not going to kill you because I want you to tell everyone else which is terrorizing the rest of the community MIKE GERMAN Exactly AMY GOODMAN So he laid it all out right there The Justice Department said they were weighing whether it was terrorist but Comey came right out FBI director and has not retracted that statement even since the manifesto MIKE GERMAN And that is unusual I mean usually in an investigation you wait until the evidence is brought forth You don8217t make a claim about the evidence long before there has been time to investigate it So it is surprising but I think again reflects this idea that the government has that if you8217re using violence to challenge the establishment to challenge government policy you8217re more dangerous than if you8217re using violence in a way that affects minority communities or reinforces establishment status quo As the Church Committee found the FBI in the Hoover era saw themselves not as law enforcers but as the guardians of the status quo And that seems to be8212that thinking seems to be reflected in the statement that this act wasn8217t political NERMEEN SHAIKH So could you say a little bit more about how the West Point center that you talked about Combating Terrorism Center how it compiles these statistics and how the FBI does And what interests are served by the FBI or the government in downplaying hate crimes MIKE GERMAN It8217s hard to understand Congress mandated that the Department of Justice publish the number of hate crimes Now the domestic terrorism events that the Combating Terrorism Center talks about are not necessarily the same There8217s sort of a Venn diagram some of the same of what we would call hate crimes But the FBI publishes an annual report that says there are about 6000 to 7000 hate crimes each year roughly I think the last time which was 2013 the last data published was about 6000 But the National Institute of Justice also part of the Justice Department did an examination and8212using a different methodology and found up to 190000 hate crimes in a year So that disparity is inexplicable and it definitely shows that the FBI8217s methodology doesn8217t show the scope of the threat AMY GOODMAN So let8217s talk about the problem with not overtly taking this as seriously or counting the numbers of cases there are You went undercover yourself Explain what you did MIKE GERMAN So in 1992 I was asked to go undercover into a group of neoNazis who we had some evidence had been engaging in some weapons transactions So the investigation started with informants introducing me and lasted from start to finish about 14 months of my involvement and8212 AMY GOODMAN As an undercover FBI agent MIKE GERMAN As an undercover agent8212identified numerous instances of weapons trafficking manufacture of explosives use of explosives and conspiracy to do further bombings including an AME church in Los Angeles So at the end of that investigation we went through the trials I think there were about eight or 10 people tried total And at the end of it I called the FBI8217s domestic terrorism unit and said When are we going to have a debriefing so I can explain everything I learned about how these groups work And they said they didn8217t need one that they felt they understood this issue well enough AMY GOODMAN This was when MIKE GERMAN This would have been 1994 after the trials in 1993 So then after the Oklahoma City bombing I went back undercover in antigovernment groups used the same methodology that I had used in the previous investigation also in a shorter period of time because I didn8217t make as many mistakes was able to basically identify the same criminal activities within the groups Again after the trials I reached out to the domestic terrorism unit and they told me they didn8217t want to debrief me So part of the problem is that the FBI doesn8217t capture the information it knows I think Sandy Berger during the 911 hearings said the FBI8217s problem isn8217t what it doesn8217t know it8217s that it doesn8217t know what it does know And so there isn8217t an effort to capture the information agents learn during these investigations And to this day the FBI8217s domestic terrorism unit has never interviewed me AMY GOODMAN I just want to bring Bud Welch into this conversation back in As you listen to Mike German talk about going undercover in white supremacist groups in 1994 asking for a debriefing they saying they didn8217t know it8212they didn8217t want it and then in 1995 Oklahoma City bombing happens8212Timothy McVeigh antigovernment white supremacist antiMuslim Your feelings BUD WELCH Well I mean my feelings are very simply that you know Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols came back from the8212from Desert Storm and when they came back they were ill they had PTSD and the government failed to give them the proper treatment that they should have received And so we see those kinds of failures in different branches of government having to do with terrorists And I think the federal government many times is reluctant to admit that we have homegrown terrorists in the United States And I think that was the case with McVeigh and Nichols and that8217s why Julie is dead today And it8217s complicated but it doesn8217t have to be that complicated NERMEEN SHAIKH I want to go back to another incident in August 2012 the massacre at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin in which six people were killed In August Democracy Now8212of 2012 Democracy Now spoke to a former senior analyst at the Department of Homeland Security Daryl Johnson In 2009 he had called attention to the threat of farright extremist groups and sparked a political firestorm in the process The report warned that the election of the first AfricanAmerican president combined with economic anxieties could fuel a rise in farright violence Johnson described the fallout from his research speaking to Democracy Now DARYL JOHNSON I never anticipated that you know the Department of Homeland Security my employer would actually clamp down on the unit and stop all of the valuable work we were doing Leading up to this report8212and I8217ll talk about this at length in my book8212my team was doing a lot of good things throughout the country We received numerous accolades from law enforcement intelligence officials talking about the great work we were doing in the fight against domestic terrorism And then in lieu of the political backlash the department decided to not only stop all of our work stop all of the training and briefings that we were scheduled to give but they also disbanded the unit reassigned us to other areas within the office and then made life increasingly difficult for us Not only did they stop the work that we were doing but they also tried to blame us for some of the attacks that were occurring NERMEEN SHAIKH That was Daryl Johnson speaking to Democracy Now in August 2012 In a New York Times piece Wednesday headlined For Domestic Hate Apply the Vigor and Strategy Used for Muslim Terror Daryl Johnson wrote quote Domestic terrorism is the national security threat whose name we dare not speak The numbers of both extremists and the radical movements that spur them to violence are soaring and coalescing in alarming ways Yet through reckless neglect at nearly all levels of government domestic terrorism not tied to Islam has become a cancer with no diagnosis or plan to address it Mike German can you respond to that MIKE GERMAN Sure I think there are a couple of issues One while the number of farright8212the fatalities from farright attacks is higher than any other group it8217s still relatively small compared to the 14000 murders that happen each year So we have to keep this in context AMY GOODMAN And on that we should talk about gun violence but we don8217t have time today MIKE GERMAN Exactly exactly And the second point is is there8217s an issue in the study of terrorism whether it8217s farright violence like the DHS study or Muslim terrorism8212 AMY GOODMAN And weren8217t they forced to revoke that study to take it back there was such an outcry MIKE GERMAN Yes And I criticized the study as well because it made a simple causal connection between holding particular ideas and becoming violent And if you look at the actual empirical studies of people who commit terrorism there is no simple connection The ideology is neither necessary8212there are plenty of people committing violence without it8212nor sufficient8212it8217s not the only thing Many thousands of people hold these ideologies join these groups who don8217t act out And I knew from my undercover work that many were actually opposed to violence even though they held abhorrent views that would shock many people They would tell me Do not engage with those knuckleheads over there that you8217re hanging out with You8217re just going to get in trouble and make the movement look bad So we have to be very clear that people need to be able to express their views without being suppressed by government surveillance and government needs to study the violence rather than the ideologies NERMEEN SHAIKH But of course as you know the government and those who support the government8217s policies following 911 make the argument that the government8217s counterterrorism strategy has been successful and the best proof of that is that there has not been an attack in the US like what occurred on September 11 2001 MIKE GERMAN So one of the first things you learn as an FBI agent is the absence of evidence is not evidence And you know unfortunately we have seen far too many people slipping through the cracks Every death from terrorism is a tragedy and government needs to understand it So the last thing that we8217d want to see is the excess and abuse used in counterterrorism operations now being brought to domestic terrorism AMY GOODMAN Your final comment as we head down to Charleston today8212we8217ll be there tomorrow for the funeral of Reverend Pinckney and the memorial for the Emanuel Nine8212who Dylann Storm Roof is what he was a part of and the significance of these flags one of these magic moments in history people fight for for so long It8217s not the particular governors who are actually doing this because it was a foundation of social activism of years for example to take down the flags But the flags are an integral part of this ideology MIKE GERMAN Absolutely And one of the things you have to keep in mind is the flags give aid and comfort to the people who have this hateful racist ideology So even if you think it doesn8217t represent that when they see the flag rising they think that far more people support their ideas and are just more quiet about it and it gives them comfort that if they just do this one violent act that will start the revolution And that8217s why you hear them talking about race wars and triggering the race war through an act of violence is because they think there is this tacit support behind them AMY GOODMAN Do you think it8217s possible that Dylann might have shot the roof off of the Confederacy MIKE GERMAN Interesting way to put it It8217s sad that it took a tragedy like this to look at this problem and to recognize how this was hurting society and keeping us back So it8217s good to see that it8217s now happening but that8217s really only part of the problem I mean we really have to have the government focus on violence rather than ideology and truly try to understand how terrorism works so they can develop measures that are narrowly targeted to the people who are actually causing harm AMY GOODMAN We want to thank you very much for being with us Mike German fellow at NYU8217s Brennan Center for Justice From 1988 to 2004 he served as an FBI agent specializing in domestic counterterrorism author of Thinking Like a Terrorist Insights of a Former FBI Undercover Agent And thanks to Bud Welch in Oklahoma City And even 20 years later as we pass this 20th anniversary our condolences on the death of Julie your daughter killed in the Oklahoma City bombing April 19 1995 amp160

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<p>(Reuters) - Technology has made a brave new world of the class action claims process, helping plaintiffs&#8217; lawyers and claims administrators locate and notify more class members than they ever could with the old blunderbuss methods of mailing out postcards or running ads in widely circulated magazines. That&#8217;s a fantastic development. But it&#8217;s not risk-free.</p> <p>Here&#8217;s the proof. Last spring, when plaintiffs&#8217; lawyers from Kerr &amp;amp; Wagstaffe and Phillips Erlewine Given &amp;amp; Carlin reached a $5.3 million settlement with eight app sellers accused of improperly accessing data stored on users&#8217; Apple devices, they wanted to reach as many of the millions of people in the class as possible. From the defendants, including Instagram, Twitter, Foursquare and Yelp, they obtained email addresses for more than 13 million potential users. Those users all received email notice of the class settlement, along with instructions for filing a claim at the website set up by the claims administrator, KCC Class Action Services.</p> <p>KCC also published notices about the settlement on Twitter. When class members filed claims, KCC could figure out whether they originated from emails or from Twitter because the email notices provided class members with a unique ID; class members who responded via Twitter didn&#8217;t have those individual claim IDs.</p> <p>The Twitter campaign was a big success. In all, according to plaintiffs&#8217; Nov. 30 <a href="" type="internal">motion for final approval</a> of the settlement, about 88,000 class members filed claims, based on about 300,000 downloaded apps. More than half of those claims &#8211; about 46,000 claims, according to Michael von Loewenfeldt of Kerr &amp;amp; Wagstaffe &#8211; traced back to Twitter. The Twitter notices, in other words, doubled the claims rate, which plaintiffs' lawyers calculated to be more than 4 percent (based on their estimate that 7 million app downloads were at issue in the case).</p> <p>But there was a hitch, as plaintiffs' lawyers disclosed in an <a href="" type="internal">administrative motion</a> filed on the same day as their motion for final approval. About 6,000 Twitter-originated claims appeared to be fraudulent.</p> <p>KCC senior project manager Lana Lucchesi explained how the administrator spotted the fakes in an accompanying <a href="" type="internal">declaration</a>. The biggest giveaway: More than 5,400 of the suspicious claims were filed and submitted from the same IP address. Nearly 1,000 of the claims from that IP address were from people who purported to live in what turned out to be a single-family home in Toledo, Ohio. (The claims cited nonexistent apartment numbers going as high as 988.) The other 505 suspicious claims came from 11 IP addresses, some of which used botlike techniques of changing a single letter in names or street addresses to file multiple claims.</p> <p>U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar of San Francisco directed KCC to send emails requesting additional information to all of the suspicious claimants. Only two responded, according to a Jan. 11 <a href="" type="internal">declaration</a> from KCC&#8217;s Lucchesi. One response was from a real class member whose name was apparently also used by fraudsters who asserted claims. The other was from an IP address that used name variations such as &#8220;Stephen Galik Galik&#8221; and &#8220;S MC Galik Galik.&#8221; Spotting inconsistencies between the original claims and the followup response, KCC was unpersuaded the claims were bona fide. The administrator told Judge Tigar it believed all of the nearly 6,000 suspicious claims it had previously flagged were fraudulent.</p> <p>On Wednesday, as the San Francisco Recorder was the <a href="https://www.law.com/therecorder/sites/therecorder/2018/01/17/judge-asks-feds-to-probe-400k-in-fraudulent-claims-in-app-privacy-settlement/?kw=Judge%20Asks%20Feds%20to%20Probe%20%24400K%20in%20Fraudulent%20Claims%20in%20App%20Privacy%20Settlement&amp;amp;et=editorial&amp;amp;bu=The%20Recorder&amp;amp;cn=20180117&amp;amp;src=EMC-Email&amp;amp;pt=Afternoon%20Update" type="external">first to report</a>, Judge Tigar <a href="" type="internal">referred</a> the apparently fraudulent claims to the U.S. Attorney&#8217;s office for investigation.</p> <p>Interestingly, Lucchesi&#8217;s original declaration suggested KCC has run across the same fraud in other class actions. She said one of the telltale signs in the app case was the use of IP and street addresses &#8220;known to KCC&#8221; because they were &#8220;associated with prior fraudulent claims.&#8221;</p> <p>She didn&#8217;t say anything else about fraud in other cases, but it seems fair to say, based only on what we know from the app class action, that claims administrators and class counsel are going to have to be wary of bots attempting to take advantage of class members.</p> <p>It boggles my mind that anyone capable of designing a bot can&#8217;t think of a more effective way to run a scam than filing small-dollar claims in a class action. The small stakes in most consumer cases, in fact, have always been regarded as a disincentive for fraud: the average recovery for class members in the app case is expected to be $39.</p> <p>But as class action notice expert Todd Hilsee pointed out in an interview Wednesday, the mass scale of bot fraud may provide economic justification. KCC and class counsel estimated the total size of the scam in the app case to be $400,000. Thirty-nine bucks isn&#8217;t much of a payoff for a fraudster, but nearly half a million dollars is.</p> <p>Hilsee told me he&#8217;s worried that claims administrators, who are facing competitive pressure, don&#8217;t have the resources to keep up with the bots. &#8220;We&#8217;ve created a very difficult challenge,&#8221; he said. &#8220;The risk is great that we&#8217;re not catching this.&#8221;</p> <p>App class action lawyer von Loewenfeldt, on the other hand, said the exposure of the apparently fake claims in his case shows administrators are doing a good job. Claims processes that are open to public always present a risk of fraud, he said, and after this case, &#8220;I&#8217;m going to be more than alert.&#8221; But the Twitter campaign that opened the door to scam artists, von Loewenfeldt said, also brought more than 40,000 legitimate claims into the case.</p> <p>&#8220;The benefit of having broader notice vastly outweighed the inconvenience of sorting out 6,000 (fake) claims,&#8221; von Loewenfeldt said.</p> <p>I have a feeling this won&#8217;t be the last case that forces us to test that balance.</p> <p>The views expressed in this article are not those of Reuters News.</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BEIRUT (Reuters) - The prospect of Western military action in Syria that could lead to confrontation with Russia hung over the Middle East on Friday but there was no clear sign that a U.S.-led attack was imminent.</p> <p>International chemical weapons experts were traveling to Syria to investigate an alleged gas attack by government forces on the town of Douma which killed dozens of people. Two days ago U.S. President Donald Trump warned that missiles &#8220;will be coming&#8221; in response to that attack.</p> <p>The allies of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad were eager on Friday to lay blame for the crisis not with him but with Trump.</p> <p>Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich said international relations should not depend on one person&#8217;s morning mood, in apparent reference to Trump&#8217;s tweets.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-chemicalweapons/factbox-chemical-weapons-inspectors-how-do-they-work-idUSKBN1HK16H" type="external">Factbox: Chemical weapons inspectors, how do they work?</a> <a href="/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-germany/germany-vows-to-keep-pressure-on-russia-over-syria-idUSKBN1HK19T" type="external">Germany vows to keep pressure on Russia over Syria</a> <p>&#8220;We cannot depend on what someone on the other side of the ocean takes into his head in the morning. We cannot take such risks,&#8221; said Dvorkovich, speaking at a forum.</p> <p>Russia has warned the West against attacking Assad, who is also supported by Iran, and says there is no evidence of a chemical attack in Douma, a town near Damascus which had been held by rebels until this month.</p> <p>Vassily Nebenzia, Moscow&#8217;s ambassador to the United Nations, said he &#8220;cannot exclude&#8221; war between the United States and Russia.</p> <p>&#8220;The immediate priority is to avert the danger of war,&#8221; he told reporters. &#8220;We hope there will be no point of no return.&#8221;</p> <p>Sheikh Naim Qassem, deputy leader of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah, told Lebanese daily al-Joumhouria: &#8220;The conditions do not point to a total war happening...unless Trump and (Israeli leader Benjamin) Netanyahu completely lose their minds.&#8221;</p> <p>U.S. allies have offered strong words of support for Washington but no clear military plans have yet emerged.</p> <p>British Prime Minister Theresa May won backing from her senior ministers on Thursday to take unspecified action with the United States and France to deter further use of chemical weapons by Syria.</p> <p>Trump was also expected to speak with French President Emmanuel Macron, who said on Thursday France had proof the Syrian government carried out the Douma attack and would decide whether to strike back when all necessary information had been gathered.</p> ASSAD TIGHTENS GRIP <p>Trump himself appeared on Thursday to cast doubt on at least the timing of any U.S.-led military action, tweeting: &#8220;Never said when an attack on Syria would take place. Could be very soon or not so soon at all!&#8221;</p> U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with governors and members of Congress at the White House in Washington, U.S., April 12, 2018. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque <p>He met his national security team on the situation in Syria later in the day and &#8220;no final decision has been made,&#8221; the White House said in a statement.</p> <p>&#8220;We are continuing to assess intelligence and are engaged in conversations with our partners and allies,&#8221; it said.</p> <p>A team of experts from the global chemical weapons watchdog, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, was traveling to Syria and will start its investigations into the Douma incident on Saturday, the Netherlands-based agency said.</p> <p>The capture of Douma has clinched a major victory for Assad, crushing what was once a center of the insurgency near Damascus, and underlines his unassailable position in the war.</p> Slideshow (3 Images) <p>He has cemented his control over most of the western, more heavily populated, part of the country, with rebels and jihadist insurgents largely contained to two areas on Syria&#8217;s northern and southern borders.</p> <p>They still control the northwestern province of Idlib, near Turkey, and a southern region around Deraa, on the border with Jordan. Turkish forces and rebel allies control territory in northern Syria, while U.S.-backed Kurdish forces hold wide areas of the northeast, and pockets of Islamic State fighters remain.</p> <p>But none of those any longer directly threaten Assad&#8217;s grip on power, which has been reinforced by Russian air power and Iran-backed fighters on the ground.</p> <p>Reporting by Alistair Smout, Tom Perry, Ellen Francis and Maria Tsvetkova; Writing by Andrew Roche; Editing by Angus MacSwan</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BERLIN (Reuters) - The German government on Friday said it would do all it could to maintain political pressure on Russia over the suspected use of chemical weapons in Syria, government spokesman Steffen Seibert said on Friday.</p> <p>Seibert said there was &#8220;serious evidence&#8221; that pointed to use of such weapons in violation of international law, and said Germany remained in close touch with the United States and other allies over how to respond.</p> <p>Foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Adebahr said Germany agreed with its allies that the use of chemical weapons must not go unpunished. She said it was clear that not all chemical weapons had been destroyed in Syria in a process that began in 2013.</p> <p>Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Joseph Nasr</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian lawmakers said on Friday they had drafted legislation in response to new U.S. sanctions that proposes banning imports of a raft of U.S. goods and services to Russia, and restricting economic ties.</p> Russian President Vladimir Putin, accompanied by Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin and Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, visits the historical Space Pavilion opened after a renovation at the the Exhibition of Achievements of National Economy (VDNH) on the Cosmonautics Day in Moscow, Russia April 12, 2018. Maxim Shipenkov/Pool via REUTERS <p>The draft law is to be discussed in the lower house of parliament next week. It proposes restricting imports of U.S.-made software and farm goods, U.S. medicines that can be sourced elsewhere, and tobacco and alcohol.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-usa-russia-sanctions-response/russian-lawmakers-mull-ban-on-u-s-audit-consulting-and-law-firms-idUSKBN1HK10G" type="external">Russian lawmakers mull ban on U.S. audit, consulting and law firms</a> <a href="/article/us-usa-russia-sanctions-companies-factbo/actions-taken-on-russian-firms-by-market-institutions-after-new-u-s-sanctions-idUSKBN1HK14V" type="external">Actions taken on Russian firms by market institutions after new U.S. sanctions</a> <p>Russian lawmakers also said they proposed a ban on cooperation with the United States on atomic power, rocket engines and aircraft making. The draft proposes barring U.S. firms from taking part in Russian privatization deals.</p> <p>The proposed measures are in retaliation for the White House last week imposing the toughest set of sanctions on Russia since Moscow&#8217;s annexation of Ukraine&#8217;s Crimea region, which dragged relations to their lowest point since the Cold War.</p> <p>The draft legislation was presented to reporters by deputy speakers of the lower house of parliament, the State Duma, which is dominated by Kremlin loyalists.</p> <p>Neither the Kremlin nor the Russian government has said if they back the measures, and it was not clear if it would become law in its current form.</p> <p>On occasion, the Kremlin uses parliament to send assertive messages to foreign powers, but that does not always translate into specific action.</p> <p>Russia imported $12.5 billion worth of U.S. products in 2017, according to official Russian customs data. That included aircraft, machinery, pharmaceutical and chemical products.</p> <p>Western companies, including Ford Motor Co, PepsiCo Inc and Coca-Cola&#8217;s bottler Coca-Cola HBC, have also invested billions of dollars since the fall of the Soviet Union to set up local production in Russia.</p> <p>In 2014, Russia banned a wide range of food imports from Western countries in retaliation for international sanctions over the conflict in Ukraine.</p> <p>Reporting by Dasha Korsunskaya; Writing by Maria Tsvetkova; Editing by Christian Lowe</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>LIMA/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Latin American leaders will gather in Lima, Peru, on Friday at a summit the United States hopes to use to counter China&#8217;s rising influence in the region, despite U.S. President Donald Trump&#8217;s last-minute decision not to attend.</p> Participants attend the Americas Business Summit in Lima, Peru April 12, 2018. REUTERS/Mariana Bazo <p>The official theme of this year&#8217;s Summit of the Americas, where heads of state in the Western Hemisphere will meet through Saturday, is corruption. Several countries attending also plan to condemn Venezuela&#8217;s upcoming election.</p> <p>But U.S. and Chinese trade will loom large over talks as a heated dispute between the world&#8217;s two biggest economies continues to fan fears of a trade war.</p> <p>The tensions spilled over into Latin America this week, with U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross disparaging Chinese trade in a speech in Lima and promising that Washington will not cede leadership in the region to &#8220;authoritarian states.&#8221;</p> <p>Ross said U.S. trade was better for local economies, and called on Latin American leaders to do more to lower tariffs and cut red tape.</p> <p>But some who had traveled to Lima said the United States had lost sway.</p> <p>&#8220;Trump&#8217;s plan seems to be to ensure the U.S. is no longer the world&#8217;s leader,&#8221; Gustavo Grobocopatel, the chief executive of an Argentine agricultural group, told Reuters at a joint summit for business leaders on Thursday.</p> <p>In the past week, Trump has threatened to slap more tariffs on Chinese goods, said he was in no hurry to reach a deal on the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and ordered his advisors to study rejoining the TPP.</p> <p>Former U.S. President Barack Obama had pitched the TPP, or Trans Pacific Partnership, as a way to give the United States an edge over China in a fast-growing region that includes large swaths of Latin America.</p> <p>But Trump called the TPP a job-killer and withdrew the United States from the multilateral trade deal in one of his first acts as president.</p> <p>So far, it has been unclear what might replace it.</p> <p>&#8220;No one wants to do bilateral trade deals with the United States, and Trump had no Plan B,&#8221; said Robert Manning, an Asia expert and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. &#8220;Trump&#8217;s anti-globalism has been mugged by reality.&#8221;</p> <p>But commerce secretary Ross said it was too early to write off Trump&#8217;s strategy.</p> <p>&#8220;This is an administration you should judge by its end results, not by theories about what may be the results,&#8221; Ross told journalists.</p> <p>The White House said on Tuesday that Trump had decided to call off his trip to Peru - which would have been his first trip to Latin America as president - to focus on Syria following a suspected chemical weapons attack.</p> <p>On Thursday, his top trade official Robert Lighthizer also canceled, and U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, who will stand in for Trump at the summit, scheduled meetings that did not include a one-on-one with Mexico&#8217;s president, dimming hopes the United States would make progress on a NAFTA renegotiation.</p> LEADERS UNDER SCRUTINY <p>Erika de la Garza with the Latin&amp;#160;America&amp;#160;Initiative at Rice University, called Trump&#8217;s absence at the summit &#8220;regrettable.&#8221; &#8220;The more the U.S. steps down, I think the more China can step in,&#8221; de la Garza said.</p> <p>But Latin Americans took it in stride, even as it deepened the view the region was being snubbed.</p> <p>&#8220;It&#8217;s not surprising. It shows the priority President Trump gives to Latin America,&#8221; a Brazilian government source who asked not to be named said. &#8220;But it doesn&#8217;t mean we can&#8217;t make progress on certain issues. On the contrary, it may help.&#8221;</p> <p>The summit will also spotlight a tough moment for Latin American leaders. Less than a month ago Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, the former president of host Peru, resigned due to one of scores of graft scandals in Latin America that have battered trust in politicians and institutions in recent years.</p> <p>Analysts have flagged potential political risks to investments in Latin America as elections loom in regional heavyweights like Brazil, Colombia and Mexico.</p> <p>In Lima, kiosk owner Cesar Alarcon said he wishes Peruvian presidents had Trump&#8217;s nationalist flair. &#8220;They always promise to put Peru first and end up favoring business interests,&#8221; Alarcon said as he sold newspapers. &#8220;I think Trump&#8217;s someone who&#8217;s looking out for his country.&#8221;</p> <p>Peruvian President Martin Vizcarra, a former vice president who took office last month, said public frustration with elected authorities and private companies had reached a fever pitch.</p> <p>&#8220;It affects not just the economy, but democratic governability itself,&#8221; Vizcarra said in a speech on Thursday.</p> <p>Vizcarra will meet one-on-one with Pence on Friday.</p> <p>In a new diplomatic blunder for the Trump administration, Pence&#8217;s office published a schedule for his trip on Thursday that mistakenly said he would dine with Peru&#8217;s disgraced former leader Kuczynski instead of Vizcarra.</p> <p>Early on Friday morning, the White House corrected the error.</p> <p>Reporting By Mitra Taj in Lima and Roberta Rampton in Washington; Additional Reporting by Lisandra Paraguassu in Sao Paulo; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

The class action claim bots are coming! (Actually, they’re already here) Threat of U.S.-Russia clash hangs over Syria Germany vows to keep pressure on Russia over Syria Russia's lawmakers propose bans on U.S. imports and investments U.S. seeks to outshine China at Latam summit, without Trump

https://reuters.com/article/us-otc-bots/the-class-action-claim-bots-are-coming-idUSKBN1F7331

