It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Sunday, September 12, 2021
Google reportedly gave some users’ data to Hong Kong authorities in 2020
The company said last year it would stop responding to such requests
Google provided some user data to the government of Hong Kong last year, despite promising it would not process such data requests from authorities, according to the Hong Kong Free Press. The company told the news outlet it “produced some data” in response to three of the 43 requests it received from Hong Kong’s government. Two of the requests had to do with investigations into human trafficking and included search warrants, and a third was an emergency disclosure as part of a credible threat to someone’s life, HKFP reported.
The company told HKFP that none of the three responses included users’ content data.
Last August, Google said it would stop responding to data requests from Hong Kong’s government, unless the requests were made in cooperation with the US Department of Justice. The move was in response to a new Hong Kong national security law imposed by China, which included a possible sentence of life in prison for people found guilty of subversion. China has used subversion charges to detain political protesters and dissidents in the Chinese mainland. Facebook and Twitter also halted the processing of data requests from Hong Kong’s government in response to the security law.
Google didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment from The Verge on Saturday
Here’s Why U.S. Crude Oil Supplies Took Such a Big Hit From Ida
Sergio Chapa and David Wethe,Bloomberg News Sep 11, 2021
A damaged home in floodwater after Hurricane Ida in Pointe-Aux-Chenes, Louisiana, U.S., on Thursday, Sept. 2, 2021. The electric utility that serves New Orleans has restored power to a small section of the city after Hurricane Ida devastated the region's grid. Photographer: Mark Felix/Bloomberg , Bloomberg
(Bloomberg) -- Hurricane Ida unleashed such furious winds and waves that almost two weeks later oil drillers, power suppliers and refiners are still picking up the pieces. They won’t be done any time soon.
The damage to offshore platforms, pipelines and even heli-pads was so severe that two out of every three barrels of crude normally pumped from the U.S. sector of the Gulf of Mexico are unavailable. The ripple effects are still playing out as refiners and brokers scour the globe for replacements and the Gulf’s biggest oil producer, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, tells some customers it can’t honor supply commitments.
It will be weeks -- maybe longer -- before normal conditions can be restored off the Louisiana coast and in the warren of oil-processing and chemical plants that occupies a 100-mile (160-kilometer) corridor from New Orleans to Baton Rouge.
“What’s different is this is lasting longer,” Bert Winders, 63, a Baker Huges Inc. health and safety manager, said in reference to how Ida’s disruption compared with previous cyclones. “It’s just demanding on people. Three to five days, they can deal with. But when you start talking two, three, even four weeks, that’s really tough on a family.”
The recovery efforts are being closely watched around the world in large part because of the unprecedented scale and duration of the oil outages. Within days of the hurricane, traders were seizing on arbitrage opportunities created by the disappearance of some U.S. Gulf grades of oil such as Mars blend. For example, crude from Russia’s Ural Mountains is a popular alternative to Mars because they share similar characteristics.
Ida’s drawn-out aftermath offers a chastening glimpse of what may be in store as climate change fuels ever-more furious storms along low-lying coastal regions dotted with heavy industry and vital fuel-making facilities.
Typically, when tropical storms and hurricanes menace the oil-producing region of the Gulf, drillers batten down hatches, shut off the subsea wells funneling oil up to platforms and evacuate crews. When the skies clear, they often can chopper inspection teams back out in a matter of hours or days and resume production shortly thereafter.
When Louisiana was battered by Hurricane Laura last year, offshore crude output bounced back quickly.
Direct Hit
After Ida, that wasn’t remotely possible. The monster storm’s direct hit on Port Fourchon a few hours before sundown on Aug. 29 completely disabled the primary jumping-off point for helicopters and vessels that service hundreds of offshore platforms and rigs.
Even the lone road connecting Port Fourchon to the rest of the state -- Louisiana Highway 1 -- was knocked out of commission by Ida’s massive wall of sea water and the tons of sand it swept ahead.
“When Port of Fourchon is out of service, it breaks a link in the chain,” said Winders, a Louisiana native who’s been working in the oil industry for four decades.
