the real world
exposing how greed, corruption, and imperialism impacts the world
and exposes the leaders who benefit
june 21, 2018
Man becomes great exactly in the degree in which he works for the welfare of his fellow-men
Mahatma Gandhi
articles
*First new all-electric mine dumps diesel; cuts costs, pollution
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Ex-Nasa scientist: 30 years on, world is failing 'miserably’ to address climate change
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Trump Building Project In Indonesia Being Funded By Chinese Government
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Notoriously Islamophobic Austrian chancellor kicks out Muslims and shuts down mosques(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Israel Refuses to Officially Recognize 2,000 Ugandan Jews as Jewish — Who Has the Right to Decide?(ARTICLE BELOW)
*As Canada Risks Billions in a “Carbon Bubble”, KM Bosses Get Big Bonuses
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*European Human Rights Court Exposes Further Complicity in CIA Torture
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Meat and fish multinationals 'jeopardising Paris climate goals'
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Colombia vows to indict companies accused of funding death squads
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Trump versus Rwanda in trade battle over used clothes
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Here Are Four Ways Fentanyl Could Radically Disrupt the Global Drug Trade
(ARTICLE BELOW)
funnies(at the end)
First new all-electric mine dumps diesel; cuts costs, pollution
Susan Taylor, Barbara Lewis - reuters
JUNE 21, 2018 / 8:56 AM
CHAPLEAU, Ontario/LONDON (Reuters) - Hundreds of feet below thick boreal forest blanketing the Canadian Shield, a squad of near-silent, battery-powered machines are tunneling toward gold in a multimillion-dollar mining experiment to ditch diesel.
Goldcorp Inc (G.TO) (GG.N) is building the world’s first new all-electric mine, a high-stakes gambit to replace noisy, fume-belching equipment being closely watched by a diesel-dependent industry.
A rough-hewn tunnel, some 800 feet underground, seems an incongruous setting for revolutionary technology, but front-line workers call it a game changer.
“It would be a challenge to go back,” said jumbo drill operator Adam Ladouceur, noting the air quality and lack of noise at the Borden project, northwest of Toronto, is “amazing” compared to the 23 mines where he previously worked.
Stung by a multi-year slump in commodity prices that began recovering in 2016, miners remain desperate to keep operating costs down. Going electric could slash energy expenses, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Borden will save about $9 million annually on diesel, propane and electricity. Productivity gains are also possible, from equipment that can keep working while gas from dynamite blasting clears, for example.
Electric equipment should help keep mine workers healthier. Studies show an elevated cancer risk for underground miners exposed to diesel exhaust, classified as carcinogenic by the World Health Organization.
Health issues are “a big problem” and particularly acute in long-running underground mines with older equipment, said IndustriALL Global Union director Brian Kohler.
Beyond Borden’s battery-powered scoops and vehicles, underground workers will wear tags linked to a ventilation-on-demand system, moving air only where needed.
Going electric carries a 25-30 percent premium on equipment, but could halve the cost of energy-hungry ventilation, which “is like trying to have air conditioning in an enormous old house with leaks,” said Goldcorp vice-president John Mullally.
When commercial production on the 100,000-ounce-per-year mine starts in the second half of 2019, further savings could come from lower maintenance costs, said project manager Luc Joncas, noting diesel machines typically have 1,000 more parts than electric.
“STONE-AGE TECHNOLOGIES NOT SEXY”
Borden is set up so that it could someday be remotely controlled, joining a handful of automated mines around the world.
Automation is taking off in mining, but electrification is lagging, said Patrick Murphy, a president at Sandvik AB (SAND.ST), supplying electric mining equipment to Borden. That is because old mines can be retrofit to add automated elements, like robots, quite efficiently, while full payback from all-electric operations requires customization of new-builds.
Still, it has not been easy planning around Borden’s challenges, including a long, steep road that will extend 4 kilometers (2.5 mile) into the mine.
To help power its 40-ton electric trucks, which cannot run a full shift hauling ore out of the mine without recharging, Sandvik is developing a fast-charge system, expected in 2020.
Goldcorp still needs to truck material to its processing plant, two hours away, and is studying alternatives to diesel vehicles.
Today, a trickle of fully electric mines are planned.
Diesel still makes economic sense at big open pit operations, where there is no ventilation savings and vehicles need big batteries that eat into haulage space.
As the world’s near-surface mines are depleted, production is moving deeper underground, where high temperatures and ventilation costs make diesel impractical.
Early this year, global miners Glencore (GLEN.L) and Vale (VALE3.SA) approved projects more than 5,000 feet below ground in Sudbury’s nickel belt. Nouveau Monde Graphite (NOU.V) aims to build the first all-electric surface mine in Quebec.
Mining companies may find that going electric appeals to the millennials needed to replace an aging workforce, said Michel Serres, a vice president at mine supplier ABB Ltd (ABBN.S).
“Mining needs a revolution to avoid retention or employment issues,” said Serres. “Working with stone-age technologies is not sexy for technicians or engineers coming out of school.”
Goldcorp Inc (G.TO) (GG.N) is building the world’s first new all-electric mine, a high-stakes gambit to replace noisy, fume-belching equipment being closely watched by a diesel-dependent industry.
A rough-hewn tunnel, some 800 feet underground, seems an incongruous setting for revolutionary technology, but front-line workers call it a game changer.
“It would be a challenge to go back,” said jumbo drill operator Adam Ladouceur, noting the air quality and lack of noise at the Borden project, northwest of Toronto, is “amazing” compared to the 23 mines where he previously worked.
Stung by a multi-year slump in commodity prices that began recovering in 2016, miners remain desperate to keep operating costs down. Going electric could slash energy expenses, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Borden will save about $9 million annually on diesel, propane and electricity. Productivity gains are also possible, from equipment that can keep working while gas from dynamite blasting clears, for example.
Electric equipment should help keep mine workers healthier. Studies show an elevated cancer risk for underground miners exposed to diesel exhaust, classified as carcinogenic by the World Health Organization.
Health issues are “a big problem” and particularly acute in long-running underground mines with older equipment, said IndustriALL Global Union director Brian Kohler.
Beyond Borden’s battery-powered scoops and vehicles, underground workers will wear tags linked to a ventilation-on-demand system, moving air only where needed.
Going electric carries a 25-30 percent premium on equipment, but could halve the cost of energy-hungry ventilation, which “is like trying to have air conditioning in an enormous old house with leaks,” said Goldcorp vice-president John Mullally.
When commercial production on the 100,000-ounce-per-year mine starts in the second half of 2019, further savings could come from lower maintenance costs, said project manager Luc Joncas, noting diesel machines typically have 1,000 more parts than electric.
“STONE-AGE TECHNOLOGIES NOT SEXY”
Borden is set up so that it could someday be remotely controlled, joining a handful of automated mines around the world.
Automation is taking off in mining, but electrification is lagging, said Patrick Murphy, a president at Sandvik AB (SAND.ST), supplying electric mining equipment to Borden. That is because old mines can be retrofit to add automated elements, like robots, quite efficiently, while full payback from all-electric operations requires customization of new-builds.
Still, it has not been easy planning around Borden’s challenges, including a long, steep road that will extend 4 kilometers (2.5 mile) into the mine.
To help power its 40-ton electric trucks, which cannot run a full shift hauling ore out of the mine without recharging, Sandvik is developing a fast-charge system, expected in 2020.
Goldcorp still needs to truck material to its processing plant, two hours away, and is studying alternatives to diesel vehicles.
Today, a trickle of fully electric mines are planned.
Diesel still makes economic sense at big open pit operations, where there is no ventilation savings and vehicles need big batteries that eat into haulage space.
As the world’s near-surface mines are depleted, production is moving deeper underground, where high temperatures and ventilation costs make diesel impractical.
Early this year, global miners Glencore (GLEN.L) and Vale (VALE3.SA) approved projects more than 5,000 feet below ground in Sudbury’s nickel belt. Nouveau Monde Graphite (NOU.V) aims to build the first all-electric surface mine in Quebec.
Mining companies may find that going electric appeals to the millennials needed to replace an aging workforce, said Michel Serres, a vice president at mine supplier ABB Ltd (ABBN.S).
“Mining needs a revolution to avoid retention or employment issues,” said Serres. “Working with stone-age technologies is not sexy for technicians or engineers coming out of school.”
Ex-Nasa scientist: 30 years on, world is failing 'miserably’ to address climate change
James Hansen, who gave a climate warning in 1988 Senate testimony, says real hoax is by leaders claiming to take action
Oliver Milman in New York
the guardian
Tue 19 Jun 2018 01.00 EDT
Thirty years after a former Nasa scientist sounded the alarm for the general public about climate change and human activity, the expert issued a fresh warning that the world is failing “miserably” to deal with the worsening dangers.
While Donald Trump and many conservatives like to argue that climate change is a hoax, James Hansen, the 77-year-old former Nasa climate scientist, said in an interview at his home in New York that the relevant hoax today is perpetrated by those leaders claiming to be addressing the problem.
Hansen provided what’s considered the first warning to a mass audience about global warming when, in 1988, he told a US congressional hearing he could declare “with 99% confidence” that a recent sharp rise in temperatures was a result of human activity.
Since this time, the world’s greenhouse gas emissions have mushroomed despite repeated, increasingly frantic warnings about civilization-shaking catastrophe, from scientists amassing reams of evidence in Hansen’s wake.
“All we’ve done is agree there’s a problem,” Hansen told the Guardian. “We agreed that in 1992 [at the Earth summit in Rio] and re-agreed it again in Paris [at the 2015 climate accord]. We haven’t acknowledged what is required to solve it. Promises like Paris don’t mean much, it’s wishful thinking. It’s a hoax that governments have played on us since the 1990s.”
Hansen’s long list of culprits for this inertia are both familiar – the nefarious lobbying of the fossil fuel industry – and surprising. Jerry Brown, the progressive governor of California, and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, are “both pretending to be solving the problem” while being unambitious and shunning low-carbon nuclear power, Hansen argues.
There is particular scorn for Barack Obama. Hansen says in a scathing upcoming book that the former president “failed miserably” on climate change and oversaw policies that were “late, ineffectual and partisan”.
Hansen even accuses Obama of passing up the opportunity to thwart Donald Trump’s destruction of US climate action, by declining to settle a lawsuit the scientist, his granddaughter and 20 other young people are waging against the government, accusing it of unconstitutionally causing peril to their living environment.
“Near the end of his administration the US said it would reduce emissions 80% by 2050,” Hansen said.
“Our lawsuit demands a reduction of 6% a year so I thought, ‘That’s close enough, let’s settle the lawsuit.’ We got through to Obama’s office but he decided against it. It was a tremendous opportunity. This was after Trump’s election, so if we’d settled it quickly the US legally wouldn’t be able to do the absurd things Trump is doing now by opening up all sorts of fossil fuel sources.”
Hansen’s frustrations temper any satisfaction at largely being vindicated for his testimony, delivered to lawmakers on 23 June 1988.
Wearing a cream-coloured suit, the soft-spoken son of Iowan tenant farmers hunched over the microphone in Washington to explain that humans had entered a confronting new era. “The greenhouse effect has been detected and it is changing our climate now,” he said.
Afterwards, Hansen told reporters: “It is time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here.” He brandished new research that forecast that 1988 was set to be the warmest year on record, as well as projections for future heat under three different emissions scenarios. The world has dutifully followed Hansen’s “scenario B” – we are “smack on it” it, Hansen said last week – with global temperatures jumping by around 1C (1.8F) over the past century.