2018-01-18

2least

Reuters Technology has made a brave new world of the class action claims process helping plaintiffs8217 lawyers and claims administrators locate and notify more class members than they ever could with the old blunderbuss methods of mailing out postcards or running ads in widely circulated magazines That8217s a fantastic development But it8217s not riskfree Here8217s the proof Last spring when plaintiffs8217 lawyers from Kerr ampamp Wagstaffe and Phillips Erlewine Given ampamp Carlin reached a 53 million settlement with eight app sellers accused of improperly accessing data stored on users8217 Apple devices they wanted to reach as many of the millions of people in the class as possible From the defendants including Instagram Twitter Foursquare and Yelp they obtained email addresses for more than 13 million potential users Those users all received email notice of the class settlement along with instructions for filing a claim at the website set up by the claims administrator KCC Class Action Services KCC also published notices about the settlement on Twitter When class members filed claims KCC could figure out whether they originated from emails or from Twitter because the email notices provided class members with a unique ID class members who responded via Twitter didn8217t have those individual claim IDs The Twitter campaign was a big success In all according to plaintiffs8217 Nov 30 motion for final approval of the settlement about 88000 class members filed claims based on about 300000 downloaded apps More than half of those claims 8211 about 46000 claims according to Michael von Loewenfeldt of Kerr ampamp Wagstaffe 8211 traced back to Twitter The Twitter notices in other words doubled the claims rate which plaintiffs lawyers calculated to be more than 4 percent based on their estimate that 7 million app downloads were at issue in the case But there was a hitch as plaintiffs lawyers disclosed in an administrative motion filed on the same day as their motion for final approval About 6000 Twitteroriginated claims appeared to be fraudulent KCC senior project manager Lana Lucchesi explained how the administrator spotted the fakes in an accompanying declaration The biggest giveaway More than 5400 of the suspicious claims were filed and submitted from the same IP address Nearly 1000 of the claims from that IP address were from people who purported to live in what turned out to be a singlefamily home in Toledo Ohio The claims cited nonexistent apartment numbers going as high as 988 The other 505 suspicious claims came from 11 IP addresses some of which used botlike techniques of changing a single letter in names or street addresses to file multiple claims US District Judge Jon Tigar of San Francisco directed KCC to send emails requesting additional information to all of the suspicious claimants Only two responded according to a Jan 11 declaration from KCC8217s Lucchesi One response was from a real class member whose name was apparently also used by fraudsters who asserted claims The other was from an IP address that used name variations such as 8220Stephen Galik Galik8221 and 8220S MC Galik Galik8221 Spotting inconsistencies between the original claims and the followup response KCC was unpersuaded the claims were bona fide The administrator told Judge Tigar it believed all of the nearly 6000 suspicious claims it had previously flagged were fraudulent On Wednesday as the San Francisco Recorder was the first to report Judge Tigar referred the apparently fraudulent claims to the US Attorney8217s office for investigation Interestingly Lucchesi8217s original declaration suggested KCC has run across the same fraud in other class actions She said one of the telltale signs in the app case was the use of IP and street addresses 8220known to KCC8221 because they were 8220associated with prior fraudulent claims8221 She didn8217t say anything else about fraud in other cases but it seems fair to say based only on what we know from the app class action that claims administrators and class counsel are going to have to be wary of bots attempting to take advantage of class members It boggles my mind that anyone capable of designing a bot can8217t think of a more effective way to run a scam than filing smalldollar claims in a class action The small stakes in most consumer cases in fact have always been regarded as a disincentive for fraud the average recovery for class members in the app case is expected to be 39 But as class action notice expert Todd Hilsee pointed out in an interview Wednesday the mass scale of bot fraud may provide economic justification KCC and class counsel estimated the total size of the scam in the app case to be 400000 Thirtynine bucks isn8217t much of a payoff for a fraudster but nearly half a million dollars is Hilsee told me he8217s worried that claims administrators who are facing competitive pressure don8217t have the resources to keep up with the bots 8220We8217ve created a very difficult challenge8221 he said 8220The risk is great that we8217re not catching this8221 App class action lawyer von Loewenfeldt on the other hand said the exposure of the apparently fake claims in his case shows administrators are doing a good job Claims processes that are open to public always present a risk of fraud he said and after this case 8220I8217m going to be more than alert8221 But the Twitter campaign that opened the door to scam artists von Loewenfeldt said also brought more than 40000 legitimate claims into the case 8220The benefit of having broader notice vastly outweighed the inconvenience of sorting out 6000 fake claims8221 von Loewenfeldt said I have a feeling this won8217t be the last case that forces us to test that balance The views expressed in this article are not those of Reuters News Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BEIRUT Reuters The prospect of Western military action in Syria that could lead to confrontation with Russia hung over the Middle East on Friday but there was no clear sign that a USled attack was imminent International chemical weapons experts were traveling to Syria to investigate an alleged gas attack by government forces on the town of Douma which killed dozens of people Two days ago US President Donald Trump warned that missiles 8220will be coming8221 in response to that attack The allies of Syrian President Bashar alAssad were eager on Friday to lay blame for the crisis not with him but with Trump Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich said international relations should not depend on one person8217s morning mood in apparent reference to Trump8217s tweets Related Coverage Factbox Chemical weapons inspectors how do they work Germany vows to keep pressure on Russia over Syria 8220We cannot depend on what someone on the other side of the ocean takes into his head in the morning We cannot take such risks8221 said Dvorkovich speaking at a forum Russia has warned the West against attacking Assad who is also supported by Iran and says there is no evidence of a chemical attack in Douma a town near Damascus which had been held by rebels until this month Vassily Nebenzia Moscow8217s ambassador to the United Nations said he 8220cannot exclude8221 war between the United States and Russia 8220The immediate priority is to avert the danger of war8221 he told reporters 8220We hope there will be no point of no return8221 Sheikh Naim Qassem deputy leader of the Iranianbacked Hezbollah told Lebanese daily alJoumhouria 8220The conditions do not point to a total war happeningunless Trump and Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu completely lose their minds8221 US allies have offered strong words of support for Washington but no clear military plans have yet emerged British Prime Minister Theresa May won backing from her senior ministers on Thursday to take unspecified action with the United States and France to deter further use of chemical weapons by Syria Trump was also expected to speak with French President Emmanuel Macron who said on Thursday France had proof the Syrian government carried out the Douma attack and would decide whether to strike back when all necessary information had been gathered ASSAD TIGHTENS GRIP Trump himself appeared on Thursday to cast doubt on at least the timing of any USled military action tweeting 8220Never said when an attack on Syria would take place Could be very soon or not so soon at all8221 US President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with governors and members of Congress at the White House in Washington US April 12 2018 REUTERSKevin Lamarque He met his national security team on the situation in Syria later in the day and 8220no final decision has been made8221 the White House said in a statement 8220We are continuing to assess intelligence and are engaged in conversations with our partners and allies8221 it said A team of experts from the global chemical weapons watchdog the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons was traveling to Syria and will start its investigations into the Douma incident on Saturday the Netherlandsbased agency said The capture of Douma has clinched a major victory for Assad crushing what was once a center of the insurgency near Damascus and underlines his unassailable position in the war Slideshow 3 Images He has cemented his control over most of the western more heavily populated part of the country with rebels and jihadist insurgents largely contained to two areas on Syria8217s northern and southern borders They still control the northwestern province of Idlib near Turkey and a southern region around Deraa on the border with Jordan Turkish forces and rebel allies control territory in northern Syria while USbacked Kurdish forces hold wide areas of the northeast and pockets of Islamic State fighters remain But none of those any longer directly threaten Assad8217s grip on power which has been reinforced by Russian air power and Iranbacked fighters on the ground Reporting by Alistair Smout Tom Perry Ellen Francis and Maria Tsvetkova Writing by Andrew Roche Editing by Angus MacSwan Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BERLIN Reuters The German government on Friday said it would do all it could to maintain political pressure on Russia over the suspected use of chemical weapons in Syria government spokesman Steffen Seibert said on Friday Seibert said there was 8220serious evidence8221 that pointed to use of such weapons in violation of international law and said Germany remained in close touch with the United States and other allies over how to respond Foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Adebahr said Germany agreed with its allies that the use of chemical weapons must not go unpunished She said it was clear that not all chemical weapons had been destroyed in Syria in a process that began in 2013 Reporting by Andrea Shalal Editing by Joseph Nasr Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles MOSCOW Reuters Russian lawmakers said on Friday they had drafted legislation in response to new US sanctions that proposes banning imports of a raft of US goods and services to Russia and restricting economic ties Russian President Vladimir Putin accompanied by Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin and Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin visits the historical Space Pavilion opened after a renovation at the the Exhibition of Achievements of National Economy VDNH on the Cosmonautics Day in Moscow Russia April 12 2018 Maxim ShipenkovPool via REUTERS The draft law is to be discussed in the lower house of parliament next week It proposes restricting imports of USmade software and farm goods US medicines that can be sourced elsewhere and tobacco and alcohol Related Coverage Russian lawmakers mull ban on US audit consulting and law firms Actions taken on Russian firms by market institutions after new US sanctions Russian lawmakers also said they proposed a ban on cooperation with the United States on atomic power rocket engines and aircraft making The draft proposes barring US firms from taking part in Russian privatization deals The proposed measures are in retaliation for the White House last week imposing the toughest set of sanctions on Russia since Moscow8217s annexation of Ukraine8217s Crimea region which dragged relations to their lowest point since the Cold War The draft legislation was presented to reporters by deputy speakers of the lower house of parliament the State Duma which is dominated by Kremlin loyalists Neither the Kremlin nor the Russian government has said if they back the measures and it was not clear if it would become law in its current form On occasion the Kremlin uses parliament to send assertive messages to foreign powers but that does not always translate into specific action Russia imported 125 billion worth of US products in 2017 according to official Russian customs data That included aircraft machinery pharmaceutical and chemical products Western companies including Ford Motor Co PepsiCo Inc and CocaCola8217s bottler CocaCola HBC have also invested billions of dollars since the fall of the Soviet Union to set up local production in Russia In 2014 Russia banned a wide range of food imports from Western countries in retaliation for international sanctions over the conflict in Ukraine Reporting by Dasha Korsunskaya Writing by Maria Tsvetkova Editing by Christian Lowe Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles LIMAWASHINGTON Reuters Latin American leaders will gather in Lima Peru on Friday at a summit the United States hopes to use to counter China8217s rising influence in the region despite US President Donald Trump8217s lastminute decision not to attend Participants attend the Americas Business Summit in Lima Peru April 12 2018 REUTERSMariana Bazo The official theme of this year8217s Summit of the Americas where heads of state in the Western Hemisphere will meet through Saturday is corruption Several countries attending also plan to condemn Venezuela8217s upcoming election But US and Chinese trade will loom large over talks as a heated dispute between the world8217s two biggest economies continues to fan fears of a trade war The tensions spilled over into Latin America this week with US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross disparaging Chinese trade in a speech in Lima and promising that Washington will not cede leadership in the region to 8220authoritarian states8221 Ross said US trade was better for local economies and called on Latin American leaders to do more to lower tariffs and cut red tape But some who had traveled to Lima said the United States had lost sway 8220Trump8217s plan seems to be to ensure the US is no longer the world8217s leader8221 Gustavo Grobocopatel the chief executive of an Argentine agricultural group told Reuters at a joint summit for business leaders on Thursday In the past week Trump has threatened to slap more tariffs on Chinese goods said he was in no hurry to reach a deal on the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement NAFTA and ordered his advisors to study rejoining the TPP Former US President Barack Obama had pitched the TPP or Trans Pacific Partnership as a way to give the United States an edge over China in a fastgrowing region that includes large swaths of Latin America But Trump called the TPP a jobkiller and withdrew the United States from the multilateral trade deal in one of his first acts as president So far it has been unclear what might replace it 8220No one wants to do bilateral trade deals with the United States and Trump had no Plan B8221 said Robert Manning an Asia expert and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council 8220Trump8217s antiglobalism has been mugged by reality8221 But commerce secretary Ross said it was too early to write off Trump8217s strategy 8220This is an administration you should judge by its end results not by theories about what may be the results8221 Ross told journalists The White House said on Tuesday that Trump had decided to call off his trip to Peru which would have been his first trip to Latin America as president to focus on Syria following a suspected chemical weapons attack On Thursday his top trade official Robert Lighthizer also canceled and US Vice President Mike Pence who will stand in for Trump at the summit scheduled meetings that did not include a oneonone with Mexico8217s president dimming hopes the United States would make progress on a NAFTA renegotiation LEADERS UNDER SCRUTINY Erika de la Garza with the Latinamp160Americaamp160Initiative at Rice University called Trump8217s absence at the summit 8220regrettable8221 8220The more the US steps down I think the more China can step in8221 de la Garza said But Latin Americans took it in stride even as it deepened the view the region was being snubbed 8220It8217s not surprising It shows the priority President Trump gives to Latin America8221 a Brazilian government source who asked not to be named said 8220But it doesn8217t mean we can8217t make progress on certain issues On the contrary it may help8221 The summit will also spotlight a tough moment for Latin American leaders Less than a month ago Pedro Pablo Kuczynski the former president of host Peru resigned due to one of scores of graft scandals in Latin America that have battered trust in politicians and institutions in recent years Analysts have flagged potential political risks to investments in Latin America as elections loom in regional heavyweights like Brazil Colombia and Mexico In Lima kiosk owner Cesar Alarcon said he wishes Peruvian presidents had Trump8217s nationalist flair 8220They always promise to put Peru first and end up favoring business interests8221 Alarcon said as he sold newspapers 8220I think Trump8217s someone who8217s looking out for his country8221 Peruvian President Martin Vizcarra a former vice president who took office last month said public frustration with elected authorities and private companies had reached a fever pitch 8220It affects not just the economy but democratic governability itself8221 Vizcarra said in a speech on Thursday Vizcarra will meet oneonone with Pence on Friday In a new diplomatic blunder for the Trump administration Pence8217s office published a schedule for his trip on Thursday that mistakenly said he would dine with Peru8217s disgraced former leader Kuczynski instead of Vizcarra Early on Friday morning the White House corrected the error Reporting By Mitra Taj in Lima and Roberta Rampton in Washington Additional Reporting by Lisandra Paraguassu in Sao Paulo Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>Editors&#8217; note: 70 Years ago this week, General Franco launched his attack on the Spanish Republic, backed by Hitler, Mussolini and, tacitly, by the US and other Western powers. Across the next few days and weeks we will be publishing articles on this pivotal struggle, and the imperishable gallantry of the Republic&#8217;s defenders. We start with a overview by VICENTE NAVARRO of the enduring significance of the Fascist onslaught and the malign tenacity of Franco&#8217;s admirers to this day in burying his crimes while seeking to renew his objectives. AC / JSC.</p> <p>Barcelona, Catalonia</p> <p>The Spanish Civil War , launched by the military Fascist coup, on July 18, 1936 was the first act of World War II. The cast of characters that shaped and appeared in World War II first came together in Spain. The Civil War, like World War II, was a war between progressive forces and the axis of evil of that day&#8211;fascism, Nazism, and reaction. Interestingly, though, in the Spanish war the Western democracies stood to one side or, even worse, indirectly assisted on the fascist side. Why?</p> <p>To answer this question,&amp;#160; we need to understand what happened in Spain before the coup led by General Franco, which took place on July 18, 1936. That coup interrupted the most progressive and modernizing government seen in Spain in the first half of the twentieth century. The II Republic, established in 1931, put in place some of the most important reforms that Spanish society has ever seen: It established reforms of the public school system, which were opposed by the Church, until that time in control of most of the educational system. It introduced much-needed land reforms, which went against the interests of the large landowners and the oligarchy (including the Church). It instituted social security reforms, which were opposed by the banking and private insurance companies (Juan March, Spain&#8217;s foremost banker and leader of the Liberal Party, financed the military coup). It established women&#8217;s suffrage, years before many other western European countries. It introduced labor rights, which were opposed by large industrialists, such as Cambo, a leader of the Catalan nationalist and liberal forces. It established the divorce law and the right to abortion, actions that further antagonized the Church. And it put in place many other reforms that made Spain a major point of reference for progressive forces throughout Europe.</p> <p>Then, in 1936, an alliance of left-wing and center parties (the Popular Front) was elected to the Spanish Parliament, with a program that expanded and solidified the reforms carried out by the first government of the II Republic (1931-1933). Just months later, all those forces that had kept Spain one of the most backward countries in Europe, and whose privileges had been curtailed by the Republic&#8217;s reforms, came together to instigate a military coup, led by General Franco. The coup was actively supported by Hitler and Mussolini, who provided Franco with all manner of military equipment and support. Even though Franco presented himself as the defender of Spain, and the fascist forces called themselves the &#8220;nationalists,&#8221; most of Franco&#8217;s troops that invaded the south of Spain were actually foreign fighters, including Foreign Legion and Moorish troops, mercenaries from Morocco. As the British historian Herbert Graham has noted, it is paradoxical that &#8220;the Spanish crusade to defend Christian civilization&#8211;were led by Islamic mercenaries.&#8221; The Moorish general, Mohamed Mizzian, who led these forces, known for their enormous cruelty, was recently paid homage in Morocco at an event attended by the Spanish ambassador, Luis Planas, and by two generals of the Spanish Army.</p> <p>American journalist John Whittaker wrote of an encounter with General Mizzian: &#8220;I met this general near Navalcarrero when his troops threw two girls of less than 20 years to his feet. He discovered in the pocket of one of them a trade union card. He took her to the public school of the village where forty Moorish soldiers were resting. He threw her to them.&#8221; A huge cry resonated in the building, writes Whittaker, horrified by what he saw. General Mizzian smiled and dismissed Whittaker&#8217;s protest by saying, &#8220;She will not survive more than four hours.&#8221; Neither the Spanish ambassador nor the two Spanish generals who paid homage to such an assassin were dismissed by the current Spanish socialist government.</p> <p>The huge military support that Franco received from Hitler and Mussolini was in stark contrast to the lack of support from the Western democracies for the first democratic regime in Spain in the twentieth century. They did not move a finger to help. Their inaction in the face of the massive military support for the fascist troops from Hitler and Mussolini should have been offensive to any person with democratic sensibilities. What explains this failure to act? It was class interests. None other than Winston Churchill put it clearly when he said (as related in Helen Graham&#8217;s A Brief History of the Spanish Civil War) that the Western democracies put their class interests&#8211;their fear that the left-wing reforms carried out by the Republican government would be attractive to their own popular classes, contaminating them with a desire to change their own societies&#8211;ahead of their national and geopolitical interests: opposing Nazism and fascism in Spain. The reality is that the dominant classes of the Western democracies were more comfortable with a fascist regime in Spain (a strong defender of reaction and the status quo) than with the reform policies of a democratic Spanish government.</p> <p>With the victory of fascism in 1939, a nightmare of repression began. In just five years, nearly 200,000 people were assassinated (according to the Minister of Justice in Franco&#8217;s government, assassinations were recorded as executions or deaths in concentration camps). The fascists knew that the majority of the Spanish people opposed them and openly called for what they called &#8220;healthy terrorism.&#8221; Indeed, it took three years for the heavily armed fascist forces to defeat the popular resistance led by the Republican government, which had few armaments at its disposal. (On some fronts, the Republicans had just one rifle for every two soldiers.) The fascist generals spoke openly of the need to terrorize a population that they knew opposed them. According to Edward Malefakis, professor of European history at Columbia University, for every assassination committed by Mussolini, Franco committed 10,000. The terror was even greater than that carried out in Chile by Pinochet, a student of Franco at the Spanish military academy. (Even today, Franco&#8217;s statue presides over the entrance to the academy.)</p> <p>The cruelty reached unheard-of dimensions, such as the killing of parents so that the assassins could adopt their young children. The brutality and bestiality of the fascist forces was well illustrated by the response of the head of the Spanish Foreign Legion, General Millan Astray, to a critical speech by Miguel de Unamuno, President of Salamanca University (the oldest university in Europe), in a meeting that Astray attended. Unamuno was a liberal intellectual who had supported the fascist coup because he was afraid of the working-class mobilizations. The brutal repression by the fascist forces, however, had shocked and disillusioned him. He denounced the repression by Franco&#8217;s forces, with the famous statement, &#8220;You will win but you will not convince because even though you have the brutal force, you don&#8217;t have the reason.&#8221; General Astray responded by yelling at him, &#8220;Long live death! Down with intelligence!&#8221; This became the slogan of a fascist regime that was responsible for genocide of overwhelming brutality.</p> <p>And all this was done with the active involvement of the Catholic Church. In every village, town, and city, it was the Spanish Church hierarchy (which had called for a military coup during the Republican government) and the priests who prepared the lists of people to be executed. A primary target of the repression was teachers, considered major enemies by the Church. Its active opposition to the popular reforms by the Spanish republican governments, and its calling on the Army to rebel against the popularly elected government, explains the fury felt by large sectors of the working class, led by anarcho-syndicalists, toward the Church. The&amp;#160;&amp;#160; day after Franco&#8217;s coup, large numbers of people decided to take justice into their own hands, burning churches and killing priests. These violations took place against the wishes of the democratic state, which actively opposed such actions. Terror was never a policy of the Republic. It was, however, part and parcel of the fascist state.</p> <p>And the terror of the fascist regime never ended. Political assassinations took place regularly. Just a few months before his death in 1975, Franco signed orders for five executions that were politically motivated.</p> <p>The Franco Dictatorship and the Transition to Democracy The Western democracies that had remained silent during Franco&#8217;s coup openly supported his government, regarding Franco as their ally against the Soviet Union. The Cold War was the excuse used by the Western democracies (led by the U.S. government and the Vatican) to support horrible dictatorships&#8211;like Franco&#8217;s&#8211;that imposed economic, cultural, and political backwardness on their countries. When Spain&#8217;s dictator died in 1975, 85% of the country&#8217;s adult population had no more than a primary school education. Public social expenditures were the lowest, by far, in Europe&#8211;even lower than in Greece and Portugal, which also suffered under ultra-right regimes.</p> <p>When Franco died, the Army, the Church, and the land-owning oligarchy wanted to maintain fascism&amp;#160; without Franco. The business and banking communities would have liked this, too, since they benefited enormously from the dictatorship, but they did not think it was possible. Their economic interests lay in the European Market, and Europe would not welcome a fascist regime in the community. Moreover, the working class had been mobilizing&amp;#160;&amp;#160; against a regime that denied them the most elementary rights of association (in 1975, Spain had the largest number of strikes in Europe). So, something needed to be done, and some changes had to be permitted to save the class power relations that existed during the dictatorship. But any political change had to take place&#8211;and indeed it did&#8211;under the dominion and hegemony of the right. The&amp;#160; monarchy was established as the grantor of privileges that ensured the existing power relations would be maintained. The Church and the Army, for example, were granted special privileges under the new Constitution. Church-owned and Church-administered private schools were given the same weight in the school system as public schools, receiving a heavy subsidy from the state. And the Army was given the right to police the state, as guarantor of the social order and of &#8220;Spanish unity,&#8221; a code name under fascism for dominance by a highly centralized and Jacobin state. Moreover, private property was granted a sacred status in the Constitution.</p> <p>The Legacy of the Fascist Past in Today&#8217;s Spain The dominant sentiment about the past among Spain&#8217;s conservative and Christian Democratic forces is that the military coup was needed to stop Communism. This vision of the past is promoted by President Bush&#8217;s main ally in continental Europe, Aznar, and his party, the Popular Party (PP), whose Honorary President is Fraga Iribarne, Minister of the Interior during the Franco regime and responsible for the hated political police. The Church, usually referred to as the religious branch of the PP, has been even more vocal than the leadership of the PP in supporting Franco&#8217;s coup and dictatorship. Even today, many churches in Spain still have monuments celebrating the coup.</p> <p>The liberals have agreed with this reading of fascism as a bulwark against Communism&#8211;although they considered the dictatorship as perhaps too cruel and perhaps lasting too long. They would have preferred a short, clean coup. Even though they despised fascism, they thought it was necessary to stop an even worse enemy, Communism. The only difference between conservatives and Christian Democrats, on the one side, and liberals, on the other, is that the first group admired fascism and the second despised it. But they all needed it and justified it. It is interesting to note that the liberal branch of the right wing, which has had no ethical problem with defending the need for fascism, usually uses the works of Trotskyites and anarcho-syndicalists (such as George Orwell&#8217;s Homage to Catalonia and Ken Loach&#8217;s Tierra y Libertad (Land and Freedom) to show that Communism was indeed the main enemy in Spain. These works greatly exaggerate the role and influence of the Communist Party in Spain and its dependence on the Soviet Union, portraying the Civil War as &#8220;a revolution betraed by Communism and the Soviet Union.&#8221; The reality was quite different. The Communist Party influence in Catalonia was relatively small, although it increased as a consequence of the Soviet Union being the only European country to provide military equipment to the Republic (with the result that most Spanish people never expressed anti-Soviet Union feelings). The International Brigades, with their 30,000 foreign soldiers, in all, during Civil War (1936-1939), played an important and heroic role, but their numbers at any given time (12,000) were small. In contrast, Mussolini&amp;#160; sent 74,000 soldiers on the fascist side. The legitimate and democratically elected Catalan government (of which the Communist Party was a minor component) wanted to regain control of the major government communications agency controlled by the anarcho-syndicalists and Trotskyites, who resisted passing&amp;#160;&amp;#160; back control to the government. This generated conflict within the Republican forces that considerably weakened the military effort. Orwell, who did not know Catalonia (and did not speak Catalan or Spanish), became an &#8220;authority&#8221; on Catalonia&#8211;mistaking names and places while writing his book. Today, Orwell is the hero of those who, indulging in anti-Communism, ignore the real class struggle that took place in Spain.</p> <p>At the end of Franco&#8217;s dictatorship and the beginning of the democratic period, an amnesty was granted to the assassins who had killed, tortured, and robbed the democratic forces in Spain. Moreover, a &#8220;pact of silence&#8221; was agreed upon, a complete silence about the past, including the horrendous crimes of the Franco regime&#8211;a pact to forget what had happened in Spain. No other country in Europe has been as silent about its past as has Spain. The deaths of tens of thousands of anti-fascists remain unrecognized; 30,000 people simply disappeared, no one knowing where they were buried or discarded.</p> <p>But that pact of silence was one-sided. The right wing has continued to pay homage to General Franco and his fascist forces. In many Spanish towns (except, again, in Catalonia and the Basque countries) there are still fascist monuments. Even left-wing municipal and regional governments are afraid to destroy them. And across Spain, there are frequent celebrations honoring the assassins. Recently, the PP opposed a declaration by the European Parliament condemning the Spanish dictatorship, as did some ultra-rightists in Poland&#8217;s government.</p> <p>One of the major celebrators of the Franco regime is the Church, which unabashedly remains a strong supporter. The Spanish Church, supported by the Vatican, is the main adversary of the current socialist government under Zapatero, even calling for insurrection and asking Catholics to disobey Spanish laws passed by Parliament, such as the legalization of gay marriage and the adoption of children by homosexual couples, introduction of &#8220;fast track divorce,&#8221; abolition of compulsory religious education in public schools, and authorization of stem cell research. All these laws have driven the Church to renew its crusade against the socialist government. The Church has also joined with top military figures in calling for maintaining &#8220;Spanish unity.&#8221; And the Church and the Army opposed Zapatero&#8217;s negotiations with ETA, the Basque separatist group. The recent visit by Pope Benedict XVI to Valencia to attend the International Conference of the Family was planned by the Spanish Catholic hierarchy as an open act of provocation and defiance toward the Spanish government. The regional government of Valencia, controlled by the PP, organized a lavish and very expensive reception for the Pope, in contrast to its lack of attention to maintaining the city&#8217;s subway, responsible for the crash that killed 44 persons (most of them working class) one week before the Pope&#8217;s visit.</p> <p>Religious fundamentalism is isolating the Church in Spain. According to a recent poll, 80% of young people in Spain distrust the Church, even more than they distrust NATO or the business community. The proportion of youngsters who define themselves as Catholics has declined from 77% ten years ago to 49% today. Meanwhile, the Spanish Church, Opus Dei, and the Legionnaires of Christ (whose founder was a child abuser) are funding a statue of the Pope in Madrid&#8211;which is being created, incidentally, by the same sculptor&#8211;Juan de Avalos&#8211;who made the fascist monument, the Valley of the Fallen, outside Madrid.</p> <p>Spain&#8217;s socialist government committed itself, in its electoral program, to correct this silence, to recognize and pay homage to the victims of fascism, and to eliminate the laws that still refer to the freedom fighters, fighting against Franco&#8217;s forces, as criminals. But the socialist government has not yet done this, and it seems to be postponing such actions, failing to keep its promises. So, the deafening&amp;#160; silence on those terrible crimes remains. As indicated by Judge Juan Guzman (who brought General Pinochet to trial) and Judge Hugo Ca&#241;on (the Argentinean judge who brought military authorities to court) at a recent conference in Barcelona, the silence in Spain on the horrors of the Franco state is an insult to democratic forces throughout the world; it is a scandal that needs to be denounced. None of the Spanish media, incidentally, reported on the judges&#8217; declarations. Meanwhile, Spain&#8217;s Judge Garzon, acclaimed worldwide for trying to get Pinochet extradited from Great Britain to stand trial in a Spanish court, remains silent about the amnesty that allows assassins to go free in Spain. Throughout Spain, and outside Spain, the deafening silence continues.</p> <p>VICENTE NAVARRO is Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at the Pompeu Fabra University, Spain, and The Johns Hopkins University, USA. In 2002 he was awarded the Anagrama Prize (Spain&#8217;s equivalent to the Pulitzer Prize in the USA) for his denunciation of the way in which the transition from dictatorship to democracy has been engineered, in his book Bienestar Insuficiente Democracia Incompleta, De lo que no se hable en nuestro pais (Insufficient Welfare, Incomplete Democracy; a book about what is being silenced in Spain).</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p>

How Spain’s Church Still Pushes Fascist Agenda

https://counterpunch.org/2006/07/19/how-spain-s-church-still-pushes-fascist-agenda/