Into Darkness
At the height of the disaster, more than a million homes and businesses were cast into darkness as Ida’s 150 mile-per-hour (240 kph) winds destroyed most of the transmission infrastructure in southeast Louisiana.
But by late Friday, there were still almost 200,000 without power or air conditioning -- a telling illustration of the extent of the destruction. As for Port Fourchon, the area isn’t expected to get full electricity restored until the end of this month, according to utility company Entergy Corp.
Out on the high seas, drilling has returned to just 29% of pre-Ida levels. There were four rigs operating in the U.S. sector of the Gulf as of Friday, well below the 14 plying the waters before the storm, according to data from Baker Hughes, which has been tracking drilling activity since 1944.
Hobbled Refineries
Shell is gearing up to reopen many of the Gulf pipelines that carry crude to shore in the next week, according to a person familiar with the operations, a key step to potentially restoring offshore crude output. Still, a crucial conduit for Mars oil and other grades will remain shut as damage assessments continue, the person said. The company declined to comment.
Further inland, the crippling effects of the cyclone are still being assessed. A New Orleans-area refinery owned by Phillips 66 suffered so much damage and flooding that the company may not even restart it, depending on how expensive it’ll cost to repair.
Shell’s Norco refining and chemical complex north of New Orleans may remain shut for several more weeks because of extensive damage.
Meanwhile, Marathon Petroleum Corp. managed to resume fuel production at its massive Garyville facility on Friday, although five other Louisiana refineries with combined daily capacity to process one million barrels remain shut.
As the latest strong storm that passed through the U.S. Gulf of Mexico showed, hurricanes are testing the resilience of offshore oil and gas facilities and pipelines. Hurricane Ida made headlines as it left 1 million customers in the state of Louisiana without power and shut-inas much as 95 percent of the U.S. Gulf of Mexico's oil production just before making landfall in Louisiana on August 29.
Unfortunately, the continued disruption to oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico was not the only headline-grabbing consequence of Hurricane Ida. Oil spills also raised eyebrows after offshore oil and gas infrastructure was damaged by the storm.
The oil spills shed light on some of the aging offshore infrastructure that were unable to withstand the forces of nature. It also proved that whichever hurricanes come next could also damage pipelines and platforms.
The damage to facilities and resulting oil spills also underscore what the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a report made public in April: The U.S. Department of the Interiorlacks a robust oversight process to monitor and ensure the safety and integrity of some 8,600 miles of active offshore oil and gas pipelines located on the seafloor of the Gulf of Mexico.
The impact of Hurricane Ida on the Gulf of Mexico offshore infrastructure and production is also an argument that environmental organizations could use to call for restrictions on offshore drilling.
Damages And Oil Spills
The hurricane caused damage to platforms while refineries were waiting for power to begin the restart process.
For example, Shell said last week that it had identified damage to its West Delta-143 offshore facilities, which serve as the transfer station for all production from the oil giant's assets in the Mars corridor in the Mississippi Canyon area to onshore crude terminals. As of Wednesday evening, September 8, damage assessment of the West Delta-143 continued,said Shell, which has begun the process of redeploying personnel to its Appomattox platform, and continues to redeploy personnel to the Enchilada/Salsa and Auger assets. However, Appomattox, Mars, Olympus, Ursa, Auger, and Enchilada/Salsa remain shut-in. Around 80 percent of Shell-operated production is currently offline.
Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE)data as of Wednesday showed that 1.4 million barrels per day (bpd)—or 76.88 percent—of U.S. Gulf of Mexico production was still offline.
Related: OPEC May Cut 2022 Oil Demand ForecastThere have been as many as350 reports of incidents that the U.S. Coast Guard has prioritized for further investigation by authorities, as it continued to assess the damage and environmental threats across Southeast Louisiana a week after Hurricane Ida made landfall.
