Study Exposes How World’s Biggest Corporations Embellish Climate Progress

Published on February 12, 2022
By Creative Commons

Above: Photo / Collage / Lynxotic / Adobe Stock

Without more regulation, this will continue,” said one critic. “We need governments and regulatory bodies to step up and put an end to this greenwashing trend.”

Anew study out Monday evaluates the public climate pledges made by 25 of the world’s biggest corporations and concludes they “cannot be taken at face value” because the vast majority of firms analyzed are exaggerating the nature of and progress toward their goals—a greenwashing trend that critics say will continue in the absence of stronger regulation.

“Setting vague targets will get us nowhere without real action, and can be worse than doing nothing if it misleads the public.”

Providing further evidence of the fallacies of “net-zero,”the Corporate Climate Responsibility Monitor 2022 finds that net-zero pledges made by several of the world’s largest companies aim to reduce aggregate greenhouse gas emissions across their full value chains by only 40%, at most, from 2019 levels—a far cry from the 100% implied when they claim to be pursuing “carbon neutrality.”

According to the assessment conducted by NewClimate Insitute in collaboration with Carbon Market Watch, just one company’s net-zero pledge was determined to have “reasonable integrity.” Three were deemed to have “moderate integrity,” 10 “low integrity,” and the remaining 11 “very low integrity.”

“We set out to uncover as many replicable good practices as possible, but we were frankly surprised and disappointed at the overall integrity of the companies’ claims,” lead author Thomas Day of NewClimate Institute said in a statement.

“As pressure on companies to act on climate change rises, their ambitious-sounding headline claims all too often lack real substance, which can mislead both consumers and the regulators that are core to guiding their strategic direction,” said Day. “Even companies that are doing relatively well exaggerate their actions.”

The analysis turned up zero pledges with “high integrity.” Maersk came out on top, with “reasonable integrity,” followed by Apple, Sony, and Vodafone with “moderate integrity.”

Meanwhile, the headline pledges of Amazon, Deutsche Telekom, Enel, GlaxoSmithKline, Google, Hitachi, IKEA, Vale, Volkswagen, and Walmart were rated as having “low integrity.” Those of Accenture, BMW Group, Carrefour, CVS Health, Deutsche Post DHL, E.ON SE, JBS, Nestlé, Novartis, Saint-Gobain, and Unilever were considered to have “very low integrity.”

Although all 25 companies examined in the report establish “some form of zero-emission, net-zero, or carbon-neutral target,” the authors note, just three companies—Maersk, Vodafone, and Deutsche Telekom—make clear commitments to decarbonizing 90% of their entire value chains.

By contrast, at least five companies would effectively decrease their emissions by less than 15%, often by excluding “upstream or downstream emissions”—pollution generated by activities indirectly linked to a company.

Day told The Guardian that “it’s short-term action that’s the most important thing, in the climate crisis.”

Nevertheless, noted the British newspaper, “the report show[s] that the companies surveyed would only cut their emissions by about 23% on average by 2030, falling far short of the figure of nearly halving in the next decade that scientists say is needed to limit global heating to 1.5ºC.”

Despite the damning findings, some companies doubled down on their claims of progress. In a statement shared with BBC, Amazon said: “We set these ambitious targets because we know that climate change is a serious problem, and action is needed now more than ever. As part of our goal to reach net-zero carbon by 2040, Amazon is on a path to powering our operations with 100% renewable energy by 2025.”

However, Amazon is one of several companies that have donated to right-wing Democratic Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) and Joe Manchin (W.Va.), who teamed up with the GOP to torpedo the Build Back Better Act—a piece of legislation that, among other things, would have accelerated the clean energy transition.

According to climate justice advocates, net-zero pledges are inadequate because they are “premised on the notion of canceling out emissions in the atmosphere rather than eliminating their causes.” Because the practice enables powerful entities to continue with business as usual in some places as long as they fund projects that purportedly slash pollution in other places, there is little to no evidence that overall emissions will be sufficiently reduced.

The new study shows how several corporations are inflating the extent of their ambition and progress by taking advantage of ambiguous terms like net-zero and carbon-neutral and by disregarding upstream or downstream emissions.