2006-07-19

4left

Editors8217 note 70 Years ago this week General Franco launched his attack on the Spanish Republic backed by Hitler Mussolini and tacitly by the US and other Western powers Across the next few days and weeks we will be publishing articles on this pivotal struggle and the imperishable gallantry of the Republic8217s defenders We start with a overview by VICENTE NAVARRO of the enduring significance of the Fascist onslaught and the malign tenacity of Franco8217s admirers to this day in burying his crimes while seeking to renew his objectives AC JSC Barcelona Catalonia The Spanish Civil War launched by the military Fascist coup on July 18 1936 was the first act of World War II The cast of characters that shaped and appeared in World War II first came together in Spain The Civil War like World War II was a war between progressive forces and the axis of evil of that day8211fascism Nazism and reaction Interestingly though in the Spanish war the Western democracies stood to one side or even worse indirectly assisted on the fascist side Why To answer this questionamp160 we need to understand what happened in Spain before the coup led by General Franco which took place on July 18 1936 That coup interrupted the most progressive and modernizing government seen in Spain in the first half of the twentieth century The II Republic established in 1931 put in place some of the most important reforms that Spanish society has ever seen It established reforms of the public school system which were opposed by the Church until that time in control of most of the educational system It introduced muchneeded land reforms which went against the interests of the large landowners and the oligarchy including the Church It instituted social security reforms which were opposed by the banking and private insurance companies Juan March Spain8217s foremost banker and leader of the Liberal Party financed the military coup It established women8217s suffrage years before many other western European countries It introduced labor rights which were opposed by large industrialists such as Cambo a leader of the Catalan nationalist and liberal forces It established the divorce law and the right to abortion actions that further antagonized the Church And it put in place many other reforms that made Spain a major point of reference for progressive forces throughout Europe Then in 1936 an alliance of leftwing and center parties the Popular Front was elected to the Spanish Parliament with a program that expanded and solidified the reforms carried out by the first government of the II Republic 19311933 Just months later all those forces that had kept Spain one of the most backward countries in Europe and whose privileges had been curtailed by the Republic8217s reforms came together to instigate a military coup led by General Franco The coup was actively supported by Hitler and Mussolini who provided Franco with all manner of military equipment and support Even though Franco presented himself as the defender of Spain and the fascist forces called themselves the 8220nationalists8221 most of Franco8217s troops that invaded the south of Spain were actually foreign fighters including Foreign Legion and Moorish troops mercenaries from Morocco As the British historian Herbert Graham has noted it is paradoxical that 8220the Spanish crusade to defend Christian civilization8211were led by Islamic mercenaries8221 The Moorish general Mohamed Mizzian who led these forces known for their enormous cruelty was recently paid homage in Morocco at an event attended by the Spanish ambassador Luis Planas and by two generals of the Spanish Army American journalist John Whittaker wrote of an encounter with General Mizzian 8220I met this general near Navalcarrero when his troops threw two girls of less than 20 years to his feet He discovered in the pocket of one of them a trade union card He took her to the public school of the village where forty Moorish soldiers were resting He threw her to them8221 A huge cry resonated in the building writes Whittaker horrified by what he saw General Mizzian smiled and dismissed Whittaker8217s protest by saying 8220She will not survive more than four hours8221 Neither the Spanish ambassador nor the two Spanish generals who paid homage to such an assassin were dismissed by the current Spanish socialist government The huge military support that Franco received from Hitler and Mussolini was in stark contrast to the lack of support from the Western democracies for the first democratic regime in Spain in the twentieth century They did not move a finger to help Their inaction in the face of the massive military support for the fascist troops from Hitler and Mussolini should have been offensive to any person with democratic sensibilities What explains this failure to act It was class interests None other than Winston Churchill put it clearly when he said as related in Helen Graham8217s A Brief History of the Spanish Civil War that the Western democracies put their class interests8211their fear that the leftwing reforms carried out by the Republican government would be attractive to their own popular classes contaminating them with a desire to change their own societies8211ahead of their national and geopolitical interests opposing Nazism and fascism in Spain The reality is that the dominant classes of the Western democracies were more comfortable with a fascist regime in Spain a strong defender of reaction and the status quo than with the reform policies of a democratic Spanish government With the victory of fascism in 1939 a nightmare of repression began In just five years nearly 200000 people were assassinated according to the Minister of Justice in Franco8217s government assassinations were recorded as executions or deaths in concentration camps The fascists knew that the majority of the Spanish people opposed them and openly called for what they called 8220healthy terrorism8221 Indeed it took three years for the heavily armed fascist forces to defeat the popular resistance led by the Republican government which had few armaments at its disposal On some fronts the Republicans had just one rifle for every two soldiers The fascist generals spoke openly of the need to terrorize a population that they knew opposed them According to Edward Malefakis professor of European history at Columbia University for every assassination committed by Mussolini Franco committed 10000 The terror was even greater than that carried out in Chile by Pinochet a student of Franco at the Spanish military academy Even today Franco8217s statue presides over the entrance to the academy The cruelty reached unheardof dimensions such as the killing of parents so that the assassins could adopt their young children The brutality and bestiality of the fascist forces was well illustrated by the response of the head of the Spanish Foreign Legion General Millan Astray to a critical speech by Miguel de Unamuno President of Salamanca University the oldest university in Europe in a meeting that Astray attended Unamuno was a liberal intellectual who had supported the fascist coup because he was afraid of the workingclass mobilizations The brutal repression by the fascist forces however had shocked and disillusioned him He denounced the repression by Franco8217s forces with the famous statement 8220You will win but you will not convince because even though you have the brutal force you don8217t have the reason8221 General Astray responded by yelling at him 8220Long live death Down with intelligence8221 This became the slogan of a fascist regime that was responsible for genocide of overwhelming brutality And all this was done with the active involvement of the Catholic Church In every village town and city it was the Spanish Church hierarchy which had called for a military coup during the Republican government and the priests who prepared the lists of people to be executed A primary target of the repression was teachers considered major enemies by the Church Its active opposition to the popular reforms by the Spanish republican governments and its calling on the Army to rebel against the popularly elected government explains the fury felt by large sectors of the working class led by anarchosyndicalists toward the Church Theamp160amp160 day after Franco8217s coup large numbers of people decided to take justice into their own hands burning churches and killing priests These violations took place against the wishes of the democratic state which actively opposed such actions Terror was never a policy of the Republic It was however part and parcel of the fascist state And the terror of the fascist regime never ended Political assassinations took place regularly Just a few months before his death in 1975 Franco signed orders for five executions that were politically motivated The Franco Dictatorship and the Transition to Democracy The Western democracies that had remained silent during Franco8217s coup openly supported his government regarding Franco as their ally against the Soviet Union The Cold War was the excuse used by the Western democracies led by the US government and the Vatican to support horrible dictatorships8211like Franco8217s8211that imposed economic cultural and political backwardness on their countries When Spain8217s dictator died in 1975 85 of the country8217s adult population had no more than a primary school education Public social expenditures were the lowest by far in Europe8211even lower than in Greece and Portugal which also suffered under ultraright regimes When Franco died the Army the Church and the landowning oligarchy wanted to maintain fascismamp160 without Franco The business and banking communities would have liked this too since they benefited enormously from the dictatorship but they did not think it was possible Their economic interests lay in the European Market and Europe would not welcome a fascist regime in the community Moreover the working class had been mobilizingamp160amp160 against a regime that denied them the most elementary rights of association in 1975 Spain had the largest number of strikes in Europe So something needed to be done and some changes had to be permitted to save the class power relations that existed during the dictatorship But any political change had to take place8211and indeed it did8211under the dominion and hegemony of the right Theamp160 monarchy was established as the grantor of privileges that ensured the existing power relations would be maintained The Church and the Army for example were granted special privileges under the new Constitution Churchowned and Churchadministered private schools were given the same weight in the school system as public schools receiving a heavy subsidy from the state And the Army was given the right to police the state as guarantor of the social order and of 8220Spanish unity8221 a code name under fascism for dominance by a highly centralized and Jacobin state Moreover private property was granted a sacred status in the Constitution The Legacy of the Fascist Past in Today8217s Spain The dominant sentiment about the past among Spain8217s conservative and Christian Democratic forces is that the military coup was needed to stop Communism This vision of the past is promoted by President Bush8217s main ally in continental Europe Aznar and his party the Popular Party PP whose Honorary President is Fraga Iribarne Minister of the Interior during the Franco regime and responsible for the hated political police The Church usually referred to as the religious branch of the PP has been even more vocal than the leadership of the PP in supporting Franco8217s coup and dictatorship Even today many churches in Spain still have monuments celebrating the coup The liberals have agreed with this reading of fascism as a bulwark against Communism8211although they considered the dictatorship as perhaps too cruel and perhaps lasting too long They would have preferred a short clean coup Even though they despised fascism they thought it was necessary to stop an even worse enemy Communism The only difference between conservatives and Christian Democrats on the one side and liberals on the other is that the first group admired fascism and the second despised it But they all needed it and justified it It is interesting to note that the liberal branch of the right wing which has had no ethical problem with defending the need for fascism usually uses the works of Trotskyites and anarchosyndicalists such as George Orwell8217s Homage to Catalonia and Ken Loach8217s Tierra y Libertad Land and Freedom to show that Communism was indeed the main enemy in Spain These works greatly exaggerate the role and influence of the Communist Party in Spain and its dependence on the Soviet Union portraying the Civil War as 8220a revolution betraed by Communism and the Soviet Union8221 The reality was quite different The Communist Party influence in Catalonia was relatively small although it increased as a consequence of the Soviet Union being the only European country to provide military equipment to the Republic with the result that most Spanish people never expressed antiSoviet Union feelings The International Brigades with their 30000 foreign soldiers in all during Civil War 19361939 played an important and heroic role but their numbers at any given time 12000 were small In contrast Mussoliniamp160 sent 74000 soldiers on the fascist side The legitimate and democratically elected Catalan government of which the Communist Party was a minor component wanted to regain control of the major government communications agency controlled by the anarchosyndicalists and Trotskyites who resisted passingamp160amp160 back control to the government This generated conflict within the Republican forces that considerably weakened the military effort Orwell who did not know Catalonia and did not speak Catalan or Spanish became an 8220authority8221 on Catalonia8211mistaking names and places while writing his book Today Orwell is the hero of those who indulging in antiCommunism ignore the real class struggle that took place in Spain At the end of Franco8217s dictatorship and the beginning of the democratic period an amnesty was granted to the assassins who had killed tortured and robbed the democratic forces in Spain Moreover a 8220pact of silence8221 was agreed upon a complete silence about the past including the horrendous crimes of the Franco regime8211a pact to forget what had happened in Spain No other country in Europe has been as silent about its past as has Spain The deaths of tens of thousands of antifascists remain unrecognized 30000 people simply disappeared no one knowing where they were buried or discarded But that pact of silence was onesided The right wing has continued to pay homage to General Franco and his fascist forces In many Spanish towns except again in Catalonia and the Basque countries there are still fascist monuments Even leftwing municipal and regional governments are afraid to destroy them And across Spain there are frequent celebrations honoring the assassins Recently the PP opposed a declaration by the European Parliament condemning the Spanish dictatorship as did some ultrarightists in Poland8217s government One of the major celebrators of the Franco regime is the Church which unabashedly remains a strong supporter The Spanish Church supported by the Vatican is the main adversary of the current socialist government under Zapatero even calling for insurrection and asking Catholics to disobey Spanish laws passed by Parliament such as the legalization of gay marriage and the adoption of children by homosexual couples introduction of 8220fast track divorce8221 abolition of compulsory religious education in public schools and authorization of stem cell research All these laws have driven the Church to renew its crusade against the socialist government The Church has also joined with top military figures in calling for maintaining 8220Spanish unity8221 And the Church and the Army opposed Zapatero8217s negotiations with ETA the Basque separatist group The recent visit by Pope Benedict XVI to Valencia to attend the International Conference of the Family was planned by the Spanish Catholic hierarchy as an open act of provocation and defiance toward the Spanish government The regional government of Valencia controlled by the PP organized a lavish and very expensive reception for the Pope in contrast to its lack of attention to maintaining the city8217s subway responsible for the crash that killed 44 persons most of them working class one week before the Pope8217s visit Religious fundamentalism is isolating the Church in Spain According to a recent poll 80 of young people in Spain distrust the Church even more than they distrust NATO or the business community The proportion of youngsters who define themselves as Catholics has declined from 77 ten years ago to 49 today Meanwhile the Spanish Church Opus Dei and the Legionnaires of Christ whose founder was a child abuser are funding a statue of the Pope in Madrid8211which is being created incidentally by the same sculptor8211Juan de Avalos8211who made the fascist monument the Valley of the Fallen outside Madrid Spain8217s socialist government committed itself in its electoral program to correct this silence to recognize and pay homage to the victims of fascism and to eliminate the laws that still refer to the freedom fighters fighting against Franco8217s forces as criminals But the socialist government has not yet done this and it seems to be postponing such actions failing to keep its promises So the deafeningamp160 silence on those terrible crimes remains As indicated by Judge Juan Guzman who brought General Pinochet to trial and Judge Hugo Ca241on the Argentinean judge who brought military authorities to court at a recent conference in Barcelona the silence in Spain on the horrors of the Franco state is an insult to democratic forces throughout the world it is a scandal that needs to be denounced None of the Spanish media incidentally reported on the judges8217 declarations Meanwhile Spain8217s Judge Garzon acclaimed worldwide for trying to get Pinochet extradited from Great Britain to stand trial in a Spanish court remains silent about the amnesty that allows assassins to go free in Spain Throughout Spain and outside Spain the deafening silence continues VICENTE NAVARRO is Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at the Pompeu Fabra University Spain and The Johns Hopkins University USA In 2002 he was awarded the Anagrama Prize Spain8217s equivalent to the Pulitzer Prize in the USA for his denunciation of the way in which the transition from dictatorship to democracy has been engineered in his book Bienestar Insuficiente Democracia Incompleta De lo que no se hable en nuestro pais Insufficient Welfare Incomplete Democracy a book about what is being silenced in Spain amp160 amp160

Editors8217/NOUN note/NOUN 70/NUM Years/NOUN ago/ADV this/DET week/NOUN General/PROPN Franco/PROPN launched/VERB his/PRON attack/NOUN on/ADP the/DET Spanish/PROPN Republic/PROPN backed/VERB by/ADP Hitler/PROPN Mussolini/PROPN and/CCONJ tacitly/ADV by/ADP the/DET US/PROPN and/CCONJ other/ADJ Western/ADJ powers/NOUN Across/ADP the/DET next/ADJ few/ADJ days/NOUN and/CCONJ weeks/NOUN we/PRON will/AUX be/AUX publishing/VERB articles/NOUN on/ADP this/DET pivotal/ADJ struggle/NOUN and/CCONJ the/DET imperishable/ADJ gallantry/NOUN of/ADP the/DET Republic8217s/PROPN defenders/NOUN We/PRON start/VERB with/ADP a/DET overview/NOUN by/ADP VICENTE/PROPN NAVARRO/PROPN of/ADP the/DET enduring/ADJ significance/NOUN of/ADP the/DET Fascist/ADJ onslaught/NOUN and/CCONJ the/DET malign/NOUN tenacity/NOUN of/ADP Franco8217s/ADJ admirers/NOUN to/ADP this/DET day/NOUN in/ADP burying/VERB his/PRON crimes/NOUN while/SCONJ seeking/VERB to/PART renew/VERB his/PRON objectives/NOUN AC/PROPN JSC/PROPN Barcelona/PROPN 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Church/PROPN And/CCONJ it/PRON put/VERB in/ADP place/NOUN many/ADJ other/ADJ reforms/NOUN that/PRON made/VERB Spain/PROPN a/DET major/ADJ point/NOUN of/ADP reference/NOUN for/ADP progressive/ADJ forces/NOUN throughout/ADP Europe/PROPN Then/ADV in/ADP 1936/NUM an/DET alliance/NOUN of/ADP leftwing/VERB and/CCONJ center/NOUN parties/NOUN the/DET Popular/PROPN Front/PROPN was/AUX elected/VERB to/ADP the/DET Spanish/ADJ Parliament/PROPN with/ADP a/DET program/NOUN that/PRON expanded/VERB and/CCONJ solidified/VERB the/DET reforms/NOUN carried/VERB out/ADP by/ADP the/DET first/ADJ government/NOUN of/ADP the/DET II/PROPN Republic/PROPN 19311933/NUM Just/ADV months/NOUN later/ADV all/DET those/DET forces/NOUN that/PRON had/AUX kept/VERB Spain/PROPN one/NUM of/ADP the/DET most/ADV backward/ADJ countries/NOUN in/ADP Europe/PROPN and/CCONJ whose/DET privileges/NOUN had/AUX been/AUX curtailed/VERB by/ADP the/DET Republic8217s/PROPN reforms/NOUN came/VERB together/ADV to/PART instigate/VERB a/DET 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<p>Jan 22 (Reuters) - ISR IMMUNE SYSTEM REGULATION HOLDING AB (PUBL):</p> <p>* ISR IMMUNE SYSTEM REGULATION HOLDING AB STARTS TWO NEW PROGRAMS AGAINST TBC AND CANCER</p> <p>* PLANS TO INITIATE A PHASE I SAFETY STUDY IN HUMANS DURING FALL OF 2018 Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage: (Gdynia Newsroom)</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>(Reuters) - Walmart Inc&#8217;s ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=WMT.N" type="external">WMT.N</a>) efforts to develop closer ties with health insurer Humana Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=HUM.N" type="external">HUM.N</a>), which came to light on Thursday, point to a brave new world of retail where superstores become healthcare centers offering basic medical care.</p> FILE PHOTO: The logo of Walmart is seen on shopping trolleys at their store in Sao Paulo, Brazil February 14, 2018. REUTERS/Paulo Whitaker/File photo <p>They are also aimed at boosting Walmart&#8217;s slowing growth in brick-and-mortar store sales as it faces increasing pressure online from Amazon.com Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AMZN.O" type="external">AMZN.O</a>). Deepening its existing partnership with Humana, or even acquiring the company outright, could be a step toward turning its 4,700 or so U.S. stores into healthcare centers that aim to attract more shoppers over 65.</p> <p>&#8220;The end goal here is to get more people in their stores, get them to buy drugs and make an additional purchase while they are in the store,&#8221; said Charles Sizemore, founder of Sizemore Capital Management LLC, who owns shares of&amp;#160;Walmart.</p> <p>If Walmart can offer &#8220;competitive rates&#8221; on primary care and other health services, he said, it &#8220;can grow traffic and push store visits.&#8221;</p> <p>Walmart approached Humana this month, and the companies began to discuss closer ties focused on new partnerships, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters on Thursday. An acquisition of Humana by Walmart is also being discussed, the sources said.</p> <p>Walmart declined comment Friday.&amp;#160;Humana could not immediately be reached for comment.</p> <p>Closer ties between the two could enable the retailer to tap into Humana&#8217;s patient roster and possibly put some of its physician clinics in stores to offer medical care to customers.</p> <p>Walmart is the largest retailer to hit upon the combination of retail and health insurance, but it is not the first.</p> <p>CVS Health Corp ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=CVS.N" type="external">CVS.N</a>) has struck a $69 billion deal to acquire Aetna Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=AET.N" type="external">AET.N</a>). Separately, insurer Cigna Corp ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=CI.N" type="external">CI.N</a>) has a $54 billion deal to buy pharmacy benefits company Express Scripts Holding Co ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=ESRX.O" type="external">ESRX.O</a>). The two deals, if approved, will put pressure on the entire health care supply chain.</p> Slideshow (3 Images) AMAZON CHECKMATE? <p>Humana could provide Walmart with &#8220;one more way to checkmate Amazon and equal and eclipse the CVS/Target partnership and equal and eclipse the CVS/Aetna partnership,&#8221; said Burt Flickinger at marketing consulting firm Strategic Resource Group.</p> <p>&#8220;It allows them to get ahead of everybody from warehouse club operators like Costco, Target and other retailers who run chain drugstores as well as food and drug combo operators like Kroger and Wegmans.&#8221;</p> <p>Bentonville, Arkansas-based Walmart already has pharmacies at many store locations and has a co-branded drug plan with Humana that caters to patients using Medicare, the federal health insurance program for people over 65. That plan steers patients to Walmart stores for their pharmacy needs, offering customers an opportunity to save up to 20 percent on drug costs, analysts said.</p> <p>Louisville, Kentucky-based Humana is one of the country&#8217;s largest providers of Medicare Advantage plans - a type of coverage offered by a private company that contracts with Medicare.</p> <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=WMT.N" type="external">Walmart Inc</a> 88.97 WMT.N New York Stock Exchange +1.20 (+1.37%) WMT.N HUM.N AMZN.O CVS.N AET.N <p>Humana has 5.1 million seniors on prescription drug benefits and another 3.5 million on full medical benefits, according to Ana Gupte, senior health care analyst with Leerink Partners in New York.</p> <p>Walmart superstores &#8220;could be a one-stop shop for seniors,&#8221; said Gupte, adding that Humana already has about 50 pharmacies sharing locations with doctors&#8217; clinics, and could expand that model using Walmart&#8217;s real estate and pharmacies.</p> DATA ANALYSIS <p>There is also a potential for Walmart and Humana to benefit from their mass of customer data, said Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData Retail.</p> <p>&#8220;One thing retailers have is a very good understanding of customers. They know their eating habits and other consumption patterns and that is quite useful in forming insurance decisions,&#8221; he said. &#8220;That is certainly something that Walmart would be able to leverage.&#8221;</p> <p>Humana patients are most likely already heavy shoppers at Walmart, according to David Friend at the BDO Center for Healthcare Excellence and Innovation.</p> <p>&#8220;If you know that somebody is on a certain medicine you can sell them other products and services and that will help keep customer loyalty,&#8221; he said.</p> <p>Reporting by Nandita Bose and Chris Prentice; Additional reporting by Carl O'Donnell and Emma Thomasson; Writing by Vanessa O'Connell; Editing by Susan Thomas and Bill Rigby</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (Reuters) - Mexico&#8217;s presidential front-runner launched his campaign close to the U.S. border on Sunday, demanding respect for Mexicans hours after U.S. President Donald Trump again threatened to scrap a key trade pact and erect a wall between the countries.</p> Leftist front-runner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) greets to supporters during his campaign rally in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico April 1, 2018. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez <p>Striking a nationalistic tone, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador signaled that if he won the July 1 election, he would be less accommodating toward Trump than the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which has lagged in opinion polls over its failure to contain violence and corruption.</p> <p>&#8220;Mexico and its people will not be the pinata of any foreign government,&#8221; Lopez Obrador said in a speech to thousands of people who jeered and swore at the mention of Trump. The U.S. president is almost universally disliked in Mexico.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-mexico-election-candidates-factbox/factbox-mexicos-presidential-candidates-at-the-start-of-campaigning-idUSKCN1H80XL" type="external">Factbox: Mexico's presidential candidates at the start of campaigning</a> <p>&#8220;It&#8217;s not with walls or use of force that you resolve social problems.&#8221;</p> <p>Symbolically, the three-month campaign began in Ciudad Juarez, whose namesake, Benito Juarez, was a 19th century Mexican president from indigenous roots whose exiled government resisted a French colonialist intervention from the unruly city that borders El Paso, Texas.</p> <p>Trump on Sunday morning reiterated his threat that has hung over the campaign, to cancel the North American Free Trade Agreement among Mexico, Canada and the United States, tying its future to its efforts to stop migrants going north.</p> <p>&#8220;Mexico is doing very little, if not NOTHING, at stopping people from flowing into Mexico through their Southern Border,&#8221; he said in a tweet.</p> Leftist front-runner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) waves to supporters during his campaign rally in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico April 1, 2018. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez <p>Lopez Obrador criticized President Enrique Pena Nieto for export-focused economic policies that he said benefited the few, and promised a strategy to build up Mexico&#8217;s internal markets.</p> <p>He decried the paltry minimum wage in Mexico, which is less than 90 pesos ($4.96) a day, and the huge salary differences between U.S. and Mexican auto industry workers, challenging Trump&#8217;s narrative that Mexico has benefited most from NAFTA.</p> <p>While he reaffirmed his backing for the pact, he said talks to renegotiate the agreement should be suspended until after the election, and that any new deal should address wages and immigration.</p> <p>&#8220;I liked that he said we won&#8217;t be Trump&#8217;s servants, nobody has said it like that,&#8221; Abelardo Ochoa, 32, said at the rally. &#8220;We work so hard here to earn well, but you cross the border and it&#8217;s something else.&#8221;</p> &#8216;EXPERIENCE OF SERVING&#8217; <p>The ruling-party candidate trailing in third place, former Finance Minister Jose Antonio Meade, launched his own campaign on Sunday at the other end of the country in the southeastern town of Merida, touting his years in government as his strength.</p> Slideshow (11 Images) <p>&#8220;I have the experience of serving and getting results for more than 20 years, without scandals. I live off my salary,&#8221; Meade told a cheering crowd dressed mostly in white.</p> <p>Second-place Ricardo Anaya began campaigning on Friday.</p> <p>Silver-haired Lopez Obrador, a former Mexico City mayor, first ran for president in 2006. He said he would treat Trump&#8217;s administration with respect but would demand the same for Mexicans.</p> <p>His unconventional, and at times inconsistent, policy stances have sometimes led to comparisons with the U.S. president.</p> <p>The 64-year-old candidate played to his leftist base, attacking the current government and saying he would suspend a $13 billion airport, an important project for Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, which he says is tainted by corruption.</p> <p>He has promised to &#8220;consult the people&#8221; on reforms and plans to turn the presidential residence into a cultural center, sell the presidential plane and cut his salary in half.</p> <p>Sandra Flores, 24, who was at Sunday&#8217;s rally with her two children, said she and members of her family, including those living in California, supported Lopez Obrador.</p> <p>&#8220;I voted for the president we have now and honestly I&#8217;m not satisfied,&#8221; she said. &#8220;(Lopez Obrador) will be able to stand up against what Trump is doing.&#8221;</p> <p>Reporting by Lizbeth Diaz in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico; Writing by Christine Murray; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel, Peter Cooney and Richard Chang</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON/IXTEPEC, Mexico (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Sunday that there will be no deal on legalizing the status on young adult immigrants known as Dreamers, declaring on Twitter that the U.S.-Mexico border is becoming more dangerous.</p> <p>After tweeting a &#8220;Happy Easter&#8221; message, Trump followed with: &#8220;Border Patrol Agents are not allowed to properly do their job at the Border because of ridiculous liberal (Democrat) laws like Catch &amp;amp; Release. Getting more dangerous. &#8216;Caravans&#8217; coming. Republicans must go to Nuclear Option to pass tough laws NOW. NO MORE DACA DEAL!&#8221;</p> <p>He also threatened to kill the North American Free Trade Agreement, which is currently being renegotiated with Mexico and Canada.</p> <p>DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) is the program created in 2012 under Democratic former President Barack Obama that Trump sought to rescind last autumn. Designed for individuals brought to the United States as children by parents who were undocumented immigrants, the program shielded the individuals from deportation and gave them work permits.</p> <p>Trump had said he was open to brokering a deal with congressional Democrats who want to protect DACA in exchange for funding to build a U.S.-Mexico border wall, a frequent campaign trail promise. He insisted during his run for the White House that Mexico would pay for the wall.</p> <p>Although Trump threatened a veto last month of an omnibus spending bill because it did not address the fate of Dreamers and did not fully fund his border wall, he did sign the bill.</p> <p>In the months after Trump took office, the number of apprehensions of illegal crossers along the U.S.- Mexico border dropped dramatically, from more than 42,400 arrests in January 2017 to a low of around 15,700 in April, according to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Since then, the number of arrests has risen and in the first months of 2018 was above the levels seen during the Obama administration.</p> <p>Trump is spending the Easter holiday at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.</p> <p>&#8220;Mexico has got to help us at the border,&#8221; the president told reporters on his way into an Easter church service. &#8220;A lot of people are coming in because they want to take advantage of DACA. They had a great chance. The Democrats blew it.&#8221;</p> <p>His DACA tweets came shortly after a report on the Fox New Channel&#8217;s Fox &amp;amp; Friends program, one of Trump&#8217;s favorites, that a &#8220;caravan&#8221; of mostly Honduran migrants was crossing Mexico and headed to the United States, &#8220;either illegally or by asking for asylum.&#8221;</p> <p>More than 1,000 would-be migrants have passed through Mexico&#8217;s southern states of Chiapas and Oaxaca in recent days in a so-called &#8220;refugee caravan&#8221; organized by U.S.-based immigrant advocacy group Pueblo Sin Fronteras.</p> <p>In the town of Ixtepec, more than 1,500 men, women and children from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala waited in a sweltering warehouse on Saturday, mattresses rolled and bags packed, as local authorities and immigration officials from Mexico&#8217;s federal government organized 15 buses to take them to their next stop on the long journey north.</p> <p>By traveling together, the immigrants hope to protect themselves from the crime and extortion that makes the route through Mexico dangerous. They say some but not all of them will seek asylum if they reach the United States.</p> <p>A guest on Sunday&#8217;s Fox &amp;amp; Friends show, Brandon Judd, head of the National Border Patrol Council union, said illegal immigrants benefit from the &#8220;catch and release&#8221; program that Trump referenced in his tweet. Under it, they can be freed while awaiting court hearings if detained in the United States.</p> <p>If recent border crossers do not claim asylum, they can usually be deported quickly. But if they say they fear targeted violence or persecution in their home countries, they can begin the long process of petitioning for asylum in immigration court.</p> <p>In such instances, the government can choose to release those individuals while their cases are processed. Trump and his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, have often criticized the Obama administration for routinely paroling asylum seekers.</p> <p>That situation has changed: last month, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of nine plaintiffs alleging that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were now detaining almost all adults who seek asylum at a port of entry.</p> <p>Trump said on Twitter on Sunday that Mexico is doing &#8220;very little, if not NOTHING,&#8221; to stop the flow of people across the southern border. &#8220;They must stop the big drug and people flows, or I will stop their cash cow, NAFTA. NEED WALL!&#8221;</p> <p>Last week, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer expressed optimism that negotiations to modify NAFTA to terms more favorable to the United States were making progress and that a deal in principle could be reached quickly.</p> U.S. President Donald Trump arrives at Palm Beach International Airport, Florida, U.S. for the Easter weekend at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach March 29, 2018. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas <p>The thorniest issues in the NAFTA talks concern U.S. demands on automotive trade and dispute settlement systems. Linking the future of the 24-year-old trade deal to Trump&#8217;s border wall plan has never been among U.S. negotiating objectives.</p> <p>Reporting by Valerie Volcovici in Washington and Delphine Schrank in Ixtepec, Mexico; Additional reporting by Mica Rosenberg, David Lawder and Steve Holland; Editing by Steve Orlofsky and Daniel Wallis</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>TORONTO/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Retailer Hudson&#8217;s Bay Co on Sunday disclosed that it was the victim of a security breach that compromised data on payment cards used at Saks and Lord &amp;amp; Taylor stores in North America.</p> The Lord &amp;amp; Taylor flagship store building is seen along Fifth Avenue in the Manhattan borough of New York City, U.S., October 24, 2017. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton <p>One cyber security firm said that it has evidence that millions of cards may have been compromised, which would make the breach one of the largest involving payment cards over the past year, but added that it was too soon to confirm whether that was the case.</p> <p>Toronto-based Hudson&#8217;s Bay said in a statement that it had &#8220;taken steps to contain&#8221; the breach but did not say it had succeeded in confirming that its network was secure. It also did not say when the breach had begun or how many payment card numbers were taken.</p> <p>&#8220;Once we have more clarity around the facts, we will notify our customers quickly and will offer those impacted free identity protection services, including credit and web monitoring,&#8221; the statement said.</p> <p>A company spokeswoman declined to elaborate.</p> <p>The breach comes as Hudson&#8217;s Bay struggles to improve its financial performance as a tough retail environment has weighed on sales and margins. Last June, it launched a transformation plan to cut costs and is working to monetize the value of its substantial real estate holdings.</p> <p>Hudson&#8217;s Bay disclosed the incident after New York-based cyber security firm Gemini Advisory reported on its blog that Saks and Lord &amp;amp; Taylor had been hacked by a well-known criminal group known as JokerStash.</p> <p>JokerStash, which sells stolen data on the criminal underground, on Wednesday said that it planned to release more than 5 million stolen credit cards, according to Gemini Chief Technology Officer Dmitry Chorine.</p> <p>The hacking group has so far released about 125,000 payment cards, about 75 percent of which appear to have been taken from the Hudson&#8217;s Bay units, Chorine told Reuters by telephone.</p> <p>The bulk of the 5 million card numbers that JokerStash said it plans to release are likely from Saks and Lord &amp;amp; Taylor, but it is too early to say for sure, Chorine said.</p> FILE PHOTO: The outside of the Saks Fifth Avenue store is seen in New York October 8, 2009. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton/File Photo <p>&#8220;It&#8217;s hard to assess at the moment, primarily because hackers have not released the entire cards in one batch,&#8221; he told Reuters.</p> <p>Alex Holden, chief information security officer with cyber security firm Hold Security, confirmed that the 125,000 cards had been released by JokerStash but said it was too soon to estimate how many had been taken from Hudson&#8217;s Bay.</p> <p>If in fact millions of records were stolen, the breach would be one of the largest involving payment cards in the past year, but it would still be far smaller than any of the biggest thefts on record, which occurred a decade ago.</p> <p>Hackers stole more than 130 million credit cards from credit-card processor Heartland Payment Systems, convenience store operator 7-Eleven Inc and grocer Hannaford Brothers Co, from 2006 to 2008, according to U.S. federal investigators.</p> <p>Cyber criminals stole some 40 million payment cards in a 2013 hack on Target Corp and 56 million from Home Depot Inc in 2014.</p> <p>Hudson&#8217;s Bay said there is no indication its recent breach involved online sales at Saks and Lord &amp;amp; Taylor outlets or its Hudson&#8217;s Bay, Home Outfitters and HBC Europe units.</p> <p>The company said that customers will not be liable for fraudulent charges resulting from the breach.</p> <p>Reporting by Jim Finkle in Toronto and David Henry in New York; Editing by Bill Rigby and Steve Orlofsky</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