In one of the largest incidents, divers identified a one-foot pipeline as the source ofan oil spill after it was displaced by the hurricane and ruptured. The oil spill occurred in Bay Marchand Block 5, off the coast of Port Fourchon,said Talos Energy, which led response efforts to contain and control the release, although none of its assets were the source of the spill. Talos ceased production from the block in 2017, and all its pipeline infrastructure was removed by 2019, the firm said.
"The Company has observed several non-Talos owned subsea pipelines that were likely impacted by Hurricane Ida, including a 12" diameter non-Talos owned pipeline that appears to be the source of the release," it added.
GoM Offshore Pipelines Need Better Regulation
In the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, a recentreport from GAO that the U.S. needs updated regulations to improve offshore pipeline oversight and decommissioning looks increasingly topical, as Reuters reminds us in anexplainer article.
"Pipelines can contain oil or gas if not properly cleaned in decommissioning. But the Bureau doesn't ensure that standards, like cleaning and burial, are met. It also doesn't monitor pipeline condition or movement from currents over time," the report from the GAO found.
BSEE lacks a robust process to ensure that decommissioned pipelines do not pose risks during and after decommissioning, the GAO added. The BSEE does not thoroughly account for such risks while reviewing decommissioning applications. This has contributed to the BSEE and its predecessors authorizing companies to leave over 97 percent (about 18,000 miles) of all decommissioned pipeline mileage on the Gulf of Mexico seafloor since the 1960s, GAO noted.
Another fault that the office found was that "BSEE does not monitor decommissioned pipelines left on the seafloor or have funding sources for removal if they later pose environmental or safety risks."
The GAO recommends that the BSEE implement updated pipeline regulations to address those long-standing limitations in its ability to ensure pipeline integrity and address safety and environmental risks associated with pipeline decommissioning. The Interior agreed with this recommendation, the GAO said in the report.
"Hurricane Season and Offshore Drilling Are a Reckless Combination"
In 2020, a year before Hurricane Ida and ten years after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, Oceana, an advocacy group for protecting the oceans,said that "Large hurricanes have the potential to not only devastate coastal communities, but also destroy oil and gas infrastructure, which can lead to more oil spills."
"Hurricane-caused damage to oil and gas infrastructure is a leading cause of oil spills. In 2005, high winds and flooding from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita destroyed more than 100 platforms and damaged over 500 pipelines," Oceana's Sarah Giltz wrote in a blog post in July 2020.
Hurricane Ida left an extensive trail of damaged homes, infrastructure, and lives from Louisiana to New England. It also has left a stain on the sea. Two weeks after the storm, several federal and state agencies and some private companies are working to find and contain oil leaks in the Gulf of Mexico.
The U.S. Coast Guard has assessed more than 1,500 reports of pollution in the Gulf and in Louisiana, and it “is prioritizing nearly 350 reported incidents for further investigation by state, local, and federal authorities in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida.” The Coast Guard is working with the Environmental Protection Agency, the state of Louisiana, the National Ocean Service, and other agencies to chronicle and monitor the state of coastal waters and infrastructure.
On September 3, 2021, the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 acquired this natural-color image of apparent oil slicks off the southeastern Louisiana coast near Port Fourchon, a major hub of the oil and gas industry.
Hurricane Ida caused the disruption of 90 to 95 percent of the region’s crude oil and gas production, while also damaging current and abandoned pipelines and structures. According to many news reports, the surface oil slicks near Port Fourchon (shown above) are likely related to as many as three damaged or ruptured submarine pipelines. It is unclear how much oil has spilled into the Gulf of Mexico.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has conducted aerial surveys of some offshore waters and has released the photos online. The NASA-sponsored Delta-X research team has also been working in the area and was called upon to make some observations of the slicks and other coastal changes with synthetic aperture radar.
Beyond active oil and gas extraction platforms, the seafloor of the Gulf of Mexico is covered in a maze of pipelines, capped wellheads, and other infrastructure that can be vulnerable to storm events. In a report issued earlier this year, the U.S. Government Accountability Office stated: “Since the 1960s, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement has allowed the offshore oil and gas industry to leave 97 percent of pipelines (18,000 miles) on the seafloor when no longer in use. Pipelines can contain oil or gas if not properly cleaned in decommissioning.”
