PREPARING FOR INVASION

US blacklists two top Haiti politicians as 'drug traffickers'

Paul HANDLEY
Fri, November 4, 2022


The United States imposed sanctions on two top Haitian politicians, former Senate President Joseph Lambert and former senator Youri Latortue, accusing them of being longtime drug traffickers.

The US Treasury said Lambert, who made a bid for the presidency last year, and Latortue, formerly a top security official, "have abused their official positions to traffic drugs and collaborated with criminal and gang networks to undermine the rule of law in Haiti."

In a parallel statement placing Lambert on the State Department's blacklist, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the powerful politician was involved in "significant corruption and a gross violation of human rights."

Blinken said there was also credible evidence that Lambert was behind an extrajudicial killing.

The announcements, which said Canada was also sanctioning the two, came as the international community seeks to help the Haitian government restore order and regain control of crucial port facilities after a surge in gang violence.

Since mid-September armed gangs have virtually paralyzed Haiti, including blockading the most important oil terminal of the country, causing shortages of fuel and drinking water.

On Monday UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the Security Council that it was urgent to act on a proposal to send an international peacekeeping force to Haiti to deal with the "nightmare" there.

John Kirby, spokesman for the White House’s National Security Council, said Friday that discussions were ongoing on a multinational force for Haiti.

"We're actively involved in talking with a variety of partners about what a force could look like," he said.

"No decisions have been made about any one particular state participating," he said, adding that the force would be restricted to "provision of humanitarian assistance."

- Gangs and drugs -

Both Lambert and Latortue have been accused of close associations with gangs.

A classified 2006 US diplomatic memo leaked in 2010 by Wikileaks said Latortue "may well be the most brazenly corrupt of leading Haitian politicians."

It identified him as the "first cousin once removed" of former prime minister Gerard Latortue.

The Treasury said Lambert and Latortue have long histories of drug trafficking.

Both were deeply involved in trafficking cocaine from Colombia and Haiti, gave protection to other traffickers, and ordered followers to carry out violent acts on their behalf.

"The United States and our international partners will continue to take action against those who facilitate drug trafficking, enable corruption, and seek to profit from instability in Haiti," said Treasury Under Secretary Brian Nelson in a statement.

Kirby said US authorities "stand ready to take additional action as appropriate against other bad actors."

Treasury sanctions seek to seize any assets that those named have under US jurisdiction and block any US individuals or entities, including international banks with US offices, from doing business with them.

The State Department designation generally bans them from entry into the United States. The State Department also blacklisted Lambert's wife Jesula Lambert Domond.

pmh/md

Italy allows ships carrying 179 migrants to dock

The charity rescue ships, have been at sea off Italy for more than a week waiting for permission from Rome to dock.

Layla Maghribi - 

A migrant child on board the 'Ocean Viking' in the Mediterranean Sea on November 2, 2022.

 AFP© VINCENZO CIRCOSTA

Italy will allow a ship carrying 179 migrants rescued in the Mediterranean Sea to dock so medics can carry out health checks, the country's foreign minister said Friday.

Antonio Tajani said that Humanity 1, a German-flagged vessel, would head for Catania, Sicily, and "be able to stay in our territorial waters for the time necessary for us to examine all the emergencies on board".

More than 1,000 migrants who were trying to reach Europe are currently aboard three rescue boats, and Italy has faced mounting pressure to let the humanitarian ships dock.

The charity rescue ships, including the Norwegian flag-bearing Ocean Viking and Geo Barents, have been at sea off Italy for more than a week waiting for permission from Rome to dock.

The Norwegian-flagged vessels have more than 800 people on board and are sailing off Sicily, while the German-flagged Humanity 1 has 179 people, including more than 100 unaccompanied minors and a seven-month-old baby with her mother.

"We will accept all those people, for example because they are minors, or because, according to what we know from the media, they are pregnant women or with young children, or people with fever", Mr Tajani said.

But he warned that "all those who do not meet these criteria will have to be removed from our territorial waters by the ship".

Norway ambassador to Italy said. it will not take in almost 1,000 migrants stranded in the Mediterranean.

In an email statement to Reuters, ambassador Johan Vibe said Norway had “no responsibility” to take in the people on board two private Norwegian-flagged vessels.

The Norwegian ambassador’s response came after Italy’s new Prime Minister Georgia Meloni suggested that the countries under whose flags the ships are operating should take in the rescued migrants.

Italy sent letters last week to the embassies of Germany and Norway, saying non-government organisation (NGO) ships flying their flags were not following European security rules and were undermining the fight against illegal immigration.

"The primary responsibility for co-ordinating the work to ensure a safe port for those in distress at sea lies with the state responsible for the search-and-rescue area where such assistance has been rendered.

"Neighbouring coastal states also have a responsibility in such matters," Mr Vibe’s statement said.

The German embassy on Wednesday urged Italy to provide help swiftly, saying the NGO ships made an important contribution to saving lives at sea.

On Thursday, the charity SOS Mediterranee, which operates the Ocean Viking, said it had asked Greece, Spain and France.

French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin told RMC-BFMTV that international law said Italy should take in the migrants, but also said that Paris and Berlin were ready to offer assistance.

"We have told our Italian friends, together with our German friends, that we are ready to take in, clearly as we have done in previous cases, some of the women and children so that Italy is not alone in receiving them," he said.

Search-and-rescue co-ordinator for SOS Humanity, Nicola Stalla, called the “blockade at sea” a “disgrace” and said delays in disembarking could have “life-threatening consequences”.

Petra Krischok, a press officer at the German NGO, SOS Humanity, who is aboard the vessel, posted on Twitter that the migrants were sleeping on the deck and could soon face rough seas after days of good weather.

In a video posted on the social media platform, a doctor on Humanity 1, said people aboard were getting sicker and suffering from skin problems, psychological stress; some showed signs of having experienced violence.

Earlier in the week, the Italian interior minister Matteo Piantedosi told the Corriere della Sera daily newspaper that Italy “cannot take in migrants who are picked up at sea by foreign ships operating without any planned co-ordination with the authorities”.

