No more sacrifices

July 14, 2021

This is the atomic bomb “Little Boy” at the Hunters Point Shipyard being loaded onto the USS Indianapolis on July 15, 1945. That one bomb killed 140,000 people when it was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945. Thursday, July 15, 2021, is the 76th anniversary of the loading of the bomb at the Shipyard.

Statement of solidarity by the Pacific Asian Nuclear-Free Peace Alliance with the people of Bayview Hunters Point, San Francisco 

by Tsukuru Fors, Founding Member, Pacific Asian Nuclear-Free Peace Alliance

On July 15, 1945, a canister of approximately 3 feet by 4 feet and a large crate were loaded onto the USS Indianapolis at Hunters Point in southeastern San Francisco. Nuclear ingredients in the canister and a firing device in the crate were later assembled into an A-bomb called “Little Boy,” which exploded over the sky of Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. 6, 1945, killing as many as 140,000 in a matter of a few months, including 350 students at a high school that I graduated from. 

Both Hiroshima and San Francisco have a special place in my heart. The city of Hiroshima taught me the meaning of belonging in my teenage years, while in my young adulthood San Francisco was the city where I learned to stand firmly in my own conviction. Little did I know that these two cities dear to my soul were somehow tied by an unbreakable bond called the nuclear legacy. 

The connection between the two cities was not a fleeting one. It was not only that the components of the A-bomb passed through the city. Hunters Point has its own toxic legacy of nuclear contamination that has plagued and haunted its residents to this day. 

This is Hiroshima shortly after the bomb was dropped – a major city wiped off the map.

This year I learned that the Hunters Point Shipyard suffered radioactive contamination during the Cold War from ships brought there after atomic-bomb tests. And not only that, but portions of the shipyard were also used by the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory (NRDL), the premier radiation research laboratory of the post-World War II era. Thus, parts of the shipyard have been contaminated by the use, storage, accidental spills and intentional discharges and disposals of radioactive materials. 

In 1994, the Northern California Cancer Center revealed that the SF Bay Area had the highest incidence rates of invasive breast cancer in the world, although the link to the area’s history of radioactive contamination has never been officially substantiated. 

Once victimized, they have been lied to repeatedly, silenced, neglected and abandoned by corporations and governments.

Today some 9,000 Bayview Hunters Point residents are fighting a class action lawsuit to halt multibillion-dollar development at the former shipyard for fear that dust stirred up by construction could be harmful to nearby schools and homes; they are demanding more extensive testing by outside scientists to ensure safety. Another lawsuit is underway against a Navy cleanup contractor Tetra Tech EC for allegedly falsifying radiation tests. 

In 2004, the U.S. EPA, the California Department of Toxic Substances Control and the San Francisco Department of Public Health declared the hilltop portion of the shipyard “safe” for residents, while the 2018 discovery of radioactive objects near the site suggests otherwise. 

Learning all these facts that I did not know before, even though I lived within a half-hour drive of the shipyard for a few years back in the early 1990s, the word that kept echoing in my mind was “sacrifices.” 

This is the plume of radioactivity from the Fukushima nuclear power plant explosion, the largest radiation release into water in history, that has now spread to all the oceans of the world. The 443 nuclear reactors still in use worldwide threaten the health and survival of humankind. Radiation doesn’t dissipate; it has the power to sicken and kill for thousands of years. Everywhere radiation exists, astronomically high rates of cancer and other deadly diseases can be found among the people exposed. – Map: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

Pacific Asian Nuclear-Free Peace Alliance, our small grassroots group in Los Angeles, California, was founded in 2017 as “Fukushima Support Committee,” not only to “support” victims of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, but also to call attention to and to dismantle the political, societal and economic systems that normalize sacrifices of underrepresented communities for the benefit of a select few. Therefore, when we say, “No More Hiroshima, No More Nagasaki, No More Fukushima,” we are referring not only to nuclear attacks in wartime and nuclear power plant accidents, but also to people and communities that have been and continue to be harmed by all activities within the nuclear chain including uranium mining, nuclear testing and dumping of nuclear waste. 

In the case of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, civilians’ lives were sacrificed for the nationalism and militarism of Imperial Japan. In Fukushima, the health and safety of the area residents were and still are jeopardized by corporate greed and political force to protect these corporations. 

Some speculate that Sasebo is becoming a strategic outpost for the US Navy in a possible conflict with China.

People were made to believe that there was no danger or that the perceived risk was worth taking for the promises of good jobs and economic prosperity of the region. However, once victimized, they have been lied to repeatedly, silenced, neglected and abandoned by corporations and governments who should have been accountable for their wellbeing. I see many similarities between Fukushima and Hunters Point. 