“Many company pledges are undermined by contentious plans to reduce emissions elsewhere, hidden critical information, and accounting tricks,” states a summary of the report. It continues:

The exclusion of emission sources or market segments is a common issue that reduces the meaning of targets. Eight companies exclude upstream or downstream emissions in their value chain, which usually account for over 90% of the emissions under their control. E.ON may exclude market segments that account for more than 40% of its energy sales; Carrefour appears to exclude locations that account for over 80% of Carrefour branded stores.

24 of 25 companies will likely rely on offsetting credits, of varying quality. At least two-thirds of the companies rely on removals from forests and other biological activities, which can easily be reversed by, for example, a forest fire. Nestlé and Unilever distance themselves from the practice of offsetting at the level of the parent company, but allow and encourage their individual brands to pursue offsetting to sell carbon-neutral labeled products.

Some apparently ambitious targets may lead to very little short-term action. It may be possible for CVS Health to achieve their 2030 emission reduction target with limited additional action, since the target is compared to a base year with extraordinarily high emissions. GlaxoSmithKline may delay the implementation of key emission reduction measures until 2028/2029, ahead of its 2030 target.

As The Guardian reported, “Day said using offsetting tended to obscure whether companies were making genuine progress on cutting their own emissions, or hiding behind offsets to achieve a notional net-zero.”

“It’s better practice not to offset—it’s more transparent and constructive,” said the researcher. “Companies should not be claiming they are net-zero by 2030 unless they are reducing their emissions by 90% by then.”


The failure of so-called “corporate social responsibility” initiatives to deliver on promises to improve the well-being of workers and ecosystems is a longstanding pattern, which is why many progressive critics have called them public relations gimmicks.

According to the new report: “The rapid acceleration of corporate climate pledges, combined with the fragmentation of approaches means that it is more difficult than ever to distinguish between real climate leadership and unsubstantiated greenwashing. This is compounded by a general lack of regulatory oversight at national and sectoral levels. Identifying and promoting real climate leadership is a key challenge that, where addressed, has the potential to unlock greater global climate change mitigation.”

Gilles Dufrasne from Carbon Market Watch said that “misleading advertisements by companies have real impacts on consumers and policymakers.”

“We’re fooled into believing that these companies are taking sufficient action, when the reality is far from it,” said Dufrasne. “Without more regulation, this will continue. We need governments and regulatory bodies to step up and put an end to this greenwashing trend.”

“Companies must face the reality of a changing planet,” he added. “What seemed acceptable a decade ago is no longer enough. Setting vague targets will get us nowhere without real action, and can be worse than doing nothing if it misleads the public.”

In a Monday op-ed, Penn State University climate scientist Michael Mann and Climate Communication director Susan Joy Hassol drew attention to the devastation wrought by corporations that have denied facts to delay necessary political-economic transformations—pointing specifically to a 40-year-long disinformation campaign bankrolled by fossil fuel interests.

Much of the damage caused by extreme weather disasters “could have been avoided had we acted decades ago when the scientific community—and indeed fossil fuel industry’s own scientists—recognized we had a problem,” the pair wrote in The Hill. “While the best time to act boldly to prevent climate catastrophe was decades ago, the second-best time is now.”

Given that the 25 firms analyzed account for roughly 5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, researchers stressed how important it is for them to quickly adopt and scale up best practices.

“If we are to meet this monumental challenge, we will need to use all the arrows in the quiver,” wrote Mann and Hassol. “We must incentivize the energy industry to move aggressively toward clean, renewable energy.”

They concluded, “There is no time left to waste, and failure is not an option.”

Originally published on Common Dreams by KENNY STANCIL and republished under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

What is the ‘social cost of carbon’? 2 energy experts explain after court ruling blocks Biden’s changes

February 12, 2022 

When an electric company runs a coal- or natural gas-fired power plant, the greenhouse gases it releases cause harm – but the company isn’t paying for the damage.

Instead, the costs show up in the billions of tax dollars spent each year to deal with the effects of climate change, such as fighting wildfires and protecting communities from floods, and in rising insurance costs.

This damage is what economists call a “negative externality.” It is a cost to society, including to future generations, that is not covered by the price people pay for fossil fuels and other activities that emit greenhouse gases, like agriculture.