Migrant numbers have surged in Italy over the past week, with more than 6,200 people arriving since October 27 compared with 1,400 in the same period in 2021, according to government data.

The latest figures from the UN refugee agency show there have been just over 83,000 sea arrivals in Italy this year.

France attempts to match immigration policies with labour needs

Tiffany FILLON - 

The French government on Wednesday announced a bill that would create a specific residence permit to enable illegal immigrants who work in understaffed sector to legalise their status. The new measure aims to fight the exploitation of undocumented migrants and comes at a time when many European countries are experiencing labour shortages.


 Boris Horvat, AFP

Immigration took centre stage in France this week, with the issue of expulsion orders for undocumented migrants dominating the political discourse, followed by a parliamentary uproar after a far-right MP on Thursday yelled “Go back to Africa!” as a Black legislator from the far left asked a question on migrant arrivals.

The latest turmoil was sparked when Carlos Martens Bilongo of the far-left France Unbowed party (LFI) was questioning the government’s response to migrants rescued at sea in recent days.

Gregoire de Fournas, a newly elected member of the far-right, anti-immigration National Rally (RN), claimed he shouted, "They should go back to Africa!", but was interrupted.

In French, the pronunciations for the pronouns "he” and "they" are similar. The comment was perceived as a suggestion by de Fournas that his Black parliamentary colleague go back to Africa.

On Friday, de Fournas was slapped with a 15-day suspension from French National Assembly along with a pay cut.

Thursday’s parliamentary furor came a day after the French government unveiled a series of new measures that attempt to integrate immigration policies with labour market needs.

The balancing act between immigration and employment was on display in a joint interview of Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin and Labor Minister Olivier Dussopt with French daily Le Monde on Wednesday.

"If I had to summarise, I would say that we must now be tough on the bad guys and kind to the rule-abiders,” Darmanin told Le Monde.

The new immigration bill, which will be debated in parliament in early 2023, will speed up the expulsion of some undocumented migrants while creating residency permits for undocumented migrants who are already in France and who want to work in sectors suffering labour shortages.

While the ministers did not reveal which industries will be covered by the new bill, France has many understaffed sectors that are heavily dependent on foreign workers, such as construction, restaurants, hotels and agriculture.

New ‘skills in demand’ permit

The creation of the “métiers en tension” – or "skills in demand" – residence permit was inspired by a 2012 official circular that allowed migrants who have been on French soil for several years and have been working for several months to obtain a residence permit. Cases are examined on a case-by-case basis. The procedure requires a work contract or an employment letter. The duration of the residence permit depends on the duration of the work contract.

Related video: Does the racist comment in French Parliament compromise the far right party's strategy of normalization?   Duration 3:11   View on Watch

With the proposed “skills in demand” residence permit, an uncocumented worker will be able to personally apply for legal status "without going through the employer", who may have a vested interest in keeping workers in their undocumented status, explained Dussopt. Since undocumented workers are not covered by French labour law, they often work for lower pay under exploitative conditions.

The ministers have not yet specified whether undocumented migrants will have to present a work contract or employment letter (as is already the case under the 2012 circular). If this is still the case, the provision enabling migrants to apply for a permit “without going through the employer” would seem contradictory.

The creation of the “skills in demand” residence permit enables France to "fight a lot of irregularities and abuses, such as illegal work or ‘rogue' companies that regularly employ illegal immigrants, which constitutes unfair competition for companies that do business by the book," Emmanuelle Auriol, an economist at the Toulouse School of Economics, told AFP.

Economic migrants need not clog asylum system

The new immigration measures are mostly symbolic, according to Virginie Guiraudon of SciencesPo’s Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics. The government aims to "provide a political impetus or to position itself politically on the issue", she explained.

Guiraudon cited the example of Stéphane Ravacley, a baker in the eastern French town of Besançon, and his apprentice, Laye Fodé Traoréiné, a young man of Guinean origin. Their story created a media stir in France when Ravacley went on a hunger strike in January 2021 to demand the legalisation of his apprentice, who was subject to an explusion order when he, as a teenaged undocumented immigrant, turned 18.

Ravacley, a portly French baker, had to be hospitalised during his hunger strike. His petition on Change.org calling for his apprentice’s legalisation got more than 200,000 signatures and mobilised the town as well as celebrities across France.

The case of the small-town baker and his apprentice highlighted public approval for enabling migrants to access and retain employment even as the far-right RN party increases its vote share in successive elections.

Guiraudon notes that, “we may not need a law to regularise undocumented migrants" since “the real problem in France is that we have to wait months, sometimes years, to get an answer from the prefecture about our papers".

Despite the shortfalls of the immigration system, including its long delays, Catherine Wihtol de Wenden from SciencesPo’s Centre for International Studies welcomes the new measures, which she explained are realistic and could help address immigration fraud. These include numerous cases of economic migrants clogging France’s asylum system with refugee status applications. "This new residence permit will encourage people not to apply for asylum since they know that they will be able to apply for a legal work status,” she noted.

The new measures have been supported by MEDEF, France’s largest employers organisation. But conservative and far-right critics say they don’t go far enough in addressing illegal immigration.

‘Selective immigration’

In his interview with Le Monde, Darmanin noted that the government was trying to implement a policy of "selective immigration" or, more precisely, "selected regulation". The idea, the interior minister explained, was to regulate immigration in a measured, rather than a massive, scale.

The government has not specified whether the “selected” regulations will apply to new arrivals or will be restricted to undocumented migrants already in France.

Centre-right French governments over the past decade have attempted to implement policies similar to the points-based systems in Australia and Canada, where immigration eligibility is determined by an applicant’s ability to score above a threshold number of points in a scoring system that includes factors such as education level, work skills and language fluency. The US also maintains an occupations list for H-1B work visas. When he was in power, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy proposed a “jobs in demand” residence permit as well as immigration quotas before giving up on the proposals.