On a more personal note, I was born and raised in the US military town of Sasebo, Nagasaki. Sasebo’s main industry has always been shipbuilding and, as such, it has benefitted from the presence of the US Naval base and Japan’s Self Defense Force (JSDF). 

Tsukuru Fors

In 1968, three years before I was born, Sasebo became the site of a violent protest. The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Enterprise docked at Sasebo Harbor and people were angry because many believed the ship was carrying nuclear weapons in violation of a government ban on the manufacture or presence of such weapons on Japanese territory. 

Recently, I was shocked to find that today US nuclear-powered aircraft carriers still dock at Sasebo from time to time, triggering no or little protest. In fact, some speculate that Sasebo is becoming a strategic outpost for the US Navy in a possible conflict with China. This is a frightening thought, but I imagine such concerns are hushed and brushed aside in favor of the promises of good jobs and economic prosperity of the region. 

Across the Pacific Ocean we may be of different races, speak different languages, and prefer different foods; however, we are linked by the nuclear legacy and united by the same pain and suffering. On July 15, the day when the cursed cargo was loaded onto the USS Indianapolis at Hunters Point 76 years ago, I stand in solidarity with people of Bayview-Hunters Point in their fight for the health, safety, equity, and dignity of their community, for we are united in the same fight. No more sacrifices. 

Tsukuru Fors, founding member of the Pacific Asian Nuclear-Free Peace Alliance, can be reached at tsukuru.fors@gmail.com.

 

Long live the Cuban Revolution, a beacon of hope for all humanity

July 14, 2021

Supporters of the Cuban government carry a photograph of Cuba’s late President Fidel Castro during a counterprotest in support of the government in Havana on Sunday. – Photo: Alexandre Meneghini, Reuters

by Gerald A. Perreira

Organization for the Victory of the People (OVP) stands firmly with the revolutionary government of President Diaz-Canel and all the patriotic and anti-imperialist citizens of our Caribbean sister-nation Cuba, as they struggle against this most recent US-backed attempt to provoke counter-revolutionary forces. In the Caribbean and South America, having seen these thinly-veiled US tactics to destabilize progressive and revolutionary governments play out time and time again, most recently in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia, the scenario is familiar and instantly recognizable. 

The Empire’s relentless attempts to wreck Cuba’s economy and break the resolve of the Cuban people since the triumph of the revolution in 1959 is nothing short of a crime against humanity. Last month, for the 29th year in a row, a total of 184 countries voted in favor of a resolution to demand the end of the US economic blockade on Cuba, with only the two rogue states, the United States and Israel, voting against. UN agencies estimate that this illegal economic blockade, designed to foment unrest, has over six decades cost Cuba well over $100 billion. 

How can the US speak of freedom and democracy while, against the will of the world’s people, it continues to enforce this tortuous and criminal economic blockade against a small nation, simply because it dares to exercise its inalienable right to sovereignty and self-determination? 

The immorality, hypocrisy and tyranny of the US Empire has been further exposed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Increased sanctions on Cuba at this time, when, like all nations of the world, it is struggling to overcome the economic and health crisis caused by the pandemic, was correctly described as “obscene” by Argentine President Alberto Fernandez. 

The sanctions, described as an “act of genocide,” and like the virus, asphyxiates and kills.

Especially obscene in light of the fact that Cuba sent medical brigades to COVID epicenters around the world in their hour of need. Cuba became the only country in the Global South to develop COVID vaccines, intended for their own citizens and for distribution to countries in South America, the Caribbean and Africa that have been denied access to vaccines by the US and Western Europe. 

The US imperialists, whose wickedness knows no bounds, have even hindered Cuba’s access to syringes and other supplies to assist in the manufacture and distribution of life-saving vaccines. Cuban Foreign Affairs Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla rightfully described the sanctions as an “act of genocide” and said that “like the virus, the blockade asphyxiates and kills; it must stop.”

In fact, there are those in our region who predicted that Cuba’s development of vaccines Soberana, Abdala and Mambisa that are different in type and perhaps safer than the vaccines developed in the West, would prompt the Empire to accelerate its attempts to create chaos in Cuba to upset and discredit Cuba’s phenomenal achievements. 

It is preposterous and incomprehensible that the US continues to promote itself as a champion of human rights, while being the world’s greatest violator of human rights.