In 2017, students demanding Harvard divest from fossil fuels blocked the entrance to University Hall.
KEITH BEDFORD/GLOBE STAFF/FILE
For nearly a decade, Harvard University has been the target of sit-ins, protests, and petitions, even resounding votes from its faculty, all calling for the university to divest its massive endowment of investments in fossil fuels.
But year after year, the university resisted, claiming, among other things, that it did not want to use its endowment as a political tool. Then suddenly, on Thursday afternoon, it changed course.
In a letter to students and faculty that did not use the word “divestment,” Harvard president Lawrence Bacow disclosed the $41 billion endowment has effectively divested its fossil fuel holdings.
“We must act now as citizens, as scholars, and as an institution to address this crisis on as many fronts as we have at our disposal,” Bacow wrote. “I write today to describe what Harvard has done — and will do — to ensure that our community is fully engaged in the critical work ahead.”
Bacow explained that Harvard Management Company, which manages the world’s largest university endowment fund, currently has no direct investments in companies that explore for or develop reserves of fossil fuels, and that it doesn’t intend to make those kinds of investments in the future. Though some 2 percent of its fund is still in investments with fossil fuel holdings, Bacow wrote that those are in “runoff mode” and will not be renewed once they come to an end.
The announcement is being hailed a major success by organizers on campus and beyond, and supporters of the broader movement hope that Harvard’s announcement will add fuel to the growing divestment movement — and not just on college campuses. Already, states, financial institutions, and private companies have joined the effort, in the hope the decisions they make with their investment dollars will pay dividends in the fight to combat the climate crisis. Given the size of Harvard’s endowment, its history of resistance, and its storied position as an institute, the decision to divest could have profound implications.
“The richest school on earth, which in 2013 pledged never to divest, has been forced to capitulate,” activist and divestment movement leader Bill McKibben wrote in a series of tweets. “I can’t overstate the power of this win. It will reverberate the world around.”
In recent years, divestment as a means of pressuring fossil fuel companies has gained steam. The concept is relatively simple: The less money that fossil fuel companies have at their disposal, the harder it is for them to operate. The less fossil fuels are burned, the less extreme the consequences of the climate crisis. RELATED: These lawmakers wrote the climate bill. They’re worried the state won’t achieve it
In the academic world, Cambridge, Oxford, and the University of California systems are among the notables that have taken the step. Earlier this year, the state of Maine divested its pension fund — the first state to do so via a vote by its legislature — and similar steps are being debated or are in the works in California, New York, Minnesota, and on Beacon Hill.
Meanwhile, the six largest US banks said last year that they would not provide funding to fossil fuel companies to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge — a step that may be at least partially responsible for a Trump-era oil leasing sale being a flop. No major oil companies bothered to bid.
Harvard University did not respond to a request for comment, and Harvard Management Company declined to comment. The letter from Bacow cited the “undeniable evidence of the world to come” — from massive fires to record heat waves — and said that “without concerted action, this dire situation is only going to get worse.”
Last year, the university announced that its endowment would reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. This week’s announcement would seem to accelerate that timeline by decades. According to Bacow, Harvard Management Company has been shedding its fossil fuel investments for some time.
“Given the need to decarbonize the economy and our responsibility as fiduciaries to make long-term investment decisions that support our teaching and research mission, we do not believe such investments are prudent,” Bacow wrote.
Earlier this year, students, alumni, and professors from Harvard filed a complaint with Attorney General Maura Healey’s office arguing that the university’s fossil fuel investments violate a state act that dictates certain charitable responsibilities for all nonprofit institutions. Members of the Harvard divestment movement noted that some of the language included in Bacow’s letter this week echoed what they argued in their complaint — perhaps a sign that the university feared the results of that lawsuit.
On Thursday, members of Fossil Free Divest Harvard — the student activist group that has for a decade led the effort on campus — said they were caught off guard by Bacow’s e-mail.
