MADE IN THE USA

Ghost guns!
Expert warns Jamaica to be on lookout for weapons coming in partially assembled

Unlike these weapons, ghost guns come partially assembled and do not have serial numbers.

Saturday, December 18, 2021
BY ALICIA DUNKLEY-WILLIS
Senior staff reporter

JAMAICA OBSERVER 
dunkleywillisa@jamaicaobserver.com


A former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent has urged the Jamaican Government to create a fusion centre that would use intelligence to combat the island's crime problem, warning that the country should shore up its capabilities to detect the flow of weapons into the island as the emergence of “ghost guns” will present the State with an even bigger dilemma.

“The point is, pretty soon you won't need to import guns into Jamaica because with the advent of ghost guns you can make a 3D gun on a machine that costs less than US$400; so pretty soon this [guns for drugs and meat trade] will be something we won't even have to discuss. The problem will be how do you stop those machines from coming into making those guns and selling them,” Wilfred Rattigan, who is now an attorney-at-law, said during a virtual panel discussion on December 5 exploring how the Diaspora can assist in solving Jamaica's crime problem.

“Just recently they caught a 13-year-old in Atlanta who sold hundreds of these guns and they are untraceable. The fusion centre will certainly help with that because it's considered an emerging threat,” added Rattigan.

Ghost guns are firearms which are about 80 per cent complete and are sold online as DIY (do it yourself) kits and can be assembled at home by a buyer. However, they are untraceable as they carry no serial numbers — a crucial bit of information that law enforcers use to trace firearms from the manufacturer to the gun dealer to the original buyer.

Rattigan — who was an FBI special agent serving across the world from 1987 to 2017 in several capacities in the bureau's counter-intelligence, counter-terrorism and intelligence divisions — argued that Jamaica does not need another study to understand its crime problem. Instead, the Government should create the fusion centre, merging the various intelligence agencies which, he said, are presently operating “in silos”.

“What I am suggesting is that we need to harness all the information we have. Based on my knowledge of what's going on in the Jamaican intelligence circles, they are operating in silos. Knowledge is power, and they tend to see the picture, not in a panoramic manner, but in a myopic way. So, everyone is looking at their piece of information not realising that the full picture can be gleaned when you share information, and that's because they share by exception. They don't share by rule,” he said.

“The FBI suffered from that; not only the FBI, but US intelligence services suffered from that,” Rattigan pointed out.

“You are going to need a fusion centre, you have parts of that with MIU (Military Intelligence Unit), NIB (National Intelligence Bureau), the Major Organised Crime & Anti-Corruption Agency (MOCA) and C-TOC (Counter-Terrorism and Organised Crime Investigation Branch). The Ministry of Tourism has something called a resilience centre, all of these you can bring them under one roof and have people pipe their information in and you have the analysts who are there to assess the information and disseminate,” he explained.

“So, for example, if there is a crime problem it would be sent to this centre and they would start combining their information, combining their efforts, and in the end a product would go out that would address the issue. There is a lot more to it than that, but that is something that is woefully needed in Jamaica,” added Rattigan, who, at one point was also in charge of the FBI offices in South Africa with territorial responsibility for 16 countries.

In the meantime, he said while funding should not be an issue it will take political will to deal with the fusion centre.

“You are gonna have to have the will of your Government because it's a tall order and there's no restrictions with where you can go with it. I have seen it in operation in New York, I have participated in it in South Africa and all over the world. It requires a significant financial investment to begin with, but I don't think that's a problem because on February 2 of this year the Jamaican Government announced in Parliament that it was committed to spending $1.2 billion on the Plan Secure Jamaica Initiative, so I believe that there is enough funding there to do what I am suggesting,” Rattigan said.

Another panellist, Herb Nelson, who spent 24 years in the United States military and more than 15 years in the US intelligence community, agreed with Rattigan.

“One of the effective things that has occurred has been the advent of the C-TOC and fusion centres. All the research that has been done, all the mapping, all that we are talking about belongs in C-TOC or the fusion centre. We've proposed before, regional fusion centres — Cornwall, Middlesex, Surrey — the three counties in Jamaica,” Nelson said.