It is equally incomprehensible, after what the entire world has witnessed over the past decade, not only in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan, but also in the very belly of the beast, the US itself, that anyone of us, in Cuba or elsewhere, could still be deceived and fall prey to the false promise that US intervention and capitalism can lead to prosperity, freedom and democracy. It is important at this time to remember the words of the revolutionary and friend of Cuba, Kwame Ture: “Capitalism and Imperialism do not lie sometimes; they lie all the time.”

In unity and struggle,

Gerald A. Perreira

On behalf of the National Directorate, Organization for the Victory of the People (OVP), Guyana, www.ovpguyana.org

Gerald A. Perreira is a writer, educator, theologian and political activist. He is chairperson of the Guyanese organizations Black Consciousness Movement Guyana (BCMG) and Organization for the Victory of the People (OVP). He is an executive member of the Caribbean Chapter of the Network for Defense of Humanity. He lived in Libya for many years, served in the Green March, an international battalion for the defense of the Al Fateh revolution, and was a founding member of the World Mathaba, based in Tripoli, Libya. He can be reached at mojadi94@gmail.com.

UK

Million children of key workers live in poverty, TUC reveals 

Over a million children of key workers are currently living in poverty, the TUC has revealed.

The research, produced by Landman Economics, found that in some regions more than a quarter of children in key worker households are living in poverty.

Key worker families in the North East have the highest rate of child poverty (29%), followed by London (27%), the West Midlands (25%) and Yorkshire and the Humber (25%).

According to the TUC, the main reasons for key worker family poverty are low pay and insecure hours – factors that often coincide in occupations such as care workers, delivery drivers or supermarket staff.

High housing costs, insufficient support through Universal Credit, and the cap on pay rises for key workers in the public sector were also cited as causes for key worker poverty.

‘Every key worker deserves a decent standard of living for their family. But too often their hard work is not paying off like it should. And they struggle to keep up with the basic costs of family life,’ said TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady.

‘The prime minister has promised to ‘build back fairer’. He should start with our key workers. They put themselves in harm’s way to keep the country going through the pandemic. Now, we must be there for them too.

‘This isn’t just about doing right thing by key workers. If we put more money in the pockets of working families, their spending will help our businesses and high streets recover. It’s the fuel in the tank that our economy needs.’

Mark Russell, chief executive of The Children’s Society, described the TUC’s findings as ‘truly shocking’.

‘Our own research has shown that many families in these key worker and zero hours’ contract roles are often migrant families with no recourse to public funds (NRPF) meaning they haven’t been able to access many mainstream benefits during the pandemic when they have experienced job losses or reduced income,’ he said.

‘It’s essential that these families can access the support they need as we recover from COVID to ensure that no children are left behind. This is why it is critical that the NRPF condition is not applied to families with children under 18.’

Mr Russell added: ‘For families that can access support through the social security system, we also urge the Government to scrap the two-child limit and remove the household benefit cap – policies which are currently applied regardless of household need. If these were to be removed it would be a big step forward in helping struggling key worker families as we recover from the pandemic.’

The Local Government Association (LGA) today urged the Government to put children at the heart of the post-pandemic recovery.

Buffett’s company abandons $1.3B natural gas pipeline deal



FILE - In this May 5, 2019, file photo Warren Buffett, Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, smiles as he plays bridge following the annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting in Omaha, Neb. Buffett’s company is abandoning its purchase of a natural gas pipeline from Dominion Energy because of uncertainty about whether the deal could get regulatory approval. Berkshire Hathaway Inc. will receive a $1.3 billion refund on the proposed purchase of Questar Pipelines that was also supposed to include $430 million of Dominion’s debt when it was announced a year ago. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik, File)


OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Warren Buffett’s company is abandoning its purchase of a natural gas pipeline from Dominion Energy because of uncertainty about whether the deal could get regulatory approval.

Berkshire Hathaway Inc. will receive a $1.3 billion refund on the proposed purchase of Questar Pipelines that was also supposed to include $430 million of Dominion’s debt when it was announced a year ago. The Richmond, Virginia-based energy company said it still plans to sell Questar and will work to find another buyer by the end of the year. Dominion also said the decision won’t affect its financial outlook.

Separate from the Questar pipeline deal, Berkshire did buy $2.7 billion worth of Dominion’s natural gas transmission and storage assets last year, which included more than 5,500 miles of natural gas transmission pipelines and about 775 billion cubic feed of gas storage facilities. Berkshire also took on $5.3 billion of Dominion debt as part of that transaction.

The decision to forego the Questar pipeline purchase reduces the value of one of Berkshire’s biggest deals from last year. In recent years, Berkshire has struggled to find sizeable acquisitions to make use of its growing $145.4 billion cash pile, so it has invested roughly $38 billion in its own stock since the start of 2020.

The Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire conglomerate owns more than 90 companies including several major utilities, BNSF railroad, large insurance companies including Geico and an assortment of retail and manufacturing companies. Berkshire also holds sizeable stock investments in Apple, Bank of America, Coca-Cola and other companies.

DEMOCRATIC Maine governor vetoes consumer-owned electric utility

By DAVID SHARP July 13, 2021

Maine Gov. Janet Mills speaks to reporters in her cabinet room, Tuesday, July 13, 2021, in Augusta, Maine, after announcing she has vetoed a bill to replace the state's privately owned electric utilities with a consumer-owned utility. (AP Photo/David Sharp)

AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) — A bill that that aimed to eliminate Maine’s privately owned electric utilities by buying them out and replacing them with a consumer-owned utility was vetoed Tuesday by Democratic Gov. Janet Mills, likely spelling the end of the proposal this legislative session.

Mills acknowledged that performance of Central Maine Power and Versant Power has been “abysmal” but said the proposal to send them packing — with voters getting the final say — was “deeply flawed” and “hastily drafted and hastily amended.”

“I certainly agree that change is necessary. No question about that. And I remain open to considering alternative proposals,” she said.

The bill’s chief sponsor, Rep. Seth Berry, D-Bowdoinham, disputed the governor’s characterization of the proposal, arguing that it was thoroughly vetted over the past three years.

And it isn’t going away. A coalition will be launching a referendum drive to put the proposal before voters anyway next year, instead of this fall.

Supporters said it’s time to replace Central Maine Power and Versant Power, which are owned by corporations in Spain and Canada, with an entity that works in the interest of Mainers instead of shareholders.

The new entity, Pine Tree Power, would keep rates low, respond faster to outages and support clean energy projects, they said.

Critics accused the bill’s supporters of underestimating the cost of buying the utility companies and said ratepayers would be saddled with billions of dollars of debt from the purchase and litigation.

The bill came at a time of frustration with CMP, the state’s largest electric utility, over a botched rollout of a billing system, slow response to storm damage and power outages, and a controversial utility corridor that would serve as a conduit for Canadian hydropower.

The bill won bipartisan support in the Maine Legislature, but Berry acknowledged there’s little hope of reaching a two-thirds majority necessary to override the governor’s veto.

The veto came a day after an independent audit conducted for the Maine Public Utilities Commission found that CMP is making improvements and isn’t “irredeemably flawed.”

But the report also said “it remains prudent to question the sustainability of the positive changes that have occurred.”

Berry said “modest improvements” cited in the report were in response to the bill that aimed to replace the utilities, and that those improvements will “go away as soon as this bill goes away.”

The veto was not a surprise. Mills previously called the proposal “a rosy solution to a very complicated series of problems.”

On Tuesday, she reiterated her concerns about the bill, calling it “a patchwork of political promises rather than a methodical reformation of Maine’s complicated electrical transmission and distribution system.”

She said she had a number of concerns including who’d operate the grid, the potential loss of property taxes for several communities, and the bill’s language that could affect the tax-exempt status of bonds.

She said she wasn’t closing the door on a takeover of the utilities but said she wants more time and effort to go into the vetting.

In the meantime, she said the state should step up its regulatory efforts through the Public Utilities Commission, look at performance-based incentives like those used in Hawaii and consider beefing up the state’s divestiture law.

William Dunn from Our Power, which will lead the referendum drive to put the proposal before voters next year, dismissed the idea that regulators can solve the utilities’ problems.

“Maine regulators cannot fix this problem any more than a mouse can tame a cat,” Dunn said.

Lawsuit says Alabama blocking solar power with unfair fees
By KIM CHANDLER

In this Thursday, Nov. 14, 2019 file photo, Teresa Thorne walks out of her solar power-equipped home near Springville, Ala. The fees imposed by the Alabama Power company on customers who generate their own electricity with rooftop or on-site solar panels are now the subject of a federal lawsuit against the state's regulators. Environmental groups argue that punishing fees are purposely discouraging the adoption of solar power in the sun-rich state. (AP Photo/Jay Reeves, File)

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — The fees imposed by the Alabama Power company on customers who generate their own electricity with rooftop or on-site solar panels are now the subject of a federal lawsuit against the state’s regulators.

Environmental groups argue that punishing fees are purposely discouraging the adoption of solar power in the sun-rich state.

Alabama Power maintains that the fees are needed to maintain the infrastructure that provides backup power to customers when their solar panels don’t provide enough energy.