In Europe, there is a growing awareness of the need to address labour shortages, according to immigration experts. "In European countries, there is an awareness of the lack of labour supplied by nationals and the need to open up the labour market to immigration. This is a good sign, because it will allow a number of people to work legally in Europe," explained Wihtol de Wenden.

When he took office in December, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz famously declared that “Germany is an immigration country”. Addressing the Bundestag, the new chancellor said it was “high time we understand ourselves. Therefore, it’s high time we make it easier for immigrants to become German citizens.”

The new German administration promised to attract 400,000 qualified workers each year, and in June, it approved a plan allowing “assimilated” immigrants without residence permits to have easier access to integration and professional language courses.

Another reform unveiled in July allows foreigners to come to Germany if they can provide proof of work experience and an employment contract in the country. Germany is also preparing to set up a points system, like Australia and Canada, to attract qualified workers.

In southern Europe, Italy, which is confronting a rapidly ageing population, makes massive use of the migrant population, particularly for low-skilled jobs in the agricultural sector, construction, and the hotel and restaurant industries. Guiraudon cites the example of "women who work in homes for the elderly in Italy" and who benefit from a specific residence permit. "In Italy, does this completely protect the employees? These are still very poorly paid jobs, so it doesn't solve all the problems," she warned.

Italy’s policy of "selected immigration" could however be challenged by extreme right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s new government, which openly opposes immigration.

(This article is adapted from the original in French.)

Surge in claims puts UK asylum system under pressure


By AFP
Published November 4, 2022

Britain is grappling with an increased number of asylum-seekers and applications - Copyright AFP Daniel LEAL

Marie HEUCLIN

Britain is struggling to cope with an increase in asylum-seekers, as numbers risking their lives to cross the Channel on small boats hit record levels.

Overcrowded reception centres and long delays to process applications are causing a political headache for the government, which promised tighter immigration controls post-Brexit.

Several newspapers this week carried the image of a young girl running towards the fence of one facility to hand a scribbled message to journalists, criticising conditions inside.

Her note shone an unflattering light on the Manston reception centre in southeast England, where migrants are first taken for identity checks after their arrival, and the system.

Nearly 40,000 people — most of them Albanians, Iranians and Afghans — have been intercepted by patrols already this year, surpassing the total for the whole of the last 12 months.

Increased checks on ferries and lorries by French and British border police have forced desperate migrants onto unsuitable craft to cross one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.

In all, more than 63,000 new asylum applications have been made in the year from June last year — the highest number since the record of more than 80,000 in 2002.

Both Britain’s current interior minister Suella Braverman and her predecessor Priti Patel have described the system as “broken”.

– 449 days –

According to official figures, an asylum-seeker in Britain now waits on average 449 days before getting a response to their application.

For non-accompanied minors, the delay can even stretch to 550 days.

As a result, 166,085 applications are outstanding — double that in June 2020, four MPs told Braverman in a letter on Wednesday.

Peter Walsh, a researcher at the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, described the backlog of cases as “the central problem”.

“The reason, largely, is because asylum claims are being processed more slowly than they had been in the past,” he told AFP.

Walsh has calculated that the number of applications getting a first response within six months — the government’s official policy up to 2019 — fell from 87 percent in 2014 to just six percent in 2021.

Braverman has characterised the increasing number of asylum-seekers as an “invasion” that had paralysed the system, and said the state was faced with eye-watering costs for accommodation while applications are processed.

Her language was widely denounced as inflammatory and even earned a rebuke from the UN’s new human rights supremo.

But a parliamentary committee report published in June said the increasing pressures on the asylum system “are not… a direct consequence of increasing demand”, pointing instead to the processing of applications in Britain.

The MPs blamed “inappropriate” software to handle cases and “insufficient administrative and technical specialist staff”.

Walsh also pointed to “inadequately trained” staff and a high turnover of employees.

– Pressure –

In a sign of the workload, on September 4 this year, nearly 1,000 people were intercepted on small boats in the Channel and brought ashore.

The subject has come to the fore again this week after reports that some 4,000 people were being held at the Manston reception facility near Dover, when its capacity is 1,600.

Last Sunday, firebombs were thrown at another reception facility in Dover by a man who was later found dead.

Local lawmakers, campaigners supporting asylum-seekers and the political opposition are calling on the government to get a grip on the situation.

In the last few days, hundreds have been moved from Manston to hotels hastily reserved by the government.

Yet even here this has not gone smoothly: in Northallerton, northern England, Ukrainian refugees were forced to give up their hotel rooms for asylum-seekers from Manston, The Times reported.

Others were reportedly taken to central London and dropped off near Victoria railway station, forcing them to spend the night on the streets, several media outlets reported.

The government has denied the claim.

Thousands protest in Mali over 'blasphemous' video

Fri, November 4, 2022 


Thousands of demonstrators thronged Mali's capital Bamako on Friday to protest the publication of a video on social media deemed blasphemous against Islam.

Six people were held on Thursday accused of complicity in circulating a "blasphemous" video showing a man making "derogatory comments" and "insulting acts" against Muslims, the Koran and the Prophet Mohammed, the Bamako prosecutor's office said.

Police said the protest, called by the High Islamic Council of Mali (HCM), gathered thousands of people, although organisers estimated their numbers at more than one million.

Slogans including "No to blasphemous comments" and "no more attacks on Islam and the Prophet Mohammed" were visible on the protesters' banners.

"What happened is unforgivable. The author of the blasphemous comments must be arrested and tried," imam Abdoulaye Fadiga told AFP.

Haby Diallo, a teacher at a religious school in her 40s, said she wanted "inter-religious dialogue. Everyone should respect each other's religion".

The six people were put in pre-trial detention notably for refusing to tell authorities where the man -- who is still on the run -- was hiding, a source in the prosecutor's office told AFP.

The affair has caused uproar in Mali, where nearly 95 percent of the population is Muslim and the right to blaspheme does not exist.