“It has been attempted before, where special review forces were brought in to intercept the guns for food, guns for drugs coming out of Haiti, and it was found out that in the six to nine months that the coast guards scanned that area, that the guns were coming through the airports and the illegal seaports,” he told the forum.

Nelson, who is the security chair for the Crime and Security Community Group with the Institute of Caribbean Studies, added: “You need giant X-ray machines at our sea ports and you need the same thing at the airports to X-ray every bit of equipment or so-called cartons filled with equipment to identify what's inside, and it should use an artificial intelligence process to identify gun parts or the parts of other known weapons.”

Canada lifts travel ban from African nations, reimposes testing

Friday, December 17, 2021
OTTAWA, Canada (AFP)— Canada announced Friday the lifting of a ban on foreign travellers from 10 African countries, while reimposing testing and warning that the Omicron variant of COVID-19 risks quickly overwhelming hospitals.

The travel restriction on flights from South Africa, Mozambique, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Eswatini, Namibia, Nigeria, Malawi and Egypt will end at 11:59 pm on Saturday (0459 GMT Sunday), Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos told a news conference.

The restriction had been announced last month "to slow the arrival of Omicron in Canada and buy us some time," he said. But with Omicron now spreading within Canada it is "no longer needed."

Pre-arrival negative PCR tests for all travellers would also be reinstated as of December 21, Duclos said, while repeating a government warning earlier this week that "now is not the time to travel."

Officials said laboratory tests have confirmed as of Friday nearly 350 cases of the Omicron variant across Canada.

The total average daily COVID case count, meanwhile, has jumped by 45 percent in the past week to about 5,000.

"It is expected the sheer number of (Omicron) cases could inundate the health system in a very short period of time," said Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam.

HEY KENNEY, DR. HINSHAW;
Omicron cases doubling in 1.5 to 3 days in areas with local spread: WHO

People pose with syringe and needle in front of displayed

 World Health Organization (WHO) logo, in this illustration

 taken December 11, 2021. 

REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

18 Dec 2021 

GENEVA: The Omicron coronavirus variant has been reported in 89 countries and the number of cases is doubling in one-and-a-half to three days in areas with community transmission, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Saturday (Dec 18).

Omicron is spreading rapidly in countries with high levels of population immunity, but it is unclear if this is due to the virus' ability to evade immunity, its inherent increased transmissibility or a combination of both, the WHO said in an update.

The agency designated Omicron a variant of concern on Nov 26, soon after it was first detected, and much is still not known about it, including the severity of the illness it causes.

Related:

Omicron more likely to reinfect than Delta, no milder: UK study

Pfizer says pandemic could extend through 2023, studies three-dose vaccine course for children

"There are still limited data on the clinical severity of Omicron," the WHO said. "More data are needed to understand the severity profile and how severity is impacted by vaccination and pre-existing immunity."

It added: "There are still limited available data, and no peer-reviewed evidence, on vaccine efficacy or effectiveness to date for Omicron."

The WHO warned that with cases rising so rapidly, hospitals could be overwhelmed in some places.

"Hospitalisations in the UK and South Africa continue to rise, and given rapidly increasing case counts, it is possible that many healthcare systems may become quickly overwhelmed."

San Francisco declares downtown emergency over drug deaths

US drug overdose deaths surged to more than 100,000 this year for the first time during the Covid-19 pandemic, exacerbated by a flood of fake online pills

 (Photo: AFP/File/Patrick T. FALLON)

18 Dec 2021 

SAN FRANCISCO: San Francisco's mayor on Friday (Dec 17) declared a state of emergency in a downtown district reeling from a severe spike in fatal drug overdoses driven mainly by fentanyl.

The Tenderloin neighborhood, just south of tourist and shopping hotspot Union Square, has emerged as the city's epicenter of an opioid crisis that has surged across the nation.

"We are losing over two people a day to drug overdoses, mostly to fentanyl, and mostly in the Tenderloin and SoMa," said city supervisor Matt Haney, referring to a neighbouring central district.

"This is a public health emergency demanding a crisis level response, with massive urgency, coordination, and determination to confront this epidemic."

Drug overdoses in San Francisco have risen sharply since the mid-2010s as highly potent synthetic opioid fentanyl infiltrated the city.