The Southern Environmental Law Center and Ragsdale LLC filed the lawsuit on Monday against the Alabama Public Service Commission on behalf of four Alabama Power customers who installed solar panels on their properties and the Greater-Birmingham Alliance to Stop Pollution, or GASP.

“We’re asking the court to require the Commission to follow the law so that Alabama Power will stop unfairly taxing private solar investments,” said Keith Johnston, director of SELC’s Alabama office.

“Alabama is being left behind by other Southern states when it comes to solar generation, and the jobs, bill savings and other benefits that come with it,” SELC’s statement said. “These charges are a significant roadblock to our state’s success.”

A spokesperson for the Public Service Commission wrote in an email that, “it would not be appropriate for the Alabama Public Service Commission to comment on pending litigation.”

Alabama Power charges a $5.41-per-kilowatt fee, based on the capacity of the home system, on people who use solar panels or other means to generate part of their own electricity. That amounts to a $27 monthly fee on a typical 5-kilowatt system. The average solar panel setup for a home costs about $10,000, according to the law center, and the fees add another $9,000 or so over a system’s 30-year lifespan, dramatically increasing costs and reducing any financial benefit for the homeowner.

Alabama Power maintains that the fees are needed to maintain the infrastructure that provides backup power. A spokesperson for Alabama Power said, “we believe Alabama law and sound ratemaking principles were followed in reaching a fair determination of the cost for this service.”

“It is important to us that all of our 1.5 million customers are treated fairly. There is nothing about the lawsuit that changes our position – we believe the lawsuit is without merit. Customers who want to rely on the company to back up their own generation should pay their share of associated costs,” Alabama Power spokesperson Alyson Tucker wrote in an email.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission rejected the environmental groups’ request to take enforcement action last month against the Public Service Commission.

However, two members of the five-member panel issued a separate statement expressing concern that Alabama regulators may be violating federal policies designed to encourage the development of cogeneration and small power production facilities and to reduce the demand for fossil fuels.

While the lawsuit deals with home and business solar energy systems, Alabama Power on Tuesday won approval for its own large solar project.

The Alabama Public Service Commission approved Alabama Power’s proposal for an 80-megawatt HEP Greenville solar project to be located in Butler County. Annual output generated from the HEP Greenville solar project is equivalent to the amount of energy used in nearly 15,000 homes, the company said.

Haiti: Retired soldier claims 26 Colombians accused in assassination were actually hired to protect the President

After 26 Colombians were accused of assassinating Haitian President Jovenel Moise, a retired special forces soldier in Colombia has told CNN that they were actually hired to provide the leader security, and that he himself was approached for the job by a US-based company

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© Joseph Odelyn/AP The police chief described the men presented at a news conference as attackers who were apprehended in the assassination of Haiti's President, in Port-au-Prince, on July 8.

By Stefano Pozzebon, CNN 5 hrs ago

Matias Gutierrez, 45, told CNN he was contacted in early June by a fellow veteran named Mendivelso Gersain, who put him in touch with another man -- retired Sgt. Duberney Capador -- recruiting a group of private security guards to travel to Haiti.

Capador told the men he was working for a US-based company and created a WhatsApp group to coordinate the recruitment effort, Gutierrez alleged. The logo of Florida-based firm CTU Security was added as the icon of the WhatsApp group, which, Gutierrez said, at some point had more than 250 people in it.

"They only mentioned a company based in the US, and a job as private security in Haiti. Security for the President of Haiti, who was believed to be under death threat," Gutierrez told CNN.

Colombian police had already named CTU Security as the recruiter for the Haiti operation, but their Haitian counterparts believe a Haitian-born American, Christian Emmanuel Sanon, had hired CTU to recruit the 26 Colombians, characterizing them as mercenaries, as well as two Haitian-Americans.

When asked about the 26 Colombians and two other Haitian-Americans who are suspects in the investigation, Sanon emphasized that "he doesn't know anything at all," according to a source close to the investigation, who cannot be named because they are not authorized to discuss the affair. "He doesn't know. He doesn't know. This is what he said since the day authorities interviewed him," the source said.

CTU Security is headquartered in the Miami area and run by a Venezuelan man, Antonio "Tony" Intriago.

CNN has tried repeatedly to contact CTU Security since Saturday and has been unable to identify contact information for Intriago. Colombian police say they are working with Interpol to provide information on Intriago.

On Monday, Colombian police also claimed that the airfares for 19 the Colombian men were paid with a credit card linked to a company based in Miami.

About a month after the first recruitment approach was made, according to Gutierrez, Moise was killed in his private residence in the early hours of July 7. Capador was gunned down in an operation by Haiti police shortly afterward, on the same day, and Gersain remains detained as one of 20 Colombians captured after the assassination.