These findings hadn’t occurred in a vacuum, of course – the Irish physicist John Tyndall confirmed that carbon dioxide is a heat-trapping gas in the 1850s. A 1985 scientific conference in Villach, Austria, concluded the temperature rise in the 21st century would be “greater than in any man’s history”. The changes in motion would “affect life on Earth for centuries to come”, the New York Times warned the morning after Hansen’s testimony.
Three decades of diplomacy has blossomed into an international consensus, albeit rattled by Trump, that the temperature rise must be curbed to “well below” 2C (3.6F) above pre-industrial times. But in this time emissions have soared (in 1988, 20bn tons of carbon dioxide was – by 2017 it was 32bn tons) with promised cuts insufficient for the 2C goal. Despite the notable growth of renewable energy such as solar and wind, Hansen believes there is no pathway to salvation without a tax on carbon-producing fuels.
“The solution isn’t complicated, it’s not rocket science,” Hansen said. “Emissions aren’t going to go down if the cost of fossil fuels isn’t honest. Economists are very clear on this. We need a steadily increasing fee that is then distributed to the public.”
Hansen faced opposition even before his testimony – he recalls a Nasa colleague telling him on the morning of his presentation “no respectable scientist” would claim the world is warming – and faced subsequent meddling and censorship from George HW Bush’s administration.
He eventually retired from Nasa in 2013 and promptly reinvented himself as an activist who was arrested, wearing his trademark hat, outside the White House while protesting against the Keystone oil pipeline.
The dawdling global response to warming temperatures means runaway climate change now looms. The aspirational 1.5C (2.7F) warming target set in Paris could be surpassed by 2040. Huge amounts of ice from western Antarctica are crashing into the ocean, redrawing forecasts for sea level rise. Some low-lying islands fear extinction.
“It’s not too late,” Hansen stressed. “There is a rate of reduction that’s feasible to stay well below 2C. But you just need that price on carbon.”
John Holdren, who was Obama’s chief science adviser, told the Guardian that the Paris agreement achieved what was possible without support from Congress and that legally binding lawsuits would be “problematic”.
However, he added that while he had reservations about Hansen’s policy ideas he was one of the “true giants” of climate science.
“Poor Jim Hansen. He’s a tragic hero,” said Naomi Oreskes, a Harvard academic who studies the history of science. “The Cassandra aspect of his life is that he’s cursed to understand and diagnose what’s going on but unable to persuade people to do something about it. We are all raised to believe knowledge is power but Hansen proves the untruth of that slogan. Power is power.”
That power has been most aggressively wielded by fossil fuel companies such as Exxon and Shell which, despite being well aware of the dangers of climate change decades before Hansen’s touchstone moment in 1988, funded a network of groups that ridiculed the science and funded sympathetic politicians. Later, they were to be joined by the bulk of the US Republican party, which now recoils from any action on climate change as heresy.
“Obama was committed to action but couldn’t do much with the Congress he had,” Oreskes said. “To blame the Democrats and Obama is to misunderstand the political context. There was a huge, organized network that put forward a message of confusion and doubt.”
Climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer, who testified at the same 1988 hearing about sea level rise, said the struggle to confront climate change has been “discouraging”.
“The nasty anti-science movement ramped up and now we are way behind.”
“I’m convinced we will deal with the problem,” he said. “[But] not before there is an amount of suffering that is unconscionable and should’ve been avoided.”
While Donald Trump and many conservatives like to argue that climate change is a hoax, James Hansen, the 77-year-old former Nasa climate scientist, said in an interview at his home in New York that the relevant hoax today is perpetrated by those leaders claiming to be addressing the problem.
Hansen provided what’s considered the first warning to a mass audience about global warming when, in 1988, he told a US congressional hearing he could declare “with 99% confidence” that a recent sharp rise in temperatures was a result of human activity.
Since this time, the world’s greenhouse gas emissions have mushroomed despite repeated, increasingly frantic warnings about civilization-shaking catastrophe, from scientists amassing reams of evidence in Hansen’s wake.
“All we’ve done is agree there’s a problem,” Hansen told the Guardian. “We agreed that in 1992 [at the Earth summit in Rio] and re-agreed it again in Paris [at the 2015 climate accord]. We haven’t acknowledged what is required to solve it. Promises like Paris don’t mean much, it’s wishful thinking. It’s a hoax that governments have played on us since the 1990s.”
Hansen’s long list of culprits for this inertia are both familiar – the nefarious lobbying of the fossil fuel industry – and surprising. Jerry Brown, the progressive governor of California, and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, are “both pretending to be solving the problem” while being unambitious and shunning low-carbon nuclear power, Hansen argues.
There is particular scorn for Barack Obama. Hansen says in a scathing upcoming book that the former president “failed miserably” on climate change and oversaw policies that were “late, ineffectual and partisan”.
Hansen even accuses Obama of passing up the opportunity to thwart Donald Trump’s destruction of US climate action, by declining to settle a lawsuit the scientist, his granddaughter and 20 other young people are waging against the government, accusing it of unconstitutionally causing peril to their living environment.
“Near the end of his administration the US said it would reduce emissions 80% by 2050,” Hansen said.
“Our lawsuit demands a reduction of 6% a year so I thought, ‘That’s close enough, let’s settle the lawsuit.’ We got through to Obama’s office but he decided against it. It was a tremendous opportunity. This was after Trump’s election, so if we’d settled it quickly the US legally wouldn’t be able to do the absurd things Trump is doing now by opening up all sorts of fossil fuel sources.”
Hansen’s frustrations temper any satisfaction at largely being vindicated for his testimony, delivered to lawmakers on 23 June 1988.
Wearing a cream-coloured suit, the soft-spoken son of Iowan tenant farmers hunched over the microphone in Washington to explain that humans had entered a confronting new era. “The greenhouse effect has been detected and it is changing our climate now,” he said.
Afterwards, Hansen told reporters: “It is time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here.” He brandished new research that forecast that 1988 was set to be the warmest year on record, as well as projections for future heat under three different emissions scenarios. The world has dutifully followed Hansen’s “scenario B” – we are “smack on it” it, Hansen said last week – with global temperatures jumping by around 1C (1.8F) over the past century.
These findings hadn’t occurred in a vacuum, of course – the Irish physicist John Tyndall confirmed that carbon dioxide is a heat-trapping gas in the 1850s. A 1985 scientific conference in Villach, Austria, concluded the temperature rise in the 21st century would be “greater than in any man’s history”. The changes in motion would “affect life on Earth for centuries to come”, the New York Times warned the morning after Hansen’s testimony.
Three decades of diplomacy has blossomed into an international consensus, albeit rattled by Trump, that the temperature rise must be curbed to “well below” 2C (3.6F) above pre-industrial times. But in this time emissions have soared (in 1988, 20bn tons of carbon dioxide was – by 2017 it was 32bn tons) with promised cuts insufficient for the 2C goal. Despite the notable growth of renewable energy such as solar and wind, Hansen believes there is no pathway to salvation without a tax on carbon-producing fuels.
“The solution isn’t complicated, it’s not rocket science,” Hansen said. “Emissions aren’t going to go down if the cost of fossil fuels isn’t honest. Economists are very clear on this. We need a steadily increasing fee that is then distributed to the public.”
Hansen faced opposition even before his testimony – he recalls a Nasa colleague telling him on the morning of his presentation “no respectable scientist” would claim the world is warming – and faced subsequent meddling and censorship from George HW Bush’s administration.
He eventually retired from Nasa in 2013 and promptly reinvented himself as an activist who was arrested, wearing his trademark hat, outside the White House while protesting against the Keystone oil pipeline.
The dawdling global response to warming temperatures means runaway climate change now looms. The aspirational 1.5C (2.7F) warming target set in Paris could be surpassed by 2040. Huge amounts of ice from western Antarctica are crashing into the ocean, redrawing forecasts for sea level rise. Some low-lying islands fear extinction.
“It’s not too late,” Hansen stressed. “There is a rate of reduction that’s feasible to stay well below 2C. But you just need that price on carbon.”
John Holdren, who was Obama’s chief science adviser, told the Guardian that the Paris agreement achieved what was possible without support from Congress and that legally binding lawsuits would be “problematic”.
However, he added that while he had reservations about Hansen’s policy ideas he was one of the “true giants” of climate science.
“Poor Jim Hansen. He’s a tragic hero,” said Naomi Oreskes, a Harvard academic who studies the history of science. “The Cassandra aspect of his life is that he’s cursed to understand and diagnose what’s going on but unable to persuade people to do something about it. We are all raised to believe knowledge is power but Hansen proves the untruth of that slogan. Power is power.”
That power has been most aggressively wielded by fossil fuel companies such as Exxon and Shell which, despite being well aware of the dangers of climate change decades before Hansen’s touchstone moment in 1988, funded a network of groups that ridiculed the science and funded sympathetic politicians. Later, they were to be joined by the bulk of the US Republican party, which now recoils from any action on climate change as heresy.
“Obama was committed to action but couldn’t do much with the Congress he had,” Oreskes said. “To blame the Democrats and Obama is to misunderstand the political context. There was a huge, organized network that put forward a message of confusion and doubt.”
Climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer, who testified at the same 1988 hearing about sea level rise, said the struggle to confront climate change has been “discouraging”.
“The nasty anti-science movement ramped up and now we are way behind.”
“I’m convinced we will deal with the problem,” he said. “[But] not before there is an amount of suffering that is unconscionable and should’ve been avoided.”
Trump Building Project In Indonesia Being Funded By Chinese Government
by jake thomas - the intellectualist
6/16/18
The project could violate the emoluments clause if Chinese government funding generates profit for President Trump.
In yet another instance of potential impropriety by President Donald Trump, the Agence France-Presse reports that a Trump Organization project in Indonesia is being partially funded by the Chinese government – a fact well known to Trump prior to the 2016 presidential election.
A subsidiary of Chinese state-owned construction firm Metallurgical Corporation of China (MCC) signed a deal with Indonesia’s MNC Land to build a theme park outside Jakarta as part of the ambitious project, the company said on Thursday.
…
The park – expected to be backed with up to US$500 million in Chinese government loans – is part of an “integrated lifestyle resort”, known as MNC Lido City.
Included in the project are Trump-branded hotels, residences and a golf course, AFP reports, making MNC Lido City the first project to connect Trump’s business interests with the Chinese government’s massive infrastructure initiative.
While the Chinese companies will not be directly involved in the construction or financing of the Trump properties, the theme park is a critical part of the 3,000-hectare development.
…
Furthermore, Chinese companies are expected to put up US$500 million – half of the development’s projected budget – putting its success or failure in the hands of decision-makers in Beijing.
According to corporate filings and internal documents reviewed by AFP, the Trump Organization and the president’s sons – Donald Trump, Jr. and Eric Trump – have been directly involved in numerous stages of project planning.
Marketing materials for the resort also point to both the theme park and Trump properties as flagship components of the development.
AFP notes that the project began prior to Trump’s ascension to the White House and well in advance of his pledge that the Trump Organization would avoid new business dealings with foreign governments.
But this is unlikely to pacify critics:
“[E]ven if this deal is completely and entirely above board, it simply furthers the perception of impropriety” surrounding Trump’s business dealings, said Christopher Balding, an economics professor at Shenzhen’s HSBC Business School. “Especially with the potential trade war, this is not a good look … Critics will be entirely right to demand answers.”
Richard Painter, an ethics lawyer under former President George W. Bush, indicated the project could constitute a violation of the emoluments clause if the Chinese government’s financial involvement generates profit for the Trump Organization.
