CRIMINAL CAPITALI$T

Hushpuppi - the Instagram influencer and international fraudster

Helen Clifton & Princess Abumere - File on 4 & BBC Africa
Tue, September 14, 2021

Ramon Abbas - known to his 2.5 million Instagram followers as Hushpuppi - is considered by the FBI to be one of the world's most high-profile fraudsters and faces a prison sentence of up to 20 years in the US after pleading guilty to money laundering.

The BBC has used newly available court documents to uncover the man behind cyber heists that have cost his victims millions, from his humble beginnings as a "Yahoo Boy" hustler in Nigeria to a so-called "Billionaire Gucci Master" living a life of luxury in Dubai before his arrest last year.

The 37-year-old began his career in Oworonshoki, a poor coastal area in the north-east of Lagos, Nigeria's commercial capital.

Local driver Seye told the BBC that he remembered Abbas as a young boy working alongside his mother in the Olojojo market. His father was a taxi driver.

As he grew older, Seye says, Abbas liked to splash his cash: "He was generous. He used to buy beer for everyone around."

But everyone knew the source of his mysterious wealth - cybercrime; he was a "Yahoo", Seye says.

Hushpuppi's former home, 9 Ogunyomi Street, in the Oworonshoki area of Lagos

"Yahoo Boys" are romance scammers who took their name from the first free email available in Nigeria.

"They came up with the idea of stealing identities. And then with that identity theft, they went into dating [scams]," explains Dr Adedeji Oyenuga, a cybercrime expert at Lagos State University.

Once a relationship is established via a false identity, romance scammers wheedle money from their online lovers.

Like many Yahoo Boys, Abbas broadened his criminal horizons. Many went to Malaysia - and Abbas followed them, ending up in Kuala Lumpur around 2014, then Dubai in 2017.
North Korean hackers

This is when his Instagram posts - and crimes - went to another level.

In February 2019, he attempted to launder 13m euros (£11m; $15m) stolen by a gang of North Korean hackers from the Maltese Bank of Valletta.

Hushpuppi's Instagram posts about his luxurious lifestyle attracted hundreds of thousands of likes

Abigail Mamo, chief executive of the Maltese chamber of small and medium enterprises, says the heist plunged the holiday island into "chaos".

Shopping trolleys filled with goods were abandoned at checkouts as payment systems shut down.

"We received calls from our members telling us they were sending money using Bank of Valletta's platform to their foreign suppliers," says Ms Mamo.

"Their foreign suppliers did not receive the money... We're talking about thousands of euros."

The bank said it managed to recover 10m euros.

"Damn," Abbas said in a text to a fellow scammer at the time in messages obtained by the FBI.

The reply shows the next heist was being planned: "Next one is in few weeks; will let you know when it's ready. Too bad they caught on, or it would have been a nice pay out."
Premiership scam scuppered

In May 2019, Abbas was tasked with setting up a bank account in Mexico.

It was to receive £100m from a Premier League Football Club, and £200m from a UK firm. Neither are named in the court documents.

The scams were to be carried out via Business Email Compromise (BEC).

Terrifyingly simple, BEC works by intercepting payments via fake emails that appear to come from an address that is almost exactly the same as the supplier's. Only a single letter or number will be different.

In that email the scammers - posing as a supplier awaiting payment - typically say they've switched banks, so the payment will need to be wired to a different account; the details for which they will provide.

The accounts clerk is fooled into thinking it is a legitimate request from the supplier - and, with a single click of a mouse, vast sums of money are lost.

But the Premiership scam fell apart when the UK banks refused to pay into the Mexican account. "Brother I can't send from UK to Mexico," Abbas's sidekick messaged him. "They keep finding out."

None of the Premiership clubs would confirm whether or not they were the intended victim.
'Professionals shamed'

Jon Shilland, fraud lead with the UK's National Crime Agency, says it can be difficult tracking down criminal networks based in multiple jurisdictions.

A fact known all too well by Dubai-based lawyer Barney Almazar.

He represents around 25 people - including eight UK citizens - in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), all of whom believe they are victims of one of Hushpuppi's BEC scams.

Investigators say it is difficult to track down scammers when those in a network are based all over the world

"We cannot say with 100% certainty that Hushpuppi is behind it," Mr Almazar says.

"But if you look at the bank accounts that police have traced, they all belong to the records obtained by the police in their raids [on Hushpuppi's home in Dubai]."

One UK victim, who wanted to remain anonymous, says he lost £500,000, has been forced to leave the UAE - and is himself facing criminal proceedings in Dubai because of the debt he has incurred as a result of the fraud.

"His clients understand that he was victimised," Mr Almazar explains.

"But they also have to cover their losses, so right now he doesn't know how he can get back to the UAE. He has spent his life in the UAE. His family are still in the UAE. He fears that he might get apprehended at immigration immediately."

Mr Almazar says shame prevents many more of Hushpuppi's victims coming forward.

"The scam was very sophisticated. Professionals were victimised. Some are hesitant to admit what has happened."
Qatari school fraud

Abbas's final big scam before his arrest in Dubai in June 2020 was straight-up identity theft, borrowed from the Yahoo Boy romance scams of his youth.

He assumed the identity of a New York banker to entrap his victim, a Qatari businessperson seeking a $15m loan to build a new school in the Gulf state.

Between December 2019 and February 2020, Abbas and a gang of alleged middlemen in Kenya, Nigeria and the US groomed and conned the victim out of more than a million dollars.

Some of it was laundered via the purchase of a watch worth a staggering $230,000.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B918wDMJUNP/

But soon, the cracks between the gang started to show.