To try to account for some of the damage, federal policymakers use what’s known as a “social cost of carbon.”

A tug-of-war over the social cost

The social cost of carbon, a dollar figure per ton of carbon dioxide released, is factored into the costs and benefits of proposed regulations and purchasing decisions, such as whether the Postal Service should buy electric- or gasoline-powered trucks, or where to set emissions standards for coal-fired power plants.

That extra social cost can tip the scales for whether a regulation’s costs appear to outweigh its benefits.

The Trump administration slashed the social cost to between $1 and $7 per metric ton of carbon dioxide – low enough that it could justify rolling back EPA regulations on power plant emissions and vehicle fuel efficiency.

The Biden administration temporarily raised it and has been preparing to finalize a new social cost that’s expected to be more than seven times as high as Trump’s. That might encourage regulators to push for emissions cuts in everything from agriculture to transportation to manufacturing.

However, how and where new cost estimates are deployed is up in the air. A Trump-appointed federal judge in Louisiana issued an injunction on Feb. 11, 2022, blocking Biden’s interim increase in the social cost. Even so, federal agencies are still required to consider the climate impacts of their regulatory decisions.
What social cost means for you

One of Joe Biden’s first actions as president was to reverse the Trump administration’s bargain-basement accounting of the “social cost.” The Biden administration returned it to the Obama-era level, adjusted for inflation, by setting an interim social cost at $51 per metric ton of carbon dioxide that would rise over time.

If that were a carbon tax paid by consumers, it would raise gasoline by about 50 cents per gallon.

But the social cost of carbon has no direct effect on the price of gasoline, electricity, or emissions-intensive goods like steel. Instead, it influences purchasing and investments by the government, and indirectly, by private companies and consumers.

President Joe Biden spoke at a GM electric vehicle factory in November 2021. The social cost of carbon can signal to automakers that stricter auto emissions rules are likely. 

Nic Antaya/Getty Images

A higher social cost of carbon signals to companies that the government sees big benefits to cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Figuring in damage from emissions also helps it justify investments in green technology.

For instance, the U.S. Postal Service has asked Congress to approve $11.3 billion for a new fleet of gasoline-powered mail delivery trucks. Those vehicles would burn through 110 million gallons of gasoline a year. At $51 per ton of emitted carbon, that purchase implies a social cost of $1.1 billion over 20 years. Incorporating such costs might push the government to consider including electric vehicles in the future postal service fleet.

Currently, economists calculate the social cost by using integrated assessment models that bring together long-term projections for population, economic growth and greenhouse gas emissions. These models use emissions scenarios to estimate future climate change, and then calculate the effects on the country’s – and the world’s – GDP, and they can vary widely depending on the assumptions used.

For example, damage estimates for 2100 produced by the three models currently used in the government’s cost-setting process range from $80 to $290 per ton. The Biden administration set the interim social cost to rise to $85 by 2050 to account for greater impact of climate change over time.

Using models to produce such estimates have become a routine part of policymaking, but they are also massively uncertain.

Why Trump’s social cost was so much lower

The Trump administration’s estimate was lower for two reasons: It accounted for climate damage only within U.S. borders; and the administration placed a lower value on future costs by setting a discount rate of 7%, more than double the 3% used by Obama and Biden. Economists use different rates to “discount” future benefits versus the cost we pay today to get there. A high discount rate on climate means we put a lower value on damages that occur in the future.

Unsurprisingly, discount rates are contentious. New York state uses a 2% discount rate to produce its current social cost of carbon of $125 per ton. Some analysts argue for a 0% discount rate because anything higher places a lower value on costs borne by future generations.

The federal judge in Louisiana agreed with the argument put forth by that state’s Republican attorney general that global damages could not be considered in social costs tailored for U.S. regulations. The Department of Justice can appeal the decision. A similar lawsuit in Missouri was dismissed.

Some scholars debate whether a social cost of carbon should be used at all.

The United Kingdom uses a “cost effectiveness analysis” instead to determine the value of carbon removal. That method uses a target – net-zero emissions – and calculates the cheapest route to get there. Some prominent scholars are recommending the U.S. adopt the U.K. approach, while others object.