“I would have advised him to sell the hotel and other similar holdings,” Painter said.
MNC’s billionaire head Hary Tanoesoedibjo flew to New York and Washington in January 2017 for “a design review with Trump”, according to AFP; he also attended Trump’s inauguration.
Photos posted on Hary’s Instagram account show him in meetings at Trump Tower with Trump’s sons, Eric and Donald Jnr, and posing with Trump himself. Click here to read more.
In yet another instance of potential impropriety by President Donald Trump, the Agence France-Presse reports that a Trump Organization project in Indonesia is being partially funded by the Chinese government – a fact well known to Trump prior to the 2016 presidential election.
A subsidiary of Chinese state-owned construction firm Metallurgical Corporation of China (MCC) signed a deal with Indonesia’s MNC Land to build a theme park outside Jakarta as part of the ambitious project, the company said on Thursday.
…
The park – expected to be backed with up to US$500 million in Chinese government loans – is part of an “integrated lifestyle resort”, known as MNC Lido City.
Included in the project are Trump-branded hotels, residences and a golf course, AFP reports, making MNC Lido City the first project to connect Trump’s business interests with the Chinese government’s massive infrastructure initiative.
While the Chinese companies will not be directly involved in the construction or financing of the Trump properties, the theme park is a critical part of the 3,000-hectare development.
…
Furthermore, Chinese companies are expected to put up US$500 million – half of the development’s projected budget – putting its success or failure in the hands of decision-makers in Beijing.
According to corporate filings and internal documents reviewed by AFP, the Trump Organization and the president’s sons – Donald Trump, Jr. and Eric Trump – have been directly involved in numerous stages of project planning.
Marketing materials for the resort also point to both the theme park and Trump properties as flagship components of the development.
AFP notes that the project began prior to Trump’s ascension to the White House and well in advance of his pledge that the Trump Organization would avoid new business dealings with foreign governments.
But this is unlikely to pacify critics:
“[E]ven if this deal is completely and entirely above board, it simply furthers the perception of impropriety” surrounding Trump’s business dealings, said Christopher Balding, an economics professor at Shenzhen’s HSBC Business School. “Especially with the potential trade war, this is not a good look … Critics will be entirely right to demand answers.”
Richard Painter, an ethics lawyer under former President George W. Bush, indicated the project could constitute a violation of the emoluments clause if the Chinese government’s financial involvement generates profit for the Trump Organization.
“I would have advised him to sell the hotel and other similar holdings,” Painter said.
MNC’s billionaire head Hary Tanoesoedibjo flew to New York and Washington in January 2017 for “a design review with Trump”, according to AFP; he also attended Trump’s inauguration.
Photos posted on Hary’s Instagram account show him in meetings at Trump Tower with Trump’s sons, Eric and Donald Jnr, and posing with Trump himself. Click here to read more.
another trump!!!
Notoriously Islamophobic Austrian chancellor kicks out Muslims and shuts down mosques
Sebastian Kurz and his party have ominously vowed that this is "just the beginning."
D. PARVAZ - thinkprogress
JUN 8, 2018, 1:55 PM
The right-wing government in Austria has escalated its hostility toward Muslims in the country by announcing this week that it plans to shut down seven mosques and deport between 40 and 60 Islamic clerics who receive foreign funding.
The coalition government, led by Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, said that this is “just the beginning” of its fight against what it sees as “radical Islam,” Reuters reportedon Friday.
Kurz’s name might sound familiar, as he’s been mentioned in news stories earlier this week after President Donald Trump’s new ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, praised him in an interview he gave to Breitbart.
Apparently falling under the spell of Kurz’s youthful looks — as much of the media did when he blazed onto the political scene last fall — Grenell called Kurz a “rock star,” adding that he’s a “big fan” while noting that he’d like Kurz to empower European conservatives. He’s since tried to backpedal, tweeting that he definitely wasn’t supporting any particular parties and that he was only trying to support the “silent majority … Led by Trump.”
One man’s rock-star is another man’s racist, it seems, with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s spokesman calling Kurz’s new policy an “Islamophobic, racist and discriminatory wave.”
Of Austria’s 8.8 million people, around 600,000 are Muslims, many of them of Turkish descent. One of the Islamic groups targeted is the Turkish-Islamic Union for Cultural and Social Cooperation in Austria, which has close ties to the Turkish government.
Even before becoming chancellor, Kurz targeted Muslims with a policy he helped craft in 2015 which stipulated that Muslims had a duty to have a positive view of the Austrian state. The law also forbids religious groups from getting foreign funding.
Austia’s move comes on the heels of two other decisions in European countries that crack down on Muslims.
Denmark last week banned the burqa as well as the niqab (face veil) — both items cover the face and are worn by some Muslim women. Only during cold weather or while engaging in activities that require the face to be covered for safety reasons (such as wearing a motorcycle helmet) will being in public with an obscured face be allowed.
Offenders will be fined, and repeat offenders will be jailed up to six months.
Other European countries, such as Belgium, France, and Austria, already have such laws in place.
Norway’s parliament on Thursday voted in favor of banning the same forms of the hijab at schools and universities, calling the face coverings a “suppressive” garment that hinders integration.
Neither the country’s National Union of Students nor the Socialist Left Party (SV) agreed with that assessment, with one SV member saying, “Work on women’s oppression and increased gender equality needs to be strengthened. To introduce a national ban on face-covering garments does not solve the problem of women in Norway today being exposed to negative social control and honor-related violence.”
The coalition government, led by Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, said that this is “just the beginning” of its fight against what it sees as “radical Islam,” Reuters reportedon Friday.
Kurz’s name might sound familiar, as he’s been mentioned in news stories earlier this week after President Donald Trump’s new ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, praised him in an interview he gave to Breitbart.
Apparently falling under the spell of Kurz’s youthful looks — as much of the media did when he blazed onto the political scene last fall — Grenell called Kurz a “rock star,” adding that he’s a “big fan” while noting that he’d like Kurz to empower European conservatives. He’s since tried to backpedal, tweeting that he definitely wasn’t supporting any particular parties and that he was only trying to support the “silent majority … Led by Trump.”
One man’s rock-star is another man’s racist, it seems, with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s spokesman calling Kurz’s new policy an “Islamophobic, racist and discriminatory wave.”
Of Austria’s 8.8 million people, around 600,000 are Muslims, many of them of Turkish descent. One of the Islamic groups targeted is the Turkish-Islamic Union for Cultural and Social Cooperation in Austria, which has close ties to the Turkish government.
Even before becoming chancellor, Kurz targeted Muslims with a policy he helped craft in 2015 which stipulated that Muslims had a duty to have a positive view of the Austrian state. The law also forbids religious groups from getting foreign funding.
Austia’s move comes on the heels of two other decisions in European countries that crack down on Muslims.
Denmark last week banned the burqa as well as the niqab (face veil) — both items cover the face and are worn by some Muslim women. Only during cold weather or while engaging in activities that require the face to be covered for safety reasons (such as wearing a motorcycle helmet) will being in public with an obscured face be allowed.
Offenders will be fined, and repeat offenders will be jailed up to six months.
Other European countries, such as Belgium, France, and Austria, already have such laws in place.
Norway’s parliament on Thursday voted in favor of banning the same forms of the hijab at schools and universities, calling the face coverings a “suppressive” garment that hinders integration.
Neither the country’s National Union of Students nor the Socialist Left Party (SV) agreed with that assessment, with one SV member saying, “Work on women’s oppression and increased gender equality needs to be strengthened. To introduce a national ban on face-covering garments does not solve the problem of women in Norway today being exposed to negative social control and honor-related violence.”
worldwide racism!!!
Israel Refuses to Officially Recognize 2,000 Ugandan Jews as Jewish — Who Has the Right to Decide?
By David Love - atlanta black star
June 9, 2018
The Israeli government has rejected a request from a Ugandan community of Jews to immigrate to the country and refused to recognize the group as Jews. This rejection of the African Jews raises issues of racism against Black people in Israel, the criteria for being accepted as a Jew, and who decides.
The Israeli Interior Ministry rejected a request for recognition by a member of the Abayudaya community, whose 2,000 members live in Uganda, as Haaretz reported. Kibita Yosef, who filed the application, has been living in Israel in a kibbutz affiliated with the Conservative movement for the past year. The Abayudaya, who have been practicing Judaism for a century, were officially converted to Judaism by the Conservative movement, one of the major denominations of Judaism, only in recent years. Under Israel’s Law of Return, anyone who is married to a Jew, has Jewish grandparents and those who convert to Judaism are allowed to immigrate to Israel if they come from a recognized Jewish community. The Jewish Agency for Israel recognizes the Abayudaya as Jewish, but the ministry, the final arbiter of such matters, does not.
The ministry said Yosef must leave the country by June 14 or he faces deportation. The Conservative movement condemned the decision, with Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, who leads its international Rabbinical Assembly, saying they were “shocked and extremely outraged” at the “unlawful” decision. “This is completely inconsistent with more than two decades of Israeli practice of Conservative converts — who are by the way halakhically [in accordance with Jewish law] converted to Judaism under our auspices — who had been recognized as Jewish for the purposes of the Law of Return,” she said, adding that the decision jeopardizes the future of conversions in Israel, not only Conservative converts, but Reform and Orthodox as well. The Orthodox Chief Rabbinate controls Jewish conversion, marriage, divorce and burial in Israel, but not immigration matters. Nearly 1 million people who emigrated to Israel from the former Soviet Union were eligible as Jews under the Law of Return and became Israeli citizens, accounting for 15 percent of Israel’s population. Yet, one quarter were not considered Jewish under Jewish law, which requires that one is born to a Jewish mother or undergoes an Orthodox conversion.
Israeli citizens of Palestinian Arab descent are second- or third-class citizens because they are not Jewish and the Law of Return does not apply to them. Meanwhile, Palestinians living under military occupation without self-determination and their own state are non-citizens and suffer from racial segregation, discrimination and brutality, and Palestinian refugees who were removed from their land are unable to return. Even Palestinians married to Israelis are barred from living in Israel and becoming citizens. This week, the Israeli Knesset blocked legislation whose purpose was “to define Israel as a democratic and multi-cultural state that guarantees complete civil, cultural, and national equality to all of its citizens” — Jewish and Arab.
The difficulties Ugandan Jews have faced in immigrating to Israel have carried with them accusations of anti-Black racism. Last December, a member of a Jewish community in Kenya who arrived in Israel to study at a Conservative yeshiva in Jerusalem was detained at the airport and deported to Ethiopia. In addition, the Ministry of Interior has taken advantage of a technicality in denying visa requests to study or immigrate to Israel from Ugandan Jews who converted before 2009, that is, before the Abayudaya were recognized as a Jewish community. “It would appear that a combination of racial prejudice, a bias against non-Orthodox conversion, a failure to issue timely decisions as demanded by the criteria of the Interior Ministry, and a structure where the responsibility to resolve the issues relating to immigration and the issuing of student visas is passed from one person to the next, has, sadly, left these Jews seeking to live or study in Israel, in limbo,” said Rabbi Andy Sacks, director of the Rabbinical Assembly of the Conservative movement in Israel. The Conservative movement will petition Israel’s High Court of Justice, the nation’s version of the Supreme Court.