One member threatened to blow the whole scam wide open as he was unhappy about the money he was getting.

Abbas was determined to shut him up.

He texted his contact - Nigerian police officer Abba Kyari - saying: "I want him to go through serious beating of his life.

"I want to spend money to send this boy to jail, let him go for a very long time."

It is alleged that Mr Kyari then falsely arrested and detained the middleman for a month in a squalid Nigerian cell.

Abba Kyari, who has a reputation in Nigeria as a "super cop", has been suspended and is wanted in the US

And now Mr Kyari too is wanted in the US on charges of fraud, money laundering and identity theft. He has previously denied having any criminal involvement with Abbas - and has not responded to the BBC's requests for comment.
Still attracting followers

BEC fraud is a huge issue across the world. According to the FBI, in 2020 BEC fraud resulted in losses of $1.8bn.

Court documents allege Abbas's crimes cost victims almost $24m in total. But some believe the actual total could be much higher.

On Instagram, he dropped the "Billionaire Gucci Master" moniker for "Real Estate Developer" about eight months before his arrest and subsequent transfer to the US to stand trial.

"I have seen parents who have taken their children to learn how to become Yahoo boys"", Source: Adedeji Oyenuga, Source description: Lagos State University cybercrime expert, Image:

Despite him pleading guilty in April to money laundering, Hushpuppi's social media is still live and attracting followers.

We contacted Instagram to ask why his account was still open. The social media platform told the BBC that it had carried out an investigation into his account - but had decided not to close it.

Just days after we put the same question to Snapchat, which deleted Hushpuppi's account.

Dr Oyenuga says Hushpuppi's influence endures as he is still regarded as a role model: "We're in a country where a lot of young people are suffering. They see another young person who was once like them become that great.

"I have seen parents who have taken their children to learn how to become Yahoo boys."

Seye says everyone knows Hushpuppi has committed a crime, but it is understandable: "No-one prays to be poor. So when you see someone who is rich, you will pray to God to give you his kind of wealth."

Stop funding coal abroad, NGO group tells top investor Bank of China


FILE PHOTO: Bank of China logo in Beijing

David Stanway
Mon, September 13, 2021

SHANGHAI (Reuters) -Bank of China (BoC), a top global investor in coal- power plants, must end the financing of such projects outside the mainland and support clean and renewable energy instead, an alliance of 35 non-governmental organisations said on Tuesday.

The comments, made in an open letter to state-controlled BoC's chairman Liu Liange and signed by groups from 13 countries in Asia, Africa and Europe, add to the growing criticism of China for financing coal-fired power stations overseas, especially as part of its Belt and Road Initiative.

While China has said that it would respect the right of local communities to decide what sort of energy they needed, the letter, which has been signed by organisations from several Belt and Road countries, indicates growing opposition to coal even in developing nations.

Bank of China's total overseas financing of coal-based power projects since the Paris climate agreement in 2015 stands at more than $35 billion, the most by any investor globally, and is "out of step with China's climate change ambition", the letter said.

It said more than 130 financial institutions have already decided to restrict fossil fuel investments, and urged Bank of China to follow suit.

Bank of China declined to comment on the letter. Its President Liu Jin said at the end of August that the bank would "gradually reduce" the share of total credit extended to coal projects during the 2021-2025 period, but would also issue more loans for technical upgrades in the sector.

GRADUAL SHIFT

Julien Vincent, executive director of Market Forces, an Australian organisation that campaigns against fossil fuel finance, said dozens of coal-fired power plants around the world would not go ahead without the bank's support.

"The narrative on coal from Chinese business and finance leaders is clearly shifting, but what really counts is action," he told Reuters.

Chinese financial institutions have been gradually shifting away from coal. Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the world's biggest bank by assets, has already pledged to draw up a "road map" to pull out of coal.

In recommendations published last week, a government advisory body also called on China to "restrict and gradually stop" the use of public funds in overseas coal power investment, and encourage state banks to make similar commitments.

According to research released on Tuesday by European think-tank E3G, 44 countries have already committed to "no new coal", with 1,175 gigawatts of coal-power capacity cancelled since 2015.

It said a similar pledge by China would remove 55% of all of the world's proposed new coal-fired power projects.

(Reporting by David Stanway, Additional reporting by Cheng Leng in Beijing; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)

Canada's ‘hospitals are building barricades’: COVID-19 pandemic reaches ugly heights with anti-vaxx protests

Elisabetta Bianchini

Mon, September 13, 2021,

On Monday, Canadin healtcare workers and patients faced a number of anti-vaxxer protesters outside hospitals, including University Health Network's Toronto General Hospital.

While the protests took place, Justin Trudeau announced that if the Liberals are re-elected, the government would move forward with legislation to make it a criminal offence to obstruct access to any health services locations, including hospitals, and also make it a criminal offence to "intimidate or threaten any healthcare professional carrying out their professional duties."

I am deeply disturbed by anti-vaxxer gatherings outside of hospitals and health care sites in the last few weeks. These people are intimidating our health care heroes and putting Canadians seeking health services at risk.Justin Trudeau, Leader of Liberal party of Canada

"I will not accept this. That’s why we’re going to take strong action to ensure everyone has access to the care they need and keep our front-line health care workers safe. Only our Liberal team will finish this fight against COVID-19 and keep our communities safe and healthy."

Other federal party leaders also commented on the protests.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, who previous announced a plan to make it a Criminal Code offence to harass or block someone from accessing healthcare, or assault healthcare workers, condemned the protests on Monday.                      

"There is no space at all for protests that are threatening healthcare workers and patients. It's wrong," a statement from Singh reads. "That's not the place to protest."