Other options: Carbon taxes and emissions caps

There are other ways to account for the costs of climate change.

A carbon tax is more straightforward and effective, but tougher to enact because it requires Congress to act. Such a tax would dissuade people from burning fossil fuels by taxing them for the damage those emissions cause – the negative externality.

Another form of carbon pricing uses a marketplace for companies to trade a declining number of emissions permits. Such cap-and-trade programs are in place today in the European Union, a few U.S. states, including California and Washington, and elsewhere.

Taxes and emissions caps would reduce carbon emissions, but they are unpopular with voters and Congress because they raise prices. A social cost of carbon is easier both to enact and to modify through regulatory review, without legislation. It allows the government the flexibility to address climate through routine policymaking – but can also be changed by subsequent administrations.

Authors

Jim Krane
Fellow for Energy Studies, Baker Institute for Public Policy; Lecturer, Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University

Mark Finley
Fellow in Energy and Global Oil, Baker Institute for Public Policy, Rice University

TD Bank Freezes Two Accounts That Received C$1.4 Million In Support Of Canada Protests


By Nichola Saminather
02/12/22 AT 11:19 AM

Demonstrators gather downtown as truckers and supporters continue to protest coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine mandates, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, February 12, 2022

. Photo: Reuters / BLAIR GABLE


Toronto-Dominion Bank has frozen two personal bank accounts into which C$1.4 million ($1.1 million) had been deposited to support protesters fighting the Canadian government's pandemic measures, a bank spokesperson said on Saturday.

The demonstrations, dubbed the "Freedom Convoy" by Canadian truckers opposing a vaccination mandate for cross-border drivers as well as other pandemic restrictions, are now in their third week. They have gridlocked the capital Ottawa and blocked U.S.-Canada border crossings, damaging trade between the two countries.

Early on Saturday, Canadian police began clearing protesters blocking a key bridge linking Canada and the United States.

TD applied to the Ontario Superior Court of Justice on Friday to take the funds, which were sent through GoFundMe and bank transfers, so they can either be sent to the intended recipients or returned to the donors "who have requested refunds but whose entitlement to a refund cannot be determined by TD," the bank said in a statement.


TD has been put "on notice that their actions are improper and disappointing," Keith Wilson, a lawyer for the convoy, said in an email on Saturday, adding the convoy will seek a court order next week to release the donations to a new not-for-profit corporation that has been set up to manage and distribute them.

One of the bank accounts received a lump sum of C$1 million through GoFundMe, while the rest was sent to the second account through multiple bank e-transfers, the TD spokesperson said. TD does not know where the GoFundMe payment originated, they said.

GoFundMe took down the protest convoy's donation page on Feb. 4 after it reached $10 million, prompting most of the protesters to turn to Boston-based GiveSendGo. GoFundMe has said https://twitter.com/gofundme it will refund the donations.

The Ontario Superior Court on Thursday ordered GiveSendGo to freeze all funds sent in aid of the protest. The crowdfunding platform defied that order in a tweet https://twitter.com/GiveSendGo/status/1491940399505682434 on Thursday.

The protest has raised C$11 million on GiveSendGo, Wilson said.

"We are also going to be taking the Ontario government to court to seek an immediate lifting of what we consider to be an unlawful order," he said.


Canada's other major banks did not immediately respond to emails asking if they were taking steps similar to TD.

The country's anti-money-laundering agency told a parliamentary committee on Thursday that it has not seen a spike in suspicious transaction reporting from the banks in recent weeks.

Instead of building new wings, museum donations could fund salaries for more diverse staff

Only 28% of art museum staff are people of color. Funds from wealthy donors could go to better pay for interns and staff, helping early-career hires of color stay in museum careers.

[Photo: Robert Bye/Unsplash]

BY LISA M. STRONG

02-13-22


Retired financier Oscar Tang, along with his wife, Agnes Hsu-Tang, are giving the Metropolitan Museum of Art $125 million. Their gift, announced in November 2021, will help pay for a long-planned renovation of the New York City museum’s Modern and Contemporary Art wing.