The HCM -- a grouping of religious leaders and associations and Mali's highest Islamic body -- has called for the man behind the video to be "killed".

As Violence Torments Ecuadoran City of Guayaquil, Even Police Cower

November 04, 2022 
Agence France-Presse

Ecuadorian soldiers enter the Litoral Penitentiary in Guayaquil,

Ecuador, on Nov. 4, 2022.

GUAYAQUIL, ECUADOR —

Two uniformed agents cower behind a wall, gun at the ready, fearfully eying a car parked outside their police station after nightfall in the violence-stricken Ecuadoran port city of Guayaquil.

Any car near a police station in these parts is viewed with suspicion after a recent spate of gun and explosives attacks blamed on a gruesome gang war that has killed dozens of officers since last year.

Numerous attacks this week in the city of 2.8 million people have killed five police officers and a civilian and injured at least 17 members of the security forces.

Officials say the attacks were a response by organized crime to an ongoing mass transfer of inmates from the infamous Guayas 1 prison in Guayaquil to other jails controlled by different gangs.

On Friday, special police units oversaw the transfer of gang leaders even as journalists and concerned family members who were gathered outside could hear loud detonations coming from the jail.

Even police live in fear in Guayaquil where gangs outgun law enforcement and everything from the port to the prisons are under criminal control.

So far this year, the commercial heart of Ecuador has seen 1,200 homicides — 60% more than in 2021 according to official data.

"I've seen bombs explode," said a Guayaquil gas station attendant who did not want to be named for fear of retribution.

"That's the danger right now. You have to watch out for any motorcyclist: If they leave something behind or throw something ... you have to watch out," he told AFP.

'Not surrender'

Ecuador, once a relatively peaceful neighbor of major cocaine producers Colombia and Peru, has seen a wave of violent crime that authorities blame on turf battles between rival gangs with ties to Mexican cartels.

President Guillermo Lasso responded to this week's rash of attacks by declaring a state of emergency and nighttime curfew in the Guayas and Esmeraldas provinces, which was extended Friday to include Santa Domingo de los Tsachilas.

Ecuadorian soldiers guard the outskirts of the Litoral Penitentiary 

in Guayaquil, Ecuador, Nov. 4, 2022.

He also ordered the deployment of troops to the three provinces, home to a third of Ecuador's 18 million inhabitants.

The streets of Guayaquil, worst hit by the violence, are largely empty at night, and police are on high alert.

They patrol in vans with the lights turned off or barricade themselves at their command posts wearing bulletproof vests.

Streets where politicians' homes are located are fenced off to any traffic and gas station attendants man their posts in fear after a number were targeted in the most recent fear-mongering campaign.

It has become an occupation of "life or death," said one attendant, 21, who did not want to be named and said he feared being shot dead by "merciless" criminals.

Lasso has vowed his government will "not surrender to narco-terrorists."

Ecuador has gone from being a drug transit route in recent years to an important distribution center.

The United States and Europe are the main destinations for drugs from Latin America.

The homicide rate in Ecuador nearly doubled in 2021 to 14 per 100,000 inhabitants and reached 18 per 100,000 between January and October this year, according to official data.

Hundreds of inmates have also died, many beheaded or burned as an extension of the gang war is waged behind bars.

Indigenous people free tourists taken in Peruvian Amazon

Fri, 4 November 2022 


Members of an Indigenous group on Friday freed more than 100 tourists whom they had abducted in the Peruvian Amazon a day earlier to protest what they called government inaction after an oil spill, officials said.

The group of detained tourists -- some 27 from the United States, Spain, France, Britain, Switzerland and 80 from Peru itself -- included several children.

"They are already returning to their places of origin," Tourism Minister Roberto Sanchez told reporters in Lima.

Travelling on a river boat, the tourists were kidnapped Thursday by members of the Cuninico community pressing for government intervention following a September 16 spill of 2,500 tons of crude oil into the Cuninico river.

Community leader Watson Trujillo said Thursday the community took the "radical measure" to try to convince the government to send a delegation to assess the environmental damage to a region home to about 2,500 Indigenous people.

On Friday, the office of Peru's human rights ombudsman said negotiations had led to the Cuninico "accepting our request to release" the tourists.

"They are freeing us all," Angela Ramirez, a Peruvian cyclist who was among the tourists, later told AFP via WhatsApp.

She added there had been "a lot of anxiety, much fatigue" as the group awaited news on their fate and slowly started running out of water and food during the 28-hour ordeal.

The September spill was caused by a rupture in the Norperuano oil pipeline owned by state-owned Petroperu to transport crude oil from the Amazon region to the ports of Piura, on the coast.

According to Petroperu, the spill was the result of an intentional 21-centimeter cut in the pipeline pipe.

et/ljc/mlr/caw

Canadian University makes new review of Mastriano's doctoral research
 

ON MYTHICAL WWI ACE SGT YORK 

 Pennsylvania Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano speaks during a campaign stop in Erie, Pa., Thursday, Sept. 29, 2022. A Canadian university that granted a doctorate in history to Mastriano is investigating a fresh complaint about his work that makes hundreds of allegations of academic fraud. (AP Photo/David Dermer, File)

MARK SCOLFORO
Wed, November 2, 2022 

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A Canadian university that granted a doctorate in history to Doug Mastriano nearly a decade before he became the Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania is investigating a fresh complaint about his work that makes multiple allegations of academic fraud in his recently public dissertation.

University of New Brunswick President Paul Mazerolle told The Associated Press in a phone interview Saturday that the school is also bringing in a team of outsiders to review its policies and procedures for graduate study, including issues raised by how Mastriano's research was handled and evaluated.

“Being subject to a complaint, I need to let that process run its course,” Mazerolle said, “recognizing that there's a time issue, and this is almost 10 years ago this was all propagated. And that's why we need to have this looked at through our complaint processes.”

He said the school's lead integrity officer, chemistry professor David MaGee, is performing an initial review to decide if a full investigation is warranted and who should conduct it. There is no time limit.