"We would make it an aggravating element of a sentence if someone was in any way threatening a healthcare worker, threatening patients, getting in the way of their ability to access care. That’s 100 per cent not on."

Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole also joined the conversation, saying that "no one should be permitted to obstruct access to a hospital."

On Monday, Mayors and Chairs from the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area released a statement on the hospital protests.

"Throughout the pandemic, we have all relied on our frontline healthcare heroes to save lives and help people," the statement reads. "People go to hospitals because they need medical help - they also don't deserve to be harassed or intimidated by protests.

"The Mayors and Chairs strongly condemn protests intentionally targeting hospitals and support our enforcement officials in taking any action they deem necessary to protect our hospitals and keeping patients and healthcare workers safe."

Speaking to reporters, Toronto Mayor John Tory responded to a question about why police and city staff are able to remove encampments at parks but it's seemingly more difficult to remove anti-vaxxers in front of local hospitals. Tory called that an "unfair comparison."

"The police understand that they have the discretion and the responsibility to enforce the law and to decide where the line is between harassment and peaceful protest," the Toronto Mayor said.

Several Canadians, including healthcare workers, have taken to social media to respond to the protests.

Mandates challenge Western liberalism amid Delta variant

By Wang Wenwen

Published: Sep 13, 2021 

OPINION / OBSERVER]

CGTN

A resident receives a dose of COVID-19 vaccine in Pasadena, Los Angeles County, California, the US, January 15, 2021. Photo: Xinhua 

The COVID-19 pandemic has never gone far, and the post-pandemic era has not arrived. As the novel coronavirus keeps challenging humans' understanding of it, countries are facing real tests of how to cope with the virus.

The latest outbreak in Putian, Fujian Province, is yet another challenge to Chinese society. 79 cases were found in the past four days. Primary studies have suggested the virus is likely the highly infectious Delta variant and health experts believe it is likely to have a spillover effect. As the Chinese public is expecting the upcoming Mid-Autumn Day and National Day holidays and the country hopes to maintain the economic recovery momentum, the latest outbreak may overshadow these expectations.

Meanwhile, the pandemic situation in the West has not been effectively controlled, as the governments and people are struggling to co-exist with the virus. In the wake of the rising number of infections and deaths in the West, Western countries, particularly the US and France, are propelled to choose a side between state mandatory measures and individual freedom.

Last week, US President Joe Biden signed executive orders mandating vaccinations among federal executive branch employees and employees of companies that do business with the federal government. The mandates immediately deepened the nation's political divisions and met with backlash from certain groups. Several Republican governors vowed to go to court to challenge the constitutionality of the rules and called the mandates a big government attack on personal freedoms. Several staffers in the maternity department of a New York hospital resigned over the hospital system's vaccine mandate.

Also over the weekend, more than 120,000 people demonstrated across France to protest the coronavirus health passes. The pass, or a recent negative COVID-19 test result, is required to enter most public places, which is viewed by protesters as a hindrance to freedom.

Xu Liang, an associate professor at the School of International Relations of Beijing International Studies University, told the Global Times that Western people's viewpoint of freedom has been incorporated into their ideas and behavior, which can hardly change, and this is the fundamental challenge to the West to adopt mandatory anti-virus measures that China has been adopting.

"Even if Western politicians want to, they couldn't do it. So any government mandate, be it a vaccine or wearing mask, will only exacerbate social chaos and political crises in the West," said Xu.

The West has pinned their hopes on the vaccines and expects the pandemic to be controlled through herd immunity without free spirit being eroded. But the high infectiousness of the Delta variant made this wish fall flat. The West has no option but to resort to vaccine mandates and other strict epidemic-control measures. As people protest, Western governments not only have to deal with the pandemic, but also face the hidden task of building social cohesion.

The way the West fights the pandemic has something to do with its liberal political and cultural tradition, while collectivism and patriotism have been displayed throughout the Chinese people's cooperation with the government-led prevention and control measures.

Right now for China, it needs to continue its dynamic zero-case route and make it work better for the changing pandemic situation. It must guarantee normal social and economic activities. The problems for the West are thornier, because they have to be prepared for social chaos or even deeper crises as their anti-pandemic measures have started shaking their core liberal values.

No scientific basis for COVID-19 vaccine boosters in general populations

Even though many wealthy countries are planning to roll out booster doses, a Lancet review has concluded that the standard COVID-19 vaccination regimen is highly effective, even against the Delta variant.

14 September 2021 – by Priya Joi


WHAT IS THE RESEARCH ABOUT?

Several rich nations have decided to rollout COVID-19 vaccine boosters – essentially another jab – to strengthen waning antibody responses in their most vulnerable groups. This is concerning for various reasons.

First off is equity in vaccine access. As many organisations, including Gavi and the World Health Organization, have said, when just 1.1% of people in low-income countries have received a first dose, wealthy countries offering additional doses to fully vaccinated individuals is not ethical.

COVID-19 vaccines remain highly effective in protecting against infection and guarding against severe disease or death.

Leaving millions of people completely unvaccinated is also unwise, as it enables the virus to circulate even more freely in certain parts of the world, increasing the likelihood that it could mutate to a point where existing vaccines become less effective.

Meanwhile, giving a third jab to fully-vaccinated people will have very little impact on the number of people hospitalised or dying from COVID-19 in countries with high vaccine coverage, because the majority of such people are unvaccinated in these countries.

This new study, published in The Lancet, investigated whether there was any scientific basis for giving people booster doses at this stage in the pandemic.

WHAT DID THE RESEARCHERS DO?