Related:

US drug deaths surpass 100,000 for first time, spurred by COVID-19 pandemic

A record 711 died from overdoses last year, with 2021 deaths projected to fall slightly below that, according to a San Francisco Chronicle tracker.

The declaration signed by Mayor London Breed on Friday allows officials to quickly open shelters and mental health services by bypassing zoning, planning and contract procurement rules.

It emulates Breed's early move to declare a citywide COVID-19 emergency in February 2020.

US drug overdose deaths surged to more than 100,000 this year for the first time during the COVID-19 pandemic, exacerbated by a flood of fake online pills.

The Tenderloin district near City Hall has long been a hub for homelessness, drug use and drug dealing, and Breed said the measure would "disrupt the illegal activity in the neighborhood" and "get people the treatment and support they need".

Substance abuse issues have soared amid the pandemic, as many treatment programs have stopped or been rolled back, and alcohol and drug consumption rates have risen.
Source: AFP/ad

USA OPENS OIL RESERVES...

Sticky situation: Canada taps maple syrup reserves to meet soaring demand




An employee drives past pasteurized maple syrup at the Quebec Maple Syrup Producers storage facility in Laurierville, on December 9, 2021 (AFP/Andrej Ivanov)

Anne-Sophie THILL
Fri, December 17, 2021

Pancake lovers, fear not. Strong demand for maple syrup after a poor Canadian harvest has created supply-side woes, but Quebec province is tapping its strategic reserves to keep the world awash in the sweet, sticky stuff.

Experts are warning the shortages could be further compounded by climate change, which is already being blamed for last spring's shorter and warmer sugaring season.

To avoid shortages, the Quebec Maple Syrup Producers said it has released more than half of its stockpile of syrup.


"It's normal, that's what we want: The reserves must be the buffer between temperature, demand and production," explained the organization's president Serge Beaulieu.

Quebec makes almost three-quarters of the world's supply, and the organization -- sometimes called the OPEC of maple syrup -- represents more than 11,000 producers.

The group's massive reserves in the town of Laurierville, near Quebec City, are emblematic of Canada's hugely lucrative maple syrup industry.

Housed in a warehouse the size of five football fields, tens of thousands of barrels, each containing 45 gallons (205 liters), are stacked row upon row, up to the ceiling.

In Canada, maple syrup is serious business. Often called "Quebec gold" in the region, it sometimes has been treated more like gold itself.

During the "Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist" a decade ago, thieves stole Can$18.7 million worth of maple syrup from the facility.

At present, however, the only siphoning is to relieve market shortages: At the start of the year, some 105 million pounds were stored here. The stockpile has since been whittled down to only 37 million pounds.

- Warm spring woes -

The sap harvest usually starts in March, when temperatures are above freezing during the day but below zero degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit) overnight.

Harvesters traditionally hammered spiles into tree trunks and let the sap drip into buckets, but now collect it from multiple trees at once through a system of tubing, for refining.

Producer Laurie Larouche, 23, lamented to AFP that "last spring was cut short because it got hotter faster than usual so instead of having a good month of harvest we had perhaps only two weeks plus a few days here and there."

"We produced 50 percent less syrup" this year, said Maryse Nault, as she trudged through the snow to inspect spiles in trees on her farm in Saint-Marc-sur-Richelieu, 50 kilometers (31 miles) east of Montreal.

The province's total yield fell to 133 million pounds of maple syrup, about 20-40 pounds less than in four of the previous five years, according to the producer cartel's data, and far short of the 175 million pounds sold in 2020.

Researchers at the Quebec Ministry of Forests have concluded that the yield per maple tree could fall by as much as 15 percent by 2050, due mostly to increasingly warm weather in the month of April.

Meanwhile, sales have doubled over the past decade, including a 20 percent jump in just the first six months of 2021 compared to the same period the previous year.

Due to this rising demand, which has occurred both domestically and in key export markets such as the United States, Germany and Japan, producers have been authorized by the province's maple syrup federation to tap seven million additional trees over the next three years, bringing the total to 57 million.

The pandemic is partly to blame for the recent surge in demand, Beaulieu said.

"Due to Covid restrictions, consumers spent much more time at home, trying out new food products," he explained.