Ethiopian Israelis, who are Jewish, and African migrants, who are not, face systemic racial discrimination in Israel. Although they are an ancient population, Ethiopian Jews find their Jewishness questioned, are racially stereotyped as lazy, and face poverty and discrimination in housing, education and employment. These Black Israelis protest against the police brutality they experience, including the case of an Israeli solider of Ethiopian descent who was beaten by police. Israeli health officials subjected Ethiopian immigrants women to the contraceptive Depo Provera without their consent in an alleged attempt to lower the Black birth rate. The immigration of thousands of Ethiopians to Israel has been delayed amid charges of racism, and Ethiopian Jews in Addis Ababa threatened a hunger strike if they were denied reunification with their families in Israel.
In March, one of Israel’s chief rabbis called Black people “monkeys,” and African migrants and asylum seekers fleeing countries such as Eritrea and Sudan are called “infiltrators” who threaten the identity of the Jewish state. The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who has regarded Africans as a greater threat than terrorists and touts Israel’s wall on the Egyptian border as keeping them out — gave thousands of African “infiltrators” a choice of leaving the country or facing indefinite imprisonment.
It is within this context that Jews of African heritage may not be regarded as Jews in Israel, or perhaps not as Jewish as others.
The Israeli Interior Ministry rejected a request for recognition by a member of the Abayudaya community, whose 2,000 members live in Uganda, as Haaretz reported. Kibita Yosef, who filed the application, has been living in Israel in a kibbutz affiliated with the Conservative movement for the past year. The Abayudaya, who have been practicing Judaism for a century, were officially converted to Judaism by the Conservative movement, one of the major denominations of Judaism, only in recent years. Under Israel’s Law of Return, anyone who is married to a Jew, has Jewish grandparents and those who convert to Judaism are allowed to immigrate to Israel if they come from a recognized Jewish community. The Jewish Agency for Israel recognizes the Abayudaya as Jewish, but the ministry, the final arbiter of such matters, does not.
The ministry said Yosef must leave the country by June 14 or he faces deportation. The Conservative movement condemned the decision, with Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, who leads its international Rabbinical Assembly, saying they were “shocked and extremely outraged” at the “unlawful” decision. “This is completely inconsistent with more than two decades of Israeli practice of Conservative converts — who are by the way halakhically [in accordance with Jewish law] converted to Judaism under our auspices — who had been recognized as Jewish for the purposes of the Law of Return,” she said, adding that the decision jeopardizes the future of conversions in Israel, not only Conservative converts, but Reform and Orthodox as well. The Orthodox Chief Rabbinate controls Jewish conversion, marriage, divorce and burial in Israel, but not immigration matters. Nearly 1 million people who emigrated to Israel from the former Soviet Union were eligible as Jews under the Law of Return and became Israeli citizens, accounting for 15 percent of Israel’s population. Yet, one quarter were not considered Jewish under Jewish law, which requires that one is born to a Jewish mother or undergoes an Orthodox conversion.
Israeli citizens of Palestinian Arab descent are second- or third-class citizens because they are not Jewish and the Law of Return does not apply to them. Meanwhile, Palestinians living under military occupation without self-determination and their own state are non-citizens and suffer from racial segregation, discrimination and brutality, and Palestinian refugees who were removed from their land are unable to return. Even Palestinians married to Israelis are barred from living in Israel and becoming citizens. This week, the Israeli Knesset blocked legislation whose purpose was “to define Israel as a democratic and multi-cultural state that guarantees complete civil, cultural, and national equality to all of its citizens” — Jewish and Arab.
The difficulties Ugandan Jews have faced in immigrating to Israel have carried with them accusations of anti-Black racism. Last December, a member of a Jewish community in Kenya who arrived in Israel to study at a Conservative yeshiva in Jerusalem was detained at the airport and deported to Ethiopia. In addition, the Ministry of Interior has taken advantage of a technicality in denying visa requests to study or immigrate to Israel from Ugandan Jews who converted before 2009, that is, before the Abayudaya were recognized as a Jewish community. “It would appear that a combination of racial prejudice, a bias against non-Orthodox conversion, a failure to issue timely decisions as demanded by the criteria of the Interior Ministry, and a structure where the responsibility to resolve the issues relating to immigration and the issuing of student visas is passed from one person to the next, has, sadly, left these Jews seeking to live or study in Israel, in limbo,” said Rabbi Andy Sacks, director of the Rabbinical Assembly of the Conservative movement in Israel. The Conservative movement will petition Israel’s High Court of Justice, the nation’s version of the Supreme Court.
Ethiopian Israelis, who are Jewish, and African migrants, who are not, face systemic racial discrimination in Israel. Although they are an ancient population, Ethiopian Jews find their Jewishness questioned, are racially stereotyped as lazy, and face poverty and discrimination in housing, education and employment. These Black Israelis protest against the police brutality they experience, including the case of an Israeli solider of Ethiopian descent who was beaten by police. Israeli health officials subjected Ethiopian immigrants women to the contraceptive Depo Provera without their consent in an alleged attempt to lower the Black birth rate. The immigration of thousands of Ethiopians to Israel has been delayed amid charges of racism, and Ethiopian Jews in Addis Ababa threatened a hunger strike if they were denied reunification with their families in Israel.
In March, one of Israel’s chief rabbis called Black people “monkeys,” and African migrants and asylum seekers fleeing countries such as Eritrea and Sudan are called “infiltrators” who threaten the identity of the Jewish state. The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who has regarded Africans as a greater threat than terrorists and touts Israel’s wall on the Egyptian border as keeping them out — gave thousands of African “infiltrators” a choice of leaving the country or facing indefinite imprisonment.
It is within this context that Jews of African heritage may not be regarded as Jews in Israel, or perhaps not as Jewish as others.
As Canada Risks Billions in a “Carbon Bubble”, KM Bosses Get Big Bonuses
Andy Rowell, oil change int.
June 5, 2018
Days after Justin Trudeau blew an estimated $15 billion of hard earnt Canadian tax payers money on Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline, scientists are warning just how financially and ecologically stupid and short-sighted the investment was.
In a peer reviewed scientific paper, published yesterday, the scientists warn of the existence of a “carbon bubble”, due to the plunging price of renewables and improved energy efficiency measures, which will make many fossil fuel projects “stranded assets”.
The abstract in the prestigeous journal, Nature, could make Trudeau choke on his morning coffee: “Several major economies rely heavily on fossil fuel production and exports, yet current low-carbon technology diffusion, energy efficiency and climate policy may be substantially reducing global demand for fossil fuels.”
It continues: “This trend is inconsistent with observed investment in new fossil fuel ventures, which could become stranded as a result.”
Crucially, the scientists argue that many fossil fuel projects will become stranded due to changing market conditions, especially with the cost of renewables rapidly decreasing.
But this economic loss of “stranded fossil fuel assets” will be exemplified if “new climate policies to reach the 2°C target of the Paris Agreement are adopted and/or if low-cost producers (some OPEC countries) maintain their level of production (‘sell out’) despite declining demand”.
If this happens there will be winners and losers, with “winners (for example, net importers such as China or the EU) and losers (for example, Russia, the United States or Canada, which could see their fossil fuel industries nearly shut down).”
So Canada will be a net looser. And the reason will be the tar sands. And if the tar sands are “shut down”, Kinder Morgan is a pipeline to nowhere.
Professor Jorge Viñuales, co-author, told the Guardian: “Contrary to investor expectations, the stranding of fossil fuel assets may happen even without new climate policies. Individual nations cannot avoid the situation by ignoring the Paris agreement or burying their heads in coal and tar sands.”
Dr Jean-François Mercure, the lead author, from Radboud and Cambridge universities, also told the newspaper: “If people stop putting funds now in fossil fuels, they may at least limit their losses.”
Trudeau has just done the opposite. As the Prime Minister buries his political future in the tar sands, others have criticised last week’s bail-out as a clear “subsidy” to the oil industry, which goes against a G7 pledge to phase out “inefficient” support for polluting sectors by 2025.
“The decision by the Canadian government to acquire the Trans Mountain pipeline from Kinder Morgan has essentially been taken because, given the risk, no other private investor would step in,” argues Mark Campanale, the executive director of Carbon Tracker. “It is government subsidising a market failure.”
But it gets worse: As Trudeau invests in “carbon bubbles” and “market failures”, two Kinder Morgan bosses are literally laughing all the way to the bank. Two senior executives have each been awarded $1.5-million “retention bonuses” in connection with the $4.5-billion sale of the pipeline.
Opposition MPs were outraged at the news: One, the B.C. New Democrat MP Nathan Cullen, said in the House of Commons: “Adding insult to injury to this public bailout, it includes a $3-million bonus to Kinder Morgan executives.”
Canadian economist Robyn Allan, who has spent the past few years analyzing the dodgy finances behind the Trans Mountain project, also criticised the pay-outs, saying: “It’s a large amount of money and it’s something that most people are going to be shocked about.”
They are right to be shocked about another example of rewarding big oil executives for climate failure.
RELATED: Canada Set to “Lose Billions” As it Already Looks For Buyer for KM Pipeline“
The taxpayer is going to end up losing billions of dollars here”
In a peer reviewed scientific paper, published yesterday, the scientists warn of the existence of a “carbon bubble”, due to the plunging price of renewables and improved energy efficiency measures, which will make many fossil fuel projects “stranded assets”.
The abstract in the prestigeous journal, Nature, could make Trudeau choke on his morning coffee: “Several major economies rely heavily on fossil fuel production and exports, yet current low-carbon technology diffusion, energy efficiency and climate policy may be substantially reducing global demand for fossil fuels.”
It continues: “This trend is inconsistent with observed investment in new fossil fuel ventures, which could become stranded as a result.”
Crucially, the scientists argue that many fossil fuel projects will become stranded due to changing market conditions, especially with the cost of renewables rapidly decreasing.
But this economic loss of “stranded fossil fuel assets” will be exemplified if “new climate policies to reach the 2°C target of the Paris Agreement are adopted and/or if low-cost producers (some OPEC countries) maintain their level of production (‘sell out’) despite declining demand”.
If this happens there will be winners and losers, with “winners (for example, net importers such as China or the EU) and losers (for example, Russia, the United States or Canada, which could see their fossil fuel industries nearly shut down).”
So Canada will be a net looser. And the reason will be the tar sands. And if the tar sands are “shut down”, Kinder Morgan is a pipeline to nowhere.
Professor Jorge Viñuales, co-author, told the Guardian: “Contrary to investor expectations, the stranding of fossil fuel assets may happen even without new climate policies. Individual nations cannot avoid the situation by ignoring the Paris agreement or burying their heads in coal and tar sands.”
Dr Jean-François Mercure, the lead author, from Radboud and Cambridge universities, also told the newspaper: “If people stop putting funds now in fossil fuels, they may at least limit their losses.”
Trudeau has just done the opposite. As the Prime Minister buries his political future in the tar sands, others have criticised last week’s bail-out as a clear “subsidy” to the oil industry, which goes against a G7 pledge to phase out “inefficient” support for polluting sectors by 2025.
“The decision by the Canadian government to acquire the Trans Mountain pipeline from Kinder Morgan has essentially been taken because, given the risk, no other private investor would step in,” argues Mark Campanale, the executive director of Carbon Tracker. “It is government subsidising a market failure.”
But it gets worse: As Trudeau invests in “carbon bubbles” and “market failures”, two Kinder Morgan bosses are literally laughing all the way to the bank. Two senior executives have each been awarded $1.5-million “retention bonuses” in connection with the $4.5-billion sale of the pipeline.
Opposition MPs were outraged at the news: One, the B.C. New Democrat MP Nathan Cullen, said in the House of Commons: “Adding insult to injury to this public bailout, it includes a $3-million bonus to Kinder Morgan executives.”