The scientists, including some from the World Health Organization and the US Food and Drug Administration, summarised evidence from randomised controlled trials and observational studies published in peer-reviewed journals and on pre-print servers. The aim was to assess evidence of vaccine effectiveness against COVID-19, especially against new variants in different populations around the world. The only justification for using booster doses when there is a limited supply of vaccines would be if there was demonstrable evidence of widespread waning immunity, the researchers said.

WHAT DID THEY FIND?

COVID-19 vaccines remain highly effective in protecting against infection and guarding against severe disease or death. Although the efficacy of most vaccines against symptomatic disease is somewhat reduced for the delta variant compared with the alpha variant or the original Wuhan strain of coronavirus, there is still high vaccine efficacy against both symptomatic and severe disease, the researchers said.

They added: “although vaccines are less effective against asymptomatic disease or against transmission than against severe disease, even in populations with high vaccination coverage the unvaccinated minority are still the major drivers of transmission, as well as being themselves at the highest risk of serious disease.”

It is important to note that this study assessed the need of booster doses among general populations. It is still possible that specific groups, such immunocompromised, elderly or frail individuals might need a booster dose.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?

These findings underscore the importance of delivering vaccines to people who haven’t yet been vaccinated or who have received only one dose – which is still a large part of the world's population. The researchers note that even if antibody levels in vaccinated individuals wane over time, this does not equate to lowered efficacy of the vaccine since our immune response is more complex than just the presence of antibodies. Memory cells and cell-mediated immunity are also critical.

The authors conclude: “If boosters are ultimately to be used, there will be a need to identify specific circumstances where the benefits outweigh the risks.”

Republicans Don’t Actually Want Roe v. Wade to End This Way
GOP politicians appear terrified of Texas’ abortion ban. The Supreme Court should take note.

BY MARK JOSEPH STERNSEPT 08, 20214:25 PM

A woman attends a protest against the Texas abortion law in Houston on Sunday. Reginald Mathalone via Reuters Connect

On Sept. 1, the anti-abortion movement won its most substantial legal victory in nearly half a century. But most Republicans don’t actually want to talk about it. Instead, the GOP’s reaction to Texas’ six-week abortion ban—which took effect at the beginning of the month after the Supreme Court refused to block it—has been silence, punctuated by lies about the law itself. Despite the Republican Party’s decadeslong crusade against Roe v. Wade, the vast majority of GOP politicians declined to celebrate, or even note, Roe’s functional demise. Why?

The most obvious answer is that Republicans are now the dog that caught the car, fearful of the political ramifications of their own victory. Indeed, it seems undeniable that Republicans did not anticipate this abrupt triumph over Roe, instead assuming that the Texas law would be blocked by the courts. After all, hundreds of similar laws were blocked by the courts for years. Their decision to downplay this victory should upend the conventional wisdom about Roe not just politically, but also from a constitutional perspective.

For years, conservative lawyers have argued that the Supreme Court should not uphold pro-choice precedent because it is unsettled, unstable, and unworkable. As evidence, they cite the fact that red states continue passing all manner of abortion restrictions to contest the legitimacy of Roe as settled precedent. But the GOP’s reaction to the Texas law suggests that this analysis has it backward. What if Republicans only continued to pass abortion restrictions because they knew the laws would get struck down? What if the passage of these laws proves that Roe is such a settled, stable, and workable precedent that legislators think they can pretend to defy it without worrying about the consequences?

When the Supreme Court handed down Roe in 1973, the decision was not nearly as controversial as it is today. It was decided by a 7–2 vote with four Republican-appointed justices in the majority. The public reaction was initially muted but grew more polarized in the following years as the political and religious right seized upon abortion as a cause célèbre. Under Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, the Department of Justice urged the Supreme Court to overturn Roe, but it refused in 1992’s Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

Every year that passed with Roe and Casey on the books, the argument for overturning the constitutional right to abortion seemed to grow weaker. The Supreme Court’s doctrine of stare decisis requires respect for precedents, especially those with deep roots upon which the nation has come to rely. As the court explained in Casey, “people have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society in reliance on the availability of abortion.” These profound “reliance interests” counsel against SCOTUS pulling out the rug from underneath millions of Americans by eradicating their right to terminate a pregnancy.

As Roe grew increasingly entrenched in American law and life, anti-abortion advocates adopted a different argument to contest its validity as precedent: The argument that it is not stable because state legislatures continue passing laws designed to undermine or flout it. Chief Justice John Roberts appeared to endorse this idea when he laid out his grand unified theory of precedent in a concurring opinion to 2010’s Citizens United v. FEC. Roberts wrote that the Supreme Court should not adhere to precedent if it is “so hotly contested that it cannot reliably function as a basis for decision in future cases.” The “simple fact that one of our decisions remains controversial” does not, by itself, “justify overruling it,” the chief justice noted. But he added that this controversy “does undermine the precedent’s ability to contribute to the stable and orderly development of the law.” In these cases, it is “entirely appropriate for the court” to “consider new approaches”—that is, to overrule it.
Republicans created the impression that Roe was “unsettled” and “unstable” while relying on its status as settled, stabled law.

Many conservative commentators believe Roberts wrote this opinion with Roe “in his cross-hairs.” Conservative litigators picked up on his hint and began filling their briefs with arguments against Roe’s stability. When 207 members of Congress urged the Supreme Court to “reconsider” Roe in 2020’s June Medical v. Russo, they zeroed in on this claim, saying they could dismiss the precedent because it is “unsettled” and “unworkable.” Other anti-abortion groups echoed Roberts’ concurrence, as well; Americans United for Life, for instance, alleged that “growing legal protection for prenatal human life”—that is, an endless stream of abortion restrictions—has “kept Roe radically unsettled.” And because it is so unstable, the Supreme Court should not award it any respect as precedent.