Gutierrez told CNN he had been in contact with the recruited Colombian guards several times while they were in Haiti. They told him the job was to supplement the Haitian presidential guard.

"They were not working in the inner circle," Gutierrez said. "A country would never put the safety of a president in the hands of a stranger. The inner circle is always a group of presidential guards or secret service in civil clothes. Our group was uniformed and working in support of the inner circle."

According to the Colombian police, Capador travelled to Port-au-Prince on May 10 with another Colombian man, retired Capt. German Rivera. A group of 11 retired Colombian soldiers followed them on June 4. It's unclear when Gersain arrived in Haiti.

At the end of May, Dimitri Herard, the Haitian chief of the General Security Unit at the presidential palace, also traveled to Ecuador through Bogota, according to the Colombian National Police. The force said July 12 that it is investigating whether Herard, while in Colombia, met with any of the Colombian nationals allegedly involved in the assassination.

Herard is currently under disciplinary measures in Haiti and was due to appear in court Wednesday, but he missed his appearance, citing "a precautionary measure ordered by the General Inspector of the Haitian Police," according to a letter from Herard that CNN has seen.

Gutierrez questions Colombians' involvement

Gutierrez, who works as a security guard for an oil company in Bogota, says he was attracted to the job by the good pay and the possibility to travel: "In Colombia, any job would pay you some three hundred USD, while this offer was for $2,700 per month, with food and accommodation included. I know people who are working right now in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, people in Kabul or Yemen, or even Syria. It was a similar job offer to those ones."

Gutierrez told CNN he is part of a wide network of retired special forces and commandos who work as private security at home and abroad. Colombian veterans are highly sought by private security companies because of their combat experience garnered from sustained warfare among the Colombian state, left-wing guerrillas and paramilitary groups.

Capador's sister told CNN her brother was also looking for a better salary abroad, saying he was struggling to get by on the state pension he received after 20 years of service in the Colombian army.

Gutierrez, as well as several relatives of other Colombians who traveled to Haiti, told CNN the accusations against the men do not add up.

"It was all a plot. How can you have this type of assassination and not have a single dead but the President himself? If my fellows had done the job, they would have had to enter the residence and kill the guards before killing the President. You would have seen a combat scene," Gutierrez said.

Capador's sister also told CNN she spoke with her brother in the morning on the day of the President's assassination, and that he told her they had arrived too late and could not save the target they had been hired to protect.

She said she last heard from her brother on the afternoon of July 7, when he told her he was negotiating the Colombians' surrender to the Haitian police, Capador told CNN, a claim CNN has not been able to independently verify.

After the news broke from Haiti, everything turned quiet on the WhatsApp group created to coordinate the recruitment effort, Gutierrez claims.

"Our group was called 'First Flight.' They created other groups because there were more than 250 people in that group, and they could not add more. Then everyone left. There's less than 50 people in it now."

Gutierrez said he felt the fact that there were so many people on the WhatsApp group suggested that the operation was nothing untoward.

"You don't do that if you need to kill somebody," he said.

"I've done those operations when I was in the military, and they would send a commando to kill a guerrilla leader or something similar. You're never more than eight people. Eight is the maximum, because otherwise too many people make the operation harder. This time they were adding more and more people."

His thoughts, he says, are for the families of the detained guards: "They didn't even receive their first salary, they had just got there. Now this happened, and probably the Colombians are going to be charged. Who knows when they'll see them again."

Miami security firm faces questions in Haiti assassination

By GISELA SALOMON and ANDREW SELSKY

today

1 of 11


MIAMI (AP) — For the owner of a small private security company with a history of avoiding paying debts and declaring bankruptcy, it looked like a good opportunity: Find people with military experience for a job in Haiti.

Antonio “Tony” Intriago, owner of Miami-based CTU Security, seems to have jumped at the chance, hiring more than 20 former soldiers from Colombia for the mission. Now the Colombians have been killed or captured in the aftermath of the July 7 assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, and Intriago’s business faces questions about its role in the killing.

On Wednesday evening, Léon Charles, head of the Haiti’s National Police, accused Intriago of traveling to Haiti numerous times as part of the assassination plot and of signing a contract while there, but provided no other details and offered no evidence.

“The investigation is very advanced,” Charles said.

A Miami security professional believes Intriago was too eager to take the job and did not push to learn details, leaving his contractors in the lurch. Some of their family members back in Colombia have said the men understood the mission was to provide protection for VIPs.