Canadian economist Robyn Allan, who has spent the past few years analyzing the dodgy finances behind the Trans Mountain project, also criticised the pay-outs, saying: “It’s a large amount of money and it’s something that most people are going to be shocked about.”
They are right to be shocked about another example of rewarding big oil executives for climate failure.
RELATED: Canada Set to “Lose Billions” As it Already Looks For Buyer for KM Pipeline“
The taxpayer is going to end up losing billions of dollars here”
European Human Rights Court Exposes Further Complicity in CIA Torture
Aisha Maniar , Truthout
PUBLISHED
June 2, 2018
The appointment of Gina Haspel as the new CIA director has brought the issue of extraordinary rendition and CIA torture back onto the radar, opening up a much-needed debate that has revealed how little is known about the program and its victims more than a decade after the CIA claims to have shut it down.
The program would not have been possible without the complicity of dozens of states worldwide; the fact that Haspel ran a CIA torture prison in Thailand in 2002 is evidence of this. A 2013 Open Society Justice Initiative report mentions 54 foreign governments participating, with 27 of them in Europe. Claims have been made concerning other states, too. Like Haspel, government officials in these countries have been evasive about their role in the CIA program.
Further light has been shed on the scale of global complicity in a ruling made by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg on May 31, finding Lithuania and Romania complicit in the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program.
The complaint against Lithuania, brought by CIA torture “poster child” Abu Zubaydah, found that he had been held at the purpose-built “Site Violet” from February 2005 to March 2006; the state had known about his treatment there and facilitated his onward journey to further torture, all in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights‘ absolute ban on the use of torture.
The complaint against Romania was brought by Abd Al Nashiri, who is currently facing the death penalty at Guantánamo in a case whose evidence was obtained through the years of torture he suffered in CIA black sites. The Court found “it had been proved that a CIA secret detention centre had operated in Romania from September 2003 to November 2005 and that Mr Al Nashiri had been held there from April 2004 to at the latest November 2005.” According to the 2014 US Senate Torture Report: “Mr Al Nashiri was subjected to rectal feeding at one point in 2004 when being held in Bucharest because he had tried to go on a hunger strike and in 2005 he was on the ‘verge of a breakdown.'”
It was the first time the European Court of Human Rights had recourse to the redacted 2014 report to back up evidence presented by the victims’ counsel. With the two badly tortured men safely and conveniently locked away at Guantánamo Bay, with highly limited access to others due to their status as high-value detainees, the court was unable to question them and had to rely on other information and experts.
The European Court of Human Rights also found that the two states had breached other human rights of the victims, particularly through their failure to investigate properly, and ordered them to pay €100,000 in compensation respectively.
This latest judgment, which can be appealed in the next three months, means that five European states have now been found complicit in the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program, after Macedonia, Italy and Poland.
The 2012 ruling against Macedonia, for its arrest and handover to the US of German-Lebanese national Khaled El Masri, was particularly important, as it was the first time ever that a state was brought to account for its complicity in extraordinary rendition, and indicated that such states are not above the law.
The case against Poland is similar to the latest judgments in that it established, for the first time, that a European state had knowingly allowed the CIA to run a detention and torture facility in its territory, similar to the site run by Gina Haspel in Thailand. While there were indeed many other individuals held at all of these facilities during the period in which they operated, the fact that the complaint was brought by the same two victims as in the latest judgments demonstrates the perverse nature of the CIA torture program. Both were held at other secret torture facilities, before and after, in different locations around the world over a number of years.
The $250,000 compensation Poland was ordered to pay the two men appears to have provoked more controversy than the $15 million the CIA is reported to have paid Poland to host the facility. Although payments to other states are mentioned in the Senate Torture Report, the exact amounts paid and to whom are not disclosed.
In the US, a known torturer has been promoted to the head of the CIA and no one involved in the program at any level has ever been prosecuted. Positive action taken in other countries is thus welcome, but it should not be forgotten that the European Court of Human Rights is a court of last instance, a resort after all other avenues have been exhausted. States are supposed to investigate their own complicity adequately and carry out the necessary prosecutions. That has not happened in any European state. Instead, states remain in denial or are noncommittal to investigating their role.
Macedonia, the first country to be found complicit, issued a formal apology to Khaled El Masri in April 2018, but it “has yet to open a formal criminal inquiry into what happened, or to hold anyone to account.” Similarly, Poland’s investigation is reportedly still ongoing, more than two years after the judgment against it became final.
In its latest judgments, the European Court of Human Rights recommended that Lithuania conclude its reopened investigation into Abu Zubaydah’s ordeal swiftly and punish those involved. No details have been made public of Romania’s alleged criminal investigation, which the court urged it to conclude and “aim to identify and, where appropriate, punish those responsible.”
In Al Nashiri’s case, Romania was also found guilty of breaching his rights with respect to a fair trial and the death penalty. The court urged Romania “to seek assurances from the US authorities that he will not suffer the death penalty.” While Al Nashiri has now successfully sued two European states for their role in his torture by the US, his military commission at Guantánamo, which has been indefinitely suspended since February 2018, demonstrates the farcical and arbitrary nature of those proceedings. The impact of this latest ruling on that case, if any, remains to be seen.
Hosting torture facilities for the CIA is only one way in which European states have been complicit, as demonstrated by the British government’s apology for its role in the rendition of a Libyan dissident and his pregnant wife from Southeast Asia to Libya in 2004. Many states allowed CIA torture flights to land and refuel at their airports. States, such as the Netherlands and Finland, have failed to investigate adequately and remain in denial about what they knew and what they allowed. The European Parliament, which held its own inquiry in 2007, has repeatedly called on member states to investigate and prosecute those responsible for enabling torture if necessary.
While there have been calls in the US to investigate and prosecute Gina Haspel, investigations into collusion in the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program must also take place worldwide. It is not enough for senior officials‘ claims to be taken at face value when they purport to have known nothing at the time. Torture victims and the general public should not have to wait years for cases to go to international courts before states are forced to take some form of action. The global conspiracy of silence around the extraordinary rendition program must be broken. With Donald Trump threatening to bring back torture, states must demonstrate that they will not collude again in the CIA’s illegal activities.
The program would not have been possible without the complicity of dozens of states worldwide; the fact that Haspel ran a CIA torture prison in Thailand in 2002 is evidence of this. A 2013 Open Society Justice Initiative report mentions 54 foreign governments participating, with 27 of them in Europe. Claims have been made concerning other states, too. Like Haspel, government officials in these countries have been evasive about their role in the CIA program.
Further light has been shed on the scale of global complicity in a ruling made by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg on May 31, finding Lithuania and Romania complicit in the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program.
The complaint against Lithuania, brought by CIA torture “poster child” Abu Zubaydah, found that he had been held at the purpose-built “Site Violet” from February 2005 to March 2006; the state had known about his treatment there and facilitated his onward journey to further torture, all in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights‘ absolute ban on the use of torture.
The complaint against Romania was brought by Abd Al Nashiri, who is currently facing the death penalty at Guantánamo in a case whose evidence was obtained through the years of torture he suffered in CIA black sites. The Court found “it had been proved that a CIA secret detention centre had operated in Romania from September 2003 to November 2005 and that Mr Al Nashiri had been held there from April 2004 to at the latest November 2005.” According to the 2014 US Senate Torture Report: “Mr Al Nashiri was subjected to rectal feeding at one point in 2004 when being held in Bucharest because he had tried to go on a hunger strike and in 2005 he was on the ‘verge of a breakdown.'”
It was the first time the European Court of Human Rights had recourse to the redacted 2014 report to back up evidence presented by the victims’ counsel. With the two badly tortured men safely and conveniently locked away at Guantánamo Bay, with highly limited access to others due to their status as high-value detainees, the court was unable to question them and had to rely on other information and experts.
The European Court of Human Rights also found that the two states had breached other human rights of the victims, particularly through their failure to investigate properly, and ordered them to pay €100,000 in compensation respectively.
This latest judgment, which can be appealed in the next three months, means that five European states have now been found complicit in the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program, after Macedonia, Italy and Poland.
The 2012 ruling against Macedonia, for its arrest and handover to the US of German-Lebanese national Khaled El Masri, was particularly important, as it was the first time ever that a state was brought to account for its complicity in extraordinary rendition, and indicated that such states are not above the law.
The case against Poland is similar to the latest judgments in that it established, for the first time, that a European state had knowingly allowed the CIA to run a detention and torture facility in its territory, similar to the site run by Gina Haspel in Thailand. While there were indeed many other individuals held at all of these facilities during the period in which they operated, the fact that the complaint was brought by the same two victims as in the latest judgments demonstrates the perverse nature of the CIA torture program. Both were held at other secret torture facilities, before and after, in different locations around the world over a number of years.
The $250,000 compensation Poland was ordered to pay the two men appears to have provoked more controversy than the $15 million the CIA is reported to have paid Poland to host the facility. Although payments to other states are mentioned in the Senate Torture Report, the exact amounts paid and to whom are not disclosed.
In the US, a known torturer has been promoted to the head of the CIA and no one involved in the program at any level has ever been prosecuted. Positive action taken in other countries is thus welcome, but it should not be forgotten that the European Court of Human Rights is a court of last instance, a resort after all other avenues have been exhausted. States are supposed to investigate their own complicity adequately and carry out the necessary prosecutions. That has not happened in any European state. Instead, states remain in denial or are noncommittal to investigating their role.
Macedonia, the first country to be found complicit, issued a formal apology to Khaled El Masri in April 2018, but it “has yet to open a formal criminal inquiry into what happened, or to hold anyone to account.” Similarly, Poland’s investigation is reportedly still ongoing, more than two years after the judgment against it became final.
In its latest judgments, the European Court of Human Rights recommended that Lithuania conclude its reopened investigation into Abu Zubaydah’s ordeal swiftly and punish those involved. No details have been made public of Romania’s alleged criminal investigation, which the court urged it to conclude and “aim to identify and, where appropriate, punish those responsible.”
In Al Nashiri’s case, Romania was also found guilty of breaching his rights with respect to a fair trial and the death penalty. The court urged Romania “to seek assurances from the US authorities that he will not suffer the death penalty.” While Al Nashiri has now successfully sued two European states for their role in his torture by the US, his military commission at Guantánamo, which has been indefinitely suspended since February 2018, demonstrates the farcical and arbitrary nature of those proceedings. The impact of this latest ruling on that case, if any, remains to be seen.
Hosting torture facilities for the CIA is only one way in which European states have been complicit, as demonstrated by the British government’s apology for its role in the rendition of a Libyan dissident and his pregnant wife from Southeast Asia to Libya in 2004. Many states allowed CIA torture flights to land and refuel at their airports. States, such as the Netherlands and Finland, have failed to investigate adequately and remain in denial about what they knew and what they allowed. The European Parliament, which held its own inquiry in 2007, has repeatedly called on member states to investigate and prosecute those responsible for enabling torture if necessary.
While there have been calls in the US to investigate and prosecute Gina Haspel, investigations into collusion in the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program must also take place worldwide. It is not enough for senior officials‘ claims to be taken at face value when they purport to have known nothing at the time. Torture victims and the general public should not have to wait years for cases to go to international courts before states are forced to take some form of action. The global conspiracy of silence around the extraordinary rendition program must be broken. With Donald Trump threatening to bring back torture, states must demonstrate that they will not collude again in the CIA’s illegal activities.