These arguments, however, failed to mention a key fact: Legislatures passed all these restrictions knowing that the federal judiciary would safeguard the core right to abortion. They did not have to face the political backlash that might result from the closure of every abortion clinic or the prosecution of patients who terminate illegally. As the implementation date for each new law loomed, clinics would race to court to obtain an injunction. Judges would oblige, and Republicans would rail against their rulings—and fundraise off the outrage they fomented. At the next legislative session, they’d repeat the process, creating an endless cycle of anti-abortion fervor that never resulted in the prohibition of abortion.

Now the Supreme Court has broken that cycle. By a 5–4 vote, it allowed Texas’ six-week abortion ban to take effect, allowing the state to outlaw virtually all abortions for the first time since 1973. The state’s clinics have stopped providing abortions to all but the rare patient at an extremely early stage of pregnancy. Yet few of its members are willing to acknowledge this new state of affairs. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell dismissed the Supreme Court’s effective abandonment of Roe—a key aim of his ruthless drive to capture the federal judiciary—as a “highly technical decision.” Texas’ Republican senators, Ted Cruz and John Cornyn—normally so vocal about their hostility to abortion—were silent.

At first, so was Gov. Greg Abbott, who signed the Texas ban into law. When Abbott did finally comment on the law, he lied about it, claiming that “it provides at least six weeks for a person to be able to get an abortion.” Abbott’s comments can only be seen as an attempt to insist that women can still access abortion care in his state. This allegation is objectively false: A patient is “six weeks pregnant” just two weeks after her first missed period. Many pregnancy tests may not even turn up positive until several days after a patient first misses her period. In reality, then, Texans have two weeks, at most, to get an abortion. No wonder more than 85 percent of abortion patients have passed the six-week mark.

Other Republicans’ assertions about the bill are equally laughable. GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy insisted that “if it is as terrible as people say it is, it’ll be destroyed by the Supreme Court.” (Except … it wasn’t.) He even declared that the court’s decision to let the law take effect was “clearly not an assault … upon Roe v. Wade.” (It was.) Why was Cassidy—who purports to support the reversal of Roe and the prohibition of abortion—so eager to convey his confidence that SCOTUS would uphold Roe and block Texas’ bill?

The most likely answer is that Cassidy, like most members of his party, has long assumed that Roe would serve as a guardrail against their most extreme anti-abortion legislation. They created the impression that Roe was “unsettled” and “unstable” while relying on its status as settled, stabled law to score political points. They pretended it was an “unworkable” precedent then trusted courts to enforce its obvious commands at the expense of their own legislation. Put simply, Republicans could only create the impression of Roe’s instability because it was so stable.

Now, thanks to their own crusade, that stability is in serious peril. The GOP has succeeded, for the first time in almost half a century, in outlawing almost all abortions in a state. And now, Republicans are running scared from the consequences of their own actions. Before the Supreme Court’s conservative justices pronounce Roe fatally unsettled, unstable, and unworkable, they should look at Republicans’ reaction to their own ostensible triumph in Texas. At long last, GOP lawmakers have achieved an end run around the constitutional right to abortion. And now, they have never been more desperate to convince the country that Roe is settled precedent.

Morongo, 3 other tribes ask U.S. Supreme Court to uphold Indian Child Welfare Act

'There’s a lot at stake here, and it’s important that the general public understands that (ICWA) stands as a beacon in child welfare practices'

Morongo tribal chairman Charles Martin

By JOE NELSON | jnelson@scng.com | 

San Bernardino Sun
PUBLISHED:September 14, 2021 


The Morongo Band of Mission Indians and four other tribes from across the nation have joined the federal government in petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold a law that gives adoption preference for American Indian children in state foster care to American Indian families.

In a petition filed Sept. 3, the tribes are essentially requesting that the high court leave intact the Indian Child Welfare Act, a law enacted in 1978 amid a trend that saw an “alarmingly high percentage” of American Indian children separated from their families by nontribal public and private agencies.

U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, who is of American Indian descent, also has petitioned the Supreme Court to uphold the law, while the state of Texas, on behalf of Chad and Jennifer Brackeen, have petitioned the high court to repeal the law, claiming it is unconstitutional.

ICWA has withstood legal challenges for more than 40 years, but in the past four years federal judges have been divided on its constitutionality.

“Over the ensuing four decades, state courts have repeatedly sustained ICWA as constitutional, and child-welfare professionals now regard ICWA’s procedural and substantive requirements as the gold standard for child welfare,” according to the petition filed by Morongo, the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin and the Quinault Indian Nation in Washington.

In its petition, Texas maintained that ICWA is a race-based system that creates a “child-custody regime for Indian children defined by a child’s genetics and ancestry,” and is designed to make the adoption of Indian children by non-Indians more difficult.

Questions raised in the Texas petition include: Does Congress have the power to enact laws governing state child-custody proceedings merely because the child is or may be an Indian, and does the Indian Child Welfare Act violate the Constitution’s equal protection guarantee by providing American Indian families preference in the adoption of American Indian children?

“The significant constitutional questions in this case and their implication on the treatment of numerous vulnerable children deserve the Court’s attention,” according to the petition.

Challenge to law in 2017

ICWA was challenged in 2017, when the Brackeens joined the states of Texas, Indiana and Louisiana as plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit testing the welfare act’s constitutionality.