Mastriano, who was elected to the Pennsylvania Senate in 2019 after decades as a U.S. Army officer, was awarded a doctorate in history in 2013 for his research into American World War I hero Sgt. Alvin York. But that research, which formed the basis of his 2014 book, has long been criticized by other researchers as inaccurate, sloppy and even fraudulent.

 Mastriano, Oz hold rallies to get out the Republican vote


Mastriano has not directly responded to numerous requests for comment about his research from The Associated Press, going back almost two years, including on Tuesday. He is currently running against Democratic Attorney General Josh Shapiro in the Nov. 8 election for governor.

But on Monday, he discussed his graduate research during an online interview, saying “the left wing goes after our academic work on the right."

“I mean of all the things I’ve done, it was brutal,” he told Real America's Voice, speaking of his doctoral studies. “And I did have concerns that some of the left-leaning professors there would hold my politics or my military background against me.”

One of the rival researchers who has challenged his work, University of Oklahoma history doctoral student James Gregory, sent the new complaint to New Brunswick administrators on Oct. 6, about a month after the school quietly made public Mastriano's doctoral dissertation. Dissertation embargoes like the one that prevented access to Mastriano's work for nearly a decade are among the topics being examined by the outside team Mazerolle is having look into graduate research policies and practices.

“His dissertation and subsequent book are built upon falsified research," Gregory wrote in a cover letter to a list of what he described as 213 cases of academic misconduct in Mastriano's doctoral thesis. “This has polluted the historiography of Alvin York causing every historian who used his work to have an inaccurate base on which their claims are built.”

In the letter addressed “to whom it should concern,” Gregory recounted how a complaint he made last year, based on problems he identified with the book, was handled. He said MaGee told him the allegations did not warrant a formal investigation and amounted to honest errors that would be corrected.

But Gregory argued the corrections made in response to issues with the book, which were appended to the dissertation in 2021 before it was posted online this August, are themselves “plagued with academic misconduct" and ignored most of what Gregory complained about last year.

“I find this to be a gross case of incompetence for a university which is supposed to uphold academic integrity,” Gregory said. “Not only does it showcase the poor response to a serious allegation, but it also reduces the reputation and level of standards for all other students at the University of New Brunswick.”

Mastriano's dissertation, largely a biography of the war hero from Tennessee, also documented his attempt to locate the precise spot of York's famed gun battle in the woods of northern France in the waning days of the war.

A faculty member who evaluated the work, New Brunswick history professor Jeff Brown, said Mastriano's degree was granted over his protests. Armed with his doctorate, Mastriano finished his military career by teaching at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, until 2017.

The controversy led some current New Brunswick history graduate students to seek a meeting with their department head, and Mazerolle said the fallout has caught his attention.

“I'm hearing generally two things” from faculty and graduate students, Mazerolle said. “One is that people are wanting to get on with their work and that this is kind of a distraction. And then I'm hearing on the other side, there are people who are deeply concerned and worrying about the reputation of the department and worried about the reputation of people's degrees.”

Mazerolle said the external reviewers of the school's processes and policies, who have not yet been named, will focus on the role of faculty advisors as well as the handling of embargoed dissertations.

Richard Yeomans, a doctoral student in history at New Brunswick was among about 20 graduate students who met with administrators to discuss the matter about two weeks ago. He said in an email Wednesday that he doubts MaGee can be impartial, given his response to Gregory’s 2021 complaint.

The graduate students have been “collectively unimpressed with how this situation has been handled, and the disruptions that this has caused to all of us. Of course, we want to get back to our research, but we want and need accountability to do so,” Yeomans said.

Days after filing the new complaint, Gregory received an email from MaGee saying the initial investigation was starting right away.

“It’s unfortunate that it took an entire publicity debacle for UNB to look for actual reviewers to confirm my complaints. I can only hope they do their due diligence this time in regards to the faulty dissertation,” Gregory said Tuesday. “They should also make sure to correct the issues that led to this poor example of research being awarded a Ph.D.”

Trump, Mastriano's wife criticize Jews for not loving Israel enough


Ben Adler
Senior Editor
Wed, November 2, 2022

Republican gubernatorial candidate for Pennsylvania Governor Doug Mastriano, with his wife, Rebecca, left. (Mark Makela/Getty Images)

Prominent Republicans, including former President Donald Trump and the wife of Pennsylvania GOP gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano, have recently engaged in an unusual form of antisemitism: attacking American Jews for being insufficiently loyal to Israel.

The most recent instance was last Saturday, when an Israeli reporter asked Mastriano, a Pennsylvania state senator, about his association with the antisemitic founder of the far-right social network Gab and Mastriano’s criticism of his Democratic opponent for sending his children to a Jewish school.

Mastriano’s wife, Rebecca Mastriano, then stepped in front of the microphones and offered a her own response.

“As a family, we so much love Israel,” she said. “In fact, I’m going to say we probably love Israel more than a lot of Jews do, I have to say that.”

She then added that she and her husband have been involved for “at least 10 years [in] outreach to Israel and Jerusalem. We have — I had — visited Israel, say, for five years.”

By responding to a question about antisemitism with a pivot to Israel and a swipe at the many American Jews who do not necessarily support all of the Israeli government’s policies, experts on antisemitism say Mastriano was playing into long-standing tropes that depict Jews as foreigners with loyalty to another country.

“She’s basically saying, how dare you raise the question of antisemitism? We’re more committed to the state of Israel — i.e. the Jewish people, for her — than many Jews,” Eliyahu Stern, a professor of modern Jewish history at Yale University, told Yahoo News. “That’s very problematic. Mastriano’s comments make evangelicals more authentic Jews than Jews. They seek to divide Jews against themselves.”

Supporters of Donald Trump wave Israeli and U.S. flags on U.S. Election Day, in Carmiel, Israel, Nov. 3, 2020. (Ariel Schalit/AP)

Mastriano’s comments were similar to an Oct. 16 post by Trump on Truth Social, in which the former president also suggested that Jews in the United States are insufficiently supportive of Israel.