BRIEF-ISR Starts Two New Programs Against TBC And Cancer Come for your drugs, leave with more shopping: Walmart's new growth strategy? Mexico is no 'piñata,' election front-runner says after Trump tweets Trump says DACA deal for young immigrants is off Saks, Lord & Taylor hit by payment card data breach

https://reuters.com/article/brief-isr-starts-two-new-programs-agains/brief-isr-starts-two-new-programs-against-tbc-and-cancer-idUSFWN1PH041

2018-01-22

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Jan 22 Reuters ISR IMMUNE SYSTEM REGULATION HOLDING AB PUBL ISR IMMUNE SYSTEM REGULATION HOLDING AB STARTS TWO NEW PROGRAMS AGAINST TBC AND CANCER PLANS TO INITIATE A PHASE I SAFETY STUDY IN HUMANS DURING FALL OF 2018 Source text for Eikon Further company coverage Gdynia Newsroom Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles Reuters Walmart Inc8217s WMTN efforts to develop closer ties with health insurer Humana Inc HUMN which came to light on Thursday point to a brave new world of retail where superstores become healthcare centers offering basic medical care FILE PHOTO The logo of Walmart is seen on shopping trolleys at their store in Sao Paulo Brazil February 14 2018 REUTERSPaulo WhitakerFile photo They are also aimed at boosting Walmart8217s slowing growth in brickandmortar store sales as it faces increasing pressure online from Amazoncom Inc AMZNO Deepening its existing partnership with Humana or even acquiring the company outright could be a step toward turning its 4700 or so US stores into healthcare centers that aim to attract more shoppers over 65 8220The end goal here is to get more people in their stores get them to buy drugs and make an additional purchase while they are in the store8221 said Charles Sizemore founder of Sizemore Capital Management LLC who owns shares ofamp160Walmart If Walmart can offer 8220competitive rates8221 on primary care and other health services he said it 8220can grow traffic and push store visits8221 Walmart approached Humana this month and the companies began to discuss closer ties focused on new partnerships two people familiar with the matter told Reuters on Thursday An acquisition of Humana by Walmart is also being discussed the sources said Walmart declined comment Fridayamp160Humana could not immediately be reached for comment Closer ties between the two could enable the retailer to tap into Humana8217s patient roster and possibly put some of its physician clinics in stores to offer medical care to customers Walmart is the largest retailer to hit upon the combination of retail and health insurance but it is not the first CVS Health Corp CVSN has struck a 69 billion deal to acquire Aetna Inc AETN Separately insurer Cigna Corp CIN has a 54 billion deal to buy pharmacy benefits company Express Scripts Holding Co ESRXO The two deals if approved will put pressure on the entire health care supply chain Slideshow 3 Images AMAZON CHECKMATE Humana could provide Walmart with 8220one more way to checkmate Amazon and equal and eclipse the CVSTarget partnership and equal and eclipse the CVSAetna partnership8221 said Burt Flickinger at marketing consulting firm Strategic Resource Group 8220It allows them to get ahead of everybody from warehouse club operators like Costco Target and other retailers who run chain drugstores as well as food and drug combo operators like Kroger and Wegmans8221 Bentonville Arkansasbased Walmart already has pharmacies at many store locations and has a cobranded drug plan with Humana that caters to patients using Medicare the federal health insurance program for people over 65 That plan steers patients to Walmart stores for their pharmacy needs offering customers an opportunity to save up to 20 percent on drug costs analysts said Louisville Kentuckybased Humana is one of the country8217s largest providers of Medicare Advantage plans a type of coverage offered by a private company that contracts with Medicare Walmart Inc 8897 WMTN New York Stock Exchange 120 137 WMTN HUMN AMZNO CVSN AETN Humana has 51 million seniors on prescription drug benefits and another 35 million on full medical benefits according to Ana Gupte senior health care analyst with Leerink Partners in New York Walmart superstores 8220could be a onestop shop for seniors8221 said Gupte adding that Humana already has about 50 pharmacies sharing locations with doctors8217 clinics and could expand that model using Walmart8217s real estate and pharmacies DATA ANALYSIS There is also a potential for Walmart and Humana to benefit from their mass of customer data said Neil Saunders managing director of GlobalData Retail 8220One thing retailers have is a very good understanding of customers They know their eating habits and other consumption patterns and that is quite useful in forming insurance decisions8221 he said 8220That is certainly something that Walmart would be able to leverage8221 Humana patients are most likely already heavy shoppers at Walmart according to David Friend at the BDO Center for Healthcare Excellence and Innovation 8220If you know that somebody is on a certain medicine you can sell them other products and services and that will help keep customer loyalty8221 he said Reporting by Nandita Bose and Chris Prentice Additional reporting by Carl ODonnell and Emma Thomasson Writing by Vanessa OConnell Editing by Susan Thomas and Bill Rigby Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles CIUDAD JUAREZ Mexico Reuters Mexico8217s presidential frontrunner launched his campaign close to the US border on Sunday demanding respect for Mexicans hours after US President Donald Trump again threatened to scrap a key trade pact and erect a wall between the countries Leftist frontrunner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the National Regeneration Movement MORENA greets to supporters during his campaign rally in Ciudad Juarez Mexico April 1 2018 REUTERSJose Luis Gonzalez Striking a nationalistic tone Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador signaled that if he won the July 1 election he would be less accommodating toward Trump than the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party or PRI which has lagged in opinion polls over its failure to contain violence and corruption 8220Mexico and its people will not be the pinata of any foreign government8221 Lopez Obrador said in a speech to thousands of people who jeered and swore at the mention of Trump The US president is almost universally disliked in Mexico Related Coverage Factbox Mexicos presidential candidates at the start of campaigning 8220It8217s not with walls or use of force that you resolve social problems8221 Symbolically the threemonth campaign began in Ciudad Juarez whose namesake Benito Juarez was a 19th century Mexican president from indigenous roots whose exiled government resisted a French colonialist intervention from the unruly city that borders El Paso Texas Trump on Sunday morning reiterated his threat that has hung over the campaign to cancel the North American Free Trade Agreement among Mexico Canada and the United States tying its future to its efforts to stop migrants going north 8220Mexico is doing very little if not NOTHING at stopping people from flowing into Mexico through their Southern Border8221 he said in a tweet Leftist frontrunner Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the National Regeneration Movement MORENA waves to supporters during his campaign rally in Ciudad Juarez Mexico April 1 2018 REUTERSJose Luis Gonzalez Lopez Obrador criticized President Enrique Pena Nieto for exportfocused economic policies that he said benefited the few and promised a strategy to build up Mexico8217s internal markets He decried the paltry minimum wage in Mexico which is less than 90 pesos 496 a day and the huge salary differences between US and Mexican auto industry workers challenging Trump8217s narrative that Mexico has benefited most from NAFTA While he reaffirmed his backing for the pact he said talks to renegotiate the agreement should be suspended until after the election and that any new deal should address wages and immigration 8220I liked that he said we won8217t be Trump8217s servants nobody has said it like that8221 Abelardo Ochoa 32 said at the rally 8220We work so hard here to earn well but you cross the border and it8217s something else8221 8216EXPERIENCE OF SERVING8217 The rulingparty candidate trailing in third place former Finance Minister Jose Antonio Meade launched his own campaign on Sunday at the other end of the country in the southeastern town of Merida touting his years in government as his strength Slideshow 11 Images 8220I have the experience of serving and getting results for more than 20 years without scandals I live off my salary8221 Meade told a cheering crowd dressed mostly in white Secondplace Ricardo Anaya began campaigning on Friday Silverhaired Lopez Obrador a former Mexico City mayor first ran for president in 2006 He said he would treat Trump8217s administration with respect but would demand the same for Mexicans His unconventional and at times inconsistent policy stances have sometimes led to comparisons with the US president The 64yearold candidate played to his leftist base attacking the current government and saying he would suspend a 13 billion airport an important project for Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim which he says is tainted by corruption He has promised to 8220consult the people8221 on reforms and plans to turn the presidential residence into a cultural center sell the presidential plane and cut his salary in half Sandra Flores 24 who was at Sunday8217s rally with her two children said she and members of her family including those living in California supported Lopez Obrador 8220I voted for the president we have now and honestly I8217m not satisfied8221 she said 8220Lopez Obrador will be able to stand up against what Trump is doing8221 Reporting by Lizbeth Diaz in Ciudad Juarez Mexico Writing by Christine Murray Editing by Frank Jack Daniel Peter Cooney and Richard Chang Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTONIXTEPEC Mexico Reuters President Donald Trump said on Sunday that there will be no deal on legalizing the status on young adult immigrants known as Dreamers declaring on Twitter that the USMexico border is becoming more dangerous After tweeting a 8220Happy Easter8221 message Trump followed with 8220Border Patrol Agents are not allowed to properly do their job at the Border because of ridiculous liberal Democrat laws like Catch ampamp Release Getting more dangerous 8216Caravans8217 coming Republicans must go to Nuclear Option to pass tough laws NOW NO MORE DACA DEAL8221 He also threatened to kill the North American Free Trade Agreement which is currently being renegotiated with Mexico and Canada DACA Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals is the program created in 2012 under Democratic former President Barack Obama that Trump sought to rescind last autumn Designed for individuals brought to the United States as children by parents who were undocumented immigrants the program shielded the individuals from deportation and gave them work permits Trump had said he was open to brokering a deal with congressional Democrats who want to protect DACA in exchange for funding to build a USMexico border wall a frequent campaign trail promise He insisted during his run for the White House that Mexico would pay for the wall Although Trump threatened a veto last month of an omnibus spending bill because it did not address the fate of Dreamers and did not fully fund his border wall he did sign the bill In the months after Trump took office the number of apprehensions of illegal crossers along the US Mexico border dropped dramatically from more than 42400 arrests in January 2017 to a low of around 15700 in April according to data from US Customs and Border Protection Since then the number of arrests has risen and in the first months of 2018 was above the levels seen during the Obama administration Trump is spending the Easter holiday at his MaraLago resort in Palm Beach Florida 8220Mexico has got to help us at the border8221 the president told reporters on his way into an Easter church service 8220A lot of people are coming in because they want to take advantage of DACA They had a great chance The Democrats blew it8221 His DACA tweets came shortly after a report on the Fox New Channel8217s Fox ampamp Friends program one of Trump8217s favorites that a 8220caravan8221 of mostly Honduran migrants was crossing Mexico and headed to the United States 8220either illegally or by asking for asylum8221 More than 1000 wouldbe migrants have passed through Mexico8217s southern states of Chiapas and Oaxaca in recent days in a socalled 8220refugee caravan8221 organized by USbased immigrant advocacy group Pueblo Sin Fronteras In the town of Ixtepec more than 1500 men women and children from Honduras El Salvador and Guatemala waited in a sweltering warehouse on Saturday mattresses rolled and bags packed as local authorities and immigration officials from Mexico8217s federal government organized 15 buses to take them to their next stop on the long journey north By traveling together the immigrants hope to protect themselves from the crime and extortion that makes the route through Mexico dangerous They say some but not all of them will seek asylum if they reach the United States A guest on Sunday8217s Fox ampamp Friends show Brandon Judd head of the National Border Patrol Council union said illegal immigrants benefit from the 8220catch and release8221 program that Trump referenced in his tweet Under it they can be freed while awaiting court hearings if detained in the United States If recent border crossers do not claim asylum they can usually be deported quickly But if they say they fear targeted violence or persecution in their home countries they can begin the long process of petitioning for asylum in immigration court In such instances the government can choose to release those individuals while their cases are processed Trump and his attorney general Jeff Sessions have often criticized the Obama administration for routinely paroling asylum seekers That situation has changed last month the American Civil Liberties Union filed a classaction lawsuit on behalf of nine plaintiffs alleging that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were now detaining almost all adults who seek asylum at a port of entry Trump said on Twitter on Sunday that Mexico is doing 8220very little if not NOTHING8221 to stop the flow of people across the southern border 8220They must stop the big drug and people flows or I will stop their cash cow NAFTA NEED WALL8221 Last week US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer expressed optimism that negotiations to modify NAFTA to terms more favorable to the United States were making progress and that a deal in principle could be reached quickly US President Donald Trump arrives at Palm Beach International Airport Florida US for the Easter weekend at MaraLago in Palm Beach March 29 2018 REUTERSYuri Gripas The thorniest issues in the NAFTA talks concern US demands on automotive trade and dispute settlement systems Linking the future of the 24yearold trade deal to Trump8217s border wall plan has never been among US negotiating objectives Reporting by Valerie Volcovici in Washington and Delphine Schrank in Ixtepec Mexico Additional reporting by Mica Rosenberg David Lawder and Steve Holland Editing by Steve Orlofsky and Daniel Wallis Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles TORONTONEW YORK Reuters Retailer Hudson8217s Bay Co on Sunday disclosed that it was the victim of a security breach that compromised data on payment cards used at Saks and Lord ampamp Taylor stores in North America The Lord ampamp Taylor flagship store building is seen along Fifth Avenue in the Manhattan borough of New York City US October 24 2017 REUTERSShannon Stapleton One cyber security firm said that it has evidence that millions of cards may have been compromised which would make the breach one of the largest involving payment cards over the past year but added that it was too soon to confirm whether that was the case Torontobased Hudson8217s Bay said in a statement that it had 8220taken steps to contain8221 the breach but did not say it had succeeded in confirming that its network was secure It also did not say when the breach had begun or how many payment card numbers were taken 8220Once we have more clarity around the facts we will notify our customers quickly and will offer those impacted free identity protection services including credit and web monitoring8221 the statement said A company spokeswoman declined to elaborate The breach comes as Hudson8217s Bay struggles to improve its financial performance as a tough retail environment has weighed on sales and margins Last June it launched a transformation plan to cut costs and is working to monetize the value of its substantial real estate holdings Hudson8217s Bay disclosed the incident after New Yorkbased cyber security firm Gemini Advisory reported on its blog that Saks and Lord ampamp Taylor had been hacked by a wellknown criminal group known as JokerStash JokerStash which sells stolen data on the criminal underground on Wednesday said that it planned to release more than 5 million stolen credit cards according to Gemini Chief Technology Officer Dmitry Chorine The hacking group has so far released about 125000 payment cards about 75 percent of which appear to have been taken from the Hudson8217s Bay units Chorine told Reuters by telephone The bulk of the 5 million card numbers that JokerStash said it plans to release are likely from Saks and Lord ampamp Taylor but it is too early to say for sure Chorine said FILE PHOTO The outside of the Saks Fifth Avenue store is seen in New York October 8 2009 REUTERSShannon StapletonFile Photo 8220It8217s hard to assess at the moment primarily because hackers have not released the entire cards in one batch8221 he told Reuters Alex Holden chief information security officer with cyber security firm Hold Security confirmed that the 125000 cards had been released by JokerStash but said it was too soon to estimate how many had been taken from Hudson8217s Bay If in fact millions of records were stolen the breach would be one of the largest involving payment cards in the past year but it would still be far smaller than any of the biggest thefts on record which occurred a decade ago Hackers stole more than 130 million credit cards from creditcard processor Heartland Payment Systems convenience store operator 7Eleven Inc and grocer Hannaford Brothers Co from 2006 to 2008 according to US federal investigators Cyber criminals stole some 40 million payment cards in a 2013 hack on Target Corp and 56 million from Home Depot Inc in 2014 Hudson8217s Bay said there is no indication its recent breach involved online sales at Saks and Lord ampamp Taylor outlets or its Hudson8217s Bay Home Outfitters and HBC Europe units The company said that customers will not be liable for fraudulent charges resulting from the breach Reporting by Jim Finkle in Toronto and David Henry in New York Editing by Bill Rigby and Steve Orlofsky Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>BEIJING (Reuters) - Beijing plans to tear down at least 40 million square meters, or a staggering 15.44 square miles, of illegal structures, roughly an area of 28 London Hyde Parks, and shut 500 manufacturing firms this year.</p> FILE PHOTO: Beijing's Mayor Chen Jining attends a group discussion session on the second day of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China October 19, 2017. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu <p>The city will &#8220;ensure zero increase of such structures&#8221; this year and will continue to relocate people out of the city center, acting mayor Chen Jining said in an annual work report to the city&#8217;s government on Wednesday.</p> <p>Beijing last year set a similar goal to demolish 40 million square meters of illegal structures, but there was no indication in this year&#8217;s report whether the target was met.</p> <p>Beijing launched a citywide safety blitz in November following a deadly fire that has resulted in the demolition of buildings that violate safety codes and the eviction of thousands of migrant workers from their homes and businesses.</p> <p>The evictions sparked unusually direct criticism from China&#8217;s intellectuals, students and journalists, who say the government is unfairly targeting the vulnerable underclass.</p> <p>There will also be no letting up in a campaign to sanitize ancient hutong alleyways that last year displaced migrants as many were evicted from homes and businesses were shut down along the narrow passageways.</p> <p>The city will continue to &#8220;close small shops operated from illegal openings cut in the wall&#8221;, the report said, referring to what the city says are illegal modifications to the traditional structures.</p> <p>Authorities will also preserve the historical areas of Beijing, including the appropriation of properties, though Chen said housing will be provided for those relocated.</p> <p>Beijing has been moving what it calls &#8220;non-capital functions&#8221; out of the city in order to relieve traffic congestion and pressure on public services, with the Xiongan New Area announced last year as a major focus for regional development.</p> <p>&#8220;Whatever support Xiongan needs, we will be there to provide it,&#8221; said Chen.</p> <p>Reporting by Elias Glenn; Editing by Michael Perry</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>LIMA (Reuters) - Peru&#8217;s center-right President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski announced his resignation on Wednesday after vote-buying allegations ensnared him in a fresh scandal on the eve of an impeachment vote, capping months of political turmoil in one of Latin America&#8217;s most stable economies.</p> <p>Kuczynski, a 79-year-old former Wall Street banker who once held U.S. citizenship, promised a &#8220;constitutional and orderly&#8221; transition of power to end what he described as a hostile political climate that had made governing nearly impossible.</p> <p>But Kuczynski, who is expected to be replaced by Vice President Martin Vizcarra on Friday, denied allegations of wrongdoing and blamed the premature end of his five-year term on the right-wing opposition party that controls Congress.</p> <p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve worked for nearly 60 years of my life with complete honesty. The opposition has tried to depict me as a corrupt person,&#8221; Kuczynski said in a pre-recorded video message to the nation that broadcast as he left the presidential palace.</p> <p>But Kuczynski added, &#8220;I think what&#8217;s best for the country is for me to resign...I don&#8217;t want to be an obstacle for the nation&#8217;s search for a path to unity and harmony.&#8221;</p> <p>Lawmakers agreed to accept Kuczynski&#8217;s resignation instead of moving forward with a vote scheduled for Thursday on whether to oust him on grounds he was &#8220;morally unfit&#8221; to govern, said the president of Congress, Luis Galarreta.</p> <p>Galarreta said he would swear Vizcarra in as president at around midday Friday.</p> <p>A former governor of a mining region who once helped secure community support for Anglo American Plc&#8217;s Quellaveco copper project, Vizcarra has served as Peru&#8217;s ambassador to Canada since September and is currently in Ottawa.</p> <p>In recent days, Vizcarra has received public assurances from opposition lawmakers that they will support his government. But he will take office amid a fractured party, widespread disgust for elected officials in Peru and inherit economic growth that slowed to 2.5 percent last year.</p> Peru's President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski is seen announcing his resignation at the Presidential Palace in Lima, Peru March 21, 2018 in this still image from video. PERU GOVERNMENT TV/AMERICA TV/Handout via REUTERS <p>Vizcarra, who turns 55 years old on Thursday, appealed to the public to pull through the crisis on Twitter. &#8220;I&#8217;m outraged by the current situation like the majority of Peruvians. But I&#8217;m convinced that together we can show that we can once more push forward.&#8221;</p> TRUMP HEADED TO PERU <p>Kuczynski had been scheduled to welcome Donald Trump on the U.S. president&#8217;s first visit to Latin America next month, where many of the region&#8217;s leaders plan to pressure Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to enact democratic reforms.</p> Slideshow (21 Images) <p>A White House official, speaking on background, said Trump still plans to attend the summit.</p> <p>Kuczynski&#8217;s resignation marked a spectacular downfall for a man who was elected less than two years ago amid hopes he would turbocharge growth while cleaning up government corruption and modernizing the Andean nation of some 30 million people.</p> <p>Markets that had cheered Kuczynski&#8217;s rise to power rallied on news of his resignation on Wednesday, amid expectations it would end the political uncertainty that has shadowed Peru since the opposition first sought to oust Kuczynski in December.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-peru-politics-security/peruvian-police-put-officers-on-high-alert-amid-political-crisis-idUSKBN1GX289" type="external">Peruvian police put officers on high alert amid political crisis</a> <a href="/article/us-peru-politics-vizcarra/perus-vizcarra-to-be-sworn-in-as-president-friday-president-of-congress-idUSKBN1GX3A5" type="external">Peru's Vizcarra to be sworn in as president Friday: president of Congress</a> <p>Popular Force - the country&#8217;s most powerful opposition party - tried to impeach Kuczynski in December after revealing his company received money from Odebrecht [ODBES.UL] - a Brazilian company at the center of Latin America&#8217;s biggest graft scandal - while he held public office more than a decade ago.</p> <p>Kuczynski unexpectedly stayed in power in December with the help of former autocratic Alberto Fujimori, whom he pardoned from a human rights sentence days later in what was widely seen as political payback.</p> <p>Ahead of the new impeachment vote on Thursday, Popular Force released a raft of video and audio that appeared to show Kuczynski&#8217;s allies offering lucrative public work contracts to lawmakers in exchange for political support.</p> <p>Kuczynski said the recordings had been edited unfairly as part of a campaign to discredit his government and stressed that no corruption allegation had been proven.</p> <p>Reporting by Mitra Taj and Teresa Cespedes; Additional Reporting by Marco Aquino and Maria Cervantes in Lima and Roberta Rampton in Washignton; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Lisa Shumaker</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel for the first time admitted that it bombed a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007 and said on Wednesday the strike should be a warning to Iran that it would not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons.</p> <p>The military released previously classified cockpit footage, photographs and intelligence documents about its Sept. 6, 2007, air strike on the Al-Kubar facility near Deir al-Zor in eastern Syria.</p> <p>It said the reactor was being constructed with help from North Korea and had been months away from activation. Amos Yadlin, Israel&#8217;s military intelligence chief at the time, said on Israel Radio that even with a functioning reactor, it would have taken Syria years to build a nuclear weapon.</p> <p>Reuters has been unable to immediately verify the Israeli material.</p> <p>Israel&#8217;s decision to go public comes after repeated calls in recent months by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the United States and international community to take tougher action on Iran, Syria&#8217;s ally.</p> <p>Netanyahu said on Wednesday Israel was determined to prevent its enemies from obtaining nuclear weapons.</p> <p>&#8220;The Israeli government, the Israel Defense Forces and the Mossad prevented Syria from developing nuclear capability. They are worthy of full praise for this. Israel&#8217;s policy was and remains consistent - to prevent our enemies from arming themselves with nuclear weapons,&#8221; Netanyahu wrote on Twitter.</p> <p>Intelligence minister, Israel Katz, said earlier on Twitter: &#8220;The (2007) operation and its success made clear that Israel will never allow nuclear weaponry to be in the hands of those who threaten its existence - Syria then, and Iran today.&#8221;</p> <p>Iran, which says its nuclear program has only peaceful aims, signed a 2015 deal under which it accepted curbs on its nuclear program in return for sanctions relief. U.S. President Donald Trump and Netanyahu have both been critical of the deal.</p> <p>The Israeli military described in detail events leading up to the night of Sept 5-6, 2007, in which, it said, eight warplanes, F-16s and F-15s, carried out the mission after taking off from the Ramon and Hatzerim air bases.</p> <p>They flew to Deir al-Zor region, 450 km (270 miles) northwest of Damascus, and dropped 18 tonnes of munitions on the site, it said.</p> <p>Yadlin said Israel decided at the time against acknowledging the raid on the reactor so as not to provoke Syrian President Bashar al-Assad into retaliating. &#8220;No core. No war,&#8221; Yadlin said about Israel&#8217;s goal.</p> A still frame taken from video material released on March 21, 2018 shows a combination image of what the Israeli military describes is before and after an Israeli air strike on a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor site near Deir al-Zor on Sept 6, 2007. IDF/Handout via Reuters TV &#8220;TOP SECRET&#8221; <p>The Israeli military on Wednesday declassified internal &#8220;top secret&#8221; intelligence reports, in Hebrew, some of them partly redacted.</p> <p>One, dated March 30, 2007, said: &#8220;Syria has set up, within its territory, a nuclear reactor for the production of plutonium, through North Korea, which according to an (initial) worst-case assessment is liable to be activated in approximately another year. To our assessment [REDACTED] secretive and orderly [REDACTED] for achieving a nuclear weapon.&#8221;</p> <p>Israeli intelligence predicted that the suspected reactor &#8220;would turn operational by the end of 2007&#8221;.</p> Slideshow (17 Images) <p>The mission to destroy the reactor started at 10.30 p.m. on Sept. 5 and ended with the return of the warplanes at 2.30 a.m. the next day, the Israeli military said.</p> <p>The disclosure on Wednesday stemmed in part, Yadlin said, from years of pressure by the Israeli media on military censors to allow them to publish Israeli-sourced information about the raid and the release on Wednesday of memoirs by Ehud Olmert, the former prime minister who ordered the bombing.</p> <p>The event was first made public by Syria, which, as reported by Reuters at the time, said in the early hours of Sept. 6 that its air defenses had repelled an incursion by Israeli warplanes.</p> <p>Syria, a signatory of the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), has always denied that the site was a reactor or that Damascus engaged in nuclear cooperation with North Korea.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-israel-syria-nuclear-netanyahu/netanyahu-commenting-on-2007-bombing-in-syria-says-israel-wont-let-its-enemies-obtain-nuclear-arms-idUSKBN1GX24U" type="external">Netanyahu, commenting on 2007 bombing in Syria, says Israel won't let its enemies obtain nuclear arms</a> <p>In his 2010 memoir &#8220;Decision Points,&#8221; former U.S. President George W. Bush disclosed he discussed intelligence about the Syrian facility with Olmert before it was destroyed but did not give him the green light for the raid.</p> <p>In 2008 the United States presented what it described as intelligence showing that North Korea had helped Syria with &#8220;covert nuclear activities.&#8221; At the time Syria dismissed the accusations as part of a campaign to discredit the Damascus government.</p> <p>The Israeli release contains a black-and-white aerial photograph captioned &#8220;before the attack&#8221; and showing a box-like structure amid desert dunes with smaller outlying buildings.</p> <p>A series of black-and-white videos, taken above the target, shows the structure in cross-hairs. A male voice is heard counting down three seconds, a cloud of black smoke rises from the structure as it explodes. Other footage appears to show the aftermath - a smoldering hole in the ground.</p> <p>&#8220;Arizona&#8221;, one pilot radioed to military headquarters in Tel Aviv, giving the code word for a successful operation.</p> <p>Writing by Dan Williams and Stephen Farrell; Editing by Janet Lawrence</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>TAIPEI (Reuters) - The United States&#8217; commitment to Taiwan has never been stronger and the island is an inspiration to the rest of the Indo-Pacific region, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Alex Wong said on Wednesday, in comments certain to anger Beijing.</p> Alex Wong, U.S. deputy assistant secretary at the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, speaks at American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham)&#8217;s yearly dinner event, in Taipei, Taiwan March 21, 2018. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu <p>Wong was speaking during a visit to Taipei at a time of increased hostility between the self-ruled island and Beijing and just a day after Chinese President Xi Jinping issued his strongest warning against Taiwan separatism to date.</p> <p>China claims Taiwan as its own and considers the self-ruled island a wayward province, which Xi said on Tuesday would face the &#8220;punishment of history&#8221; for any attempt at separatism.</p> <p>The island is one of China&#8217;s most sensitive issues and a potential military flashpoint. Underlining that threat, Taiwan sent ships and aircraft earlier on Wednesday to shadow a Chinese aircraft carrier group through the narrow Taiwan Strait, its defense ministry said.</p> <p>&#8220;Taiwan can no longer be excluded unjustly from international fora. Taiwan has much to share with the world,&#8221; Wong said at a reception attended by Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, a member of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party.</p> <p>&#8220;I can assure you, the United States government and the United States private sector will do their part to ensure Taiwan&#8217;s stellar international example shines brightly.&#8221;</p> <p>Beijing is already furious over a law signed last week by U.S. President Donald Trump that encourages the United States to send senior officials to Taiwan to meet Taiwanese counterparts and vice versa.</p> <p>President Tsai welcomed the new law on Wednesday.</p> Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen and Alex Wong (R), U.S. deputy assistant secretary at the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, attend AmCham&#8217;s yearly dinner event, in Taipei, Taiwan March 21, 2018. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu <p>&#8220;We were pleased President Trump signed the Taiwan travel act into law. We are grateful to the Trump administration and to members of the congress for supporting this bill,&#8221; she said.</p> <p>Taiwan&#8217;s defense ministry said earlier that the Chinese carrier group, led by the mainland&#8217;s sole operational aircraft carrier the Liaoning, entered the Taiwan Strait late on Tuesday, but kept on its western side.</p> Slideshow (2 Images) <p>By midday on Wednesday it had left Taiwan&#8217;s air defense identification zone heading southwest, the ministry said, adding that it looked like China was conducting drills.</p> <p>Taiwan&#8217;s military sent ships and aircraft to shadow the carrier group the entire way but spotted nothing out of the ordinary and people in Taiwan should not be concerned, it added.</p> <p>China&#8217;s Defence Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.</p> <p>Taiwan says China has ramped up military exercises around the island in the past year or so.</p> <p>China suspects Taiwan&#8217;s Tsai wants to push for formal independence for the island, which would cross a red line for Communist Party leaders in Beijing. Tsai has said she wants to maintain the status quo and is committed to ensuring peace.</p> <p>Separately on Wednesday, China announced that a former ambassador to the United Nations, Liu Jieyi, has been appointed head of China&#8217;s Taiwan Affairs Office. Veteran diplomat Liu has been deputy head of the office since October last year.</p> <p>Reporting by Fabian Hamacher and Twinnie Siu; Writing by Ben Blanchard and Anne Marie Roantree; Editing by Himani Sarkar</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>KABUL (Reuters) - A suicide bomber blew himself up near a shrine in Kabul on Wednesday, killing at least 32 people and wounding dozens, as the Afghan capital celebrated the Nawruz holiday marking the start of the Persian new year.</p> <p>The explosion underlined the threat to the city from militant attacks, despite government promises to tighten security in the wake of an attack in central Kabul that killed around 100 people in January.</p> <p>Militant group Islamic State, which has claimed several previous attacks on Shi&#8217;ite targets, claimed responsibility, saying the attack specifically targeted Shi&#8217;ites celebrating Nawruz, its Amaq news agency said.</p> <p>The Taliban, which often fights Islamic State&#8217;s local affiliate in Afghanistan, issued a statement denying any connection to the blast.</p> <p>Kabul had been on alert for attacks over the Nawruz holiday but the bomber was still able to detonate his explosives as people were leaving the Kart-e Sakhi shrine, in a heavily Shi&#8217;ite area in the west of the city.</p> <p>&#8220;People were heading home joyously after the end of the ceremony when the suicide bomber detonated his explosives among them,&#8221; said Kabul police chief Daud Amin. &#8220;Many of our countrymen were martyred.&#8221;</p> <p>Interior Ministry spokesman Najib Danesh said the bomber had apparently intended to reach the shrine, which was attacked during a Shi&#8217;ite festival in October 2016, but had been prevented from getting closer by police checkpoints.</p> An Afghan man inspects the site of a suicide attack in Kabul, Afghanistan March 21, 2018. REUTERS/Omar Sobhani <p>&#8220;We had our security in place in and around the shrine,&#8221; he said. &#8220;All the casualties were young people who were either passing by on the road or gathering to enjoy Nawruz.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;UN-ISLAMIC&#8221; FESTIVAL</p> Slideshow (11 Images) <p>Nawruz, an ancient Persian festival to mark the start of spring, is widely celebrated in many parts of Afghanistan but has also faced opposition from some fundamentalist Muslims, who say it is un-Islamic.</p> <p>Waheed Majroh, a spokesman for the ministry of public health, said 32 people were confirmed dead with more than 50 wounded being treated in hospitals in the city. Women and children were among the casualties, he said.</p> <p>Wednesday&#8217;s attack was the latest in a series to have struck Kabul this year, including one earlier this month that targeted the mainly Shi&#8217;ite Hazara minority.</p> <p>The seemingly endless attacks have undermined support for the government of President Ashraf Ghani, who offered last month to hold peace talks with Taliban insurgents fighting to drive out international forces and reimpose their version of strict Islamic law.</p> <p>The Taliban have so far shown little sign of accepting the offer of talks with the Western-backed government, which they consider an illegitimate, foreign-imposed regime, although they have offered to talk to the United States.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Mohammad Aziz and Omar Fahmy in CAIRO; Writing by James Mackenzie; Editing by Nick Macfie and Gareth Jones</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