The Brackeens had successfully fought ​in state court efforts by social workers to place a Navajo-Cherokee boy ​they were trying to adopt with a Navajo family in New Mexico. The couple, however, hit another roadblock when they tried to adopt the boy’s half-sister, who was placed with a tribal family in Texas.

In October 2018, federal Judge Reed O’Connor of the Northern District of Texas declared ICWA unconstitutional. The federal government appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, and In August 2019 the three-judge panel overturned Reed’s ruling. But it didn’t end there.

The plaintiffs appealed again to the Fifth Circuit, only this time requesting that all 17 circuit judges review the matter and decide. The request was granted.
Opinion murky

On April 21, the Fifth Circuit released its more than 300-page opinion — a mixed bag that largely upheld the law, but in which some judges agreed that certain provisions of ICWA were unconstitutional and others were constitutional, leaving the outcome less than clear.

Now, both the plaintiffs and the defendants have petitioned the nation’s highest court to review the case.

Texas noted in its petition that eight of the Fifth Circuit judges “amply demonstrated” that clarification was needed about the limits on Congress’ authority to legislate with respect to Indians.

Matthew D. McGill, an attorney for the Brackeens, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Should the Supreme Court hear the case, its decision would not impact the Brackeens or their adopted children, but could determine the fate of future American Indian children in the foster system, and upend the ICWA process that has existed for decades.

“Our tribes continue to fight for ICWA because it ensures the best outcomes for Indian children by keeping them connected to their families and tribal communities. We can never go back to the dark times when Indian children were removed from their homes and stripped of their heritage,” the petitioning tribes said in a statement.

A Supreme Court response to the tribes’ petition and the petition filed by the plaintiffs is due on Oct. 8, according to the docket.

‘Terrible practices’

David Simmons, director of governmental affairs and advocacy for the National Indian Child Welfare Association in Portland, Oregon, stressed that ICWA has helped stem a centuries-old practice by the federal government and private agencies of systemically separating American Indian families.

“We’re looking at almost 200 years of really difficult policies and terrible practices,” Simmons said, noting, as another example, the establishment of Indian boarding schools in the 19th century that also resulted in American Indian children being torn from their families.

The recent unearthing of mass graves at former boarding schools in Canada has prompted the U.S. Department of Interior to launch an investigation of more than 350 American Indian boarding schools nationwide that operated under the government’s cultural assimilation program in the 19th and 20th centuries.

“We know that (ICWA) is working very well throughout the country … yet we have some opponents trying to dismantle it and have it ruled unconstitutional, despite the evidence of how well it’s worked,” Simmons said. “There’s a lot at stake here, and it’s important that the general public understands that (ICWA) stands as a beacon in child welfare practices.”

Ken Ramirez, chairman of the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians in San Bernardino, said in a statement Friday that, for more than 40 years, the Indian Child Welfare Act has helped reverse the tide of one of the most enduring historical attacks on Native American people: the forcible removal of American Indian children from their homes, tribal cultures, and tribal communities.

“We are hopeful that the United States Supreme Court will review this case and affirm the constitutionality of the Indian Child Welfare Act,” Ramirez said. “Those who seek to remove Native children from their homes and tribal communities should not be emboldened to return to the harmful and tragic practices of the past.”




Joe Nelson | reporter
Joe Nelson is an award-winning investigative reporter who has worked for The Sun since November 1999. He started as a crime reporter and went on to cover a variety of beats including courts and the cities of Colton, Highland and Grand Terrace. He has covered San Bernardino County since 2009. Nelson is a graduate of California State University Fullerton. In 2014, he completed a fellowship at Loyola Law School's Journalist Law School program.

The True Lessons of the Afghan War

Wars of unintended consequences.


US Army soldiers in the 1/501st of the 25th Infantry Division shield their eyes from the powerful rotor wash of a Chinook cargo helicopter as they are picked up from a mission October 15, 2009 in Paktika Province, Afghanistan.

 (Photo: Chris Hondros/Getty Images)



RAJAN MENON

September 14, 2021 

by TomDispatch

Disagreements over how to assess the American exodus from Afghanistan have kept the pundits busy these last weeks, even though there wasn't much to say that hadn't been said before. For some of them, however, that was irrelevant. Having overseen or promoted the failed Afghan War themselves, all the while brandishing various "metrics" of success, they were engaged in transparent reputation-salvaging.

Not surprisingly, the entire spectacle has been tiresome and unproductive. Better to devote time and energy to distilling the Afghan war's larger lessons.

Here are four worth considering.

Lesson One: When You Make Policy, Give Serious Thought to Possible Unintended Consequences

The architects of American policy toward Afghanistan since the late 1970s bear responsibility for the disasters that occurred there because they couldn't, or wouldn't, look beyond their noses. As a result, their policies backfired with drastic consequences. Some historical scene-setting is required to understand just why and how.

Let's start in another country and another time. Consider the December 1979 decision of the leadership of the Soviet Union to send in the Red Army to save the ruling Marxist and pro-Soviet People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA). Having seized control of that country the previous year, the PDPA was soon pleading for help. By centralizing its power in the Afghan capital, Kabul (never a good way to govern that land), and seeking to modernize society at breakneck speed—through, among other things, promoting the education and advancement of women—it had provoked an Islamic insurgency that spread rapidly. Once Soviet troops joined the fray, the United States, assisted by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, and even China, would start funding, arming, and training the mujahedeen, a collection of Islamist groups committed to waging jihad there.