“I was leaving my social studies lecture and I just checked my e-mail and I was like, ‘Oh my god,’” said Suhaas Bhat, a core organizer of the group. “I mean, I thought this would just keep going forever, and that I’d be one person in a long chain of activists that have been fighting this forever. The fact that this just happened is insane.”
Bhat and his colleagues hailed the announcement as “an incredible victory,” but that doesn’t mean they are letting up. In an online response, the group listed three steps it wants to see the university take next: immediately phase out the 2 percent of remaining investments; address holes in its net-zero by 2050 endowment pledge, by focusing more on the total elimination of carbon emissions; and stop allowing fossil fuel companies to fund academic research and programming or recruit on campus.
Elsewhere on campus, the tone of Bacow’s announcement frustrated some who have long supported the divestment movement. “The temerity to reject scientific, economic, political, legal, & moral arguments of faculty & students for a decade, then reverse course & feign leadership, is breathtaking but unsurprising,” tweeted Geoffrey Supran, a research fellow at the university.
He and others said Harvard’s decision now shines a light on peers within the academic world that have resisted divesting, including Boston College, MIT, Princeton, and Yale.
There are currently 166 active divestment movements on campuses nationwide, according to Divest Ed, a training and strategy hub that helps the movements. Senior organizer Gracie Brett said Harvard’s activists had been hearing “probably the most persistent ‘no’s’ that anyone in the movement has received.”
That makes the change of tune that much more impactful, she said.
“It just is a great roadmap for the rest of the divestment movement, that even if you receive a ‘no,’ if you have the people power and are persistent, you can have victory,” Brett said. “And I think the implications for our movement will be huge.”
'Dune' director longing for sequel as sci-fi makes N.America debut
Issued on: 12/09/2021
Canadian "Dune" director Denis Villeneuve is revered critically and successful commercially for making original, big, grown-up movies like "Sicario" and "Blade Runner 2049"
Geoff Robins AFP
Toronto (Canada) (AFP)
Denis Villeneuve always planned for his wildly ambitious sci-fi "Dune" to be seen on the biggest screen possible, and the director got his wish Saturday as the much-hyped film made its splashy IMAX premiere at the Toronto film festival.
Boasting terrifying giant sandworms, warring interstellar tribes and an A-list cast spanning Timothee Chalamet, Javier Bardem and Zendaya, the long-delayed epic based on a beloved novel has already drawn strong reviews.
The publicity blitz for Warner Bros studio's $165 million gamble moved from Venice to North America's biggest festival this weekend, where Villeneuve told AFP that watching his film in the extra-large, immersive screen format was "the proper way to see the movie."
"You receive the full power and the landscape, and at the same time it's the most powerful way to increase intimacy with the characters."
However, from October 22 it will be viewable on the small-screen HBO Max platform -- the same day it hits regular theaters.
That controversial decision -- announced while the pandemic kept movie theaters closed last year -- was blasted by Villeneuve himself for showing "no love for cinema, nor for the audience."
More is at stake, however, than the creative vision of the Canadian auteur, who is revered critically and commercially for making big, intelligent, grown-up movies like "Sicario" and "Blade Runner 2049."
His "Dune" film splits Frank Herbert's seminal 1965 sci-fi novel in two parts, but Warner has yet to officially green-light the sequel, presumably waiting to gauge its performance with the public.
And there are fears that giving viewers the option to skip the theater for the small screen could undermine the first film's box office returns, potentially spelling doom for any follow-ups.
"I can say nothing! If ever it happened it would be fantastic," said Villeneuve, discussing sequel plans on the Toronto red carpet Saturday.
"Because for me, I just laid the ground -- the world is explained to the audience now. 'Dune Two' would be just pure cinematic pleasure for me."
- 'Challenge' -
Rebecca Ferguson, who plays royal concubine Lady Jessica, said she was in the dark about any sequel too, but would love to return.
"Has he written it? I don't know. I'm hoping," she told AFP. "Unless he casts someone else!"
The fact that "Dune" got made at all is in some ways remarkable, given the dire track record of previous efforts.