Beijing to demolish 15 square miles of illegal structures Peru's president, ensnared in scandals, resigns on eve of impeachment vote Israel admits bombing suspected Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007, warns Iran U.S. official says support of Taiwan has never been stronger Suicide bomber kills more than 30 near shrine in Afghan capital

https://reuters.com/article/china-migrants/beijing-to-demolish-15-square-miles-of-illegal-structures-idUSL4N1PJ2MF

2018-01-24

2least

BEIJING Reuters Beijing plans to tear down at least 40 million square meters or a staggering 1544 square miles of illegal structures roughly an area of 28 London Hyde Parks and shut 500 manufacturing firms this year FILE PHOTO Beijings Mayor Chen Jining attends a group discussion session on the second day of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing China October 19 2017 REUTERSTyrone Siu The city will 8220ensure zero increase of such structures8221 this year and will continue to relocate people out of the city center acting mayor Chen Jining said in an annual work report to the city8217s government on Wednesday Beijing last year set a similar goal to demolish 40 million square meters of illegal structures but there was no indication in this year8217s report whether the target was met Beijing launched a citywide safety blitz in November following a deadly fire that has resulted in the demolition of buildings that violate safety codes and the eviction of thousands of migrant workers from their homes and businesses The evictions sparked unusually direct criticism from China8217s intellectuals students and journalists who say the government is unfairly targeting the vulnerable underclass There will also be no letting up in a campaign to sanitize ancient hutong alleyways that last year displaced migrants as many were evicted from homes and businesses were shut down along the narrow passageways The city will continue to 8220close small shops operated from illegal openings cut in the wall8221 the report said referring to what the city says are illegal modifications to the traditional structures Authorities will also preserve the historical areas of Beijing including the appropriation of properties though Chen said housing will be provided for those relocated Beijing has been moving what it calls 8220noncapital functions8221 out of the city in order to relieve traffic congestion and pressure on public services with the Xiongan New Area announced last year as a major focus for regional development 8220Whatever support Xiongan needs we will be there to provide it8221 said Chen Reporting by Elias Glenn Editing by Michael Perry Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles LIMA Reuters Peru8217s centerright President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski announced his resignation on Wednesday after votebuying allegations ensnared him in a fresh scandal on the eve of an impeachment vote capping months of political turmoil in one of Latin America8217s most stable economies Kuczynski a 79yearold former Wall Street banker who once held US citizenship promised a 8220constitutional and orderly8221 transition of power to end what he described as a hostile political climate that had made governing nearly impossible But Kuczynski who is expected to be replaced by Vice President Martin Vizcarra on Friday denied allegations of wrongdoing and blamed the premature end of his fiveyear term on the rightwing opposition party that controls Congress 8220I8217ve worked for nearly 60 years of my life with complete honesty The opposition has tried to depict me as a corrupt person8221 Kuczynski said in a prerecorded video message to the nation that broadcast as he left the presidential palace But Kuczynski added 8220I think what8217s best for the country is for me to resignI don8217t want to be an obstacle for the nation8217s search for a path to unity and harmony8221 Lawmakers agreed to accept Kuczynski8217s resignation instead of moving forward with a vote scheduled for Thursday on whether to oust him on grounds he was 8220morally unfit8221 to govern said the president of Congress Luis Galarreta Galarreta said he would swear Vizcarra in as president at around midday Friday A former governor of a mining region who once helped secure community support for Anglo American Plc8217s Quellaveco copper project Vizcarra has served as Peru8217s ambassador to Canada since September and is currently in Ottawa In recent days Vizcarra has received public assurances from opposition lawmakers that they will support his government But he will take office amid a fractured party widespread disgust for elected officials in Peru and inherit economic growth that slowed to 25 percent last year Perus President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski is seen announcing his resignation at the Presidential Palace in Lima Peru March 21 2018 in this still image from video PERU GOVERNMENT TVAMERICA TVHandout via REUTERS Vizcarra who turns 55 years old on Thursday appealed to the public to pull through the crisis on Twitter 8220I8217m outraged by the current situation like the majority of Peruvians But I8217m convinced that together we can show that we can once more push forward8221 TRUMP HEADED TO PERU Kuczynski had been scheduled to welcome Donald Trump on the US president8217s first visit to Latin America next month where many of the region8217s leaders plan to pressure Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to enact democratic reforms Slideshow 21 Images A White House official speaking on background said Trump still plans to attend the summit Kuczynski8217s resignation marked a spectacular downfall for a man who was elected less than two years ago amid hopes he would turbocharge growth while cleaning up government corruption and modernizing the Andean nation of some 30 million people Markets that had cheered Kuczynski8217s rise to power rallied on news of his resignation on Wednesday amid expectations it would end the political uncertainty that has shadowed Peru since the opposition first sought to oust Kuczynski in December Related Coverage Peruvian police put officers on high alert amid political crisis Perus Vizcarra to be sworn in as president Friday president of Congress Popular Force the country8217s most powerful opposition party tried to impeach Kuczynski in December after revealing his company received money from Odebrecht ODBESUL a Brazilian company at the center of Latin America8217s biggest graft scandal while he held public office more than a decade ago Kuczynski unexpectedly stayed in power in December with the help of former autocratic Alberto Fujimori whom he pardoned from a human rights sentence days later in what was widely seen as political payback Ahead of the new impeachment vote on Thursday Popular Force released a raft of video and audio that appeared to show Kuczynski8217s allies offering lucrative public work contracts to lawmakers in exchange for political support Kuczynski said the recordings had been edited unfairly as part of a campaign to discredit his government and stressed that no corruption allegation had been proven Reporting by Mitra Taj and Teresa Cespedes Additional Reporting by Marco Aquino and Maria Cervantes in Lima and Roberta Rampton in Washignton Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Lisa Shumaker Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles JERUSALEM Reuters Israel for the first time admitted that it bombed a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007 and said on Wednesday the strike should be a warning to Iran that it would not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons The military released previously classified cockpit footage photographs and intelligence documents about its Sept 6 2007 air strike on the AlKubar facility near Deir alZor in eastern Syria It said the reactor was being constructed with help from North Korea and had been months away from activation Amos Yadlin Israel8217s military intelligence chief at the time said on Israel Radio that even with a functioning reactor it would have taken Syria years to build a nuclear weapon Reuters has been unable to immediately verify the Israeli material Israel8217s decision to go public comes after repeated calls in recent months by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the United States and international community to take tougher action on Iran Syria8217s ally Netanyahu said on Wednesday Israel was determined to prevent its enemies from obtaining nuclear weapons 8220The Israeli government the Israel Defense Forces and the Mossad prevented Syria from developing nuclear capability They are worthy of full praise for this Israel8217s policy was and remains consistent to prevent our enemies from arming themselves with nuclear weapons8221 Netanyahu wrote on Twitter Intelligence minister Israel Katz said earlier on Twitter 8220The 2007 operation and its success made clear that Israel will never allow nuclear weaponry to be in the hands of those who threaten its existence Syria then and Iran today8221 Iran which says its nuclear program has only peaceful aims signed a 2015 deal under which it accepted curbs on its nuclear program in return for sanctions relief US President Donald Trump and Netanyahu have both been critical of the deal The Israeli military described in detail events leading up to the night of Sept 56 2007 in which it said eight warplanes F16s and F15s carried out the mission after taking off from the Ramon and Hatzerim air bases They flew to Deir alZor region 450 km 270 miles northwest of Damascus and dropped 18 tonnes of munitions on the site it said Yadlin said Israel decided at the time against acknowledging the raid on the reactor so as not to provoke Syrian President Bashar alAssad into retaliating 8220No core No war8221 Yadlin said about Israel8217s goal A still frame taken from video material released on March 21 2018 shows a combination image of what the Israeli military describes is before and after an Israeli air strike on a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor site near Deir alZor on Sept 6 2007 IDFHandout via Reuters TV 8220TOP SECRET8221 The Israeli military on Wednesday declassified internal 8220top secret8221 intelligence reports in Hebrew some of them partly redacted One dated March 30 2007 said 8220Syria has set up within its territory a nuclear reactor for the production of plutonium through North Korea which according to an initial worstcase assessment is liable to be activated in approximately another year To our assessment REDACTED secretive and orderly REDACTED for achieving a nuclear weapon8221 Israeli intelligence predicted that the suspected reactor 8220would turn operational by the end of 20078221 Slideshow 17 Images The mission to destroy the reactor started at 1030 pm on Sept 5 and ended with the return of the warplanes at 230 am the next day the Israeli military said The disclosure on Wednesday stemmed in part Yadlin said from years of pressure by the Israeli media on military censors to allow them to publish Israelisourced information about the raid and the release on Wednesday of memoirs by Ehud Olmert the former prime minister who ordered the bombing The event was first made public by Syria which as reported by Reuters at the time said in the early hours of Sept 6 that its air defenses had repelled an incursion by Israeli warplanes Syria a signatory of the 1970 nuclear NonProliferation Treaty NPT has always denied that the site was a reactor or that Damascus engaged in nuclear cooperation with North Korea Related Coverage Netanyahu commenting on 2007 bombing in Syria says Israel wont let its enemies obtain nuclear arms In his 2010 memoir 8220Decision Points8221 former US President George W Bush disclosed he discussed intelligence about the Syrian facility with Olmert before it was destroyed but did not give him the green light for the raid In 2008 the United States presented what it described as intelligence showing that North Korea had helped Syria with 8220covert nuclear activities8221 At the time Syria dismissed the accusations as part of a campaign to discredit the Damascus government The Israeli release contains a blackandwhite aerial photograph captioned 8220before the attack8221 and showing a boxlike structure amid desert dunes with smaller outlying buildings A series of blackandwhite videos taken above the target shows the structure in crosshairs A male voice is heard counting down three seconds a cloud of black smoke rises from the structure as it explodes Other footage appears to show the aftermath a smoldering hole in the ground 8220Arizona8221 one pilot radioed to military headquarters in Tel Aviv giving the code word for a successful operation Writing by Dan Williams and Stephen Farrell Editing by Janet Lawrence Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles TAIPEI Reuters The United States8217 commitment to Taiwan has never been stronger and the island is an inspiration to the rest of the IndoPacific region US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Alex Wong said on Wednesday in comments certain to anger Beijing Alex Wong US deputy assistant secretary at the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs speaks at American Chamber of Commerce AmCham8217s yearly dinner event in Taipei Taiwan March 21 2018 REUTERSTyrone Siu Wong was speaking during a visit to Taipei at a time of increased hostility between the selfruled island and Beijing and just a day after Chinese President Xi Jinping issued his strongest warning against Taiwan separatism to date China claims Taiwan as its own and considers the selfruled island a wayward province which Xi said on Tuesday would face the 8220punishment of history8221 for any attempt at separatism The island is one of China8217s most sensitive issues and a potential military flashpoint Underlining that threat Taiwan sent ships and aircraft earlier on Wednesday to shadow a Chinese aircraft carrier group through the narrow Taiwan Strait its defense ministry said 8220Taiwan can no longer be excluded unjustly from international fora Taiwan has much to share with the world8221 Wong said at a reception attended by Taiwan President Tsai Ingwen a member of the proindependence Democratic Progressive Party 8220I can assure you the United States government and the United States private sector will do their part to ensure Taiwan8217s stellar international example shines brightly8221 Beijing is already furious over a law signed last week by US President Donald Trump that encourages the United States to send senior officials to Taiwan to meet Taiwanese counterparts and vice versa President Tsai welcomed the new law on Wednesday Taiwans President Tsai Ingwen and Alex Wong R US deputy assistant secretary at the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs attend AmCham8217s yearly dinner event in Taipei Taiwan March 21 2018 REUTERSTyrone Siu 8220We were pleased President Trump signed the Taiwan travel act into law We are grateful to the Trump administration and to members of the congress for supporting this bill8221 she said Taiwan8217s defense ministry said earlier that the Chinese carrier group led by the mainland8217s sole operational aircraft carrier the Liaoning entered the Taiwan Strait late on Tuesday but kept on its western side Slideshow 2 Images By midday on Wednesday it had left Taiwan8217s air defense identification zone heading southwest the ministry said adding that it looked like China was conducting drills Taiwan8217s military sent ships and aircraft to shadow the carrier group the entire way but spotted nothing out of the ordinary and people in Taiwan should not be concerned it added China8217s Defence Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment Taiwan says China has ramped up military exercises around the island in the past year or so China suspects Taiwan8217s Tsai wants to push for formal independence for the island which would cross a red line for Communist Party leaders in Beijing Tsai has said she wants to maintain the status quo and is committed to ensuring peace Separately on Wednesday China announced that a former ambassador to the United Nations Liu Jieyi has been appointed head of China8217s Taiwan Affairs Office Veteran diplomat Liu has been deputy head of the office since October last year Reporting by Fabian Hamacher and Twinnie Siu Writing by Ben Blanchard and Anne Marie Roantree Editing by Himani Sarkar Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles KABUL Reuters A suicide bomber blew himself up near a shrine in Kabul on Wednesday killing at least 32 people and wounding dozens as the Afghan capital celebrated the Nawruz holiday marking the start of the Persian new year The explosion underlined the threat to the city from militant attacks despite government promises to tighten security in the wake of an attack in central Kabul that killed around 100 people in January Militant group Islamic State which has claimed several previous attacks on Shi8217ite targets claimed responsibility saying the attack specifically targeted Shi8217ites celebrating Nawruz its Amaq news agency said The Taliban which often fights Islamic State8217s local affiliate in Afghanistan issued a statement denying any connection to the blast Kabul had been on alert for attacks over the Nawruz holiday but the bomber was still able to detonate his explosives as people were leaving the Karte Sakhi shrine in a heavily Shi8217ite area in the west of the city 8220People were heading home joyously after the end of the ceremony when the suicide bomber detonated his explosives among them8221 said Kabul police chief Daud Amin 8220Many of our countrymen were martyred8221 Interior Ministry spokesman Najib Danesh said the bomber had apparently intended to reach the shrine which was attacked during a Shi8217ite festival in October 2016 but had been prevented from getting closer by police checkpoints An Afghan man inspects the site of a suicide attack in Kabul Afghanistan March 21 2018 REUTERSOmar Sobhani 8220We had our security in place in and around the shrine8221 he said 8220All the casualties were young people who were either passing by on the road or gathering to enjoy Nawruz8221 8220UNISLAMIC8221 FESTIVAL Slideshow 11 Images Nawruz an ancient Persian festival to mark the start of spring is widely celebrated in many parts of Afghanistan but has also faced opposition from some fundamentalist Muslims who say it is unIslamic Waheed Majroh a spokesman for the ministry of public health said 32 people were confirmed dead with more than 50 wounded being treated in hospitals in the city Women and children were among the casualties he said Wednesday8217s attack was the latest in a series to have struck Kabul this year including one earlier this month that targeted the mainly Shi8217ite Hazara minority The seemingly endless attacks have undermined support for the government of President Ashraf Ghani who offered last month to hold peace talks with Taliban insurgents fighting to drive out international forces and reimpose their version of strict Islamic law The Taliban have so far shown little sign of accepting the offer of talks with the Westernbacked government which they consider an illegitimate foreignimposed regime although they have offered to talk to the United States Additional reporting by Mohammad Aziz and Omar Fahmy in CAIRO Writing by James Mackenzie Editing by Nick Macfie and Gareth Jones Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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inspects/VERB the/DET site/NOUN of/ADP a/DET suicide/NOUN attack/NOUN in/ADP Kabul/PROPN Afghanistan/PROPN March/PROPN 21/NUM 2018/NUM REUTERSOmar/PROPN Sobhani/PROPN 8220We/NUM had/VERB our/PRON security/NOUN in/ADP place/NOUN in/ADP and/CCONJ around/ADP the/DET shrine8221/NOUN he/PRON said/VERB 8220All/NOUN the/DET casualties/NOUN were/AUX young/ADJ people/NOUN who/PRON were/AUX either/ADV passing/VERB by/ADV on/ADP the/DET road/NOUN or/CCONJ gathering/NOUN to/PART enjoy/VERB Nawruz8221/PROPN 8220UNISLAMIC8221/NUM FESTIVAL/PROPN Slideshow/PROPN 11/NUM Images/PROPN Nawruz/PROPN an/DET ancient/ADJ Persian/ADJ festival/NOUN to/PART mark/VERB the/DET start/NOUN of/ADP spring/NOUN is/AUX widely/ADV celebrated/VERB in/ADP many/ADJ parts/NOUN of/ADP Afghanistan/PROPN but/CCONJ has/AUX also/ADV faced/VERB opposition/NOUN from/ADP some/DET fundamentalist/ADJ Muslims/PROPN who/PRON say/VERB it/PRON is/AUX unIslamic/PROPN Waheed/PROPN Majroh/PROPN a/DET spokesman/NOUN for/ADP the/DET ministry/PROPN of/ADP public/PROPN health/NOUN said/VERB 32/NUM people/NOUN were/AUX confirmed/VERB dead/ADJ with/ADP more/ADJ than/ADP 50/NUM wounded/VERB being/AUX treated/VERB in/ADP hospitals/NOUN in/ADP the/DET city/NOUN Women/PROPN and/CCONJ children/NOUN were/AUX among/ADP the/DET casualties/NOUN he/PRON said/VERB Wednesday8217s/PROPN attack/NOUN was/AUX the/DET latest/ADJ in/ADP a/DET series/NOUN to/PART have/AUX struck/VERB Kabul/PROPN this/DET year/NOUN including/VERB one/NUM earlier/ADV this/DET month/NOUN that/PRON targeted/VERB the/DET mainly/ADV Shi8217ite/PROPN Hazara/PROPN minority/NOUN The/DET seemingly/ADV endless/ADJ attacks/NOUN have/AUX undermined/VERB support/NOUN for/ADP the/DET government/NOUN of/ADP President/PROPN Ashraf/PROPN Ghani/PROPN who/PRON offered/VERB last/ADJ month/NOUN to/PART hold/VERB peace/NOUN talks/NOUN with/ADP Taliban/PROPN insurgents/NOUN fighting/VERB to/PART drive/VERB out/ADP international/ADJ forces/NOUN and/CCONJ reimpose/VERB their/PRON version/NOUN of/ADP strict/ADJ Islamic/ADJ law/NOUN The/DET Taliban/PROPN have/AUX so/ADV far/ADV shown/VERB little/ADJ sign/NOUN of/ADP accepting/VERB the/DET offer/NOUN of/ADP talks/NOUN with/ADP the/DET Westernbacked/VERB government/NOUN which/PRON they/PRON consider/VERB an/DET illegitimate/ADJ foreignimposed/VERB regime/NOUN although/SCONJ they/PRON have/AUX offered/VERB to/PART talk/VERB to/ADP the/DET United/PROPN States/PROPN Additional/PROPN reporting/NOUN by/ADP Mohammad/PROPN Aziz/PROPN and/CCONJ Omar/PROPN Fahmy/PROPN in/ADP CAIRO/PROPN Writing/PROPN by/ADP James/PROPN Mackenzie/PROPN Editing/PROPN by/ADP Nick/PROPN Macfie/PROPN and/CCONJ Gareth/PROPN Jones/PROPN Our/PRON Standards/PROPN The/DET Thomson/PROPN Reuters/PROPN Trust/PROPN Principles/PROPN