Meat and fish multinationals 'jeopardising Paris climate goals'
New index finds many of the world’s largest protein producers failing to measure or report emissions, despite accounting for 14.5% of greenhouse gases
Bibi van der Zee and Andrew Wasley
the guardian
Wed 30 May 2018 02.00 EDT
Meat and fish companies may be “putting the implementation of the Paris agreement in jeopardy” by failing to properly report their climate emissions, according to a groundbreaking index launched today.
Three out of four (72%) of the world’s biggest meat and fish companies provided little or no evidence to show that they were measuring or reporting their emissions, despite the fact that, as the report points out, livestock production represents 14.5% of all greenhouse gas emissions.
“It is clear that the meat and dairy industries have remained out of public scrutiny in terms of their significant climate impact. For this to change, these companies must be held accountable for the emissions and they must have credible, independently verifiable emissions reductions strategy,” said Shefali Sharma, director of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy European office.
The new Coller FAIRR Protein Producers Index has examined the environmental and social commitments of 60 of the world’s largest meat and fish producers and found that more than half are failing to properly document their impact, despite their central role in our lives and societies.
Many of the names in the index will be unfamiliar, but their consolidated revenues of $300bn cover around one-fifth of the global livestock and aquaculture market – roughly one in every five burgers, steaks or fish.
The companies looked at by the index include giants like the Australian Agricultural Company, which has the biggest cattle herd in the world; the Chinese WH Group, the largest global pork company; or the US’s Sandersons, which processes more than 10 million chickens a week.
Many of them run vertically integrated systems, sourcing meat from contracted farmers around the world, processing it themselves through their own slaughter and packing houses and then selling on to frontline, more familiar companies such as McDonalds, Walmart, Nestle and Danone.
But a close examination by the Farm Animal Investment Risk and Return (FAIRR) group has shown that, despite their critical part in our food system, these companies appear to be neglecting some of their social responsibilities.
The food system, according to FAIRR, is “very sensitive to changing public sentiment”, and really large sums of investor money in the sector are often at risk due to little-understood risks. The organisation, founded by financier Jeremy Coller in 2015, aims to shed greater light on these risks.
Animal welfare, water scarcity, deforestation and working conditions were some of the areas in which the 60 largest protein-producing companies around the world were assessed. The index looked at self-declared information from each company, and set a wide range of key performance indicators such as targets for deforestation reduction, a policy on antibiotic reduction, or water exposer of supply chains. Overall 60% were found to be “either not managing critical risks or are failing to disclose basic information”.
“The findings from this first index create cause for concern,” said the report’s introduction. “There is still a worrying lack of ESG [environmental, social and governance] data availability and disclosure … despite the sector’s myriad sustainability impacts.”
Climate change emerged as a particular concern. Despite the fact that, according to the report, livestock production represents 14.5% of all greenhouse gas emissions, almost 72% of companies provided little or no evidence to show that they were measuring or reporting their emissions. Some 19 companies received the lowest possible mark in this section, including Australia Agricultural Company, Cal-Maine (a US company which reportedly produced 1bn eggs in 2017), Russian Cherkizovo and Indian Venky’s. This, the report argues, may be “putting the implementation of the Paris agreement in jeopardy”. The Guardian approached these companies for comment but received no response.
Studies over the last decade have repeatedly shown that the production of red meat is energy and water-intensive compared to the production of most grains and vegetables. But many government officials appear to be reluctant to suggest that consumers should reduce their meat consumption.
Antibiotic use also stood out. Antibiotic resistance has soared in recent decades and is now considered one of the biggest public health threats facing the world. The role of farming and food production in spreading resistant bacteria has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years as growing evidence points to a direct threat to human health from veterinary overuse of antibiotics on farms.
Despite this, there has been a “widespread failure to respond” to the crisis, the report says. The report says that 77% of the sector - 46 companies worth an estimated $239bn - rank “high risk” on antibiotic stewardship, with “little or no measures in place to reduce excessive use of antibiotics”.
Abigail Herron, global head of responsible investment, Aviva Investors, said: “Our research shows that three in four of these companies are ignoring the calls from regulators, health professionals and the financial community to manage and reduce their use of antibiotics. That failure puts both global public health and their business models at risk.”
Indian poultry giant Venky’s is among the companies ranked as “high risk” on antibiotics. Sanderson Farms, one of the US’s largest poultry producers, is also given bottom-tier ranking.
Venky’s was recently found by an investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism to be advertising colistin, a so-called “last resort” antibiotic, for sale as a growth promoter in India, one of five pharma companies found to be doing the same.
Deforestation is another area in which many companies are falling short. A recent analysis by Forest 500found that despite cattle production being the biggest driver of tropical production globally, only 17% of assessed cattle companies had a policy addressing forest production. And the Coller Index finds that of the 24 companies processing beef and dairy (where deforestation is a particular risk), only one is assessed as “low risk”.
“From an investment point of view, it is not only this $300bn group of companies at risk but the wider multi-trillion dollar global food supply chain ... Investors sit at the top of the chain as ultimate owners of these listed businesses. They need to use their influence as responsible stewards of these assets to start a dialogue on best practice and encourage a race to the top to build a more sustainable food system,” said Aarti Ramachandran, head of research and corporate engagement at FAIRR.
“A major, systemic change is needed in the way we source protein if we are to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, habitat loss and water stress. This can only be achieved if businesses and policymakers, working with the latest food technologies and scientific advice, collaborate to create a sustainable and nutritious food revolution that meets tomorrow’s demand,” said Emily Farnworth, Head of Climate Change Initiatives, World Economic Forum.
“It’s always worth remembering that there is no such thing as cheap meat—these industries have been subsidised for years by the public because we pay for their environmental pollution, public health costs that they do not account for in their business model. This is where governments need to step in,” said Sharma.
Three out of four (72%) of the world’s biggest meat and fish companies provided little or no evidence to show that they were measuring or reporting their emissions, despite the fact that, as the report points out, livestock production represents 14.5% of all greenhouse gas emissions.
“It is clear that the meat and dairy industries have remained out of public scrutiny in terms of their significant climate impact. For this to change, these companies must be held accountable for the emissions and they must have credible, independently verifiable emissions reductions strategy,” said Shefali Sharma, director of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy European office.
The new Coller FAIRR Protein Producers Index has examined the environmental and social commitments of 60 of the world’s largest meat and fish producers and found that more than half are failing to properly document their impact, despite their central role in our lives and societies.
Many of the names in the index will be unfamiliar, but their consolidated revenues of $300bn cover around one-fifth of the global livestock and aquaculture market – roughly one in every five burgers, steaks or fish.
The companies looked at by the index include giants like the Australian Agricultural Company, which has the biggest cattle herd in the world; the Chinese WH Group, the largest global pork company; or the US’s Sandersons, which processes more than 10 million chickens a week.
Many of them run vertically integrated systems, sourcing meat from contracted farmers around the world, processing it themselves through their own slaughter and packing houses and then selling on to frontline, more familiar companies such as McDonalds, Walmart, Nestle and Danone.
But a close examination by the Farm Animal Investment Risk and Return (FAIRR) group has shown that, despite their critical part in our food system, these companies appear to be neglecting some of their social responsibilities.
The food system, according to FAIRR, is “very sensitive to changing public sentiment”, and really large sums of investor money in the sector are often at risk due to little-understood risks. The organisation, founded by financier Jeremy Coller in 2015, aims to shed greater light on these risks.
Animal welfare, water scarcity, deforestation and working conditions were some of the areas in which the 60 largest protein-producing companies around the world were assessed. The index looked at self-declared information from each company, and set a wide range of key performance indicators such as targets for deforestation reduction, a policy on antibiotic reduction, or water exposer of supply chains. Overall 60% were found to be “either not managing critical risks or are failing to disclose basic information”.
“The findings from this first index create cause for concern,” said the report’s introduction. “There is still a worrying lack of ESG [environmental, social and governance] data availability and disclosure … despite the sector’s myriad sustainability impacts.”
Climate change emerged as a particular concern. Despite the fact that, according to the report, livestock production represents 14.5% of all greenhouse gas emissions, almost 72% of companies provided little or no evidence to show that they were measuring or reporting their emissions. Some 19 companies received the lowest possible mark in this section, including Australia Agricultural Company, Cal-Maine (a US company which reportedly produced 1bn eggs in 2017), Russian Cherkizovo and Indian Venky’s. This, the report argues, may be “putting the implementation of the Paris agreement in jeopardy”. The Guardian approached these companies for comment but received no response.
Studies over the last decade have repeatedly shown that the production of red meat is energy and water-intensive compared to the production of most grains and vegetables. But many government officials appear to be reluctant to suggest that consumers should reduce their meat consumption.
Antibiotic use also stood out. Antibiotic resistance has soared in recent decades and is now considered one of the biggest public health threats facing the world. The role of farming and food production in spreading resistant bacteria has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years as growing evidence points to a direct threat to human health from veterinary overuse of antibiotics on farms.
Despite this, there has been a “widespread failure to respond” to the crisis, the report says. The report says that 77% of the sector - 46 companies worth an estimated $239bn - rank “high risk” on antibiotic stewardship, with “little or no measures in place to reduce excessive use of antibiotics”.
Abigail Herron, global head of responsible investment, Aviva Investors, said: “Our research shows that three in four of these companies are ignoring the calls from regulators, health professionals and the financial community to manage and reduce their use of antibiotics. That failure puts both global public health and their business models at risk.”
Indian poultry giant Venky’s is among the companies ranked as “high risk” on antibiotics. Sanderson Farms, one of the US’s largest poultry producers, is also given bottom-tier ranking.
Venky’s was recently found by an investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism to be advertising colistin, a so-called “last resort” antibiotic, for sale as a growth promoter in India, one of five pharma companies found to be doing the same.
Deforestation is another area in which many companies are falling short. A recent analysis by Forest 500found that despite cattle production being the biggest driver of tropical production globally, only 17% of assessed cattle companies had a policy addressing forest production. And the Coller Index finds that of the 24 companies processing beef and dairy (where deforestation is a particular risk), only one is assessed as “low risk”.
“From an investment point of view, it is not only this $300bn group of companies at risk but the wider multi-trillion dollar global food supply chain ... Investors sit at the top of the chain as ultimate owners of these listed businesses. They need to use their influence as responsible stewards of these assets to start a dialogue on best practice and encourage a race to the top to build a more sustainable food system,” said Aarti Ramachandran, head of research and corporate engagement at FAIRR.
“A major, systemic change is needed in the way we source protein if we are to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, habitat loss and water stress. This can only be achieved if businesses and policymakers, working with the latest food technologies and scientific advice, collaborate to create a sustainable and nutritious food revolution that meets tomorrow’s demand,” said Emily Farnworth, Head of Climate Change Initiatives, World Economic Forum.
“It’s always worth remembering that there is no such thing as cheap meat—these industries have been subsidised for years by the public because we pay for their environmental pollution, public health costs that they do not account for in their business model. This is where governments need to step in,” said Sharma.
Colombia vows to indict companies accused of funding death squads
by Adriaan Alsema - columbia reports
May 25, 2018
Colombia’s chief prosecutor on Thursday promised results of more than 16,000 criminal investigations into the country’s private sector’s ties to illegal armed groups.
The announcement came less than two weeks after the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights (IACHR) heard victims of paramilitary groups, many of which were formed and funded by ranchers and corporations.
The phenomenon of using paramilitary death squads for profit has become known as “para-economics.”
Thousands of ranchers, miners, farming companies and corporations were never taken to court four decades after the first paramilitary groups formed.
“Almost all of the presumed perpetrators in this criminal chain remain unpunished,” victims rights defenders reportedly told the IACHR.