“No President has done more for Israel than I have,” Trump wrote. “Somewhat surprisingly, however, our wonderful Evangelicals are far more appreciative of this than the people of the Jewish faith, especially those living in the U.S. Those living in Israel, though, are a different story - Highest approval rating in the World, could easily be P.M.! U.S. Jews have to get their act together and appreciate what they have in Israel - Before it is too late!”

Trump’s messaging on Jews is deeply problematic, experts say.

“On the one hand, you see [extremist candidates] using antisemitism, and on the other hand, they seem to use this pro-Israel language of a means of offsetting their hateful language against Jews,” Jack Rosen, president of the American Jewish Congress, told Yahoo News. “To use Israel as a wedge ... that doesn’t help Israel at all, and it upsets the Jewish community.”

Surveys show American Jews have the same breadth of political concerns as their non-Jewish neighbors. A national survey by the Jewish Electorate Institute in September asked Jewish voters to choose the two issues most important to them this year, and found that Israel was the ninth most popular choice, tied with affordable housing, and chosen as a top-two issue by only 7% of voters. That’s far lower than the proportion who chose issues such as the future of democracy, abortion, inflation and the economy, and climate change.

“Our issues are American issues: the welfare of people in the country, health care, education etc.” Rosen said, “We’re not a single-issue community.” 

A voter at Frank McCourt High School, an early voting polling site, in Manhattan, Nov. 1.

 (Ted Shaffrey/AP)

Many American Jews also bristle at the implication that criticizing policies of the right-leaning Israeli government means one is insufficiently committed to Israel.

“‘I love Israel’ could be interpreted as a blanket statement that Israel can do no wrong,” said Andy Bachman, a Reform rabbi and former executive director of the Jewish Community Project of Lower Manhattan. “What they’re really saying is Republicans will give Israel a blank check.”

But immunity from criticism isn’t in Israel’s best interest, Bachman added.

“To truly love a child is to point out a child’s errors,” Bachman said. “To truly love a child is to criticize a child because criticism leads to growth.”

Mastriano’s opponent, Pennsylvania Attorney General Joshua Shapiro, is an observant Jew who sends his children to Jewish day school, for which Mastriano has repeatedly attacked him. Mastriano calls it a “privileged, exclusive, elite” school, and has said that it demonstrates Shapiro’s “disdain for people like us.”

Jenna Ellis, a campaign aide to Mastriano, falsely claimed on Twitter that “Shapiro is at best a secular Jew in the same way Joe Biden is a secular Catholic.”

Mastriano’s campaign paid paid $5,000 to the Christian nationalist social media platform Gab, whose founder Andrew Torba has made a number of antisemitic statements including one in which he said that Jews are not welcome in the conservative movement. “We don't want people who are atheists,” Torba said in a livestream. “We don’t want people who are Jewish. We don't want people who are, you know, nonbelievers, agnostic, whatever. This is an explicitly Christian movement because this is an explicitly Christian country.”

Torba also said that he and Mastriano do not do interviews with reporters who aren’t Christian. “[Mastriano] does not talk to these people,” Torba said. “He does not give press access to these people. These people are dishonest. They’re liars. They’re a den of vipers, and they want to destroy you.”

Under pressure to renounce Torba’s statements, Mastriano issued a statement rejecting antisemitism.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro speaking at Triumph Baptist Church, Oct. 29.

 (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

On Monday, a coalition of Democratic and progressive Jewish groups called on Mehmet Oz, the Republican senatorial nominee in Pennsylvania, to unendorse Mastriano. “Despite the recent rise in antisemitism, Oz has refused to denounce Mastriano’s hate speech and instead continues to endorse and support him,” leaders of Democratic Majority of Israel, Jewish Democratic Council of America, Democratic Jewish Outreach PA, Pittsburgh Jews Unite Against Extremism and the “pro-Israel, pro-peace” organization J Street wrote in a statement.

On Wednesday, the Washington Post reported that Mastriano was featured in a 2019 film about the Holocaust that scholars say is inaccurate and offensive. In it, a Holocaust survivor asks a modern-day school board to include the Holocaust in school textbooks — while also deploying conservative talking points about gun control and abortion. “It’s time to say never again!” the survivor played by Mastriano says about abortion, repurposing a familiar refrain about the genocide of Jews. “It is offensive to weaponize the Holocaust for political ends, yet that is what this film does and quite proudly,” Neil Leifert, director of the Center for Holocaust and Jewish Studies at Penn State, told the Post.

Trump has repeatedly complained that American Jews do not reward the Republican Party’s blanket support for Israel — which he has referred to as “your country” when speaking to American Jews — regarding the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “Jewish people who live in the United States don’t love Israel enough,” Trump told an Orthodox Jewish magazine last year. In 2019, he said “any Jewish people who would vote for a Democrat, I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty.” Since at least 71% of Jewish voters lean Democratic, according to a Pew Research Center study from 2020, Trump essentially called the majority of the Jewish population ignorant or disloyal.

In 2017, Trump infamously said there were “some very fine people” among the white nationalists who held a rally in Charlottesville, Va., and chanted “Jews will not replace us,” in reference to the “great replacement“ theory that also motivated the mass shooter who killed 11 at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018.

Trump has also engaged in crude ethnic stereotyping about Jews as transactional and obsessed with money. In 2015, he told the Republican Jewish Committee, “I don’t want your money, therefore you’re probably not going to support me,” and “I’m a negotiator like you, folks; we’re negotiators. ... This room negotiates perhaps more than any room I’ve spoken to — maybe more.”

Mastriano’s and Trump’s recent comments come at a time in which open antisemitism has become a regular occurrence, including recent comments by the hip-hop artist Kanye West and Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving. The Anti-Defamation League found that antisemitic incidents reached an all-time high in 2021.

“I’m concerned at a time of rising antisemitism, [Mastriano is] dodging the question to talk about Israel instead,” Stern said.