<p>This being the age of public relations, the genteel term &#8220;public-private partnership&#8221; is used instead of corporate plunder. A &#8220;partnership&#8221; such deals may be, but it isn&#8217;t the public who gets the benefits.</p> <p>We&#8217;ll be hearing more about so-called &#8220;public-private partnerships&#8221; in coming weeks because the new U.S. president, Donald Trump, is promoting these as the basis for a promised $1 trillion in new infrastructure investments. But the new administration has also promised cuts to public spending. How to square this circle? It&#8217;s not difficult to discern when we recall the main policy of the Trump administration is to hand out massive tax cuts to big business and the wealthy, and provide them with subsidies.</p> <p>Public-private partnerships are one of the surest ways of shoveling money into the gaping maws of corporate wallets, used, with varying names, by neoliberal governments around the world, particularly in Europe and North America. The result has been disastrous &#8212; public services and infrastructure maintenance is consistently more expensive after privatization. Cuts to wages for workers who remain on the job and increased use of low-wage subcontractors are additional features of these privatizations.</p> <p>The rationale for these partnerships is, similar to other neoliberal prescriptions, ideological &#8212; the private sector is supposedly always more efficient than government. A private company&#8217;s profit incentive will supposedly see to it that costs are kept under control, thereby saving money for taxpayers and transferring risk to the contractor. In the real world, however, this works much differently. A government signs a long-term contract with a private enterprise to build and/or maintain infrastructure, under which the costs are borne by the contractor but the revenue goes to the contractor as well.</p> <p>The contractor, of course, expects a profit from the arrangement. The government doesn&#8217;t &#8212; and thus corporate expectation of profits requires that revenues be increased and expenses must be cut. Less services and fewer employees means more profit for the contractor, and because the contractor is a private enterprise there&#8217;s no longer public accountability.</p> <p>Public-private partnerships are nothing more than a variation on straightforward schemes to sell off public assets below cost, with working people having to pay more for reduced quality of service. A survey of these partnerships across Europe and North America will demonstrate this clearly, but first a quick look at the Trump administration&#8217;s plans.</p> <p>Corporate subsidies, not $1 trillion in new spending</p> <p>The use of the word &#8220;plans&#8221; is rather loose here. No more than the barest outline of a plan has been articulated. The only direct mention of his intentions to jump-start investment in infrastructure is found in President Trump&#8217;s campaign web site. <a href="" type="internal">In full, it states</a> the plan &#8220;Leverages public-private partnerships, and private investments through tax incentives, to spur $1 trillion in infrastructure investment over ten years. It is revenue neutral.&#8221; The administration&#8217;s official White House web site&#8217;s <a href="" type="internal">sole mention of infrastructure</a> is an announcement approving the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines without environmental reviews, and an intention to expedite environmental reviews for &#8220;high priority infrastructure projects.&#8221;</p> <p>Wilbur Ross, an investment banker who buys companies and then takes away pensions and medical benefits so he can flip his companies for a big short-term profit, and who is President Trump&#8217;s pick for commerce secretary, along with a conservative economics professor, Peter Navarro, have recommended the Trump administration allocate <a href="" type="internal">$137 billion in tax credits</a> for private investors who underwrite infrastructure projects. The two estimate that over 10 years the credits could spur $1 trillion in investment. So the new administration won&#8217;t actually spend $1 trillion to fix the country&#8217;s badly decaying infrastructure; it hopes to encourage private capital to do so through tax cuts.</p> <p>There is a catch here &#8212; private capital is only going to invest if a steady profit can be extracted. Writing in the New Republic, David Dayen <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/138674/beware-donald-trumps-infrastructure-plan" type="external">put this plainly</a>:</p> <p>&#8220;Private operators will only undertake projects if they promise a revenue stream. You may end up with another bridge in New York City or another road in Los Angeles, which can be monetized. But someplace that actually needs infrastructure investment is more dicey without user fees. So the only way to entice private-sector actors into rebuilding Flint, Michigan&#8217;s water system, for example, is to give them a cut of the profits in perpetuity. That&#8217;s what Chicago did when it sold off 36,000 parking meters to a Wall Street-led investor group. Users now pay exorbitant fees to park in Chicago, and city government is helpless to alter the rates.&#8221;</p> <p>The Trump plan appears to go beyond even the ordinary terms of public-private partnerships because it would transfer money to developers with no guarantee at all that net new investments are made, according to an Economic Policy Institute analysis. <a href="http://www.epi.org/blog/trumps-infrastructure-plan-is-not-a-simple-public-private-partnership-plan-and-wont-lead-to-much-new-investment" type="external">The EPI report</a> asks several questions:</p> <p>&#8220;[I]t appears to be a plan to give tax credits to private financiers and developers, period. The lack of details here are daunting and incredibly important. For starters, we don&#8217;t know if the tax credit would be restricted to new investment, or if investors in already existing [public-private partnerships] are eligible for the credit. If private investors in already existing PPP arrangements are eligible, how do we ensure these tax credits actually induce net new investments rather than just transferring taxpayer largesse on operators of already-existing projects? Who decides which projects need to be built? How will the Trump administration provide needed infrastructure investments that are unlikely to be profitable for private providers (such as building lead-free water pipes in Flint, MI)? If we assume tax credits will be restricted (on paper, anyhow) to just new investment, how do we know the money is not just providing a windfall to already planned projects rather than inducing a net increase in how much infrastructure investment occurs?&#8221;</p> <p>Critiques of this scheme can readily be found on the Right as well. For example, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former head of the Congressional Budget Office and economic adviser to John McCain&#8217;s 2008 presidential campaign, <a href="" type="internal">told The Associated Press</a>, &#8220;I don&#8217;t think that is a model that is going be viewed as successful or that you can use it for all of the infrastructure needs that the U.S. has.&#8221;</p> <p>Corporations plunder, people pay in Britain</p> <p>Britain&#8217;s version of public-private partnerships are called &#8220;private finance initiatives.&#8221; A scheme concocted by the Conservative Party and enthusiastically adopted by the New Labour of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, the results are disastrous. A 2015 report in The Independent reveals that the British government owes more than &#163;222 billion to banks and businesses as a result of private finance initiatives. <a href="" type="internal">Jonathan Owen reports</a>:</p> <p>&#8220;The startling figure &#8211; described by experts as a &#8216;financial disaster&#8217; &#8211; has been calculated as part of an Independent on Sunday analysis of Treasury data on more than 720 PFIs. The analysis has been verified by the National Audit Office. The headline debt is based on &#8216;unitary charges&#8217; which start this month and will continue for 35 years. They include fees for services rendered, such as maintenance and cleaning, as well as the repayment of loans underwritten by banks and investment companies.</p> <p>Responding to the findings, [British Trades Union Congress] General Secretary Frances O&#8217;Grady said: &#8216;Crippling PFI debts are exacerbating the funding crisis across our public services, most obviously in our National Health Service.&#8217; &#8221;</p> <p>Under private finance initiatives, a consortium of private-sector banks and construction firms <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/ournhs/joel-benjamin/seven-things-everyone-should-know-about-private-finance-initiative" type="external">finance, own, operate and lease</a>the formerly public property back to the U.K. taxpayer over a period of 30 to 35 years. By no means do taxpayers receive value for these deals &#8212; and the total cost will likely rise far above the initial &#163;222 billion cost. According to The Independent:</p> <p>&#8220;The system has yielded assets valued at &#163;56.5bn. But Britain will pay more than five times that amount under the terms of the PFIs used to create them, and in some cases be left with nothing to show for it, because the PFI agreed to is effectively a leasing agreement. Some &#163;88bn has already been spent, and even if the projected cost between now and 2049/50 does not change, the total PFI bill will be in excess of &#163;310bn. This is more than four times the budget deficit used to justify austerity cuts to government budgets and local services.&#8221;</p> <p>The private firms can even flip their contracts for a faster payday. Four companies given 25-year contracts to build and maintain schools <a href="" type="internal">doubled their money</a> by selling their shares in the schemes less than five years into the deals for a composite profit of &#163;300 million. Clearly, these contracts were given at well below reasonable cost.</p> <p>One of the most prominent privatization disasters was a &#163;30 billion deal for Metronet to upgrade and maintain London&#8217;s subway system. The company failed, leaving taxpayers with a &#163;2 billion bill because Transport for London, the government entity responsible for overseeing the subway, <a href="" type="internal">guaranteed 95 percent of the debt</a> the private companies had taken out. Then there is the example of England&#8217;s water systems, directly sold off. The largest, Thames Water, was acquired by a consortium led by the Australian bank Macquarie Group. This has been disastrous for rate payers but most profitable to the bank. An <a href="" type="internal">Open University study</a> found that, in four of the five years studied, the consortium took out more money from the company than it made in post-tax profits, while fees increased and service declined.</p> <p>As for the original sale itself, the water companies were sold on the cheap. Although details of the business can be discussed by &#8220;stakeholders,&#8221; the authors conclude, the privatization itself remains outside political debate, placing a &#8220;ring-fence&#8221; around the issues surrounding the privatization, such as the &#8220;politics of packaging and selling households as a captive revenue stream.&#8221; The public has no choice when the water provider is a monopoly and thus no say in rates.</p> <p>Incredibly, Prime Minister Theresa May and the Tories intend to <a href="" type="internal">sell off more public services</a> to Macquarie-led consortiums.</p> <p>Corporations plunder, people pay across Europe</p> <p>Privatization of water systems has not gone better in continental Europe. Cities in Germany and France, including Paris, have <a href="" type="internal">taken back their water</a> after selling systems to corporations. The city of Paris&#8217; contracts with Veolia Environment and Suez Environment, expired in 2010; during the preceding 25 years water prices there had doubled, after accounting for inflation, according to a paper prepared by David Hall, a University of Greenwich researcher. Despite the costs of taking back the water system, the city saved &#8364;35 million in the first year and was able to reduce water charges by eight percent. Higher prices and reduced services have been the norm for privatized systems across France, according to Professor Hall&#8217;s study.</p> <p>German cities have also &#8220;re-municipalized&#8221; basic utilities. One example is the German city of Bergkamen (population about 50,000), which reversed its privatization of energy, water and other services. As a result of returning those to the public sector, the city now earns &#8364;3 million a year from the municipal companies set up to provide services, while reducing costs by as much as 30 percent.</p> <p>Water is big business. Suez and Veolia both reported profits of more than &#8364;400 million for 2015. Not unrelated to this is the increasing prominence of bottled water. Bottled water is dominated by three of the world&#8217;s biggest companies: Coca-Cola (Dasani), PepsiCo (Aquafina) and Nestl&#233; (Poland Springs, Deer Park, Arrowhead and others). So it&#8217;s perhaps not surprising that Nestl&#233; Chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe infamously issued a video in which he declared the idea that water is <a href="" type="internal">a human right &#8220;extreme&#8221;</a> and that water should instead have a &#8220;market value.&#8221;</p> <p>One privatization that has not been reversed, however, is Goldman Sachs&#8217; takeover of Denmark&#8217;s state-owned energy company Dong Energy. Despite strong popular opposition, the Danish government sold an 18 percent share in Dong Energy to Goldman Sachs in 2014 while giving the investment bank a veto over strategic decisions, essentially handing it control. The bank was also given the right to sell back its shares for a guaranteed profit. Goldman Sachs has turned a huge profit already &#8212; two years after buying its share, Dong began selling shares on the stock market, and initial trading established a value for the company twice as high as it was valued for purposes of selling the shares to Goldman. In other words, Goldman&#8217;s <a href="http://www.occupy.com/article/ding-dong-goldman-sachs-just-ate-denmark-breakfast#sthash.j46I9PLT.dpbs" type="external">shares doubled in value</a> in just two years &#8212; a $1.7 billion gain.</p> <p>Danes have paid for this partial privatization in other ways as well. Taking advantage of the control granted it, Goldman demanded lower payments to Danish subcontractors and replaced some subcontractors who refused to use lower-paid workers.</p> <p>Corporations plunder, people pay in Canada</p> <p>Canada&#8217;s version of public-private partnerships has followed the same script. A report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives <a href="https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/problem-public-private-partnerships" type="external">flatly declared that</a></p> <p>&#8220;In every single project approved so far as a P3 in Ontario, the costs would have been lower through traditional procurement if they had not inflated by these calculations of the value of &#8216;risk.&#8217; The calculations of risk could just as well have been pulled out of thin air &#8212; and they are not small amounts.&#8221;</p> <p>Not that Ontario is alone here. Among the examples the Centre provides are a hospital, Brampton Civic, that cost the public $200 million more than if it had been publicly financed and built directly by Ontario; the Sea-to-Sky Highway in British Columbia that will cost taxpayers $220 million more than if it had been financed and operated publicly; bailouts of the companies operating the city of Ottawa&#8217;s recreational arenas; and a Universit&#233; de Qu&#233;bec &#224; Montr&#233;al project that doubled the cost to $400 million.</p> <p>A separate study by University of Toronto researchers of 28 Ontario public-private partnerships found they cost an <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/the-hidden-price-of-public-private-partnerships/article4611798/" type="external">average of 16 percent more</a> than conventional contracts.</p> <p>Corporations plunder, people pay in the United States</p> <p>In the United States, a long-time goal of the Republican Party has been to privatize the Postal Service. To facilitate this, a congressional bill signed into law in 2006 required the Postal Service to pre-fund its pension <a href="" type="internal">costs for the next 75 years</a> in only 10 years. This is unheard of; certainly no private business would or could do such a thing. This preposterous requirement saddled the Postal Service with a $16 billion deficit. The goal here is to weaken the post office in order to manufacture a case that the government is incapable of running it.</p> <p>The city of Chicago has found that there are many bad consequences of public-private partnerships beyond the monetary. In 2008, Chicago gave a 75-year lease on its parking meters to Morgan Stanley for $1 billion. Shortly afterward, the city&#8217;s inspector general concluded the <a href="https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/infrastructure-projects-p3-contracts-chicago-parking" type="external">value of the meter lease</a> was $2 billion. Parking rates skyrocketed, and the terms of the lease protecting Morgan Stanley&#8217;s investment created new annual costs for the city, according to a Next City report.</p> <p>That report noted that plans for express bus lanes, protected bike lanes and street changes to enhance pedestrian safety are complicated by the fact that each of these projects requires removing metered parking spaces. Removing meters requires the city to make penalty payments to Morgan Stanley. Even removals for street repairs requires compensation; the Next City report notes that the city lost a $61 million lawsuit filed by the investment bank because of street closures.</p> <p>Nor have water systems been exempt from privatization schemes. A <a href="https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/problems/corporate-control-water" type="external">study by Food &amp;amp; Water Watch</a> found that:</p> <p>*Investor-owned utilities typically charge 33 percent more for water and 63 percent more for sewer service than local government utilities.</p> <p>*After privatization, water rates increase at about three times the rate of inflation, with an average increase of 18 percent every other year.</p> <p>*Corporate profits, dividends and income taxes can add 20 to 30 percent to operation and maintenance costs.</p> <p>Pure ideology drives these privatization schemes. The Federal Reserve poured $4.1 trillion into buying bonds, which did little more than inflate a stock-market bubble, while the <a href="" type="internal">investment needs to rebuild</a> U.S. water systems, schools and dams, plus cleaning up Superfund sites and eliminating student debt, are less at a combined $3.4 trillion. What if that Federal Reserve money had gone to those instead?</p> <p>&#8220;Public investment to create private profit&#8221;</p> <p>Given its billionaire leadership, the Trump administration&#8217;s plans for public-private partnerships will not lead to better results, and may well be even worse. Michael Hudson <a href="" type="internal">recently summarized</a> what is likely coming in this way:</p> <p>&#8220;Mr. Trump wants to turn the U.S. economy into the kind of real estate development that has made him so rich in New York. It will make his fellow developers rich, and it will make the banks that finance this infrastructure rich, but the people are going to have to pay for it in a much higher cost for transportation, much higher cost for all the infrastructure that he&#8217;s proposing. So I think you could call Trump&#8217;s plan &#8216;public investment to create private profit.&#8217; That&#8217;s really his plan in a summary, it looks to me.&#8221;</p> <p>This makes no sense as public policy. But it is consistent with the desire of capitalists to continually extract higher profits from any and all human activity. Similar to governments <a href="http://www.leftvoice.org/Free-Trade-Agreements-and-the-Dynamics-of-Capitalism" type="external">handing over their sovereignty</a> to multi-national corporations in so-called &#8220;free trade&#8221; deals that facilitate the movement of production to locales with ever lower wages and weaker laws, public-private partnerships represent a plundering of the public sector for private profit, and government surrender of public goods. All this is a reflection of the imbalance of power in capitalist countries.</p> <p>This is &#8220;the market&#8221; in action &#8212; and the market is nothing more than the aggregate interests of the most powerful industrialists and financiers. It also reflects that as capitalist markets mature and capital runs out of places into which to expand, ongoing competitive pressures will drive corporate leaderships to reduce expenses (particularly wages) and move into new lines of business. Taking over what had been the public sector is one way of achieving this, especially if public goods can be bought below fair market value and guarantees of profits extracted.</p> <p>The ruthless logic of capitalism is that a commodity goes to those who can pay the most, regardless of whether it is something essential to human life.</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p>

The Bait and Switch of Public-Private Partnerships

https://counterpunch.org/2017/02/24/the-bait-and-switch-of-public-private-partnerships/

2017-02-24

4left

This being the age of public relations the genteel term 8220publicprivate partnership8221 is used instead of corporate plunder A 8220partnership8221 such deals may be but it isn8217t the public who gets the benefits We8217ll be hearing more about socalled 8220publicprivate partnerships8221 in coming weeks because the new US president Donald Trump is promoting these as the basis for a promised 1 trillion in new infrastructure investments But the new administration has also promised cuts to public spending How to square this circle It8217s not difficult to discern when we recall the main policy of the Trump administration is to hand out massive tax cuts to big business and the wealthy and provide them with subsidies Publicprivate partnerships are one of the surest ways of shoveling money into the gaping maws of corporate wallets used with varying names by neoliberal governments around the world particularly in Europe and North America The result has been disastrous 8212 public services and infrastructure maintenance is consistently more expensive after privatization Cuts to wages for workers who remain on the job and increased use of lowwage subcontractors are additional features of these privatizations The rationale for these partnerships is similar to other neoliberal prescriptions ideological 8212 the private sector is supposedly always more efficient than government A private company8217s profit incentive will supposedly see to it that costs are kept under control thereby saving money for taxpayers and transferring risk to the contractor In the real world however this works much differently A government signs a longterm contract with a private enterprise to build andor maintain infrastructure under which the costs are borne by the contractor but the revenue goes to the contractor as well The contractor of course expects a profit from the arrangement The government doesn8217t 8212 and thus corporate expectation of profits requires that revenues be increased and expenses must be cut Less services and fewer employees means more profit for the contractor and because the contractor is a private enterprise there8217s no longer public accountability Publicprivate partnerships are nothing more than a variation on straightforward schemes to sell off public assets below cost with working people having to pay more for reduced quality of service A survey of these partnerships across Europe and North America will demonstrate this clearly but first a quick look at the Trump administration8217s plans Corporate subsidies not 1 trillion in new spending The use of the word 8220plans8221 is rather loose here No more than the barest outline of a plan has been articulated The only direct mention of his intentions to jumpstart investment in infrastructure is found in President Trump8217s campaign web site In full it states the plan 8220Leverages publicprivate partnerships and private investments through tax incentives to spur 1 trillion in infrastructure investment over ten years It is revenue neutral8221 The administration8217s official White House web site8217s sole mention of infrastructure is an announcement approving the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines without environmental reviews and an intention to expedite environmental reviews for 8220high priority infrastructure projects8221 Wilbur Ross an investment banker who buys companies and then takes away pensions and medical benefits so he can flip his companies for a big shortterm profit and who is President Trump8217s pick for commerce secretary along with a conservative economics professor Peter Navarro have recommended the Trump administration allocate 137 billion in tax credits for private investors who underwrite infrastructure projects The two estimate that over 10 years the credits could spur 1 trillion in investment So the new administration won8217t actually spend 1 trillion to fix the country8217s badly decaying infrastructure it hopes to encourage private capital to do so through tax cuts There is a catch here 8212 private capital is only going to invest if a steady profit can be extracted Writing in the New Republic David Dayen put this plainly 8220Private operators will only undertake projects if they promise a revenue stream You may end up with another bridge in New York City or another road in Los Angeles which can be monetized But someplace that actually needs infrastructure investment is more dicey without user fees So the only way to entice privatesector actors into rebuilding Flint Michigan8217s water system for example is to give them a cut of the profits in perpetuity That8217s what Chicago did when it sold off 36000 parking meters to a Wall Streetled investor group Users now pay exorbitant fees to park in Chicago and city government is helpless to alter the rates8221 The Trump plan appears to go beyond even the ordinary terms of publicprivate partnerships because it would transfer money to developers with no guarantee at all that net new investments are made according to an Economic Policy Institute analysis The EPI report asks several questions 8220It appears to be a plan to give tax credits to private financiers and developers period The lack of details here are daunting and incredibly important For starters we don8217t know if the tax credit would be restricted to new investment or if investors in already existing publicprivate partnerships are eligible for the credit If private investors in already existing PPP arrangements are eligible how do we ensure these tax credits actually induce net new investments rather than just transferring taxpayer largesse on operators of alreadyexisting projects Who decides which projects need to be built How will the Trump administration provide needed infrastructure investments that are unlikely to be profitable for private providers such as building leadfree water pipes in Flint MI If we assume tax credits will be restricted on paper anyhow to just new investment how do we know the money is not just providing a windfall to already planned projects rather than inducing a net increase in how much infrastructure investment occurs8221 Critiques of this scheme can readily be found on the Right as well For example Douglas HoltzEakin a former head of the Congressional Budget Office and economic adviser to John McCain8217s 2008 presidential campaign told The Associated Press 8220I don8217t think that is a model that is going be viewed as successful or that you can use it for all of the infrastructure needs that the US has8221 Corporations plunder people pay in Britain Britain8217s version of publicprivate partnerships are called 8220private finance initiatives8221 A scheme concocted by the Conservative Party and enthusiastically adopted by the New Labour of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown the results are disastrous A 2015 report in The Independent reveals that the British government owes more than 163222 billion to banks and businesses as a result of private finance initiatives Jonathan Owen reports 8220The startling figure 8211 described by experts as a 8216financial disaster8217 8211 has been calculated as part of an Independent on Sunday analysis of Treasury data on more than 720 PFIs The analysis has been verified by the National Audit Office The headline debt is based on 8216unitary charges8217 which start this month and will continue for 35 years They include fees for services rendered such as maintenance and cleaning as well as the repayment of loans underwritten by banks and investment companies Responding to the findings British Trades Union Congress General Secretary Frances O8217Grady said 8216Crippling PFI debts are exacerbating the funding crisis across our public services most obviously in our National Health Service8217 8221 Under private finance initiatives a consortium of privatesector banks and construction firms finance own operate and leasethe formerly public property back to the UK taxpayer over a period of 30 to 35 years By no means do taxpayers receive value for these deals 8212 and the total cost will likely rise far above the initial 163222 billion cost According to The Independent 8220The system has yielded assets valued at 163565bn But Britain will pay more than five times that amount under the terms of the PFIs used to create them and in some cases be left with nothing to show for it because the PFI agreed to is effectively a leasing agreement Some 16388bn has already been spent and even if the projected cost between now and 204950 does not change the total PFI bill will be in excess of 163310bn This is more than four times the budget deficit used to justify austerity cuts to government budgets and local services8221 The private firms can even flip their contracts for a faster payday Four companies given 25year contracts to build and maintain schools doubled their money by selling their shares in the schemes less than five years into the deals for a composite profit of 163300 million Clearly these contracts were given at well below reasonable cost One of the most prominent privatization disasters was a 16330 billion deal for Metronet to upgrade and maintain London8217s subway system The company failed leaving taxpayers with a 1632 billion bill because Transport for London the government entity responsible for overseeing the subway guaranteed 95 percent of the debt the private companies had taken out Then there is the example of England8217s water systems directly sold off The largest Thames Water was acquired by a consortium led by the Australian bank Macquarie Group This has been disastrous for rate payers but most profitable to the bank An Open University study found that in four of the five years studied the consortium took out more money from the company than it made in posttax profits while fees increased and service declined As for the original sale itself the water companies were sold on the cheap Although details of the business can be discussed by 8220stakeholders8221 the authors conclude the privatization itself remains outside political debate placing a 8220ringfence8221 around the issues surrounding the privatization such as the 8220politics of packaging and selling households as a captive revenue stream8221 The public has no choice when the water provider is a monopoly and thus no say in rates Incredibly Prime Minister Theresa May and the Tories intend to sell off more public services to Macquarieled consortiums Corporations plunder people pay across Europe Privatization of water systems has not gone better in continental Europe Cities in Germany and France including Paris have taken back their water after selling systems to corporations The city of Paris8217 contracts with Veolia Environment and Suez Environment expired in 2010 during the preceding 25 years water prices there had doubled after accounting for inflation according to a paper prepared by David Hall a University of Greenwich researcher Despite the costs of taking back the water system the city saved 836435 million in the first year and was able to reduce water charges by eight percent Higher prices and reduced services have been the norm for privatized systems across France according to Professor Hall8217s study German cities have also 8220remunicipalized8221 basic utilities One example is the German city of Bergkamen population about 50000 which reversed its privatization of energy water and other services As a result of returning those to the public sector the city now earns 83643 million a year from the municipal companies set up to provide services while reducing costs by as much as 30 percent Water is big business Suez and Veolia both reported profits of more than 8364400 million for 2015 Not unrelated to this is the increasing prominence of bottled water Bottled water is dominated by three of the world8217s biggest companies CocaCola Dasani PepsiCo Aquafina and Nestl233 Poland Springs Deer Park Arrowhead and others So it8217s perhaps not surprising that Nestl233 Chairman Peter BrabeckLetmathe infamously issued a video in which he declared the idea that water is a human right 8220extreme8221 and that water should instead have a 8220market value8221 One privatization that has not been reversed however is Goldman Sachs8217 takeover of Denmark8217s stateowned energy company Dong Energy Despite strong popular opposition the Danish government sold an 18 percent share in Dong Energy to Goldman Sachs in 2014 while giving the investment bank a veto over strategic decisions essentially handing it control The bank was also given the right to sell back its shares for a guaranteed profit Goldman Sachs has turned a huge profit already 8212 two years after buying its share Dong began selling shares on the stock market and initial trading established a value for the company twice as high as it was valued for purposes of selling the shares to Goldman In other words Goldman8217s shares doubled in value in just two years 8212 a 17 billion gain Danes have paid for this partial privatization in other ways as well Taking advantage of the control granted it Goldman demanded lower payments to Danish subcontractors and replaced some subcontractors who refused to use lowerpaid workers Corporations plunder people pay in Canada Canada8217s version of publicprivate partnerships has followed the same script A report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives flatly declared that 8220In every single project approved so far as a P3 in Ontario the costs would have been lower through traditional procurement if they had not inflated by these calculations of the value of 8216risk8217 The calculations of risk could just as well have been pulled out of thin air 8212 and they are not small amounts8221 Not that Ontario is alone here Among the examples the Centre provides are a hospital Brampton Civic that cost the public 200 million more than if it had been publicly financed and built directly by Ontario the SeatoSky Highway in British Columbia that will cost taxpayers 220 million more than if it had been financed and operated publicly bailouts of the companies operating the city of Ottawa8217s recreational arenas and a Universit233 de Qu233bec 224 Montr233al project that doubled the cost to 400 million A separate study by University of Toronto researchers of 28 Ontario publicprivate partnerships found they cost an average of 16 percent more than conventional contracts Corporations plunder people pay in the United States In the United States a longtime goal of the Republican Party has been to privatize the Postal Service To facilitate this a congressional bill signed into law in 2006 required the Postal Service to prefund its pension costs for the next 75 years in only 10 years This is unheard of certainly no private business would or could do such a thing This preposterous requirement saddled the Postal Service with a 16 billion deficit The goal here is to weaken the post office in order to manufacture a case that the government is incapable of running it The city of Chicago has found that there are many bad consequences of publicprivate partnerships beyond the monetary In 2008 Chicago gave a 75year lease on its parking meters to Morgan Stanley for 1 billion Shortly afterward the city8217s inspector general concluded the value of the meter lease was 2 billion Parking rates skyrocketed and the terms of the lease protecting Morgan Stanley8217s investment created new annual costs for the city according to a Next City report That report noted that plans for express bus lanes protected bike lanes and street changes to enhance pedestrian safety are complicated by the fact that each of these projects requires removing metered parking spaces Removing meters requires the city to make penalty payments to Morgan Stanley Even removals for street repairs requires compensation the Next City report notes that the city lost a 61 million lawsuit filed by the investment bank because of street closures Nor have water systems been exempt from privatization schemes A study by Food ampamp Water Watch found that Investorowned utilities typically charge 33 percent more for water and 63 percent more for sewer service than local government utilities After privatization water rates increase at about three times the rate of inflation with an average increase of 18 percent every other year Corporate profits dividends and income taxes can add 20 to 30 percent to operation and maintenance costs Pure ideology drives these privatization schemes The Federal Reserve poured 41 trillion into buying bonds which did little more than inflate a stockmarket bubble while the investment needs to rebuild US water systems schools and dams plus cleaning up Superfund sites and eliminating student debt are less at a combined 34 trillion What if that Federal Reserve money had gone to those instead 8220Public investment to create private profit8221 Given its billionaire leadership the Trump administration8217s plans for publicprivate partnerships will not lead to better results and may well be even worse Michael Hudson recently summarized what is likely coming in this way 8220Mr Trump wants to turn the US economy into the kind of real estate development that has made him so rich in New York It will make his fellow developers rich and it will make the banks that finance this infrastructure rich but the people are going to have to pay for it in a much higher cost for transportation much higher cost for all the infrastructure that he8217s proposing So I think you could call Trump8217s plan 8216public investment to create private profit8217 That8217s really his plan in a summary it looks to me8221 This makes no sense as public policy But it is consistent with the desire of capitalists to continually extract higher profits from any and all human activity Similar to governments handing over their sovereignty to multinational corporations in socalled 8220free trade8221 deals that facilitate the movement of production to locales with ever lower wages and weaker laws publicprivate partnerships represent a plundering of the public sector for private profit and government surrender of public goods All this is a reflection of the imbalance of power in capitalist countries This is 8220the market8221 in action 8212 and the market is nothing more than the aggregate interests of the most powerful industrialists and financiers It also reflects that as capitalist markets mature and capital runs out of places into which to expand ongoing competitive pressures will drive corporate leaderships to reduce expenses particularly wages and move into new lines of business Taking over what had been the public sector is one way of achieving this especially if public goods can be bought below fair market value and guarantees of profits extracted The ruthless logic of capitalism is that a commodity goes to those who can pay the most regardless of whether it is something essential to human life amp160