The gift was the largest donation the museum has ever received and led the couple to rank No. 22 among the top 50 U.S. donors of 2021, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy. The donors placed no official requirements on how the money should be used but expressed support for the Met’s plan to spend it on a new space that will exhibit work by artists from a wide range of countries and backgrounds.

As a scholar of museum studies, I would welcome a more inclusive vision for the Met’s collection in a state-of-the-art gallery. However, I believe that the institution would better enhance its inclusiveness by taking steps to increase the diversity of its staff from top to bottom, particularly at the entry level.

30 YEARS OF SEEKING MORE EQUITY IN ART MUSEUMS

Calls for greater social justice in museums began to pick up three decades ago.

The American Alliance of Museums, the largest professional museum organization, published a report in 1992 that highlighted this problem and called for museums to “become more inclusive places that welcome diverse audiences” and to “reflect our society’s pluralism in every aspect of their operations and programs.

Since then, museums have acknowledged their need to increase the diversity of their collections and exhibitions by reducing the over-representation of straight, white male artists.

Eventually, this effort broadened to include a wide range of equity issues, as well as access for people with disabilities and various kinds of inclusion. In 2020, with the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic, this movement gained momentum at the Met and other museums.

A BLOCKED PIPELINE

Due to historical inequalities, young people of color embarking on an art museum career are less likely to have families that can fund their unpaid internships or volunteer work. Done right, these types of early-training opportunities help ensure that candidates of color will join the pipeline of museum professionals.

Lonnie Bunch made this case in the Alliance’s Museum Magazine in 2000, long before he became the first Black secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. Among his many responsibilities: overseeing 21 museums, including two in planning stages.

Despite Bunch’s personal rise to prominence and the Smithsonian’s recent hire of Jane Carpenter-Rock, who is also Black, as a new deputy director, museums haven’t made enough progress toward this goal in recent years.

The most recent comprehensive demographic survey of art museums, which the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation conducted in 2018, found that only 28% of all museum staff were people of color. It also determined that only 16% of curators and 12% of top executives were non-white.

Although there is no data yet regarding the number of people of color hired at museums since 2020, early reports suggest incremental increases and a sense of isolation among curators hired into high-profile museum positions.

How might museums do better? There are many options, such as making grants contingent upon making strides toward a more diverse workforce, or engaging in diversity training. One solution that I rarely hear mentioned is paying entry-level staff higher wages.

A curator assistant at a major metropolitan art museum can make as little as $36,000 to start, whereas a senior curator at the same-size institution can make four or five times as much.

This wage differential may have made sense in the past, when these jobs didn’t require educational credentials. Today, however, most new hires have earned an expensive master’s degree.

Even getting that credential doesn’t always help launch a career in the arts. Alumni of the program I direct often tell me they have left coveted positions for higher-paid work in another field. People of color typically enter the workforce with less generational wealth than their white peers, so it stands to reason that they are more likely to leave the profession due to low compensation, if they enter it at all.

A SIGNIFICANT GIFT

In August 2020, Adrienne Arsht, a banker and arts philanthropist who previously shored up the finances of the Miami Center for the Performing Arts, pledged $5 million for the Met to fully fund paid internships for 120 graduate and undergraduate students per year.

Students without the financial means to undertake an unpaid internship would now participate in the Met’s valuable mentor and training programs, “increasing opportunities and supporting equity in the art field,” Arsht promised. In an interview, she said that applications went up 300% once the internship positions became paid.

I see Arsht’s gift as a possible model for other wealthy donors who wish to make long-term contributions to museum diversity, equity, and inclusion. A few similar examples have emerged, including a $462,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation that’s supporting long-term paid internships at the National Gallery of Art for students attending Howard University, a historically Black school.

TOPPLING CONVENTIONAL WISDOM

If the Met wants to present a more global and inclusive vision of modern and contemporary art, it does not need to renovate its Modern and Contemporary wing. It could hang more diverse artwork on the walls it already has, and use new funds from donors to compensate its staff differently, so that early-career hires of color have more of an incentive to stick around.

But, as I have long seen firsthand, museum leaders and fundraisers generally presume that big donors don’t want to help support day-to-day expenses, such as salaries.