GOP Senate candidate Mehmet Oz with former Donald Trump at a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Sept. 3. (Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images)

Mastriano’s campaign and a representative for Trump’s did not respond to a request for comment.

Mastriano is a staunch social conservative who has said that the separation of church and state in the U.S. is a “myth.” His wife’s comments, like Trump’s, stem in part from the embrace of Israel by many evangelical Christians, who believe that the Jewish return to the Holy Land is a necessary condition for the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the subsequent rapture, in which Christians will ascend to Heaven. Jews, many evangelicals believe, will be left behind to suffer tribulations such as earthquakes and stars falling from the sky.

Christian Republicans have sometimes accused Jews of being inadequately supportive of the Israeli government. For instance, in 2014, then-Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., said Jewish leaders who supported the Obama administration’s agreement with Iran to prevent the country from obtaining nuclear weapons “sold out Israel.”

“For the better part of the last 40 years, the Christian evangelical community has been very proud of its blanket support for Israeli policy,” Bachman said. “The evangelical movement, in particular, really gives Israel for all intents and purposes carte blanche, does not believe it’s acceptable to criticize Israel.”

“There also is a kind of millennialist movement afoot and they see support for Israel as necessary to bring about the messianic age and the return of Jesus and the rapture,” Bachman added.

Then-presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at the Republican Jewish Coalition Presidential Forum in Washington, Dec. 3, 2015. (Susan Walsh/AP)

Comparisons of evangelicals and Jews on the question of loyalty to Israel invites more antisemitism, some observers say.

“This doesn’t come out of the blue,” Peter Beinart, editor at large of the magazine Jewish Currents, said in a video posted on his Substack about Rebecca Mastriano’s comments. “This has been Trump’s line, right? Trump has said now repeatedly that basically there’s something wrong with American Jews because they don’t love Israel as much as he does. And again, I think you see the way that Trump has changed American discourse in ways that make antisemitism more legitimate. Right-wing American support, evangelical Christian support for Israel is really nothing new. It goes back certainly to the 1980s. But I think what is more new is this use of the Christian right’s support for Israel as a weapon to attack Jews in the United States.”

“Trump and other Republicans have responded to criticisms that they tolerate and accept antisemitism on the political right, associate with antisemites, or make use of antisemitic stereotypes with defensive statements that themselves have antisemitic undertones,” Chad Goldberg, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin, told Yahoo News in an email. “They expect American Jews to be primarily and even exclusively motivated by allegiance to Israel, which (ignoring Israel’s own internal political conflicts) they nearly always conflate with Israel’s far right.”

And then, using a Yiddish word for audacity — which Bachmann once famously mispronounced — Goldberg added, “Furthermore, with this kind of rhetoric, non-Jewish Republicans arrogate to themselves the authority to distinguish ‘good’ from ‘bad’ Jews. This is not just laughable chutzpah.”

A brief history of the mortgage, from its roots in ancient Rome to the English 'dead pledge' and its rebirth in America



Michael J. Highfield, 

Professor of Finance and Warren Chair of Real Estate Finance, Mississippi State University

THE CONVERSATION
Thu, November 3, 2022 

The average interest rate for a new U.S. 30-year fixed-rate mortgage topped 7% in late October 2022 for the first time in more than two decades. It’s a sharp increase from one year earlier, when lenders were charging homebuyers only 3.09% for the same kind of loan.

Several factors, including inflation rates and the general economic outlook, influence mortgage rates. A primary driver of the ongoing upward spiral is the Federal Reserve’s series of interest rate hikes intended to tame inflation. Its decision to increase the benchmark rate by 0.75 percentage points on Nov. 2, 2022, to as much as 4% will propel the cost of mortgage borrowing even higher.

Even if you have had mortgage debt for years, you might be unfamiliar with the history of these loans – a subject I cover in my mortgage financing course for undergraduate business students at Mississippi State University.

The term dates back to medieval England. But the roots of these legal contracts, in which land is pledged for a debt and will become the property of the lender if the loan is not repaid, go back thousands of years.

Ancient roots

Historians trace the origins of mortgage contracts to the reign of King Artaxerxes of Persia, who ruled modern-day Iran in the fifth century B.C. The Roman Empire formalized and documented the legal process of pledging collateral for a loan.

Often using the forum and temples as their base of operations, mensarii, which is derived from the word mensa or “bank” in Latin, would set up loans and charge borrowers interest. These government-appointed public bankers required the borrower to put up collateral, whether real estate or personal property, and their agreement regarding the use of the collateral would be handled in one of three ways.

First, the Fiducia, Latin for “trust” or “confidence,” required the transfer of both ownership and possession to lenders until the debt was repaid in full. Ironically, this arrangement involved no trust at all.

Second, the Pignus, Latin for “pawn,” allowed borrowers to retain ownership while sacrificing possession and use until they repaid their debts.

Finally, the Hypotheca, Latin for “pledge,” let borrowers retain both ownership and possession while repaying debts.

The living-versus-dead pledge

Emperor Claudius brought Roman law and customs to Britain in A.D. 43. Over the next four centuries of Roman rule and the subsequent 600 years known as the Dark Ages, the British adopted another Latin term for a pledge of security or collateral for loans: Vadium.

If given as collateral for a loan, real estate could be offered as “Vivum Vadium.” The literal translation of this term is “living pledge.” Land would be temporarily pledged to the lender who used it to generate income to pay off the debt. Once the lender had collected enough income to cover the debt and some interest, the land would revert back to the borrower.

With the alternative, the “Mortuum Vadium” or “dead pledge,” land was pledged to the lender until the borrower could fully repay the debt. It was, essentially, an interest-only loan with full principal payment from the borrower required at a future date. When the lender demanded repayment, the borrower had to pay off the loan or lose the land.

Lenders would keep proceeds from the land, be it income from farming, selling timber or renting the property for housing. In effect, the land was dead to the debtor during the term of the loan because it provided no benefit to the borrower.

Following William the Conqueror’s victory at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, the English language was heavily influenced by Norman French – William’s language.