The decision to arm them set the stage for much of what happened in Afghanistan ever since, especially because Washington gave Pakistan carte blanche to decide which of the jihadist groups would be armed, leaving that country's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence Agency to call the shots. The ISI favored the most radical mujahedeen groups, calculating that an Islamist-ruled Afghanistan would provide Pakistan with "strategic depth" by ending India's influence there.

India did indeed have close ties with the PDPA, as well as the previous government of Mohammed Daoud, who had overthrown King Zahir Shah, his cousin, in 1973. Pakistan's Islamist parties, especially the Jama'at-i-Islami, which had been proselytizing among the millions of Afghan refugees then in Pakistan, along with the most fundamentalist of the exiled Afghan Islamist groups, also helped recruit fighters for the war against the Soviet troops.

From 1980 until 1989, when the defeated Red Army finally departed from Afghanistan, Washington's foreign policy crew focused in a single-minded fashion on expelling them by arming those anti-Soviet insurgents. One rationale for this was a ludicrous theory that the Soviet move into Afghanistan was an initial step toward Moscow's ultimate goal: conquering the oil-rich Persian Gulf. The spinners of this apocalyptic fantasy, notably President Jimmy Carter's hawkish national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, seemed not to have even bothered to peruse a map of the terrain between Afghanistan and the Gulf. It would have shown that among the obstacles awaiting Russian forces headed there was the 900-mile-long, 14,000-foot-high Zagros mountain range.

Enmeshed in a Cold War-driven frenzy and eager to stick it to the Soviets, Brzezinski and others of like mind gave no thought to a critical question: What would happen if the Soviets were finally expelled and the mujahedeen gained control of Afghanistan? That lapse in judgment and lack of foresight was just the beginning of what proved to be a chain of mistakes.

Though the PDPA government outlasted the Red Army's retreat, the collapse of the Soviet Union in late 1991 proved a death sentence for its Afghan allies. Instead of forming a unity government, however, the mujahedeen promptly turned on one another. There ensued a vicious civil war, pitting Pashtun mujahedeen groups against their Tajik and Uzbek counterparts, with Kabul as the prize. The fighting destroyed large parts of that city's western and southern neighborhoods, killing as many as 25,000 civilians, and forcing 500,000 of them, nearly a third of the population, to flee. So wearied were Afghans by the chaos and bloodletting that many were relieved when the Taliban, themselves former participants in the anti-Soviet jihad, emerged in 1994, established themselves in Kabul in 1996, and pledged to reestablish order.

Some of the Taliban and Taliban-allied leaders who would later make the United States' most-wanted list had, in fact, been bankrolled by the CIA to fight the Red Army, including Jalaluddin Haqqani, founder of the now-infamous Haqqani Network, and the notoriously cruel Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, leader of the Hezb-e-Islami, arguably the most extreme of the mujahedeen groups, who is now negotiating with the Taliban, perhaps angling for a spot in its new government.

Osama Bin Laden's links with Afghanistan can also be traced to the anti-Soviet war. He achieved his fame thanks to his role in that American-backed jihad and, along with other Arabs involved in it, founded al-Qaeda in 1988. Later, he decamped to Sudan, but after American officials demanded his expulsion, moved, in 1996, back to Afghanistan, a natural haven given his renown there.

Though the Taliban, unlike al-Qaeda, never had a transnational Islamist agenda, they couldn't deny him succor—and not just because of his cachet. A main tenet of Pashtunwali, the Pashtun social code they lived by, was the duty to provide refuge (nanawati) to those seeking it. Mullah Mohammad Omar, the Taliban's supreme leader, became increasingly perturbed by Bin Laden's incendiary messages proclaiming it "an individual duty for every Muslim" to kill Americans, including civilians, and personally implored him to stop, but to no avail. The Taliban were stuck with him.

Now, fast forward a couple of decades. American leaders certainly didn't create the Islamic State-Khorasan Province—aka IS-K, an affiliate of the main Islamic State—whose suicide bombers killed 170 people at Kabul airport on August 26th, 13 of them American troops. Yet IS-K and its parent body emerged partly from the ideological evolution of various extremists, including many Taliban commanders, who had fought the Soviets. Later, inspired, especially after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, to continue the jihad, they yearned for something bolder and more ambitious than the Taliban's version, which was confined to Afghanistan.

It should hardly have required clairvoyance in the 1980s to grasp that funding an anti-Soviet Islamist insurgency might have dangerous long-term consequences. After all, the mujahedeen were hardly secretive about the sort of political system and society they envisaged for their country.

Lesson Two: Beware the Overwhelming Pride Produced by the Possession of Unrivaled Global Power

The idea that the U.S. could topple the Taliban and create a new state and society in Afghanistan was outlandish considering that country's history. But after the Soviet Union started to wobble and eventually collapsed and the Cold War was won, Washington was giddy with optimism. Recall the paeans in those years to "the unipolar moment" and "the end of history." We were Number One, which meant that the possibilities, including remaking entire countries, were limitless.

The response to the 9/11 attacks then wasn't simply a matter of shock and fear. Only one person in Washington urged reflection and humility in that moment. On September 14, 2001, as Congress prepared to authorize a war against al-Qaeda and its allies (the Taliban), Representative Barbara Lee (D-CA) gave a prescient speech. "I know," she said, "this resolution will pass, although we all know that the president can wage a war even without it. However… let's step back for a moment… and think through the implications of our actions today, so that this does not spiral out of control."

In the heat of that moment, in a country that had become a military power beyond compare, no one cared to consider alternative responses to the al-Qaeda attacks. Lee's would be the lone no vote against that Authorization to Use Military Force. Afterward, she would receive hate mail, even death threats.