Instead, conventional wisdom holds that major philanthropists prefer to make gifts that are used to build new spaces and will give them the opportunity to see their own name splashed on those new walls.

The Met’s internship program, which as it happens now bears Arsht’s name, is proof that some donors are willing to fund unglamorous expenses, such as salaries for young professionals and students. If more philanthropists were willing to do that, it would surely help increase the diversity of museum staff in the long term.

Lisa M. Strong is director of the art and museum studies master’s program and professor of the practice, Georgetown University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

For Asian American women, Olympics reveal a harsh duality
By SALLY HO

1 of 6

 Eileen Gu, of China, waves after competing during the women's freestyle skiing big air finals of the 2022 Winter Olympics, Feb. 8, 2022, in Beijing. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

BEIJING (AP) — Across two pandemic Olympics set in Asian countries, Asian American women fronting the Games have encountered a whiplashing duality — prized on the global stage for their medal-winning talent, buffeted by the escalating crisis of racist abuse at home.

The world’s most elite and international sporting event, which pits athletes and countries against each other, underscores along the way the crude reality that many Asian women face: of only being seen when they have something to offer.

“It’s like Asian American women can’t win,” says Jeff Yang, an author and cultural critic. “Asian American female athletes, like most Asian American women in many other spaces, are seen as worthy when they can deliver … and then disposed of otherwise.”

The issue is playing out at the Beijing Winter Games, the third straight Olympics set in Asia and the second held during the unrelenting global coronavirus crisis — and playing out, too, during a rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans.

Here, U.S. snowboarder Chloe Kim and China’s freestyle skier Eileen Gu are the latest additions to the list of American women of Asian descent who have been “It Girls” of the Winter Games, joining icons like American figure skaters Kristi Yamaguchi and Michelle Kwan.

When Kim and Gu earned their gold medals in Beijing, it was the perfect bow on professional narratives that have been covered incessantly leading up to the actual event. Their star power and talent made them two of the de facto spokeswomen for the Olympics.

United States' Chloe Kim trains on the halfpipe curse at the 2022 Winter Olympics, Feb. 7, 2022, in Zhangjiakou, China. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco File)

Meanwhile, other Asian American women like figure skaters Karen Chen and Alysa Liu of the U.S. team and Zhu Yi of the China team have also been promoted by their national teams and scrutinized — sometimes harshly — by Olympic fans.

Commentators have mocked Yi for falling in the team event, as if she deserved the mistake after giving up her U.S. citizenship to compete for her ancestral homeland. Others are angry that she “stole” the Olympic spot from an actual China-born athlete.

Even the winners struggle to feel fully embraced in America.

Kim, who won the halfpipe at the Beijing and Pyeongchang Olympics, has revealed she was tormented online daily. She says she was consumed by fear that her parents could be killed whenever she heard news about another brutal assault on an Asian person.

There have been more than 10,000 reported anti-Asian incidents — from taunts to outright assaults – between March 2020 and September 2021, according to Stop AAPI Hate, a national coalition that gathers data on racially motivated attacks related to the pandemic.

“The experience of hate is withering, and it takes a huge mental health toll,” says Cynthia Choi, the coalition’s co-founder. “When we think about the Olympics, it’s really incredibly powerful to have taken place in Asia three times in a row. That context is very significant, and to have Asian Americans and Asians representing the United States in these games is more than symbolic.”

Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders across the country have endured racist verbal, physical and sometimes deadly attacks for two years now, fueled by the pandemic.

Some perpetrators have based their hate on the fact that the virus was first detected in Wuhan, China. Adding to the mix: former President Donald Trump, who regularly talked about COVID-19 in racial terms.

Gu, the daredevil freestyle skier who placed first in the big air competition, said she’d never been as scared as when a man directed a tirade about the coronavirus’ Chinese origins against her and her immigrant grandmother at a San Francisco pharmacy.

The San Francisco native, fashion model and social media figure has also been criticized with anti-China rhetoric for switching from the U.S. team to the China team. Conservative Fox News personalities Tucker Carlson and Will Cain even dedicated a segment to berating Gu, saying she was “ungrateful” and is “betraying her country.”