While it profoundly influenced later sci-fi epics such as "Star Wars," the original novel -- about the battle for a valuable resource called "spice" on a hostile desert planet of the future -- has been considered unwieldy or even "unfilmable" for the screen.
That is largely due to its length, sprawling scale, and elaborate detail concerning the universe's various religions, technologies and "Game of Thrones"-esque feuding families.
David Lynch's 1984 film flopped after producers -- alarmed by its run-time -- savagely chopped it down. A previous bid by cult Franco-Chilean filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky never made it past its gargantuan draft screenplay.
But Villeneuve said he was not put off by any such fears.
"It's a book that I've been haunted by (for) almost 40 years," said Villeneuve.
"I knew that I could try to take this challenge -- when you make a movie you never know if it's going to be a success or not. It's part of the game. It's part of the risk of making art."
"I didn't think about what was made before."
However, that is not to say any part of making the film was easy.
"It was technically by far the most difficult thing I have ever tried with a camera," said Villeneuve.
The Toronto International Film Festival runs until September 18.
Decades after 9/11, what became of the US’s neoconservatives?
Few willingly describe themselves as ‘neoconservative’ as the label has fallen away from popular use.
WAR CRIMINALS
Paul Wolfowitz (left) and Donald Rumsfeld (centre) were key architects of President George W Bush's war strategy after the September 11 attacks
[File: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters] By Chris Moody 10 Sep 2021
In the weeks before former President Bill Clinton delivered his State of the Union address to Congress in 1998, a group of intellectuals, writers and policymakers penned an open letter to the president that made an impassioned case for “removing Saddam Hussein and his regime” from power in Iraq.
“We urge you to act decisively,” the letter, published through an organisation called the Project For The New American Century, read. “If we accept a course of weakness and drift, we put our interests and our future at risk.”
The letter stood as a statement of policy in concert with a school of thought commonly called neoconservatism. Although Clinton ignored their advice, the signers included names of men who would later hold sway as part of George W Bush’s presidential administration: Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, to name a few.
What followed over the next few years – US invasions of two nations that lasted decades – changed the course of history.
While the level of influence of the neoconservatives on the Bush administration is often debated, their heeded calls for a hawkish American presence defined the first years of the twenty-first century.
“Neoconservatives proved to be extremely influential in shaping American foreign policy after the Cold War,” said Stephen Wertheim, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of Tomorrow, the World: The Birth of US Global Supremacy. “Neoconservatives were one of the more cohesive intellectual and political groups that made a strident case for US global military dominance and, after 9/11, a series of open-ended wars.”
Today, as the last US troops have departed Afghanistan, weary after years of war, the legacy of the neoconservatives remains widely criticised.
“American conservatives assumed that military power would enable the United States to accomplish a radical ideological agenda, particularly in the Middle East,” said Andrew Bacevich, author of After the Apocalypse: America’s Role in a World Transformed. “That effort has proven to be a costly failure.”
In the early 2000s the term neoconservative – or when often used derisively, “neocon” – became part of the common American lexicon. But these conservative thinkers and practitioners who saw their foreign policy ambitions put into practice on the world stage were not new.
What was first used to describe a group of New York-based intellectuals and former liberals, neoconservativism has come to be defined by support for aggressive foreign policy through military might.
In the 1990s and 2000s, neoconservatives like Irving Kristol of The National Interest and Norman Podhoretz of Commentary were commonly lumped in with a younger generation of thinkers and fellow travellers, like William Kristol, foreign policy analysts Robert Kagan and Max Boot, Bush speechwriter David Frum and others who served in the George W Bush administration
WAR CRIMINALS
.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (centre right) shares a laugh with Attorney General John Ashcroft and US military leaders outside the White House ahead of a meeting with President George W Bush in March 2003 when the US invaded Iraq
[File: Larry Downing/Reuters]
Through policy advocacy in Washington, think-tank papers and articles in conservative journals of opinion, this loosely aligned bunch included some of the loudest supporters of the war in Iraq and other forms of US foreign adventurism.