According to the social leaders, Colombia’s justice system has failed to “respond to the court orders and investigations that have emerged from already implemented transitional justice” systems.
Prosecutor General Nestor Humberto Martinez said this is about to change.
“From now on you will begin seeing the results of the 29 macro-investigations we have virtually completed,” the chief prosecutor told press.
Martinez said his office has a backlog of 16,407 court orders to investigate ties between illegal armed groups, the private sector and state officials.
The prosecution said in 2015 that 12,000 businessmen were being investigated for their ties to illegal armed groups. Martinez said the ongoing investigations implicate 1,017 private sector parties and 2,300 state officials.
Among the businesses that have been accused of supporting death squads are mayor companies including the country’s largest soft drink producer, Postobon, and Cementos Argos, the country’s largest cement company.
Paramilitary groups emerged in Colombia in the 1980s to protect the business interests of drug traffickers, legal businesses and politicians from left-wing guerrilla attacks.
These groups, however, imposed a reign of terror by assassinating and disappearing tens of thousands of civilians, which spurred the United States to declare paramilitary umbrella organization AUC a foreign terrorist organization in 2002.
The announcement came less than two weeks after the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights (IACHR) heard victims of paramilitary groups, many of which were formed and funded by ranchers and corporations.
The phenomenon of using paramilitary death squads for profit has become known as “para-economics.”
Thousands of ranchers, miners, farming companies and corporations were never taken to court four decades after the first paramilitary groups formed.
“Almost all of the presumed perpetrators in this criminal chain remain unpunished,” victims rights defenders reportedly told the IACHR.
According to the social leaders, Colombia’s justice system has failed to “respond to the court orders and investigations that have emerged from already implemented transitional justice” systems.
Prosecutor General Nestor Humberto Martinez said this is about to change.
“From now on you will begin seeing the results of the 29 macro-investigations we have virtually completed,” the chief prosecutor told press.
Martinez said his office has a backlog of 16,407 court orders to investigate ties between illegal armed groups, the private sector and state officials.
The prosecution said in 2015 that 12,000 businessmen were being investigated for their ties to illegal armed groups. Martinez said the ongoing investigations implicate 1,017 private sector parties and 2,300 state officials.
Among the businesses that have been accused of supporting death squads are mayor companies including the country’s largest soft drink producer, Postobon, and Cementos Argos, the country’s largest cement company.
Paramilitary groups emerged in Colombia in the 1980s to protect the business interests of drug traffickers, legal businesses and politicians from left-wing guerrilla attacks.
These groups, however, imposed a reign of terror by assassinating and disappearing tens of thousands of civilians, which spurred the United States to declare paramilitary umbrella organization AUC a foreign terrorist organization in 2002.
another trump fuck-up!!!
Trump versus Rwanda in trade battle over used clothes
Clement Uwiringiyimana, Joe Bavier - reuters
MAY 24, 2018 / 12:14 AM
KIGALI/ABIDJAN (Reuters) - Early last year, weeks after Donald Trump was sworn in as president, a little known American trade association filed a petition with the U.S. Trade Representative.
That seven-page letter set Africa in the cross-hairs of the new administration’s ‘America First’ trade ideology, pitting the world’s largest economy against tiny Rwanda over an unlikely U.S. export: cast-off clothes.
In March, the USTR warned Rwanda it would lose some benefits under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), America’s flagship trade legislation for Africa, in 60 days after it increased tariffs on second-hand clothes to support its local garment industry.
“The president’s determinations underscore his commitment to enforcing our trade laws and ensuring fairness in our trade relationships,” Deputy U.S. Trade Representative C.J. Mahoney said, announcing the decision.
The 60-day grace period expires on May 28.
But no matter the outcome, the row is further straining Washington’s relations with Africa at a time when it is being aggressively courted by America’s global competitors, not least China.
Beijing has invested tens of billions of dollars in the continent, most recently as part of its huge Belt and Road foreign trade strategy.
Under AGOA, enacted in 2000 with the aim of using trade to boost development, qualifying African countries are granted duty-free access to the U.S. market for 6,500 exported products.
The current dispute, which also initially involved Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, has received none of the attention of Trump’s trade war with China or his haggling with North American neighbors.
Yet critics – including former U.S. trade officials – see in it a worrying indication of how Washington will approach trade relations with Africa.
“It delegitimizes so much of what we’ve worked for for so many years,” said Gail Strickler, who served as the top U.S. trade official on textiles until 2015. “I think it’s horrible. I think it’s sad. I think it’s pathetic and I think it’s obscene.”
MADE IN RWANDA
Since her husband was murdered in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, Devotha Mukankusi has relied heavily on the UTEXRWA garment factory in the capital Kigali.
“I survived the genocide together with my kids. But it’s thanks to this job that they have grown up,” she said, her voiced raised above the drone of sewing machines as she supervised a group of women assembling police uniforms.
Some 800,000 people - 10 percent of Rwanda’s population - were killed in the genocide. The economy was crushed.
Rwanda has bounced back in the past decade or so. As part of a drive to become a middle-income country by 2020, it is nurturing a garment sector it hopes can create 25,000 jobs.
But domestic demand for locally produced clothes has been stifled, east African governments say, by the ubiquity of cheap, second-hand garments imported from Europe and the United States.
The manager of the factory where Mukankusi works says the facility is only running at 40 percent capacity and second-hand garments, which can sell at well below his production costs, are at least partly to blame.
In response, East African Community (EAC) members Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Uganda increased tariffs on used clothing in July 2016. Rwanda hiked import duties from 20 cents to $2.50 per kilogram.
At Kigali’s Biryogo market, where shoppers pick through bales of used garments, the downside of the increase in duties was immediate.
“Before, even with a little money, you could buy enough second-hand clothes for a child. But some children in my neighborhood are now naked,” Fillette Umugwaneza, 24, a mother of two told Reuters. “It is a disgrace to our country.”
Rwanda’s government argues such hardships will be short-lived. Opening new factories will create more, better paid jobs, while expanding domestic consumption will cut its external trade deficit, it says.
That will take time, admits Clare Akamanzi, CEO of the Rwanda Development Board, but early results are encouraging.
“Just in the last two or three years ... we’ve seen almost three times growth in production of garments and textiles for the economy,” she said.
The government is also seeking to attract companies targeting the export market, like U.S. designer Kate Spade which assembles high-end handbags in Rwanda. It’s a strategy that has flourished elsewhere in Africa under AGOA, with duty-free exports from the continent to the U.S. market almost quadrupling to over $1 billion since the law was enacted.
The ultimatum from the office of the USTR, however, has thrown up a potential roadblock to further growth.
It acted after receiving a complaint in March last year from the Secondary Materials and Recycled Textiles Association (SMART), a U.S.-based organization which represents companies that collect and resell Americans’ used clothing.
Selling America’s used clothing - much of it donated to charities and the bulk of it originally made outside the United States - is a nearly $1 billion industry. Exports typically end up in poor nations. Africa is a key destination.
SMART said the EAC duty increase violated AGOA.
“It basically was a shutdown in the market for my members,” SMART Executive Director Jackie King told Reuters. “When Rwanda particularly wanted the duties increased by 1,100 percent, it just wasn’t possible to do business there.”
The USTR agreed to review the AGOA status of all four countries. That decision shocked some veteran trade officials in Washington.
“AGOA clearly has a criterion that the beneficiary countries must be eliminating barriers to U.S. trade,” said Florie Liser, former Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Africa under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
“That’s kind of always been there, but no one was looking to go after the AGOA countries.”
SELF-RELIANT
The mere prospect of losing AGOA benefits was enough to push Kenya, which in 2017 exported nearly $340 million worth of apparel duty-free to the United States, to back down.
The remaining east African nations initially tried to defend their position at a USTR hearing in July, rejecting SMART’s assertion that the new tariffs had cost 24,000 American jobs in the first nine months. Using U.S. trade data, they pointed out that the decline in exports to the EAC that SMART blamed for the job losses had already begun four years before the 2016 duty increase.
Data compiled by agoa.info, an online information portal about AGOA run by the South Africa-based Trade Law Centre, indicates that U.S. used clothing exports to Rwanda in particular actually increased slightly in 2016.
SMART has not publicly disclosed the survey of its members used to calculate the job losses, saying it contains proprietary information.
The EAC also accused SMART of inflating the importance of the east African market to the industry. Trade data showed the United States shipped around $24 million worth of used clothing to the EAC in 2016.
SMART, however, added another $100 million in exports it said were shipped to third countries for processing before being re-exported. By its calculation the EAC represented over a fifth of the U.S. industry’s global market.
After the July 2017 hearing, Uganda and Tanzania followed Kenya’s example and capitulated, agreeing to roll back tariffs to pre-2016 levels.
Rwanda has held out. If it does not concede by the end of this month it faces losing duty-free access for its garment exports.
“The United States has been explicit about what Rwanda must do to adhere to the AGOA eligibility criteria,” a U.S. official told Reuters. “It is up to Rwanda to make a decision.”
The dispute has provoked dismay in Washington and Africa.
“(Africans) are watching. They’re shocked and they’re livid,” said Rosa Whitaker, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton as the United States’ first Assistant Trade Representative for Africa and helped draft the original AGOA legislation.
She called the Trump administration’s actions bullying and predicted they would backfire.
“African countries, from what they’re telling me, are feeling abandoned. We’ve just ceded it to China.”
Devotha Mukankusi is more matter of fact about the trade tiff. She’s survived genocide and the Trump administration doesn’t worry her, she said.
“My message for Trump is that it won’t affect us. We are determined to be self-reliant. We’ll make our own clothes.”
That seven-page letter set Africa in the cross-hairs of the new administration’s ‘America First’ trade ideology, pitting the world’s largest economy against tiny Rwanda over an unlikely U.S. export: cast-off clothes.
In March, the USTR warned Rwanda it would lose some benefits under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), America’s flagship trade legislation for Africa, in 60 days after it increased tariffs on second-hand clothes to support its local garment industry.
“The president’s determinations underscore his commitment to enforcing our trade laws and ensuring fairness in our trade relationships,” Deputy U.S. Trade Representative C.J. Mahoney said, announcing the decision.
The 60-day grace period expires on May 28.
But no matter the outcome, the row is further straining Washington’s relations with Africa at a time when it is being aggressively courted by America’s global competitors, not least China.
Beijing has invested tens of billions of dollars in the continent, most recently as part of its huge Belt and Road foreign trade strategy.
Under AGOA, enacted in 2000 with the aim of using trade to boost development, qualifying African countries are granted duty-free access to the U.S. market for 6,500 exported products.
The current dispute, which also initially involved Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, has received none of the attention of Trump’s trade war with China or his haggling with North American neighbors.
Yet critics – including former U.S. trade officials – see in it a worrying indication of how Washington will approach trade relations with Africa.
“It delegitimizes so much of what we’ve worked for for so many years,” said Gail Strickler, who served as the top U.S. trade official on textiles until 2015. “I think it’s horrible. I think it’s sad. I think it’s pathetic and I think it’s obscene.”
MADE IN RWANDA
Since her husband was murdered in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide, Devotha Mukankusi has relied heavily on the UTEXRWA garment factory in the capital Kigali.
“I survived the genocide together with my kids. But it’s thanks to this job that they have grown up,” she said, her voiced raised above the drone of sewing machines as she supervised a group of women assembling police uniforms.
Some 800,000 people - 10 percent of Rwanda’s population - were killed in the genocide. The economy was crushed.