And, he added, syrup is increasingly replacing white sugar because it "is better for your health than refined sugar."

ast/amc/bfm/

Director del Toro spins macabre carnival fable in 'Nightmare Alley'


Director Guillermo del Toro's crew constructed a full-scale World War II-era carnival set for his film "Nightmare Alley" (AFP/VALERIE MACON)

Andrew MARSZAL
Thu, December 16, 2021, 7:08 PM·3 min read

Guillermo del Toro's new film "Nightmare Alley," set in a macabre 1940s carnival world of "geek shows" and grifters, is a modern parable about illusion, lies and greed, its director and cast said.

The pitch-black noir movie, out Friday, is del Toro's first since his Oscar-winning "The Shape of Water," and stars Bradley Cooper as a traveling "mind reader," who develops a lucrative side hustle in defrauding rich clients with sham seances.

Del Toro's crew constructed a full-scale World War II-era carnival set, capturing in eerie detail infamous sideshow practices like "geek shows," in which vagrants were trapped into performing gruesome acts by carnival bosses who preyed on their addictions to alcohol and opium.

"It's an indictment of a certain kind of ambition, or a certain kind of capitalism, or a certain kind of exploitation of other people for your happiness," said co-star Willem Dafoe, who plays carnival pitchman Clem Hoately.

"It was a beautiful world to enter, even though it's a little dark," he told a press conference.

The story, based on William Lindsay Gresham's novel and previously adapted into a 1947 film, finds Cooper's mysterious Stan Carlisle joining a carnival troupe and quickly learning the art of mentalism.

After tiring of tricking ordinary customers through coded messages to his assistant Molly (Rooney Mara), Stan teams up with Cate Blanchett's femme fatale psychiatrist Lilith to ensnare millionaire clients with promises he can contact their departed loved ones.

"There is an emptiness in him and a need for more -- more and more -- that I find pertinent" today, said del Toro, who cast Cooper in part "because he looks like a movie star from the '30s and the '40s."

Del Toro's "Shape of Water," which won best picture and best director at the 2018 Oscars, depicts a metaphor for modern racism through an inter-species romance in a Cold War military laboratory.

Similarly, the Mexican horror master wanted to "imbue" his latest movie "with the anxiety of this time."

"We wanted not to make a movie about the period. We wanted to make it about now," del Toro said.

"That essential moment we're in -- in which we have to distinguish narrative truth and narrative lie with reality -- is so important."

- 'Misfits' -

The film, seen as the final Oscar-contending heavyweight of the year to screen to critics earlier this month, has drawn praise for Cooper and Blanchett's performances, as well as its extravagant set design.

"We constructed 100 percent of the carnival," explained production designer Tamara Deverell.

"And when we were halfway through and Covid hit, we literally came back and saw half of the tents had just blown away."

Dafoe, who recalled visiting carnivals as a child and being drawn to their "darkly romantic" world, said his performance was inspired by "the production design, beautifully, of this very complete, almost truly functional" carnival.

Dafoe was drawn to the project by del Toro, whose work frequently spotlights "creatures and misfits and monsters and people that are outside of our society."

"He humanizes those people and pushes our understanding and compassion in all ways, in all of his movies."

amz/hg/sw

 FREAKS

Fictional film based on the true life experiences of circus sideshow freaks made in the 1930s. The film was edited for American distribution and banned in England for over 30 years. However, recently, it has taken on cult status for its campy plot and the real circus entertainers who appear in the film. Directed by horror film master Tod Browning.

Freaks (1932) #WarnerArchive #WarnerBros #Freaks

Gooble-gobble…we accept her…one of us, goes the haunting chant of Freaks. 

Yet it would be decades before this widely banned morality play gained acceptance as a cult masterpiece. Tod Browning (1931's Dracula) directs this landmark movie in which the true freaks are not the story's sideshow performers, but "normals" who mock and abuse them. Browning, a former circus contortionist, cast real-life sideshow professionals.

Directed By Tod Browning

Starring Wallace Ford, Leila Hyams, Olga Baclanova

Ruthless Geek: Tyrone Power's Nightmare Alley

Friday, February 11, 2011

Power knew that Stanton Carlisle would be the role of a lifetime. Critics said Power played an "utterly reprehensible charlatan" who was "unscrupulous."