That is how the Latin term “Mortuum Vadium” morphed into “Mort Gage,” Norman French for “dead” and “pledge.” “Mortgage,” a mashup of the two words, then entered the English vocabulary.
Establishing rights of borrowers

Unlike today’s mortgages, which are usually due within 15 or 30 years, English loans in the 11th-16th centuries were unpredictable. Lenders could demand repayment at any time. If borrowers couldn’t comply, lenders could seek a court order, and the land would be forfeited by the borrower to the lender.

Unhappy borrowers could petition the king regarding their predicament. He could refer the case to the lord chancellor, who could rule as he saw fit.

Sir Francis Bacon, England’s lord chancellor from 1618 to 1621, established the Equitable Right of Redemption.

This new right allowed borrowers to pay off debts, even after default.

The official end of the period to redeem the property was called foreclosure, which is derived from an Old French word that means “to shut out.” Today, foreclosure is a legal process in which lenders to take possession of property used as collateral for a loan.

Early US housing history

The English colonization of what’s now the United States didn’t immediately transplant mortgages across the pond.

But eventually, U.S. financial institutions were offering mortgages.

Before 1930, they were small – generally amounting to at most half of a home’s market value.

These loans were generally short-term, maturing in under 10 years, with payments due only twice a year. Borrowers either paid nothing toward the principal at all or made a few such payments before maturity.

Borrowers would have to refinance loans if they couldn’t pay them off.

https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/undergraduate/modules/fulllist/special/statesofdamage/syllabus201516/graeber-debt_the_first_5000_years.pdf

Mobster and drug gang killer ordered released by federal judge: ‘I am letting two murderers sentenced to life out of prison’


John Annese, New York Daily News
Wed, November 2, 2022 

Two convicted killers — including mob capo Anthony Russo, who ordered murders during the bloody Colombo crime family civil war — are being released from prison by a federal judge.

Russo and Paul Moore, a drug trafficker who fatally shot a rival, were given reduced sentences Wednesday by Judge Frederic Block under the First Step Act.

The felons applied for compassionate release under the criminal justice reform bill, which was signed into law by Donald Trump in 2018.

Block noted that Russo and Moore were model prisoners, and that they were punished with life sentences for exercising their right to trial.

“I am letting two murderers sentenced to life out of prison,” Block wrote Wednesday. “But I have painstakingly endeavored to explain why it is the appropriate thing to do under the First Step Act.”

The two men won’t be sprung immediately, but Block cut both their prison terms to 35 years.

That means Russo, 70, still owes six years of his sentence, while Moore, 56, has about three years to go, though both could potentially get credit for good time.

Russo and two others were convicted in 1994 of conspiring to murder John Minerva and Michael Imbergamo during the battle between Colombo boss Victor Orena and Alphonse Persico — the son of jailed Colombo head Carmine “The Snake” Persico. A dozen killings have been linked to the bloody conflict.

Russo served as a captain under Orena, but when the war broke out in 1991, he sided with Persico. On March 25, 1992, Russo’s subordinates stalked Minerva and Imbergamo — who sided with Orena — to a cafe Minerva owned on Long Island, and shot them dead as they walked to their cars.

In his memo, Block praised the First Step Act, which has led to the reduction of more than 4,000 prison sentences. Russo and Moore’s cases “reflect the broad range of issues” that Block believes judges should look at while weighing compassionate release requests,” he wrote.

“The Act was a remarkable piece of bipartisan legislation by an otherwise divided Congress and reflected the realization by lawyers on both sides of the aisle that sentencing reform of the judicial system was sorely needed,” Block said.

Block, 88, has served on the federal bench since his appointment by President Clinton in 1994.

Prior to that, at the retrial in the slaying of a Hasidic man during the 1991 Crown Heights riot, Block asked a Black witness to define the slang term “‘chillin’ for somebody who is not a brother.”

He has a reputation for shooting from the hip, and was ripped on the front page of the Daily News in 2007 with the headline “Judge Blockhead” after he ridiculed prosecutors for seeking the death penalty against a drug kingpin during a racketeering murder trial.

Russo “has clearly demonstrated that he has achieved extraordinary rehabilitation” when he applied for compassionate release in April and pointed to his health problems and his risk of catching COVID-19, Block wrote.

He also contends that Russo shouldn’t be penalized for choosing to go to trial.

“Russo exercised his constitutional right to trial. Of Russo’s 14 co-defendants, seven went to trial. Six received mandatory life sentences under the then-mandatory sentencing guidelines. The seventh was acquitted,” he wrote. “In contrast, the remaining co-defendants received sentences ranging from time-served, equating to approximately four years, to 270 months.”

Those other defendants were accused of actions “no less violent or destructive than those who received life sentences,” he said.

Federal prosecutors opposed Russo’s early release, arguing that he showed a “disregard for the law and human life,” and that he could still become a player in the Colombo crime family.

“Russo rose through the ranks to serve as a captain of the Colombo crime family, a position from which he gave direction to the ‘made men’ who reported to him,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Devon Lash wrote to the judge. “His risk he poses (even at an advanced age) comes from the influence he has over others in the enterprise.”

The judge made similar arguments about Moore, a Jamaican immigrant who served as an enforcer for drug boss Eric Vassell, and was tasked with expanding his gang’s influence from Brooklyn to Texas. Moore and an accomplice shot and killed a rival drug dealer in 1991, and he shot one of his own gang members in the leg to discipline him for disrespecting Vassell, Block wrote.

“Like Russo, Moore has also been the victim of sentencing disparities. Only Moore and one of his 46 co-defendants are serving life sentences,” Block said. “Eric Vassell, who accepted a plea deal, murdered two people and ordered the murders of several others. He is scheduled to be released from prison in December after serving approximately 25 years.”

Moore, who applied for compassionate release last November, has agreed not to fight deportation after he’s freed.

A spokesman for Eastern District of New York U.S. Attorney Breon Peace declined comment.

Lawyers for Russo and Moore did not return messages seeking comment.