This/PRON being/AUX the/DET age/NOUN of/ADP public/ADJ relations/NOUN the/DET genteel/ADJ term/NOUN 8220publicprivate/NUM partnership8221/PROPN is/AUX used/VERB instead/ADV of/ADP corporate/ADJ plunder/NOUN A/ADP 8220partnership8221/NUM such/ADJ deals/NOUN may/AUX be/AUX but/CCONJ it/PRON isn8217/VERB t/VERB the/DET public/NOUN who/PRON gets/VERB the/DET benefits/NOUN We8217ll/ADP be/AUX hearing/VERB more/ADV about/ADP socalled/ADJ 8220publicprivate/PROPN partnerships8221/NOUN in/ADP coming/VERB weeks/NOUN because/SCONJ the/DET new/ADJ US/PROPN president/NOUN Donald/PROPN Trump/PROPN is/AUX promoting/VERB these/PRON as/ADP the/DET basis/NOUN for/ADP a/DET promised/VERB 1/NUM trillion/NUM in/ADP new/ADJ infrastructure/NOUN investments/NOUN But/CCONJ the/DET new/ADJ administration/NOUN has/AUX also/ADV promised/VERB cuts/NOUN to/ADP public/ADJ spending/NOUN How/SCONJ to/PART square/VERB this/DET circle/NOUN It8217s/PROPN not/PART difficult/ADJ to/PART discern/VERB when/SCONJ we/PRON 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<p>SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean President Moon Jae-in&#8217;s approval rating has fallen to a four-month low, a poll showed on Friday, after a public backlash over a decision for South and North Korea to field a joint ice hockey team at next month&#8217;s Winter Olympics.</p> FILE PHOTO: South Korean President Moon Jae-in delivers a speech during his New Year news conference at the Presidential Blue House in Seoul, South Korea, January 10, 2018. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji <p>Moon&#8217;s approval rating dropped to 67 percent, Gallup Korea said in a press release, down from last week&#8217;s 73 percent and the second-lowest ever after the rating stood at 65 percent in late September last year.</p> <p>North and South Korea started rare dialogue last week over the participation of North Korea in the Winter Games, and in addition to the joint ice hockey team, the two Koreas agreed on Wednesday to march under a unity flag at the Olympics.</p> <p>The president&#8217;s specific moves to bring together the two Koreas at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics have sparked a sharp public backlash that has gone beyond his traditional conservative detractors to include his main support base of young South Koreans.</p> <p>Friday&#8217;s poll showed Moon&#8217;s approval rating among people in their 20s and 30s fell to 75 percent and 82 percent respectively, dropping by six percentage points and seven percentage points compared to the previous week&#8217;s rating.</p> <p>Gallup Korea also said approval ratings for Moon had dropped markedly among those in their 40s and below compared to those in their 50s and older. The latter are not part of Moon&#8217;s main support base and tend to be more conservative in South Korea&#8217;s political landscape.</p> <p>Moon was elected to office in May last year with a high approval rating after his predecessor, Park Geun-hye, was removed from office over a corruption scandal.</p> <p>The latest poll of 1,005 adults, was conducted this week from Tuesday to Thursday this week and has a margin of error of plus minus 3.1 percent.</p> <p>Reporting by Heekyong Yang; Editing by Christine Kim and Michael Perry</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>BUDAPEST, Hungary (Reuters) - Prime Minister Viktor Orban could use his sweeping new political mandate to extend Hungary&#8217;s crackdown on civil organizations that have been critical of his anti-immigration policies.</p> Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban addresses the supporters after the announcement of the partial results of parliamentary election in Budapest, Hungary, April 8, 2018.REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger <p>The right-wing nationalist projected himself as a savior of Hungary&#8217;s Christian culture against Muslim migration into Europe, an image which resonated with over 2.5 million voters, especially in rural areas.</p> <p>His Fidesz party won a two-thirds majority for the third time straight time in Sunday&#8217;s election, meaning he has the powers to change constitutional laws.</p> <p>The victory could embolden Orban to put more muscle into a Central European alliance against EU migration policies, working with other right-wing nationalists in Poland and Austria, and further expose cracks in the 28-nation European Union.</p> <p>The European Commission said it was looking forward to working with Hungary on many challenges.</p> <p>On Monday, a spokesman for Fidesz said one of the first laws to be passed by the new parliament could be legislation that would empower the government to ban NGOs that support migration and pose a &#8220;national security risk&#8221;.</p> <p>The proposed legislation, dubbed &#8220;Stop Soros&#8221; by the government before the vote, is part of Orban&#8217;s strident anti-immigration campaign targeting Hungarian born U.S. financier George Soros, whose philanthropy aims to bolster liberal and open-border values.</p> Related Coverage <a href="/article/us-hungary-election-eu/eus-juncker-to-call-hungarys-orban-to-congratulate-on-victory-idUSKBN1HG1DO" type="external">EU's Juncker to call Hungary's Orban to congratulate on victory</a> <a href="/article/us-hungary-election-germany/merkel-to-work-with-orban-despite-differences-on-migration-spokesman-idUSKBN1HG1EH" type="external">Merkel to work with Orban despite differences on migration: spokesman</a> <p>A Fidesz spokesman told state radio on Monday: &#8220;After parliament is formed, at the end of April ... in early May in the next parliament session we can start work ... that is needed in the interest of the country, which could be the Stop Soros legal package.&#8221;</p> <p>One non-governmental organization described the prospect of the bill as &#8220;terrifyingly serious.&#8221;</p> <p>Among the measures floated before the election were mandatory registration of some non-government organizations that &#8220;support illegal immigration&#8221;, a 25 percent tax to be imposed on foreign donations that such NGOs collect, and activists could face restraining orders that preclude them from approaching the EU&#8217;s external borders in Hungary. Those borders have been fortified since a migrant influx in 2015.</p> <p>Last month, Orban told state radio that the government had information on activists being paid by Soros.</p> <p>&#8220;We know by name who they are and how they work to transform Hungary into an immigrant country. That&#8217;s why we drafted and submitted the Stop Soros bill which qualifies immigration as an issue of national security,&#8221; Orban said before the election.</p> <p>Soros has rejected the government campaign against him as &#8220;distortions and lies&#8221; meant to create a false external enemy.</p> STANCE HARDENING? <p>According to preliminary results with 99 percent of votes counted, National Election Office data showed Fidesz winning 133 seats, a tight two-thirds majority in the 199-seat parliament. Nationalist Jobbik won 26 seats, while the Socialists were projected as third with 20 lawmakers.</p> <p>Some of the NGOs that could be hit by the new law said they expected a hardening in the new government&#8217;s stance.</p> <p>&#8220;I think what the ruling party promised during the campaign will now come to pass,&#8221; Hungarian Civil Liberties Union director Stefania Kapronczay said. &#8220;This was a key promise to stop the Soros organizations, whatever that may mean. With a two thirds majority there can be no doubt they can and will do it.&#8221;</p> <p>&#8220;This is terrifyingly serious,&#8221; she said.</p> <p>Transparency International Legal Director Miklos Ligeti said for the time being they considered Halasz&#8217; comment &#8220;a political declaration made in the heat of an election victory&#8221;.</p> <p>Ligeti added that if the government submitted the version already published earlier this year, it should await the opinion of the European Council&#8217;s Venice Committee, which has said it would scrutinize all three laws in the package.</p> <p>Orban, Hungary&#8217;s longest-serving post-communist premier, opposes deeper integration of the EU and - teaming up with Poland - has been a fierce critique of Brussels&#8217; policies.</p> <p>Since coming to power in 2010, his government has locked horns with the European Commission over reforms, which critics say have eroded democratic checks and balances and weakened the independence of the media.</p> <p>His critics say Orban has put Hungary on an increasingly authoritarian path and his stance on immigration has fueled xenophobia in the Central European country.</p> <p>French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, president of the National Front, was the first to congratulate Orban on Sunday.</p> <p>Orban&#8217;s victory is &#8220;a confirmation of Central Europe&#8217;s emancipation policy&#8221;, Poland&#8217;s deputy foreign minister and envoy to the EU, Konrad Szymanski, said on Monday.</p> <p>However, some people in the capital Budapest, where Fidesz only won in six out of 18 voting districts were very disappointed on Monday morning.</p> <p>&#8220;Well, the government has successfully implemented its hate campaign. They planted hatred in people&#8217;s heart, which is very sad,&#8221; said Balazs Bansagi, 45, a quality controller.</p> <p>Writing by Krisztina Than; Editing by Alison Williams</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>AMMAN/CAIRO (Reuters) - Syria accused Israel on Monday of carrying out overnight missile strikes on a major airfield, after earlier saying it suspected the United States of being behind the attack.</p> <p>Russia, the Damascus government&#8217;s key ally, also said two Israeli F-15 war planes carried out the strikes near Homs in central Syria. An Israeli military spokesman said he had no immediate comment.</p> <p>Russia&#8217;s Defence Ministry said Israel conducted the strikes from Lebanese air space, and Syrian air defense systems shot down five out of eight missiles, the Interfax news agency reported.</p> <p>&#8220;The Israeli aggression on the T4 airfield was carried out with F-15 planes,&#8221; the Syrian state agency SANA said, citing a military source.</p> <p>Washington has denied launching any air strikes against the country. France was not involved in the strikes, a defense ministry official said.</p> <p>Israel has previously accused Damascus of allowing Iran to set up a complex at the base to supply arms to its ally, Lebanon&#8217;s Shi&#8217;ite Hezbollah.</p> <p>Monday&#8217;s statements were unusual for Russia, which has generally been reticent about Israeli strikes in Syria even as it tries to shore up President Bashar al-Assad&#8217;s rule.</p> <p>Russia and Israel set up a hotline in 2015 to prevent accidental clashes between their forces in Syria, and diplomatic sources on both sides say Moscow is willing to turn a blind eye to Israeli actions as long as they do not destabilise Damascus.</p> <p>Israel rarely acknowledges strikes in Syria but has said that, as a matter of policy, they aim to thwart the entrenchment of Iranian forces or arms transfers to Hezbollah.</p> <p>U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday there would be a &#8220;big price to pay&#8221; after medical aid groups reported dozens of civilians, including many children and women, were killed by poison gas in a besieged rebel town.</p> <p>The United States launched a cruise missile strike on a Syrian air base a year ago, after dozens of civilians died in a gas attack in an opposition town in northwest Syria.</p> <p>The Syrian state has denied that government forces launched any chemical attack. Russia, Assad&#8217;s most powerful ally, has called the reports fake.</p> <p>Additional reporting by Maria Kiselyova in Moscow, and Dan Williams and Ori Lewis in Jerusalem, John Irish in Paris; Editing by Rosalba O'Brien, Robert Birsel, Richard Balmforth</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON/LIMA (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump, who has disparaged Latin American countries over immigration, narcotics and trade, heads to the region this week for a summit that diplomats say is likely to be awkward and tense.</p> FILE PHOTO - U.S. President Donald Trump shakes hands with Mexico's President Enrique Pena Nieto during the their bilateral meeting at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany July 7, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo <p>Trump will arrive in the Peruvian capital, Lima, on Friday for the Summit of the Americas with an agenda of encouraging commercial ties and urging allies to take a hard line on Venezuela, according to U.S. officials who briefed reporters on the trip.</p> <p>But the U.S. president&#8217;s divisive rhetoric and fraught relationships with leaders such as Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto make it unlikely he will make big strides toward his goals, experts said.</p> <p>&#8220;He is going in profoundly unpopular in the region, and that obviously complicates the ability of leaders to work with him,&#8221; said Mark Feierstein, who managed hemispheric issues for President Barack Obama&#8217;s White House, and is now an adviser with the Albright Stonebridge Group.</p> <p>The visit is stirring nostalgia for Obama, the Republican president&#8217;s Democratic predecessor, a Peruvian diplomat said.</p> <p>The diplomat added, however: &#8220;Nobody has lost any sleep over Trump,&#8221; saying: &#8220;We all know how to smile and nod along, so we&#8217;re not too worried.&#8221;</p> <p>Trump has complained about U.S. job losses to Mexico, threatened to rip up the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada and began his presidential bid with a speech describing Mexican immigrants as &#8220;rapists&#8221; and drug dealers.</p> <p>Trump has also taken aim at migration from Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador and other Latin American countries and threatened to cut off aid to Colombia and Peru over the drug trade.</p> <p>As he prepares for his trip, which includes a stop in Colombia after the summit, Trump has ramped up his rhetoric on illegal immigration with a plan to send National Guard troops to the U.S. border with Mexico.</p> UNPOPULAR IN REGION <p>After Trump&#8217;s first year in office, only 16 percent of poll respondents in Latin America approved of Trump&#8217;s performance, according to Gallup.</p> <p>Sergio Montenegro, 40, who works at an insurance company in Lima, compared Trump with some populist leaders who gained power in Latin America in recent decades.</p> <p>&#8220;Being loud, always at the center of attention, constant scandals ... that&#8217;s been our reality for many years,&#8221; Montalvo said. &#8220;The United States isn&#8217;t respected as much now ... before, whatever Americans said seemed to be the right thing - the voice of reason. Now whatever they say is questioned.&#8221;</p> <p>Asked about how confrontational Trump might be at the summit and if there was discussion about countering his low regional popularity, a U.S. official on the briefing said: &#8220;He speaks what&#8217;s on his mind.&amp;#160;And I think he will speak to issues of shared values and shared goals within the region.&#8221;</p> <p>A source in the Brazilian government told Reuters on condition of anonymity that a positive agenda from Washington &#8220;is badly needed if the Trump administration wants to keep productive relations with the region.&#8221;</p> <p>At the summit, leaders will try to build consensus around cracking down on corruption in the region, a theme brought into focus last month by the resignation of Peru&#8217;s former president, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, over ties to a scandal involving Brazilian construction conglomerate Odebrecht.</p> VENEZUELA <p>The White House also wants to turn up regional pressure on Venezuela&#8217;s socialist president, Nicolas Maduro - disinvited from the summit - who called an election for May that his opposition and Washington have cast as a sham. Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have fled to Colombia and other neighboring countries to escape hunger and poverty.</p> <p>Trump mused last year about a &#8220;military option&#8221; to push for change in Venezuela, a comment widely condemned in the region.</p> <p>The United States, a major buyer of Venezuelan oil, has weighed ramping up economic sanctions. A U.S. official told reporters last week that no decisions were imminent but could be made over the next several months.</p> <p>At the summit, diplomats from countries critical of Maduro might formally condemn the election and discuss ways to help Venezuelan migrants, according to a source at Argentina&#8217;s Foreign Ministry.</p> <p>Such a statement would be &#8220;unprecedented,&#8221; said Ana Rose Quintana, an analyst with the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington. &#8220;The statement would be the groundwork for additional sanctions later on,&#8221; Quintana said.</p> <p>Reporting by Roberta Rampton in Washington and Mitra Taj in Lima; Additional reporting by Anthony Boadle in Brasilia, Julia Cobb in Bogota and Caroline Stauffer in Buenos Aires; Editing by Caren Bohan and Peter Cooney</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> <p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - North Korea has told the United States for the first time that it is prepared to discuss the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula when North Korean leader Kim Jong Un meets President Donald Trump, a U.S. official said on Sunday.</p> <p>U.S. and North Korean officials have held secret contacts recently in which Pyongyang directly confirmed its willingness to hold the unprecedented summit, the official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.</p> <p>The communications, still at a preliminary stage, have involved State Department officials talking to North Korea apparently through its United Nations mission, and intelligence officers from both sides using a separate backchannel, the official said.</p> <p>Until now, the United States had relied mostly on ally South Korea&#8217;s assurance of Kim&#8217;s intentions.</p> <p>South Korean envoys visited Washington last month to convey Kim&#8217;s invitation to meet. Trump, who has exchanged bellicose threats with Kim in the past year, surprised the world by quickly agreeing to meet Kim to discuss the crisis over Pyongyang&#8217;s development of nuclear weapons capable of hitting the United States.</p> <p>But North Korea has not broken its public silence on the summit, which U.S. officials say is being planned for May. There was no immediate word on the possible venue for the talks, which would be the first ever between a sitting U.S. president and North Korean leader.</p> <p>The U.S. official declined to say exactly when the U.S.-North Korea communications had taken place but said the two sides had held multiple direct contacts.</p> <p>&#8220;The U.S. has confirmed that Kim Jong Un is willing to discuss the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula&#8206;,&#8221; said a second U.S. official.</p> <p>South Korea&#8217;s presidential Blue House welcomed the communication between North Korea and the United States, with one official saying the development was &#8220;positive&#8221;.</p> <p>&#8220;We are aware contact between North Korea and the United States is going well,&#8221; said another Blue House official on condition of anonymity.</p> <p>&#8220;We don&#8217;t know, however, up to what extent information is being shared between the two.&#8221;</p> <p>On Monday, former U.N. ambassador John Bolton is due to begin his role as Trump&#8217;s national security adviser, while on Thursday Senate confirmation hearings begin for Mike Pompeo, Trump&#8217;s nominee for secretary of state. Both have taken hawkish stances on North Korea.</p> <p>The second South Korean official said the South&#8217;s National Security Office head, Chung Eui-yong, could speak with Bolton over the telephone as early as Tuesday.</p> <p>Questions remain about how North Korea would define denuclearization, which Washington sees as Pyongyang abandoning its nuclear weapons program.</p> <p>North Korea has said over the years that it could consider giving up its nuclear arsenal if the United States removed its troops from South Korea and withdrew its so-called nuclear umbrella of deterrence from South Korea and Japan.</p> <p>Some analysts have said Trump&#8217;s willingness to meet Kim handed North Korea a diplomatic win, as the United States had insisted for years that any such summit be preceded by North Korean steps to denuclearize.</p> <p>Tension over North Korea&#8217;s tests of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile surged last year and raised fears of U.S. military action against Pyongyang.</p> <p>But anxieties have eased significantly since North Korea sent athletes to the Winter Olympics in South Korea in February. The neighbors are technically still at war after a 1950-53 conflict ended with a ceasefire, not a truce.</p> <p>North and South Korea will hold their first summit in more than a decade towards the end of April.</p> North Korean leader Kim Jong Un watches the launch of a Hwasong-12 missile in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on September 16, 2017. KCNA via REUTERS <p>The two Koreas have been holding working talks since March to work out details of the summit, like the agenda and security for the two leaders.</p> <p>Kim met Chinese President Xi Jinping in a surprise visit to Beijing in late March, his first trip outside the isolated North Korea since he came to power in 2011.</p> <p>Reporting by Matt Spetalnick and David Brunnstromm; Additional reporting by Christine Kim in SEOUL; Editing by Peter Cooney and Rosalba O'Brien</p> Our Standards: <a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>

South Korea President Moon's approval rating drops on Olympics furor Hungarian PM could target Soros organizations right after election win Syria, Russia accuse Israel of missile attack on air base 'Smile and nod': Latin American leaders brace for tense Trump visit North Korea tells U.S. it is prepared to discuss denuclearization: source

https://reuters.com/article/us-southkorea-moon/south-korea-president-moons-approval-rating-drops-on-olympics-furor-idUSKBN1F808S

2018-01-19

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SEOUL Reuters South Korean President Moon Jaein8217s approval rating has fallen to a fourmonth low a poll showed on Friday after a public backlash over a decision for South and North Korea to field a joint ice hockey team at next month8217s Winter Olympics FILE PHOTO South Korean President Moon Jaein delivers a speech during his New Year news conference at the Presidential Blue House in Seoul South Korea January 10 2018 REUTERSKim HongJi Moon8217s approval rating dropped to 67 percent Gallup Korea said in a press release down from last week8217s 73 percent and the secondlowest ever after the rating stood at 65 percent in late September last year North and South Korea started rare dialogue last week over the participation of North Korea in the Winter Games and in addition to the joint ice hockey team the two Koreas agreed on Wednesday to march under a unity flag at the Olympics The president8217s specific moves to bring together the two Koreas at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics have sparked a sharp public backlash that has gone beyond his traditional conservative detractors to include his main support base of young South Koreans Friday8217s poll showed Moon8217s approval rating among people in their 20s and 30s fell to 75 percent and 82 percent respectively dropping by six percentage points and seven percentage points compared to the previous week8217s rating Gallup Korea also said approval ratings for Moon had dropped markedly among those in their 40s and below compared to those in their 50s and older The latter are not part of Moon8217s main support base and tend to be more conservative in South Korea8217s political landscape Moon was elected to office in May last year with a high approval rating after his predecessor Park Geunhye was removed from office over a corruption scandal The latest poll of 1005 adults was conducted this week from Tuesday to Thursday this week and has a margin of error of plus minus 31 percent Reporting by Heekyong Yang Editing by Christine Kim and Michael Perry Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles BUDAPEST Hungary Reuters Prime Minister Viktor Orban could use his sweeping new political mandate to extend Hungary8217s crackdown on civil organizations that have been critical of his antiimmigration policies Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban addresses the supporters after the announcement of the partial results of parliamentary election in Budapest Hungary April 8 2018REUTERSLeonhard Foeger The rightwing nationalist projected himself as a savior of Hungary8217s Christian culture against Muslim migration into Europe an image which resonated with over 25 million voters especially in rural areas His Fidesz party won a twothirds majority for the third time straight time in Sunday8217s election meaning he has the powers to change constitutional laws The victory could embolden Orban to put more muscle into a Central European alliance against EU migration policies working with other rightwing nationalists in Poland and Austria and further expose cracks in the 28nation European Union The European Commission said it was looking forward to working with Hungary on many challenges On Monday a spokesman for Fidesz said one of the first laws to be passed by the new parliament could be legislation that would empower the government to ban NGOs that support migration and pose a 8220national security risk8221 The proposed legislation dubbed 8220Stop Soros8221 by the government before the vote is part of Orban8217s strident antiimmigration campaign targeting Hungarian born US financier George Soros whose philanthropy aims to bolster liberal and openborder values Related Coverage EUs Juncker to call Hungarys Orban to congratulate on victory Merkel to work with Orban despite differences on migration spokesman A Fidesz spokesman told state radio on Monday 8220After parliament is formed at the end of April in early May in the next parliament session we can start work that is needed in the interest of the country which could be the Stop Soros legal package8221 One nongovernmental organization described the prospect of the bill as 8220terrifyingly serious8221 Among the measures floated before the election were mandatory registration of some nongovernment organizations that 8220support illegal immigration8221 a 25 percent tax to be imposed on foreign donations that such NGOs collect and activists could face restraining orders that preclude them from approaching the EU8217s external borders in Hungary Those borders have been fortified since a migrant influx in 2015 Last month Orban told state radio that the government had information on activists being paid by Soros 8220We know by name who they are and how they work to transform Hungary into an immigrant country That8217s why we drafted and submitted the Stop Soros bill which qualifies immigration as an issue of national security8221 Orban said before the election Soros has rejected the government campaign against him as 8220distortions and lies8221 meant to create a false external enemy STANCE HARDENING According to preliminary results with 99 percent of votes counted National Election Office data showed Fidesz winning 133 seats a tight twothirds majority in the 199seat parliament Nationalist Jobbik won 26 seats while the Socialists were projected as third with 20 lawmakers Some of the NGOs that could be hit by the new law said they expected a hardening in the new government8217s stance 8220I think what the ruling party promised during the campaign will now come to pass8221 Hungarian Civil Liberties Union director Stefania Kapronczay said 8220This was a key promise to stop the Soros organizations whatever that may mean With a two thirds majority there can be no doubt they can and will do it8221 8220This is terrifyingly serious8221 she said Transparency International Legal Director Miklos Ligeti said for the time being they considered Halasz8217 comment 8220a political declaration made in the heat of an election victory8221 Ligeti added that if the government submitted the version already published earlier this year it should await the opinion of the European Council8217s Venice Committee which has said it would scrutinize all three laws in the package Orban Hungary8217s longestserving postcommunist premier opposes deeper integration of the EU and teaming up with Poland has been a fierce critique of Brussels8217 policies Since coming to power in 2010 his government has locked horns with the European Commission over reforms which critics say have eroded democratic checks and balances and weakened the independence of the media His critics say Orban has put Hungary on an increasingly authoritarian path and his stance on immigration has fueled xenophobia in the Central European country French farright leader Marine Le Pen president of the National Front was the first to congratulate Orban on Sunday Orban8217s victory is 8220a confirmation of Central Europe8217s emancipation policy8221 Poland8217s deputy foreign minister and envoy to the EU Konrad Szymanski said on Monday However some people in the capital Budapest where Fidesz only won in six out of 18 voting districts were very disappointed on Monday morning 8220Well the government has successfully implemented its hate campaign They planted hatred in people8217s heart which is very sad8221 said Balazs Bansagi 45 a quality controller Writing by Krisztina Than Editing by Alison Williams Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles AMMANCAIRO Reuters Syria accused Israel on Monday of carrying out overnight missile strikes on a major airfield after earlier saying it suspected the United States of being behind the attack Russia the Damascus government8217s key ally also said two Israeli F15 war planes carried out the strikes near Homs in central Syria An Israeli military spokesman said he had no immediate comment Russia8217s Defence Ministry said Israel conducted the strikes from Lebanese air space and Syrian air defense systems shot down five out of eight missiles the Interfax news agency reported 8220The Israeli aggression on the T4 airfield was carried out with F15 planes8221 the Syrian state agency SANA said citing a military source Washington has denied launching any air strikes against the country France was not involved in the strikes a defense ministry official said Israel has previously accused Damascus of allowing Iran to set up a complex at the base to supply arms to its ally Lebanon8217s Shi8217ite Hezbollah Monday8217s statements were unusual for Russia which has generally been reticent about Israeli strikes in Syria even as it tries to shore up President Bashar alAssad8217s rule Russia and Israel set up a hotline in 2015 to prevent accidental clashes between their forces in Syria and diplomatic sources on both sides say Moscow is willing to turn a blind eye to Israeli actions as long as they do not destabilise Damascus Israel rarely acknowledges strikes in Syria but has said that as a matter of policy they aim to thwart the entrenchment of Iranian forces or arms transfers to Hezbollah US President Donald Trump said on Sunday there would be a 8220big price to pay8221 after medical aid groups reported dozens of civilians including many children and women were killed by poison gas in a besieged rebel town The United States launched a cruise missile strike on a Syrian air base a year ago after dozens of civilians died in a gas attack in an opposition town in northwest Syria The Syrian state has denied that government forces launched any chemical attack Russia Assad8217s most powerful ally has called the reports fake Additional reporting by Maria Kiselyova in Moscow and Dan Williams and Ori Lewis in Jerusalem John Irish in Paris Editing by Rosalba OBrien Robert Birsel Richard Balmforth Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTONLIMA Reuters US President Donald Trump who has disparaged Latin American countries over immigration narcotics and trade heads to the region this week for a summit that diplomats say is likely to be awkward and tense FILE PHOTO US President Donald Trump shakes hands with Mexicos President Enrique Pena Nieto during the their bilateral meeting at the G20 summit in Hamburg Germany July 7 2017 REUTERSCarlos BarriaFile Photo Trump will arrive in the Peruvian capital Lima on Friday for the Summit of the Americas with an agenda of encouraging commercial ties and urging allies to take a hard line on Venezuela according to US officials who briefed reporters on the trip But the US president8217s divisive rhetoric and fraught relationships with leaders such as Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto make it unlikely he will make big strides toward his goals experts said 8220He is going in profoundly unpopular in the region and that obviously complicates the ability of leaders to work with him8221 said Mark Feierstein who managed hemispheric issues for President Barack Obama8217s White House and is now an adviser with the Albright Stonebridge Group The visit is stirring nostalgia for Obama the Republican president8217s Democratic predecessor a Peruvian diplomat said The diplomat added however 8220Nobody has lost any sleep over Trump8221 saying 8220We all know how to smile and nod along so we8217re not too worried8221 Trump has complained about US job losses to Mexico threatened to rip up the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada and began his presidential bid with a speech describing Mexican immigrants as 8220rapists8221 and drug dealers Trump has also taken aim at migration from Nicaragua Honduras El Salvador and other Latin American countries and threatened to cut off aid to Colombia and Peru over the drug trade As he prepares for his trip which includes a stop in Colombia after the summit Trump has ramped up his rhetoric on illegal immigration with a plan to send National Guard troops to the US border with Mexico UNPOPULAR IN REGION After Trump8217s first year in office only 16 percent of poll respondents in Latin America approved of Trump8217s performance according to Gallup Sergio Montenegro 40 who works at an insurance company in Lima compared Trump with some populist leaders who gained power in Latin America in recent decades 8220Being loud always at the center of attention constant scandals that8217s been our reality for many years8221 Montalvo said 8220The United States isn8217t respected as much now before whatever Americans said seemed to be the right thing the voice of reason Now whatever they say is questioned8221 Asked about how confrontational Trump might be at the summit and if there was discussion about countering his low regional popularity a US official on the briefing said 8220He speaks what8217s on his mindamp160And I think he will speak to issues of shared values and shared goals within the region8221 A source in the Brazilian government told Reuters on condition of anonymity that a positive agenda from Washington 8220is badly needed if the Trump administration wants to keep productive relations with the region8221 At the summit leaders will try to build consensus around cracking down on corruption in the region a theme brought into focus last month by the resignation of Peru8217s former president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski over ties to a scandal involving Brazilian construction conglomerate Odebrecht VENEZUELA The White House also wants to turn up regional pressure on Venezuela8217s socialist president Nicolas Maduro disinvited from the summit who called an election for May that his opposition and Washington have cast as a sham Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have fled to Colombia and other neighboring countries to escape hunger and poverty Trump mused last year about a 8220military option8221 to push for change in Venezuela a comment widely condemned in the region The United States a major buyer of Venezuelan oil has weighed ramping up economic sanctions A US official told reporters last week that no decisions were imminent but could be made over the next several months At the summit diplomats from countries critical of Maduro might formally condemn the election and discuss ways to help Venezuelan migrants according to a source at Argentina8217s Foreign Ministry Such a statement would be 8220unprecedented8221 said Ana Rose Quintana an analyst with the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington 8220The statement would be the groundwork for additional sanctions later on8221 Quintana said Reporting by Roberta Rampton in Washington and Mitra Taj in Lima Additional reporting by Anthony Boadle in Brasilia Julia Cobb in Bogota and Caroline Stauffer in Buenos Aires Editing by Caren Bohan and Peter Cooney Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles WASHINGTON Reuters North Korea has told the United States for the first time that it is prepared to discuss the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula when North Korean leader Kim Jong Un meets President Donald Trump a US official said on Sunday US and North Korean officials have held secret contacts recently in which Pyongyang directly confirmed its willingness to hold the unprecedented summit the official told Reuters speaking on condition of anonymity The communications still at a preliminary stage have involved State Department officials talking to North Korea apparently through its United Nations mission and intelligence officers from both sides using a separate backchannel the official said Until now the United States had relied mostly on ally South Korea8217s assurance of Kim8217s intentions South Korean envoys visited Washington last month to convey Kim8217s invitation to meet Trump who has exchanged bellicose threats with Kim in the past year surprised the world by quickly agreeing to meet Kim to discuss the crisis over Pyongyang8217s development of nuclear weapons capable of hitting the United States But North Korea has not broken its public silence on the summit which US officials say is being planned for May There was no immediate word on the possible venue for the talks which would be the first ever between a sitting US president and North Korean leader The US official declined to say exactly when the USNorth Korea communications had taken place but said the two sides had held multiple direct contacts 8220The US has confirmed that Kim Jong Un is willing to discuss the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula82068221 said a second US official South Korea8217s presidential Blue House welcomed the communication between North Korea and the United States with one official saying the development was 8220positive8221 8220We are aware contact between North Korea and the United States is going well8221 said another Blue House official on condition of anonymity 8220We don8217t know however up to what extent information is being shared between the two8221 On Monday former UN ambassador John Bolton is due to begin his role as Trump8217s national security adviser while on Thursday Senate confirmation hearings begin for Mike Pompeo Trump8217s nominee for secretary of state Both have taken hawkish stances on North Korea The second South Korean official said the South8217s National Security Office head Chung Euiyong could speak with Bolton over the telephone as early as Tuesday Questions remain about how North Korea would define denuclearization which Washington sees as Pyongyang abandoning its nuclear weapons program North Korea has said over the years that it could consider giving up its nuclear arsenal if the United States removed its troops from South Korea and withdrew its socalled nuclear umbrella of deterrence from South Korea and Japan Some analysts have said Trump8217s willingness to meet Kim handed North Korea a diplomatic win as the United States had insisted for years that any such summit be preceded by North Korean steps to denuclearize Tension over North Korea8217s tests of nuclear weapons and ballistic missile surged last year and raised fears of US military action against Pyongyang But anxieties have eased significantly since North Korea sent athletes to the Winter Olympics in South Korea in February The neighbors are technically still at war after a 195053 conflict ended with a ceasefire not a truce North and South Korea will hold their first summit in more than a decade towards the end of April North Korean leader Kim Jong Un watches the launch of a Hwasong12 missile in this undated photo released by North Koreas Korean Central News Agency KCNA on September 16 2017 KCNA via REUTERS The two Koreas have been holding working talks since March to work out details of the summit like the agenda and security for the two leaders Kim met Chinese President Xi Jinping in a surprise visit to Beijing in late March his first trip outside the isolated North Korea since he came to power in 2011 Reporting by Matt Spetalnick and David Brunnstromm Additional reporting by Christine Kim in SEOUL Editing by Peter Cooney and Rosalba OBrien Our Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles

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<p>Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick Head of the U.S. Delegation to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights and Ambassador Kevin E. Moley Permanent Representative to the United Nations and other International Organizations in Geneva respond to questions from the press outside the Commission on Human Rights Palais des Nations Geneva. April 24, 2003</p> <p>AMBASSADOR MOLEY: We want to give you the US reaction to Secretary General Annan&#8217;s speech and there are a couple of things that we want to specifically comment upon. In the third paragraph of the speech which I think you all have a copy of there is a comment or a statement by the Secretary General &#8220;I hope the Coalition will set an example by making clear that they intend to act strictly within the rules set down by the Geneva Conventions and the Hague Regulations regarding the treatment of prisoners of war..&#8221; We have not only made that clear by our words, more importantly we have made that clear from day one of this conflict through our actions, and quite frankly we find it odd at best that the Secretary General would feel that he had to bring this to our attention.</p> <p>Secondly, and I&#8217;m sure that Ambassador Kirkpatrick is going to want to comment as well. The fourth paragraph begins: &#8220;The decision to go to war without specific authorization by the Security Council,&#8221;- and I&#8217;ll repeat &#8211; &#8220;The decision to go to war without specific authorization by the Security Council.&#8221; The Secretary General more than any single person should know that there is specific authorization. Specifically Security Council resolutions 678, 687 and 1441. And so this is an egregious misstatement of the facts of our going to war in Iraq. And Ambassador Kirkpatrick I&#8217;m sure may want to comment as well.</p> <p>AMBASSADOR KIRKPATRICK: Yes, I do want to comment. I want to say that it is a misstatement, quite simply, as the Secretary General obviously knows. The Secretary General knows resolutions 678 and 687 and 1441. 687 contains the terms of the cease-fire which was negotiated at the interruption of the first Gulf War. And he is perfectly aware of the fact that Iraq has not ever fulfilled those terms of the cease-fire. The cease-fire was a conditional cease-fire. It has been the position of the United States from the beginning and it has been the position of the Secretary General as a matter of record that Iraq never fulfilled the terms of that cease-fire.</p> <p>And on an earlier occasion when someone raised a question about the legitimacy of the US and the UK using force to protect the Iraqi Kurds by over-flights, the Secretary General himself it was authorized under resolution 687. Of course President George W. Bush affirmed this again during his initial presentation before the Security Council. The Security Council responded to that presentation by unanimously adopting resolution 1441, which described the material breach in which Iraq was engaged. So it is a serious mistake on the part of the Secretary General. One can only assume that he had reasons for doing it. He didn&#8217;t just say that, he said the decision to go to war without specific authorization by the security council &#8220;has created deep divisions that will need to be bridged if we are to deal effectively not just with the aftermath in Iraq but with other major challenges.&#8221; It is of course the US position &#8212; and my personal position &#8212; that the French created deep divisions when they announced that they would veto any resolution which was passed by the Security Council that dealt with the question of use of force in Iraq at that time. The French President Jacques Chirac reiterated this view several times, and effectively ended the use of the Security Council as an arena for negotiating some kind of settlement to that conflict. So I think this is very inaccurate and not consistent with views that the Secretary General himself has expressed on other occasions and not an accurate description of what actually transpired. I think this is very objectionable.</p> <p>QUESTION: May I ask, why do you think the Secretary General said this and will there be any sort of repercussions by the United States against the United Nations. The US is not particularly happy with the UN role in this whole issue.</p> <p>MOLEY: I would simply say that we are here to set the record straight in terms of the comments made by the Secretary General this morning here at the Human Rights Commission and any other reactions in respect to this would come from the White House or the State Department in Washington.</p> <p>QUESTION: We have heard that perhaps the resolution on Iraq could be considered today. Will that take place, will there be any consideration&#8230;</p> <p>MOLEY: I don&#8217;t believe that will be considered until tomorrow. Under the 24 hour rule which I believe was imposed and you will correct me if this isn&#8217;t the case, but I believe that the 24-hour rule would not permit it to be taken up until tomorrow.</p> <p>QUESTION: What is the reason for the United States to try to limit the mandate of the special representative to just the crimes under Saddam Hussein and not any others that might have occurred since?</p> <p>MOLEY: Well, I don&#8217;t think that is quite accurate. We are not in fact delimiting the mandate from the original resolution. And it is clear, common sense would tell you, that crimes of the regime that has been replaced were the crimes that have been the subject of the rapporteur. Even though this is the UN we must at times at least retain some degree of logic in our deliberations.</p> <p>QUESTION: But does the US see any need for a special investigator given that Human Rights Watch is presently in Iraq trying to secure what they say are mass grave sites so that forensic experts can get in there and investigate. They would like to see human rights monitors on the ground to try and preserve some of the stuff and do a thorough investigation. Does the US see any role for such human rights monitors.</p> <p>MOLEY: I think that is a subject for on-going discussion. I don&#8217;t think we are in the position at the moment to make that decision here.</p> <p>KIRKPATRICK: I think that the United States has a very large interest in having the evidence concerning the crimes against humanity of the Saddam Hussein regime preserved and investigated.</p> <p>QUESTION: Will you vote for this resolution?</p> <p>KIRKPATRICK: We don&#8217;t have the final form of the resolution, so we can&#8217;t comment on whether we are willing to vote on something we haven&#8217;t seen in the final form.</p> <p>MOLEY: We are in discussions with the EU and hopefully it will come to a successful conclusion as well as with others and we would hope that that would enable us to do so, but as the Ambassador has just said, it is not fully cooked yet.</p> <p>QUESTION: You said earlier that you have made it clear from day one that you would respect the Geneva Conventions, the Hague etc, but a couple of weeks ago when (NAME INAUDIBLE) was asked questions at Central Command in Doha about the issue of occupying power, the response was, well we are not at that stage yet, it&#8217;s a liberating force.</p> <p>MOLEY: You have mixed metaphors there. You asked me about the Geneva Convention and the Hague and I would reply as I did earlier, we have been fully, fully in conformity and intend to be since day one, not only by virtue of our words, but by virtue of our actions on the ground that demonstrate that.</p> <p>QUESTION: So there is no separate occupying or liberating force category?</p> <p>MOLEY: We are simply saying that the issue of an occupying power has not yet been dealt with. Once again the situation is still quite fluid. We will come to that, and presumably come to it quickly. But there should be no question &#8212; certainly no question in the mind of the Secretary General &#8212; that we need to make any clearer than we already have, and have been on the record repeatedly as being in conformance and wanting to be in conformance in every way with the Geneva Conventions.</p> <p>QUESTION: I am just curious, can I ask you something generally about the Human Rights Commission? How has the US viewed this year&#8217;s session, because we have seen some countries escape censure, and at least human rights groups are quite upset about Zimbabwe and Sudan.</p> <p>KIRKPATRICK: I&#8217;d like to say something about that if I may, speaking of human rights groups. I was very shocked this year to learn that Human Rights Watch has never occupied itself with Zimbabwe which is surely one of the deep broad problems in human rights violations in our times. And I mention this to suggest that it is often the case that serious persons and groups skip some and focus on others. Part of the reason for that is that there a good many serious human rights violations in the contemporary world and even very serious people often do not divide their time equally. We try to cover all the serious human rights violations in our discussions and our decisions and we did indeed address a good many of them this year.</p> <p>MOLEY: In our State Department reports put out annually we do, country by country, an evaluation of their human rights conditions, so we take this very seriously. But let me say something that Ambassador Kirkpatrick can&#8217;t say and that is that our commitment to human rights should be demonstrated by the fact that the President chose to name one of our most distinguished diplomats and scholars Ambassador Kirkpatrick to be the head of our delegation here signaling our commitment as we return to the Human Rights Commission &#8212; as you know we were not on the Commission last year &#8212; so we have learned a few things and no doubt we will be looking at ways to improve the performance of this Commission in concert with other serious minded countries that are on the Commission. But there are a lot of countries on the Commission who are only on the Commission to protect themselves by virtue of their own egregious deplorable human rights situations in their countries. And I will specifically name Zimbabwe and Libya and Sudan and others in that category. And we have heard that North Korea is intending to be a candidate next month in May to become a member, which would be, as in the case of Zimbabwe, another outrage to the conditions of human rights around the world.</p> <p>QUESTION: What about China? China has slipped through the cracks because some groups have said that the US just hasn&#8217;t put the pressure to bring China up this year. Is that because the US needs China for North Korea in the negotiations?</p> <p>MOLEY: Let me say that there is no linkage in effect there. Certainly one looks at China&#8217;s position on the Security Council on other issues that have been of importance to the United States in recent times including Iraq and one would be hard put to suggest that there was any linkage. The fact of the matter is, in China&#8217;s case, as is reported in our State Department&#8217;s own country by country report, there are serious human rights violations taking place in China. There has been an on-going dialogue however between very high level State Department officials who are fully engaged with China. And there has been some progress. Not as much as we would like. We would like to see more. One of the interesting things and I commented on this the other day, with respect to the recent outbreak of SARS, we have seen just in recent days a change of position by the new government, and there is a new government in Beijing, headed by Hu Jintao, which has declared that they must be absolutely open. We hope that this kind of transparency will translate into further progress on the human rights front.</p> <p>QUESTION: The Secretary General in his speech did seem to indicate and criticize I believe the Human Rights Commission for being weak and that it should be stronger. How do you react to that?</p> <p>MOLEY: Well I would add our voice to that of the Secretary General and in fact the High Commissioner Sergio Viera de Mello who in an article in the Wall Street Journal on April 22 himself decried the fact that the Human Rights Commission did not seem to be taking the issue of human rights serious, and I am paraphrasing, you will have to go to his own remarks for a direct quote. But he was very, very critical of the performance.</p> <p>KIRKPATRICK: I must say that we also addressed this issue and predicted that we would be unhappy with the final outcome across the board because there are so many countries who are members of the Human Right Commission who are not themselves serious practitioners of respect for human rights in their own countries and their own policies. That was a major emphasis in the first speech that I delivered here, the US opening speech at the Human Rights Commission.</p> <p>QUESTION: Some NGOs are accusing the United States of not having any leadership this year and of, after your absence last year, failing to pass resolutions not only on China but to have been more proactive as far as Chechnya is concerned&#8230;</p> <p>KIRKPATRICK: I want to say something about that too. Anyone who imagines that the United States is not being proactive when we do not ourselves sponsor a resolution is making a mistake. It is often the case inside the United Nations, not only on Human Rights issues, but on many issues, that it is more effective to cooperate with other countries and to sometimes let them take the lead. Sometimes it is better for them to take the lead, sometimes it is better for us to take the lead. We have to make judgements about that issue by issue and year by year. But I think it is a mistake to imagine that because we didn&#8217;t take the lead on the resolution that we did not act. We were, for example, very active on Sudan. And we did not take the lead. We ended as one of the sponsors of the resolution. And we worked actively on it. So don&#8217;t fall for that line. That is just not an accurate way to judge.</p> <p>MOLEY: And we did take the lead in some cases that were unique to us in our position on the Commission. Belarus is an example. We are not saying our performance has been perfect either, but the fact is we are back on. We have made a serious commitment and we worked hard and we are going to work hard next year as well.</p> <p>QUESTION: I am just curious. I see that Sudan today is asking the US to be removed from the list of terrorist countries. I don&#8217;t know if you can comment on whether the White House&#8230;</p> <p>KIRKPATRICK: The list of terrorist countries is, you know, it does not depend on what a nation requests. There would not be a list of states sponsoring terrorism if it depended on the requests of the governments concerned. I think the United States would like very much to see the government of Sudan improve its behavior. We would like to see it improve its behavior in a number of domains. And so far we have not felt that it has done so. I would repeat, if you want to know the US position on a given country, the best thing to do is to go to our human rights country reports. They are serious, they are good, and they are up-to-date. They are revised on an annual basis. So look there.</p> <p>QUESTION: Could I just ask you one question, it may be a little out of the range, but there has been a lot of criticism of the United States in terms of the deterioration of human rights law, international law specifically, with Guantanamo Bay and so forth, and the&#8230;</p> <p>MOLEY: We don&#8217;t accept that characterization at all, not at all.</p> <p>QUESTION: The question is that the US has always been held up as a model of the rule of law and propriety and has been an encouragement to smaller states to follow this model and there is a feeling that there is an erosion of that by the behavior of the United States.</p> <p>KIRKPATRICK: I think that that is a misplaced feeling. It is a feeling and not an informed opinion. I know one thing. I know the prisoners in Guantanamo are being treated under the laws of combatants. And that is quite different from the Geneva Conventions. They were arrested in the course of seeking to kill Americans in an ongoing war.</p> <p>MOLEY: Specifically I would suggest that if someone thinks we should be</p> <p>treating them differently they would in fact be making up law or misapplying the law. The fact of the matter is that these are illegal combatants, unlawful combatants. And they are being treated as such. If someone wants them treated otherwise they are in fact misapplying the law. And so I would suggest that the fact is that we are in compliance in the strictest sense with humanitarian law, with the law of war, and accept our responsibilities as such. As a consequence we remain the model. We are not without fault, but we are the model.</p> <p>KIRKPATRICK: I&#8217;d like to make a point because of the role in the Human Rights Commission of Cuba. You know Cuba does not permit the Red Cross or any other objective international group to visit prisoners in its prisons. The United States on the other hand gives the Red Cross broad access to the prisoners that we hold in Guantanamo. There is only one part of Cuba that there is any access for an international humanitarian agency, and that is Guantanamo Bay and the prisoners held there.</p> <p>&amp;#160;</p>

Jeane Kirkpatrick Unbound

https://counterpunch.org/2003/04/23/jeane-kirkpatrick-unbound/

2003-04-23

4left

Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick Head of the US Delegation to the UN Commission on Human Rights and Ambassador Kevin E Moley Permanent Representative to the United Nations and other International Organizations in Geneva respond to questions from the press outside the Commission on Human Rights Palais des Nations Geneva April 24 2003 AMBASSADOR MOLEY We want to give you the US reaction to Secretary General Annan8217s speech and there are a couple of things that we want to specifically comment upon In the third paragraph of the speech which I think you all have a copy of there is a comment or a statement by the Secretary General 8220I hope the Coalition will set an example by making clear that they intend to act strictly within the rules set down by the Geneva Conventions and the Hague Regulations regarding the treatment of prisoners of war8221 We have not only made that clear by our words more importantly we have made that clear from day one of this conflict through our actions and quite frankly we find it odd at best that the Secretary General would feel that he had to bring this to our attention Secondly and I8217m sure that Ambassador Kirkpatrick is going to want to comment as well The fourth paragraph begins 8220The decision to go to war without specific authorization by the Security Council8221 and I8217ll repeat 8211 8220The decision to go to war without specific authorization by the Security Council8221 The Secretary General more than any single person should know that there is specific authorization Specifically Security Council resolutions 678 687 and 1441 And so this is an egregious misstatement of the facts of our going to war in Iraq And Ambassador Kirkpatrick I8217m sure may want to comment as well AMBASSADOR KIRKPATRICK Yes I do want to comment I want to say that it is a misstatement quite simply as the Secretary General obviously knows The Secretary General knows resolutions 678 and 687 and 1441 687 contains the terms of the ceasefire which was negotiated at the interruption of the first Gulf War And he is perfectly aware of the fact that Iraq has not ever fulfilled those terms of the ceasefire The ceasefire was a conditional ceasefire It has been the position of the United States from the beginning and it has been the position of the Secretary General as a matter of record that Iraq never fulfilled the terms of that ceasefire And on an earlier occasion when someone raised a question about the legitimacy of the US and the UK using force to protect the Iraqi Kurds by overflights the Secretary General himself it was authorized under resolution 687 Of course President George W Bush affirmed this again during his initial presentation before the Security Council The Security Council responded to that presentation by unanimously adopting resolution 1441 which described the material breach in which Iraq was engaged So it is a serious mistake on the part of the Secretary General One can only assume that he had reasons for doing it He didn8217t just say that he said the decision to go to war without specific authorization by the security council 8220has created deep divisions that will need to be bridged if we are to deal effectively not just with the aftermath in Iraq but with other major challenges8221 It is of course the US position 8212 and my personal position 8212 that the French created deep divisions when they announced that they would veto any resolution which was passed by the Security Council that dealt with the question of use of force in Iraq at that time The French President Jacques Chirac reiterated this view several times and effectively ended the use of the Security Council as an arena for negotiating some kind of settlement to that conflict So I think this is very inaccurate and not consistent with views that the Secretary General himself has expressed on other occasions and not an accurate description of what actually transpired I think this is very objectionable QUESTION May I ask why do you think the Secretary General said this and will there be any sort of repercussions by the United States against the United Nations The US is not particularly happy with the UN role in this whole issue MOLEY I would simply say that we are here to set the record straight in terms of the comments made by the Secretary General this morning here at the Human Rights Commission and any other reactions in respect to this would come from the White House or the State Department in Washington QUESTION We have heard that perhaps the resolution on Iraq could be considered today Will that take place will there be any consideration8230 MOLEY I don8217t believe that will be considered until tomorrow Under the 24 hour rule which I believe was imposed and you will correct me if this isn8217t the case but I believe that the 24hour rule would not permit it to be taken up until tomorrow QUESTION What is the reason for the United States to try to limit the mandate of the special representative to just the crimes under Saddam Hussein and not any others that might have occurred since MOLEY Well I don8217t think that is quite accurate We are not in fact delimiting the mandate from the original resolution And it is clear common sense would tell you that crimes of the regime that has been replaced were the crimes that have been the subject of the rapporteur Even though this is the UN we must at times at least retain some degree of logic in our deliberations QUESTION But does the US see any need for a special investigator given that Human Rights Watch is presently in Iraq trying to secure what they say are mass grave sites so that forensic experts can get in there and investigate They would like to see human rights monitors on the ground to try and preserve some of the stuff and do a thorough investigation Does the US see any role for such human rights monitors MOLEY I think that is a subject for ongoing discussion I don8217t think we are in the position at the moment to make that decision here KIRKPATRICK I think that the United States has a very large interest in having the evidence concerning the crimes against humanity of the Saddam Hussein regime preserved and investigated QUESTION Will you vote for this resolution KIRKPATRICK We don8217t have the final form of the resolution so we can8217t comment on whether we are willing to vote on something we haven8217t seen in the final form MOLEY We are in discussions with the EU and hopefully it will come to a successful conclusion as well as with others and we would hope that that would enable us to do so but as the Ambassador has just said it is not fully cooked yet QUESTION You said earlier that you have made it clear from day one that you would respect the Geneva Conventions the Hague etc but a couple of weeks ago when NAME INAUDIBLE was asked questions at Central Command in Doha about the issue of occupying power the response was well we are not at that stage yet it8217s a liberating force MOLEY You have mixed metaphors there You asked me about the Geneva Convention and the Hague and I would reply as I did earlier we have been fully fully in conformity and intend to be since day one not only by virtue of our words but by virtue of our actions on the ground that demonstrate that QUESTION So there is no separate occupying or liberating force category MOLEY We are simply saying that the issue of an occupying power has not yet been dealt with Once again the situation is still quite fluid We will come to that and presumably come to it quickly But there should be no question 8212 certainly no question in the mind of the Secretary General 8212 that we need to make any clearer than we already have and have been on the record repeatedly as being in conformance and wanting to be in conformance in every way with the Geneva Conventions QUESTION I am just curious can I ask you something generally about the Human Rights Commission How has the US viewed this year8217s session because we have seen some countries escape censure and at least human rights groups are quite upset about Zimbabwe and Sudan KIRKPATRICK I8217d like to say something about that if I may speaking of human rights groups I was very shocked this year to learn that Human Rights Watch has never occupied itself with Zimbabwe which is surely one of the deep broad problems in human rights violations in our times And I mention this to suggest that it is often the case that serious persons and groups skip some and focus on others Part of the reason for that is that there a good many serious human rights violations in the contemporary world and even very serious people often do not divide their time equally We try to cover all the serious human rights violations in our discussions and our decisions and we did indeed address a good many of them this year MOLEY In our State Department reports put out annually we do country by country an evaluation of their human rights conditions so we take this very seriously But let me say something that Ambassador Kirkpatrick can8217t say and that is that our commitment to human rights should be demonstrated by the fact that the President chose to name one of our most distinguished diplomats and scholars Ambassador Kirkpatrick to be the head of our delegation here signaling our commitment as we return to the Human Rights Commission 8212 as you know we were not on the Commission last year 8212 so we have learned a few things and no doubt we will be looking at ways to improve the performance of this Commission in concert with other serious minded countries that are on the Commission But there are a lot of countries on the Commission who are only on the Commission to protect themselves by virtue of their own egregious deplorable human rights situations in their countries And I will specifically name Zimbabwe and Libya and Sudan and others in that category And we have heard that North Korea is intending to be a candidate next month in May to become a member which would be as in the case of Zimbabwe another outrage to the conditions of human rights around the world QUESTION What about China China has slipped through the cracks because some groups have said that the US just hasn8217t put the pressure to bring China up this year Is that because the US needs China for North Korea in the negotiations MOLEY Let me say that there is no linkage in effect there Certainly one looks at China8217s position on the Security Council on other issues that have been of importance to the United States in recent times including Iraq and one would be hard put to suggest that there was any linkage The fact of the matter is in China8217s case as is reported in our State Department8217s own country by country report there are serious human rights violations taking place in China There has been an ongoing dialogue however between very high level State Department officials who are fully engaged with China And there has been some progress Not as much as we would like We would like to see more One of the interesting things and I commented on this the other day with respect to the recent outbreak of SARS we have seen just in recent days a change of position by the new government and there is a new government in Beijing headed by Hu Jintao which has declared that they must be absolutely open We hope that this kind of transparency will translate into further progress on the human rights front QUESTION The Secretary General in his speech did seem to indicate and criticize I believe the Human Rights Commission for being weak and that it should be stronger How do you react to that MOLEY Well I would add our voice to that of the Secretary General and in fact the High Commissioner Sergio Viera de Mello who in an article in the Wall Street Journal on April 22 himself decried the fact that the Human Rights Commission did not seem to be taking the issue of human rights serious and I am paraphrasing you will have to go to his own remarks for a direct quote But he was very very critical of the performance KIRKPATRICK I must say that we also addressed this issue and predicted that we would be unhappy with the final outcome across the board because there are so many countries who are members of the Human Right Commission who are not themselves serious practitioners of respect for human rights in their own countries and their own policies That was a major emphasis in the first speech that I delivered here the US opening speech at the Human Rights Commission QUESTION Some NGOs are accusing the United States of not having any leadership this year and of after your absence last year failing to pass resolutions not only on China but to have been more proactive as far as Chechnya is concerned8230 KIRKPATRICK I want to say something about that too Anyone who imagines that the United States is not being proactive when we do not ourselves sponsor a resolution is making a mistake It is often the case inside the United Nations not only on Human Rights issues but on many issues that it is more effective to cooperate with other countries and to sometimes let them take the lead Sometimes it is better for them to take the lead sometimes it is better for us to take the lead We have to make judgements about that issue by issue and year by year But I think it is a mistake to imagine that because we didn8217t take the lead on the resolution that we did not act We were for example very active on Sudan And we did not take the lead We ended as one of the sponsors of the resolution And we worked actively on it So don8217t fall for that line That is just not an accurate way to judge MOLEY And we did take the lead in some cases that were unique to us in our position on the Commission Belarus is an example We are not saying our performance has been perfect either but the fact is we are back on We have made a serious commitment and we worked hard and we are going to work hard next year as well QUESTION I am just curious I see that Sudan today is asking the US to be removed from the list of terrorist countries I don8217t know if you can comment on whether the White House8230 KIRKPATRICK The list of terrorist countries is you know it does not depend on what a nation requests There would not be a list of states sponsoring terrorism if it depended on the requests of the governments concerned I think the United States would like very much to see the government of Sudan improve its behavior We would like to see it improve its behavior in a number of domains And so far we have not felt that it has done so I would repeat if you want to know the US position on a given country the best thing to do is to go to our human rights country reports They are serious they are good and they are uptodate They are revised on an annual basis So look there QUESTION Could I just ask you one question it may be a little out of the range but there has been a lot of criticism of the United States in terms of the deterioration of human rights law international law specifically with Guantanamo Bay and so forth and the8230 MOLEY We don8217t accept that characterization at all not at all QUESTION The question is that the US has always been held up as a model of the rule of law and propriety and has been an encouragement to smaller states to follow this model and there is a feeling that there is an erosion of that by the behavior of the United States KIRKPATRICK I think that that is a misplaced feeling It is a feeling and not an informed opinion I know one thing I know the prisoners in Guantanamo are being treated under the laws of combatants And that is quite different from the Geneva Conventions They were arrested in the course of seeking to kill Americans in an ongoing war MOLEY Specifically I would suggest that if someone thinks we should be treating them differently they would in fact be making up law or misapplying the law The fact of the matter is that these are illegal combatants unlawful combatants And they are being treated as such If someone wants them treated otherwise they are in fact misapplying the law And so I would suggest that the fact is that we are in compliance in the strictest sense with humanitarian law with the law of war and accept our responsibilities as such As a consequence we remain the model We are not without fault but we are the model KIRKPATRICK I8217d like to make a point because of the role in the Human Rights Commission of Cuba You know Cuba does not permit the Red Cross or any other objective international group to visit prisoners in its prisons The United States on the other hand gives the Red Cross broad access to the prisoners that we hold in Guantanamo There is only one part of Cuba that there is any access for an international humanitarian agency and that is Guantanamo Bay and the prisoners held there amp160

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