“Its carnival setting early on…brings to mind Tod Browning’s Freaks,” writes the My Blog author of the 1947 film, Nightmare Alley. Carny Stanton Carlisle (Tyrone Power) is watching the sideshow geek, whose “act” involves biting heads off of chickens. We don’t see the geek. The camera is locked on the barker and his banter. Then we hear the geek scream--and see Stanton’s reaction.

“How does a guy become a geek?” he asks a fellow carny. The question is answered through the unfolding of the plot and conclusion of Nightmare Alley.

Nightmare Alley was the pet project of star Tyrone Power, who purchased the rights to the novel of the same name by William Gresham. The star then convinced Darryl Zanuck and 20th Century Fox to sanction the project. It got a big budget and everything associated with Nightmare Alley was A-list. This film is one of the “darkest” noirs to come out of the 1940s. Tyrone Power wanted a vehicle to show that he could act, and boy did he pick a doozy. Power was an incredibly handsome leading man at 20th Century Fox and the roles that he usually played were romantic or swashbuckling--but not the kind of parts to show off any skill as an actor. Power wanted to be respected as an actor, not just known as a leading man and movie star.




Critical acclaim for Power in Nightmare Alley

The character of Stanton Carlisle is the antithesis of every role Power ever portrayed. The New York Times review of 1947 said that Power is “playing an utterly reprehensible charlatan” and that there is “little in the way of human wickedness that Mr. Power doesn’t do as the slick-tongued carnival spieler…” The review in Variety of late 1946 says of Power’s role, “Ruthless and unscrupulous, he uses the women in his life to further his advancement, stepping on them as he climbs.” Writing in 2007, the Self-Styled Siren says in her blog, “That Power worked so hard to put Nightmare’s Stanton Carlisle on the screen tell you something about him as an actor….[Power] fought long and hard for the chance to play the lead in a movie that equates entertainment with fraud and ends with his character barely hanging onto humanity.”

The plot of Nightmare Alley

Carlisle tells other carnies that he was raised in an orphanage and that his parents were not very interested in him. He also admits that he faked religious devotion to make his life in the orphanage more bearable. Carlisle is ambitious and wants to work a scam that will reward him handsomely. Stanton works the crowd for the carnival’s phony prophetess, Zeena (Joan Blondell). He knows that she and her now broken-down drunk husband Pete (Ian Keith) were once the top mentalist act on the circuit, and he is angling to get the code from either of them so he can move up the ladder of the carnival world. He is having an affair with Zeena, but she won’t betray her husband, whom she still loves.

One night Carlisle tries to pry the secret out of Pete and offers him a bottle of booze. He unwittingly gave him a bottle of wood alcohol and Pete dies. Shortly thereafter Zeena gives in and tell him the code. Then the two of them begin to work the act in the carnival. Carlisle has bigger fish to fry, so he leaves the carnival, marrying Molly, the “electric girl” (Coleen Gray).

They take off for Chicago and push the act to a higher level. But then in steps the femme-fatale, a psychiatrist named Lilith (Helen Walker). She is running her own scam with her wealthy patients and lures Stanton into working together with her to set up the biggest con yet. Lilith turns the tables on Carlisle and everything that he’s worked for begins to unravel. Stanton ends up a drunk hopping freight cars. Eventually he ends up back at the carnival--willing to do any job they offer him.

Nightmare Alley: Morality Play and Film Noir

Nightmare Alley has many of the trapping of both a morality play and film noir. Carlisle has a religious quality to him as he gains confidence,power and money playing his mentalist act. His downfall may have something to do with divine intervention as punishment for what could be perceived as Carlisle's "playing God."

The chiaroscuro lighting is typical of film noir, as is the appearance of the femme-fatate in the person of Lilith the psychiatrist. The author of My Blog writes that there's a "peculiar redefinition of the femme fatale, who is reimagined as an almost androgynous and sexually ambiguous intellectual dominatrix; and even for a noir, the eventual depths to which our 'hero' sinks defies belief."
The role of a lifetime for Tyrone Power

Power knew he had something special when he bought the rights to Nightmare Alley. It was the crowning achievement of his career. The New York Times says of his performance, "Mr. Power has a juicy role and sinks his teeth into it, performing with considerable versatility and persuasiveness." The Self-Styled Siren writes that when Carlisle returns to the carnival at the end and desperately accepts a job, "Tyrone Power's still-beautiful face is as psychologically bare as any actor in noir."