Those racially charged denunciations have been called out on social media for being hypocritical. Phil Yu, who runs the popular Angry Asian Man blog, tweeted succinctly: “Oh sure, it’s always ‘go back to your country’ but not ‘go back to your country and win a gold medal.’”

The dichotomy of the Asian American woman’s existence is not limited to Winter Olympians, though. In October, Hmong American gymnast Sunisa Lee said she was pepper sprayed by someone shouting racist slurs while driving by in a car. At the time, she was standing outside with a group of Asian American friends in Los Angeles while filming the “Dancing with the Stars” TV show.

Olympian Sunisa Lee, center, waves from a St. Paul fire truck with her mom Yeev Thoj, left, and sister Shyenne Lee as fans cheer for her along the parade route, Aug. 8, 2021, in St. Paul, Minn. (Jerry Holt/Star Tribune via AP, File)

Lesser-profile Olympians from the Tokyo Games like golfer Danielle Kang and karateka Sukura Kokumai spoke about their experiences with anti-Asian hate last summer.

Kang said she’s fought racism all her life and urged for a broader social studies curriculum that could better capture today’s multicultural America.

“I’ve been told to go back to China. I don’t know why they think China is the only Asian country,” said the Korean American athlete. “I also have heard, ‘Do you eat dogs for dinner?’ It’s nothing new to me. However, the violence was very upsetting. But the violence also has been around. I’ve gotten into fist fights. I’ve grown up like this.”

Kokumai, who is Japanese American, was angry to discover that the same man who had harassed her in April with racist slurs also assaulted an elderly Asian American couple.

Equally painful: colleagues’ silence when the incident was reported. She said Japan’s coach called her about it before members of her U.S. team did.

“It was really hurtful that it took so long for my side of the federation to address it,” Kokumai said last summer.

In July, when Lee became the surprise breakout star of the Tokyo Olympics by winning gold in the all-around event and bronze on uneven bars, Sung Yeon Choimorrow, executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, said she felt conflicted about seeing Lee on a pedestal given the way Hmongs have been marginalized.

“I’m really wrestling with this idea that we’re all ‘American’ only when it comes to us being excellent and winning medals for the country,” Choimorrow said. “Asian American women are hyper-visible in ways that dehumanize us and completely invisible in the ways that humanize us.”

___

Seattle-based AP journalist Sally Ho is on assignment at the Beijing Olympics, covering figure skating. Follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/_sallyho

___

More AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/winter-olympics and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports.

(Real) snow disrupts events at the Beijing Winter Olympics

February 13, 2022
JACLYN DIAZ

Finland's Samu Torsti falls in the first run of the men's giant slalom on Feb. 13 at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games.

Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images

BEIJING — Heavy snowfall — the real kind — disrupted Olympic events Sunday, reminding participants that this is a winter event. Amid the snow and fog, skiers taking to the slopes struggled to fight against their main competitor: Mother Nature.

Beijing organizers have created their ski and snowboarding courses out of almost entirely human-made snow. The real snow altered those conditions for athletes competing Sunday afternoon.

THE 2022 WINTER OLYMPICS
No snow? No problem. How Beijing made the white stuff in time for the Olympics

In response, organizers postponed training for women's downhill and qualifiers for women's freeski slopestyle.

At the Yanqing alpine ski venue — a location in the mountainous northwest of Beijing — snow was forecast to fall all day and it has. Crews were dispatched to remove excess snow with plows (big and small) and trucks to clear the competition area. Eventually, the first run of the men's giant slalom went ahead as scheduled — despite visibility issues for the competitors. The second run was delayed.

Workers clear snow from the finish line prior to the second run of the men's giant slalom. The second run was delayed due to the heavy snowfall.Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images

In giant slalom — a technical competition — athletes must ski between poles, called gates, until the end of the course.

Thirty-three skiers were unable to finish the first qualifier. They stumbled in the snow as they wobbled and weaved down the slope. Many fell or skied off course entirely due to low visibility. Others tumbled down the mountain — falling skies over poles — and getting buried in the fluffy white snow.

Crew members prepare the course as snow falls ahead of the first run of the men's giant slalom during the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games on Feb. 13.

Jeff Pachoud/AFP via Getty Images

Henrik Kristoffersen, of Norway, said succinctly of the visibility, that he couldn't see s**t.
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He still managed to get to the bottom of the course in 27th place.