Three Colombians were killed and 18 are behind bars in Haiti, Colombia’s national police chief, Gen. Jorge Luis Vargas, told reporters in Bogota. Colombian diplomats in Haiti have not had access to them.

Vargas has said that CTU Security used its company credit card to buy 19 plane tickets from Bogota to Santo Domingo for the Colombian suspects allegedly involved in the killing. One of the Colombians who was killed, Duberney Capador, photographed himself wearing a black CTU Security polo shirt.

Nelson Romero Velasquez, an ex-soldier and attorney who is advising 16 families of the Colombians held in Haiti, said Wednesday that the men had all served in the Colombian military’s elite special forces and could operate without being detected, if they had desired. He said their behavior made it clear they did not go to Haiti to assassinate the president.

“They have the ability to be like shadows,” Romero Velasquez said.

The predawn attack took place at the president’s private home. He was shot to death and his wife wounded. It’s not clear who pulled the trigger. The latest suspects identified in the sweeping investigation included a former Haitian senator, a fired government official and an informant for the U.S. government.

Miami has become a focus of the probe. The city has long been a nest of intrigue, from being a CIA recruitment center for the failed Bay of Pigs operation to overthrow Cuban dictator Fidel Castro to being a key shipment point for Colombian cocaine in the 1980s. Its palm-fringed shores have also been a place of exile for people from Latin American and Caribbean countries when political winds blew against them at home, and where some plotted their returns.

Homeland Security Investigations, a U.S. agency responsible for investigating crimes that cross international borders, is also investigating the assassination, said a Department of Homeland Security official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about the case. He declined to provide details.

The FBI says it is “providing investigative assistance” to Haitian authorities.

Intriago, who immigrated from Venezuela over a decade ago and participated in activities in Miami opposing the leftist regime in his homeland, did not respond to multiple requests for an interview.

He likes to be around powerful people and has posted photos on social media showing himself with them, including Colombian President Ivan Duque.

Duque’s office on Monday disavowed any knowledge of Intriago, saying Duque was in Miami while campaigning for the presidency in February 2018. He posed for photographs with some of those in attendance, but Duque did not have any meeting or any ties with Intriago, the Colombian president’s office said.

Florida state records show Intriago’s company has changed names in the past dozen years: CTU Security to CS Security Solutions to Counter Terrorist Unit Federal Academy LLC.

CTU lists two Miami addresses on its website. One is a shuttered warehouse with no signage. The other is a small office suite under a different name. A receptionist said the CTU owner stops by once a week to collect mail.

The company website says it offers “first-class personalized products and services to law enforcement and military units, as well as industrial customers.”

But it ducked paying some of those wholesale companies for their products. Florida records show Intriago’s company was ordered by a court to pay a $64,791 debt in 2018 to a weapons and tactical gear supply company, RSR Group. Propper, a military apparel manufacturer, also sued for nonpayment.

Alexis Ortiz, a writer who worked with Intriago organizing meetings of expatriate Venezuelans in the United States, described him as a “very active, skilled collaborator.”

“He seemed nice,” Ortiz said.

Richard Noriega, who runs International Security Consulting in Miami, said he does not know Intriago personally but has been observing the developing situation. Noriega, who is also originally from Venezuela, believes Intriago was lured by the prospect of fast money and did not perform due diligence.

Putting himself in Intriago’s shoes, Noriega said: “I’m coming out of a complicated situation — of work, of income, of money. An opportunity arises. I don’t want to lose it.”

Normally, a security company would seek all the details of an operation, to determine how many people to use and what level of insurance they would need. A priority would be to plan an escape route in case things go awry, he said.

“The first thing we (security professionals) have to take into account is the evacuation. Where will they exit? That’s the first thing I do,” Noriega said.

But apparently that planning never happened, perhaps because the Colombians, or at least some of them, thought their mission was benign.

He said it does not seem logical that if the highly trained Colombians were there to kill the president, that they would not have had an escape route. Instead they were caught, some hiding in bushes, by the local population and police.

“It is very murky,” Noriega said.

___

Selsky, a former Associated Press bureau chief in the Caribbean and Colombia, reported from Salem, Oregon. AP writers Joshua Goodman in Miami, Evens Sanon in Port-au-Prince, Haiti and Manuel Rueda and Astrid Suarez in Bogota, Colombia, contributed to this report.

Defense Secretary Austin calls for ethical AI development

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, speaking on Wednesday to the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, said that ethics is a key to military AI development. Photo courtesy of Defense Department/Twitter

July 14 (UPI) -- The U.S. military must develop artificial intelligence ethically and responsibly, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in remarks on Wednesday.

In remarks to the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, he noted that while China intends to be the world's AI leader by 2030, the United States has the same goal but a different approach.