Sources

T.M.P. "Nightmare Alley. At the Mayfair." The New York Times. October 10, 1947.

Political row in Brazil over dystopian film 'Executive Order'



'Actor and director Lazaro Ramos and his wife, actress Tais Araujo, before the screening of their movie 'Executive Order' at the Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival on December 15, 2021 (AFP/Daniel RAMALHO)


Isabela CABRAL
Fri, December 17, 2021

In the Brazil of the near future, the government has found what it calls the answer to righting the wrongs of slavery: send its black citizens to Africa.

That dystopian premise is the point of departure for the new film "Executive Order," which is generating controversy in the Brazil of the present over allegations it is being censored by far-right President Jair Bolsonaro's government.

The film, the directorial debut from acclaimed actor Lazaro Ramos ("Madame Sata"), has won praise at a series of international festivals, from Moscow to Memphis.

But it does not yet have a release date in Brazil, where there are mounting accusations against the National Cinema Agency (Ancine) of dragging its feet on green-lighting films deemed uncomfortable for the Bolsonaro administration.

"I can't say whether it's bureaucracy or censorship, but both are barriers to culture," Ramos said when the picture screened at the Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival, which wraps up Sunday -- for now, the only time the movie is scheduled to play in Brazil.

"Executive Order" stars Ramos's wife, Tais Araujo, renowned actor and singer Seu Jorge ("City of God," "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou"), and Anglo-Brazilian star Alred Enoch (the "Harry Potter" franchise, "How to Get Away with Murder").

Araujo and Enoch play Capitu and Antonio, a doctor and lawyer with the trappings of professional success.

Capitu "is a black woman who doesn't really want to talk about racism at first -- she just wants to live," said Araujo.

"But then life comes calling, and she has to dive deep" into the issue.

- 'Accentuated melanin' -

The "executive order" of the film's title requires all black people -- or people with "accentuated melanin," in the script's Orwellian language -- to hand themselves in to the authorities to be removed to Africa.

Through Capitu, Antonio and his cousin Andre (Seu Jorge), viewers see how Afro-Brazilians organize a resistance to this mass deportation as the security forces begin arresting people in the streets.

The film is flush with references to structural racism in present-day Brazil, the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery, in 1888.

"The idea of the film is to make people aware," Ramos told AFP.

"I want the viewer, in watching it, to cry and to say to themselves that they are capable of leading an anti-racist fight," he said.

"It was very moving," said Araujo.

Some authorities in its fictional government also bear strong resemblance to real members of the Bolsonaro administration.

In April, Bolsonaro ally Sergio Camargo, head of the Palmares Cultural Foundation, called for a boycott of the film.

"It's pure victim mentality and a defamatory attack on our president," said Camargo, a black Brazilian who has sparked controversy in the past by saying slavery was "beneficial for Afro-descendants."

It is unclear when Ancine will clear the film for release in Brazil.

The production team says it completed its application for funds to distribute the film in November 2020 and has yet to receive the official response.

Ancine says the application is "under review" and that it is following the "standard procedure."

- 'Marighella precedent' -

It is not the first such case to cause controversy.

Another Brazilian film that won applause on the international festival circuit, "Marighella," faced a similar delay.

Directed by "Narcos" star Wagner Moura, the film is a biopic on a leftist guerrilla leader who fought Brazil's military dictatorship (1964-1985).

Bolsonaro, a former army captain, is a fervent admirer of the former military regime, despite its large-scale human-rights abuses.

"Marighella" had its application to Ancine rejected twice in 2019, before finally being cleared for its Brazilian premiere last month.

Shortly after taking office in 2019, Bolsonaro said he wanted to "filter" Brazilian film productions.

"If there's no filter, we're going to get rid of Ancine," he said.

Ramos is undeterred.

"We're not going to stop debating this issue, or thinking about how this country was built," he said.