“They were the dog that caught the car,“ said Daniel McCarthy, editor of Modern Age, a conservative quarterly critical of neoconservatives. “They got the chance to implement their most strongly desired objective. They got to make an attempt at creating an American empire. It was an empire for the sake of promoting liberal democracy as they understood it.”
Twenty years after the attacks on 9/11, an event that arguably set in motion the fulfilment of neoconservative foreign policy dreams, what has become of the neoconservatives?
In recent years, many of the former neoconservatives – or those aligned with them – have coalesced in opposition to former President Donald Trump. These so-called “Never Trumpers” refused to support Trump even after he locked up the GOP nomination in 2016 and some crossed party lines to support Biden’s presidency in 2020.
William Kristol, who had been affiliated with Republicans for decades, launched a new publication, The Bulwark, as a space for conservatives who opposed Trump. In 2020, Kristol supported Democrat Joe Biden for president, calling him “the simple answer” to defeating Trump. Still, Kristol has not abandoned his foreign policy instincts. In August, Kristol co-authored an open letter to Biden calling for him to bolster forces in Afghanistan, writing that “it is not too late to deploy forces to stabilize it, and ultimately turn it around”.
Frum, the Bush speechwriter who coined the phrase “axis of evil” and who in 2003 castigated conservatives who questioned the Iraq War effort as “unpatriotic” in the pages of the conservative National Review, has found a home at The Atlantic, a centre-left magazine. Frum has been a vocal critic of Trump, penning a book called Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic.
Meanwhile, other Bush administration officials, like Doug Feith and Paul Wolfowitz, who worked in the Defense Department, have found safe havens in think-tanks.
The word “neoconservative” has largely fallen away from popular use and one is hard-pressed to find those who willingly use the term to describe themselves. Even as far back as 1996, Podhoretz wrote of neoconservatism using the past tense. More recently, in 2019, Boot called for abandoning it altogether.
“‘Neoconservatism’ once had a real meaning – back in the 1970s,” Boot wrote. “But the label has now become meaningless.”
Seeking to change deadbeat image, Zimbabwe pays debt
NOT DEADBEAT,PAYING RANSOM TO VULTURE CAPITALI$TS
Issued on: 12/09/2021 -
Wracked by economic crises and hyperinflation that saw it introduce various currencies that quickly lost value, Zimbabwe has not paid its foreign debt for years
ZINYANGE AUNTONY AFP/File
Harare (AFP)
After 20 years of not paying its debts, Zimbabwe is taking steps to clean up its balance sheet and its image by making payments to major creditors.
Even if admittedly token amounts, the government hopes they will build goodwill towards Zimbabwe.
Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube announced during a video conference this month that Zimbabwe had made its first payments in two decades to a group of rich countries known as the Paris Club.
"We have started paying them because, as a country, we ought to be known as good debtors and not bad debtors," Ncube said. In addition to the first payments in two decades to the 17 nations that are part of the Paris Club, he said Zimbabwe was also settling its debts to multilateral lenders. "We have taken the step of beginning to pay token payments to the World Bank, the African Development Bank and the European Investment Bank," Ncube said.
Clearing Zimbabwe's debts, or simply catching up on payments, is a mammoth task. The $11 billion that Zimbabwe owes to foreign lenders amounts to about 71 percent of the country's GDP. Some $6.5 billion of the total is payments that are in arrears.
Ncube said the government would need a "sponsor" to bring its debt payments under control.
It was unclear what exactly he meant by that, but he said the goal was "really to tackle those arrears with the World Bank and the African Development Bank, the preferred creditors."
"We are working hard on that," he said.
Zimbabwe defaulted on its debts when the economy fell into a tailspin 20 years ago under then-president Robert Mugabe.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who took power after a coup in 2017, wants to renew ties with Europe and the United States, which had largely cut them over Mugabe's undermining of elections and human rights abuses.
- 'Essentially a gesture' -
"The country seeks to re-engage with the international community in Europe and the US," economist Persistence Gwanyanya told AFP. The debt payments "are positive actions that will convince the rest of the world that we mean what we say."