"Beijing already talks about using AI for a range of missions, from surveillance to cyberattacks to autonomous weapons," Austin said.

"We're going to compete to win, but we're going to do it the right way. We're not going to cut corners on safety, security or ethics, and our watchwords are 'responsibility' and 'results,' and we don't believe for a minute that we have to sacrifice one for the other," he said.

"Our use of AI must reinforce our democratic values, protect our rights, ensure our safety and defend our privacy," Austin added.

In March, commission vice chair Robert Work said that the United States lacks an AI strategy in its competition with China.

Work said that the United States is currently the world leader in AI, but noted that China has structured its army, private sector and academia to overtake the United States.

He urged the Pentagon to dedicate 3.4 percent of its budget to AI development.

In his address on Wednesday, Austin noted that over 600 AI projects are in progress within the Defense Department, "significantly more than just a year ago, and that includes the Artificial Intelligence and Data Acceleration initiative, which brings AI to bear on operational data."

Austin also identified Project Salus, a project with the National Guard which uses AI to predict shortages of water, medicine and COVID-19 supplies.

He also noted the Pathfinder Project, which uses AI-derived algorithms to better detect airborne threats from military sensors and available data.

To accomplish the military's AI goals, Austin referred to recruitment and retention of talented people, typically young and not inclined to military service.

"We need to more vigorously recruit talented people and not scare them away," Austin said. "In today's world, in today's department, innovation cannot be an afterthought. It is the ballgame.''

Farm robots could bring utopia or disaster, scientist warns


An illustration shows what a utopian farm run by a variety of intelligent robots might look like. Photo by Natalis Lorenz


July 13 (UPI) -- Agriculture is already highly mechanized, and in the not too distant future, agricultural economist Thomas Daum predicts entire farms will be run by robots.

In fact, robots are already being deployed on farms.

As Daum sees it, robotization has the potential to transform the agricultural sector and usher in one of two realities: one utopian, the other dystopian.

Daum described these two opposing realities in a new paper, published Tuesday in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution.

Daum's utopia features swarms of small robots working around the clock on small- and medium-sized farms.

These farms feature a diverse rotation of crops interwoven seamlessly with the natural environment, including healthy habitat for a rich variety of native flora and fauna -- organically raised crops buffered by grasslands, streams and woodlands.

"It's like a Garden of Eden," Daum, a research fellow at the University of Hohenheim in Germany, said in a press release.

"Small robots could help conserve biodiversity and combat climate change in ways that were not possible before," Daum said.

Utopian farming, according to Daum, would be too labor intensive, but swarms of small, intelligent robots working in synchronicity 24-7 could make it work.

These robots would be able to deploy biopesticides more precisely and zap individual weeds with lasers, limiting the farm's impact on the surrounding environment.

Crop yields would be high, while the farm's environmental footprint would be minimal, Daum said.

Conversely, large but less sophisticated robots could be used to bulldoze the land and further expand modern, monoculture agriculture.

With humans out of the way, these robots could spray pesticides and deploy fertilizers with greater intensities and at broader scales.

Though reality is unlikely to resemble a pure utopia or dystopia, Daum hopes his paper will inspire scientists, engineers and policy makers to start thinking about how agricultural robots can be used for sustainably.

"The utopia and dystopia are both possible from a technological perspective," he said. "But without the right guardrails on policy, we may end up in the dystopia without wanting to if we don't discuss this now."

Daum's utopian farm would benefit more than just the environment.

Farms that grow a diversity of crops, not just high yield grains, are more likely to supply consumers with the full range of fruits and vegetables that healthy diet requires.

Because small swarms of intelligent robots can be more easily adopted by small farmers, places like Asia and Africa may be better positioned for utopian agriculture.

Conversely, agriculture in the places like the United States, Russia and Brazil are already dominated by large-scale farms growing low-value grains and oilseeds -- places where big, crude robots are more likely to be introduced.

"While it is true that the preconditions for small robots are more challenging in these areas, even with large robots -- or a mix between small and large -- we can take steps toward the utopia with practices such as intercropping, having hedgerows, agroforestry and moving away from larger farms to smaller plots of land owned by large farmers," Daum said.

"Some such practices may even pay off for farmers once robots can do the job, as previously uneconomic practices become profitable," Daum said.

To ensure agricultural robots are engineered for sustainable ends and deployed in eco-friendly ways, Daum said policy makers must use a combination of incentives, including subsidies, regulations and taxes.

"I think the utopia is achievable," Daum said. "It won't be as easy as the dystopia, but it's very much possible."