So confident was Washington that it rejected the Taliban's offer to discuss surrendering Bin Laden to a third country if the U.S. stopped the bombing and provided proof of his responsibility for 9/11. Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld also refused to consider the Taliban's leadership attempts to negotiate a surrender and amnesty. The Bush administration treated the Taliban and al-Qaeda as identical and excluded the former from the December 2001 Bonn talks it had convened to form a new Afghan government. As it happened, the Taliban, never having received the memo from various eminences who pronounced it dead, soon regrouped and revved up its insurgency.

The United States then faced two choices, neither of them good. Its top officials could have decided that the government they had created in Kabul wouldn't survive and simply withdrawn their forces. Or they could have stuck with nation-building and periodically "surged" troops into the country in hopes that a viable government and army would eventually emerge. They chose the latter. No president or senior military commander wanted to be blamed for "losing" Afghanistan or the "war on terror," so the baton was passed from one commander to the next and one administration to another, each claiming to have made significant progress. The result: a 20-year, $2.3-trillion fiasco that ended chaotically at Kabul airport.

Lesson Three: Don't Assume That Opponents Whose Values Don't Fit Yours Won't Be Supported Locally

Reporting on the Taliban's retrograde beliefs and pitiless practices helped foster the belief that such a group, itself supposedly a Pakistani creation, could be routed because Afghans reviled it. Moreover, the bulk of the dealings American officials and senior military leaders had were with educated, urbane Afghan men and women, and that strengthened their view that the Taliban lacked legitimacy while the U.S.-backed government had growing public confidence.

Had the Taliban truly been a foreign transplant, however, they could never have kept fighting, dying, and recruiting new members for nearly two decades in opposition to a government and army backed by the world's sole superpower. The Taliban certainly inspired fear and committed numerous acts of brutality and horror, but poor rural Pashtuns, their social base, didn't view them as outsiders with strange beliefs and customs, but as part of the local social fabric.

Mullah Omar, the Taliban's first supreme leader, was born in Kandahar Province and raised in Uruzgun Province. His father, Moulavi Ghulam Nabi, had been respected locally for his learning. Omar became the leader of the Hotaki tribe, part of one of the two main Pashtun tribal confederacies, the Ghilzai, which was a Taliban mainstay. He joined the war against the Soviet occupation in 1979, returning to Kandahar once it ended, where he ran a madrassa, or religious school. After the Taliban took power in 1996, though its leader, he remained in Kandahar, seldom visiting the capital.

The Kabul government and its American patrons may have inadvertently helped the Taliban's cause. The more that ordinary Afghans experienced the raging corruption of the American-created system and the viciousness of the paramilitary forces, militias, and warlords the U.S. military relied on, the more successful the insurgents were at portraying themselves as the country's true nationalists resisting foreign occupiers and their collaborators. Not for nothing did the Taliban liken Afghanistan's U.S.-supported presidents to Shah Shuja, an exiled Afghan monarch the invading British placed on the throne, triggering an armed uprising that lasted from 1839 to 1842 and ended with British troops suffering a catastrophic defeat.

But who needed history? Certainly not the greatest power ever.

Lesson Four: Beware the Generals, Contractors, Consultants, and Advisers Who Eternally Issue Cheery Reports From War Zones

The managers of wars and economic projects acquire a vested interest in touting their "successes" (even when they know quite well that they're actually failures). Generals worry about their professional reputations, nation-builders about losing lucrative government contracts.

Senior American commanders repeatedly assured the president and Congress that the Afghan army was becoming a thoroughly professional fighting force, even when they knew better. (If you doubt this, just read the scathing analysis of retired Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis, who did two tours of duty in Afghanistan.)

Reporter Craig Whitlock's Afghanistan Papers—based on a trove of once-private documents as well as extensive interviews with numerous American officials—contains endless example of such happy talk. After serving 19 months leading U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan, General John Allen declared that the Afghan army could hold its own, adding that "this is what winning looks like." General John Campbell, who held the same position during the last quarter of 2015, praised those troops as a "capable" and "modern, professional force." American generals constantly talked about corners being turned.

Torrents of data were cited to tout the social and economic progress produced by American aid. It mattered not at all that reports by the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction questioned the readiness and capabilities of the Afghan army, while uncovering information about schools and hospitals funded but never built, or built but never used, or "unsafe," "literally crumbling," or saddled with unsustainable operating costs. Staggering sums of American aid were also lost to systemic corruption. U.S.-funded fuel supplies were typically stolen on a "massive scale" and sold on the black market.

Afghan commanders padded payrolls with thousands of "ghost soldiers," pocketing the cash as they often did the salaries of unpaid actual soldiers. The economic aid that American commander General David Petraeus wanted ramped up because he considered it essential to victory fueled bribe-taking by officials managing basic services. That, in turn, only added to the mistrust of the U.S.-backed government by ordinary citizens.

Have policymakers learned any lessons from the Afghan War? President Biden did declare an end to this country's "forever wars" and its nation-building (though not to its anti-terror strategy driven by drone attacks and commando raids). Real change, however, won't happen until the vast national security establishment and military-industrial complex nourished by the post-9/11 commitment to the war on terror, regime change, and nation building reaches a similar conclusion. And only a wild optimist could believe that likely.

Here, then, is the simplest lesson of all: no matter how powerful your country may be, your wishes are not necessarily the world's desires and you probably understand a lot less than you think.

© 2021 TomDispatch.com

RAJAN MENON is Anne and Bernard Spitzer of International Relations at the Powell School, City College of New York/City University of New York. He is a senior research fellow in the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University. He is the author, most recently, of The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention (Oxford University Press, 2016).