The West may take a lot of convincing.
Mnangagwa, once a top deputy to Mugabe, is among the senior government officials banned from travelling or banking in the United States and Europe.
Western countries froze his assets in protest of human rights violations, and so far have shown little inclination to ease them.
In July, Britain added new sanctions to a Zimbabwean official for fraudulently redeeming treasury bills at 10 times their official value. But Gwanyanya said making even small payments on its debts shows the world that Mnangagwa wants to do business differently from his predecessor.
"That Zimbabwe has started to do so at a time where our debt is very in excess would unlock some capital from the external world," he said. Zimbabwe's economy has swung dramatically since 2000, shrinking at a breathtaking rate during years of hyperinflation, before clawing its way back to growth in 2009.
Covid-19 and a drought pushed the economy back into recession, with inflation returning to triple digits.
Inflation has settled back down into double digits -- sitting at 56 percent in July, down from 106 the previous month -- and Ncube has ambitious plans to bring the country into the global middle class by 2030.
To do that, Zimbabwe will need capital and investors. Paying down its debts is one way to make the country more attractive.
"Essentially it's a gesture," Gwanyanya said. "It does not mean we are able to pay the complete debt but it will send a signal to the rest of the world about our willingness to service debts and therefore change perceptions of how others view the country."
Unlike most classical concerts, both the musicians and the listening public are dressed completely in leather
John MACDOUGALL AFP
Berlin (AFP)
In a Berlin church, a piano and flute duo are holding a recital of music by the romantic composer Edvard Grieg to an attentive audience.
But unlike most classical concerts, both the musicians and the listening public are dressed completely in leather.
The organiser of this soiree, Tyrone Rontgagner, could not be prouder to bring together in this house of prayer about one hundred members of the queer community, displaying their love for everything leather, from chaps and braces to masks and vests.
"Lots of people think that the fetish scene is all about sex, but they're just the clothes we wear," says Rontgagner at the "classic meets fetish" event.
"It's just another way to express yourself, like music. Music brings people together just like our dress," says the long-time LGBT activist.
A translator by profession and two-time "Mr Leather Germany", Rontgagner has been organising the concert in the Twelve Apostles Evangelical Chuch to promote everything queer since 2015.
For the event he has the blessing of the minister, Burkhard Bornemann, openly gay and an active figure in the local community providing support for drug addicts and prostitutes.
The musicians, among them an organist and a violinist, all follow the dress code
John MACDOUGALL AFP
The audience, almost exclusively men, are by and large not regular churchgoers.
"Religion? Not for me," confesses Pup Luppi, a fifty-something year old man in a leather jumpsuit with a wagging dog's tail.
"Classical music on the other hand calms me, and like BDSM, it's a sort of game in which the excitement rises and falls," he says.
- 'Typical Berlin' -
"At the start it was a bit strange for me but I think it's great," says Ronald Hartewig, who looks distinctly like Victor Willis from disco group Village People in his police officer's uniform.
The musicians, among them an organist and a violinist, all follow the dress code while playing interpretations of Rachmaninoff's "Valse and Romance", Aram Khachaturian's "Sabre Dance" and more Grieg.
The audience, almost exclusively men, are by and large not regular churchgoers
John MACDOUGALL AFP
"It's fun to be all in leather rather than in a suit. It lets you build a bridge between the gay community and our everyday life as a musician," says Eric Beillevaire, a bass-baritone singer.
"It's such a pleasure to perform in front of an audience again after such a long time," he adds, while noting that the choice of venue is "typical of Berlin".
Located in the Schoeneberg neighbourhood, the centre of Berlin's gay scene, the Twelve Apostles Church is not a place of worship just like any other.
The church is located in the Schoeneberg neighbourhood, the centre of Berlin's gay scene
John MACDOUGALL AFP
Also known as the "gin church", its windows were donated by the local distillery to replaced those destroyed during the Second World War and are designated as an historic monument.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/69845428/acastro_180427_1777_0003.0.jpg)