"Art is powerful, we can't give that up."

ic/jhb/jh/caw/bfm

Foreigners among 11 killed in Iraqi Kurdistan floods



Floods in Iraq (AFP/Laurence SAUBADU)


Fri, December 17, 2021, 12:31 AM·2 min read

Eleven people including two foreigners died Friday in flash floods which swept through northern Iraq after torrential rains in Arbil, capital of the autonomous Kurdistan region, an official said.

In a country dealing with severe drought, many were caught by surprise as powerful storm waters started surging into their homes before dawn.

"The toll is now 11 after the civil defence discovered the bodies of three people who were missing, carried away by the waters. Among them are a Filipino national and a Turk," Nabaz Abdelhamid, a local administration official, told AFP.

Provincial governor Omid Khoshnaw had earlier given a death toll of eight, including women and children. He also reported "significant" damage, especially in a working-class district south-east of Arbil city.

Four members of the civil defence team who came to help residents were injured when their car was washed away, he added.

"Of the eight people who died, one died struck by lightning, while the others drowned in their homes," civil defence spokesperson Sarkawt Karach had said.

Many people have been forced to leave their houses, he added.

"Searches are ongoing for missing people," Karach said, warning that the death toll could rise.

- Vehicles washed away -

In Arbil, an AFP reporter saw torrents of muddy water pouring down roads.

Buses, trucks and tanker trucks were washed away by the storm waters, with some flipped over or turned onto their side.

Khoshnaw called on residents to stay at home unless necessary, warning that further rain was expected with fears of more floods.

Iraq has been hit by a succession of extreme weather events.

It has endured blistering temperatures and repeated droughts in recent years, but has also experienced intense floods --- made worse when torrential rain falls on sun-baked earth.

Hard ground and vegetation loss means the earth does not absorb water as quickly, and when storms hit they can become flash floods.

Scientists say climate change amplifies extreme weather, including droughts as well as the potential for the increased intensity of rain storms.

Experts have warned that record low rainfall, compounded by climate change, are threatening social and economic disaster in war-scarred Iraq.

The effects of low rainfall have been exacerbated by falling water levels on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers as a result of dam-building in neighbouring Turkey and Iran, Samah Hadid, of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), has said.

The severity of the drought has forced many farming families to leave their land and seek a living in urban areas.

In a study released Thursday, the NRC said half of the families living in drought-affected areas of Iraq need food aid.

That followed a warning in November from the World Bank which said Iraq could suffer a 20-percent drop in water resources by 2050 due to climate change.

str/lk/feb/it/lg

THEY VOTE THEIR CLASS INTEREST

'Fear of communism,' why Chile's rich vote right

THE CHILEAN BOUGEOISIE (1%)
 

FAR RIGHT CANDIDATE KAST

LEFT WING Chilean presidential candidate Gabriel Boric gestures during his closing campaing rally in Santiago on December 16, 2021 (AFP/MARTIN BERNETTI)

Mariëtte Le Roux
Fri, December 17, 2021

In Santiago's upper-class neighborhood of Lo Barnechea with its Ferraris, mansions and luxury retailers, 51.68 percent of people voted for far-right, neoliberal candidate Jose Antonio Kast in Chile's first presidential election round in November.

It is one of two neighborhoods out of dozens in greater Santiago where Kast, an apologist for Chile's brutal dictator Augusto Pinochet, amassed more than half the votes out of the seven candidates then in the race.

His rival in Sunday's runoff, leftist lawmaker Gabriel Boric, won the most neighborhoods, mainly in middle-class areas, but did not break the 50-percent ceiling in any of them.


Kast's defenders are vociferous in Lo Barnechea. The neighborhood is notable for also having gone against the stream last year to vote "No" in a referendum on whether Chile should approve a new constitution to replace the one enacted under Pinochet.

"One of the most serious issues is that it (the left) endorses violence," said entrepreneur Sergio Adauy, 52, referring to anti-inequality protests and clashes with the police in 2019 that caused dozens of deaths.

The resulting "uncertainty and fear" risks causing an outflow of capital, he said.

According to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, the top one percent of the population of Chile holds a quarter of the wealth.

- More money, more fear -

Kast is against marriage for same-sex couples and is anti-abortion. He is also a defender of Pinochet and the neoliberal economic system he left behind.