Rwanda has bounced back in the past decade or so. As part of a drive to become a middle-income country by 2020, it is nurturing a garment sector it hopes can create 25,000 jobs.
But domestic demand for locally produced clothes has been stifled, east African governments say, by the ubiquity of cheap, second-hand garments imported from Europe and the United States.
The manager of the factory where Mukankusi works says the facility is only running at 40 percent capacity and second-hand garments, which can sell at well below his production costs, are at least partly to blame.
In response, East African Community (EAC) members Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Uganda increased tariffs on used clothing in July 2016. Rwanda hiked import duties from 20 cents to $2.50 per kilogram.
At Kigali’s Biryogo market, where shoppers pick through bales of used garments, the downside of the increase in duties was immediate.
“Before, even with a little money, you could buy enough second-hand clothes for a child. But some children in my neighborhood are now naked,” Fillette Umugwaneza, 24, a mother of two told Reuters. “It is a disgrace to our country.”
Rwanda’s government argues such hardships will be short-lived. Opening new factories will create more, better paid jobs, while expanding domestic consumption will cut its external trade deficit, it says.
That will take time, admits Clare Akamanzi, CEO of the Rwanda Development Board, but early results are encouraging.
“Just in the last two or three years ... we’ve seen almost three times growth in production of garments and textiles for the economy,” she said.
The government is also seeking to attract companies targeting the export market, like U.S. designer Kate Spade which assembles high-end handbags in Rwanda. It’s a strategy that has flourished elsewhere in Africa under AGOA, with duty-free exports from the continent to the U.S. market almost quadrupling to over $1 billion since the law was enacted.
The ultimatum from the office of the USTR, however, has thrown up a potential roadblock to further growth.
It acted after receiving a complaint in March last year from the Secondary Materials and Recycled Textiles Association (SMART), a U.S.-based organization which represents companies that collect and resell Americans’ used clothing.
Selling America’s used clothing - much of it donated to charities and the bulk of it originally made outside the United States - is a nearly $1 billion industry. Exports typically end up in poor nations. Africa is a key destination.
SMART said the EAC duty increase violated AGOA.
“It basically was a shutdown in the market for my members,” SMART Executive Director Jackie King told Reuters. “When Rwanda particularly wanted the duties increased by 1,100 percent, it just wasn’t possible to do business there.”
The USTR agreed to review the AGOA status of all four countries. That decision shocked some veteran trade officials in Washington.
“AGOA clearly has a criterion that the beneficiary countries must be eliminating barriers to U.S. trade,” said Florie Liser, former Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Africa under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
“That’s kind of always been there, but no one was looking to go after the AGOA countries.”
SELF-RELIANT
The mere prospect of losing AGOA benefits was enough to push Kenya, which in 2017 exported nearly $340 million worth of apparel duty-free to the United States, to back down.
The remaining east African nations initially tried to defend their position at a USTR hearing in July, rejecting SMART’s assertion that the new tariffs had cost 24,000 American jobs in the first nine months. Using U.S. trade data, they pointed out that the decline in exports to the EAC that SMART blamed for the job losses had already begun four years before the 2016 duty increase.
Data compiled by agoa.info, an online information portal about AGOA run by the South Africa-based Trade Law Centre, indicates that U.S. used clothing exports to Rwanda in particular actually increased slightly in 2016.
SMART has not publicly disclosed the survey of its members used to calculate the job losses, saying it contains proprietary information.
The EAC also accused SMART of inflating the importance of the east African market to the industry. Trade data showed the United States shipped around $24 million worth of used clothing to the EAC in 2016.
SMART, however, added another $100 million in exports it said were shipped to third countries for processing before being re-exported. By its calculation the EAC represented over a fifth of the U.S. industry’s global market.
After the July 2017 hearing, Uganda and Tanzania followed Kenya’s example and capitulated, agreeing to roll back tariffs to pre-2016 levels.
Rwanda has held out. If it does not concede by the end of this month it faces losing duty-free access for its garment exports.
“The United States has been explicit about what Rwanda must do to adhere to the AGOA eligibility criteria,” a U.S. official told Reuters. “It is up to Rwanda to make a decision.”
The dispute has provoked dismay in Washington and Africa.
“(Africans) are watching. They’re shocked and they’re livid,” said Rosa Whitaker, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton as the United States’ first Assistant Trade Representative for Africa and helped draft the original AGOA legislation.
She called the Trump administration’s actions bullying and predicted they would backfire.
“African countries, from what they’re telling me, are feeling abandoned. We’ve just ceded it to China.”
Devotha Mukankusi is more matter of fact about the trade tiff. She’s survived genocide and the Trump administration doesn’t worry her, she said.
“My message for Trump is that it won’t affect us. We are determined to be self-reliant. We’ll make our own clothes.”
Here Are Four Ways Fentanyl Could Radically Disrupt the Global Drug Trade
It's not just wreaking havoc on the streets of American cities.
By Phillip Smith / Independent Media Institute - alternet
May 22, 2018, 9:56 AM GMT
The synthetic opioid fentanyl isn't just killing American drug users by the thousands; its emergence also signals a shift in the decades-old contours of the global drug trade, with ramifications not only for traditional drug-producing countries and drug trafficking networks but also for U.S. foreign policy.
Synthesized from chemicals—not from papaver somniferum, the opium poppy--fentanyl is about 50 times stronger than heroin and is severely implicated in the country's drug overdose crisis, accounting for almost 20,000 deaths in 2016.
Illicit fentanyl is typically mixed with other opiates, such as heroin, resulting in much stronger doses of opioids that users expect, thus leading to opioid overdoses. But it is also increasingly also showing up in non-opiate drugs, resulting in fentanyl overdose deaths among unsuspecting methamphetamine and cocaine users.
But the havoc super-potent fentanyl is wreaking among drug users pales in comparison with the dramatic changes it could prompt in the global illicit drug production industry. As academic researchers Vanda Felbab-Brown, Jonathan Caulkins, and Keith Humphreys write in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, fentanyl's rise has the potential to cause disruption and innovation in black markets.
Here are four ways fentanyl alters the illegal drug production and distribution status quo:
1. It doesn't require an agricultural base.
Virtually all of the other opioids on the black market, from heroin to morphine, oxycodone, and hydrocodone, require land to grow poppies on. And they require land that is outside the effective control of the state. Non-state actors who can control such areas, whether it’s the Taliban in Afghanistan or the drug cartels in southern and western Mexico, reap the profits and power of that control. With the ascent of lab-produced fentanyl made out of chemicals, traditional opiate producers should see their profits and their influence undermined.
2. It doesn't require a large workforce.
Traditional opium production requires a large seasonal workforce of people to plant and tend the poppies, score the pods and scrape off the leaking opium, and then process and package the raw opium. Other workers will get jobs processing raw opium into heroin. All of those jobs bring money into the hands of poor agricultural families and political capital to the traffickers, whether it’s the Taliban in Afghanistan or the cartels in Mexico. With fewer job opportunities to offer up, the traffickers lose clout.
3. It doesn't require an elaborate smuggling infrastructure. Because fentanyl is so potent, small amounts of the drug can contain huge numbers of doses, and that means it doesn't require transportation networks of trucks, planes, and boats to get an agricultural crop from the valleys of Afghanistan or the mountains of Mexico to consumers in the U.S. Fentanyl is so potent, medicinal doses are measured in micrograms, and packages of it worth hundreds of thousands of dollars can fit inside a Priority Mail envelope. With smuggling fentanyl as easy as dropping a package in the mail, international drug smuggling organizations now have competition they never had before.
4. All of this can change the dynamics of U.S. foreign policy. If plant-based opiates lose market share to synthetics in the future, this can both weaken insurgencies (Afghanistan) and criminal networks (Mexico). Ever since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, drug warriors have been constrained in their efforts to go after the Afghan opium crops because of fears it would drive poppy-dependent peasants into the hands of the Taliban. If opium production becomes relatively less important vis-à-vis fentanyl production, that constraint on an aggressive U.S. response to Afghan opium production is weakened. Similarly, in Mexico, to the degree that fentanyl displaces peasants and processors and weakens the link between drug cartels and rural populations, it increases the ability of the Mexican government and its American backers to crack down even harder on the cartels.
Under drug prohibition, there is a strong impetus to come up with more pure, more potent, and more compact products. Fentanyl is the ultimate expression of that imperative, and its arrival is changing the contours of the global drug industry—and who knows how it will play out.
Synthesized from chemicals—not from papaver somniferum, the opium poppy--fentanyl is about 50 times stronger than heroin and is severely implicated in the country's drug overdose crisis, accounting for almost 20,000 deaths in 2016.
Illicit fentanyl is typically mixed with other opiates, such as heroin, resulting in much stronger doses of opioids that users expect, thus leading to opioid overdoses. But it is also increasingly also showing up in non-opiate drugs, resulting in fentanyl overdose deaths among unsuspecting methamphetamine and cocaine users.
But the havoc super-potent fentanyl is wreaking among drug users pales in comparison with the dramatic changes it could prompt in the global illicit drug production industry. As academic researchers Vanda Felbab-Brown, Jonathan Caulkins, and Keith Humphreys write in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, fentanyl's rise has the potential to cause disruption and innovation in black markets.
Here are four ways fentanyl alters the illegal drug production and distribution status quo:
1. It doesn't require an agricultural base.
Virtually all of the other opioids on the black market, from heroin to morphine, oxycodone, and hydrocodone, require land to grow poppies on. And they require land that is outside the effective control of the state. Non-state actors who can control such areas, whether it’s the Taliban in Afghanistan or the drug cartels in southern and western Mexico, reap the profits and power of that control. With the ascent of lab-produced fentanyl made out of chemicals, traditional opiate producers should see their profits and their influence undermined.
2. It doesn't require a large workforce.
Traditional opium production requires a large seasonal workforce of people to plant and tend the poppies, score the pods and scrape off the leaking opium, and then process and package the raw opium. Other workers will get jobs processing raw opium into heroin. All of those jobs bring money into the hands of poor agricultural families and political capital to the traffickers, whether it’s the Taliban in Afghanistan or the cartels in Mexico. With fewer job opportunities to offer up, the traffickers lose clout.
3. It doesn't require an elaborate smuggling infrastructure. Because fentanyl is so potent, small amounts of the drug can contain huge numbers of doses, and that means it doesn't require transportation networks of trucks, planes, and boats to get an agricultural crop from the valleys of Afghanistan or the mountains of Mexico to consumers in the U.S. Fentanyl is so potent, medicinal doses are measured in micrograms, and packages of it worth hundreds of thousands of dollars can fit inside a Priority Mail envelope. With smuggling fentanyl as easy as dropping a package in the mail, international drug smuggling organizations now have competition they never had before.
4. All of this can change the dynamics of U.S. foreign policy. If plant-based opiates lose market share to synthetics in the future, this can both weaken insurgencies (Afghanistan) and criminal networks (Mexico). Ever since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, drug warriors have been constrained in their efforts to go after the Afghan opium crops because of fears it would drive poppy-dependent peasants into the hands of the Taliban. If opium production becomes relatively less important vis-à-vis fentanyl production, that constraint on an aggressive U.S. response to Afghan opium production is weakened. Similarly, in Mexico, to the degree that fentanyl displaces peasants and processors and weakens the link between drug cartels and rural populations, it increases the ability of the Mexican government and its American backers to crack down even harder on the cartels.
Under drug prohibition, there is a strong impetus to come up with more pure, more potent, and more compact products. Fentanyl is the ultimate expression of that imperative, and its arrival is changing the contours of the global drug industry—and who knows how it will play out.
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