The candidate wants to cut taxes and social spending, contrary to Boric -- who wants to increase them and represents a leftist alliance that includes Chile's Communist Party.

For 53-year-old teacher Maria-Luisa Galleguillos, another resident of Lo Barnechea -- an area with golf and equestrian clubs some 20 kilometers (12 miles) northwest of central Santiago -- Kast will "give us security."

"I have children who recently started working. I want that they can live in their country, that they don't need to go to other countries to work," she told AFP at an up-market mall.

She said Kast's image has suffered due to "misunderstandings" spread by a "leftist" media, and explained she was grateful to Pinochet for making Chile a relatively rich country in Latin America.

"If it wasn't for Pinochet... we would have been like Venezuela today," Galleguillos said.

There is "much, much, much fear of communism here," said Francisca Olivares, 48, a lawyer who told AFP she was "an exception" in Lo Barnechea for not supporting Kast.

In the neighborhood there is "more money, therefore there is more fear of losing it," she said.

"We are an extremely divided country in terms of class. And that generates a lot of fear of the other, a lot of hatred of the other."

- Class divide -

In the neighborhood of Nunoa in Santiago's voting district 10, where Boric had his highest first-round turnout with 39.4 percent, voters say they are driven by civil rights and social equality.

Chile's social uprising was sparked in late 2018 by a rise in the price of metro tickets, but soon transformed into a revolt against the country's status as one of the most unequal countries in the world.

Nunoa resident Karla, 25, who did not wish to give her full name, said she supports Boric because of "what he stands for in terms of rights, social equality."

The student said she is particularly concerned about Chile's private pensions system, which costs workers an arm and a leg, yet leaves them with little to retire on.

But for Adauy, the entrepreneur, more accessible healthcare, education and fairer pensions, amount to handouts and are harmful to the economy.

He referred to the hardship Chileans suffered -- partly due to US economic blockades -- under the rule of Salvador Allende, Latin America's first elected Marxist president who was ousted by Pinochet in a coup d'etat.

"I think it is better to have a debit card than a ration card, which is what we had under the government of Allende," he said.

mlr/bfm

US court reinstates Covid vaccine mandate for large US businesses

Fri, December 17, 2021

The national mandate will cover more than two-thirds of US workers

A federal appeals court has reinstated a vaccine-or-testing mandate for large US businesses.

The mandate will require workers at private companies with more than 100 employees to get fully vaccinated against Covid-19, or be tested weekly.

It had been blocked by a court ruling last month, with critics citing "grave statutory and constitutional" issues.

But a three-judge panel ruled on Friday that delaying its implementation would hinder efforts against Covid-19.

The ruling, which would cover more than two-thirds of the nation's workers, marked a major win for President Joe Biden. But opponents have signalled plans to appeal the verdict at the Supreme Court.

Many businesses in the US already require their employees to be vaccinated. There are also requirements for military and federal contractors.

The US workers refusing to get jabbed

The latest mandate is set to be in place from 4 January.

In addition to its vaccine and testing regulations, it also requires companies to determine which of their employees are vaccinated, and to enforce a mask mandate among unvaccinated workers.

It was issued by the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in November. OSHA argued that it could save more than 6,500 lives and prevent a quarter of a million hospitalizations during the six months it would be in effect.

But the mandate attracted a raft of legal challenges from 27 states, as well as private companies and industry groups. Opponents argued that OSHA did not have the legal authority to enforce the rule, and that it would be costly and lead to worker shortages.

In a 2-1 ruling, the judges said these concerns were "entirely speculative".

"Fundamentally, the [rule] is an important step in curtailing the transmission of a deadly virus that has killed over 800,000 people in the United States, brought our healthcare system to its knees, forced businesses to shut down for months on end, and cost hundreds of thousands of workers their jobs," wrote Circuit Judge Jane Stranch.

Job Creators Network, a conservative advocacy group that was party to the case, said in a statement that it was disappointed with the decision.

"This mandate adds an incredible burden on small business owners who are still suffering negative effects of the pandemic," it added.

Similar mandates for healthcare workers and federal contractors are currently being held up in separate court disputes across the US.

More than 72% of the US population has received at least one Covid vaccination, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, some 80 million people in the US remain unvaccinated.