The skiers who didn't complete their run said they were ultimately fine with race organizers going ahead with the competition.

"For sure it is frustrating. For sure it's not what I was hoping for but it's part of the game, part of the sport," Switzerland's Loic Meillard, who didn't finish, said. "We've raced in conditions like that, it's not the first time."

France's Mathieu Faivre (left) speaks in the mixed zone after the first run of the men's giant slalom.

Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP via Getty Images

AFRICA HAS NO WINTER

United front by African countries to back Beijing Winter Olympics, ignoring US ‘boycott’ calls

By Joyce Chimbi

Published: Feb 11, 2022 

Nigeria's flag bearer leads the delegation as they enter the stadium during the opening ceremony of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games, at the National Stadium, known as the Bird's Nest, in Beijing, on February 4, 2022.Photo: AFP

Africa has undeniably expressed its support for its biggest bilateral trading partner, China, during the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing.

African leaders including Tanzania's President Samia Suluhu Hassan, Tanzania's Zanzibar President Hussein Ali Mwinyi and Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari are unambiguously backing China.

Prior to the Games, President Mwinyi voiced his support for a "successful convening of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games."

He stressed that the eagerly awaited Olympics present an opportunity to unite people from across the continent and beyond. They are a much-needed boost for mankind to move forward faster, higher and stronger in keeping with the Olympic creed.

President Mwinyi's counterpart, President Hassan of Tanzania similarly commended China for hosting the Olympics and had no doubt that China would deliver a dazzling and successful global event.

"As a friendly and brotherly country to Nigeria, President Buhari affirms the support of the Nigerian government and its people to China," according to a statement of Nigeria's State House.

Six athletes from Nigeria, Eritrea, Ghana, Madagascar and Morocco are competing in the alpine skiing and cross-country events in Beijing's Winter Olympic Games.

Other hopefuls from countries such as Kenya are not participating for reasons including a lack of resources needed to adequate prepare for the competitive event.

Still, many Kenyans joined Chinese living in Kenya to usher in the Chinese New Year at a popular shopping mall a short distance from the capital, Nairobi.

Solid support for the Olympics was similarly expressed by presidents of various national Olympic Committee officials, including Zimbabwe's Olympic Committee president Thabani Gonye, and Mali's National Olympic and Sports Committee president Habib Sissoko.

Uganda's Olympic Committee president Donald Rukare and, the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC) have vocalized their support for China's key role in Winter Olympics 2022.

In this regard, African countries have put up a united front, decidedly ignoring calls from Washington for a "diplomatic boycott" of the Beijing Winter Olympics.

It is clear that calls for a boycott opposed with increasingly vocal support from across the continent by leaders, sports associations and sports enthusiasts. For Africa, the Olympics are a highlight and a celebration of China as it marks a memorable moment in sports history.

Mali, Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa are among the many countries across the continent to have spoken out in support of the Winter Olympics and stressed that the Games serve to bring people together and unite the world.

In this regard, Botsang Tshenyego, president of the Botswana National Olympic Committee, strongly expressed his support for the Olympics, urging others to avoid the polarization of sports.

The overwhelming support comes hot on the heels of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation held in Dakar, Senegal.

During the forum, African countries drew a statement that reads in part, "We are committed to promoting the sustained and sound development of the Olympic Movement and oppose the politicization of sports."

Standing in solidarity with China, Africa has not wavered in expressing its support for a country that has stood shoulder to shoulder with a continent that has until recently, struggled to make significant strides towards sustainable development.

As the continent walks step by step with the eastern nation, it has significantly transformed as state-of-the-art infrastructure and technology have gradually improved.

For African leaders, Beijing offers a much-needed platform to foster Africa-China diplomatic ties and deepen cooperation and friendships that transcend traditional bilateral ties.

Sports experts say the event provides youths in Africa with exposure to a sport that is slowly making inroads into Africa.

As a largely tropical region and one of the hottest continents in the world, Africa lacks the climate for winter sports.

Still, many athletes in Africa continue to express a desire to participate in sports like snowboarding, skiing and bobsleigh. Experts say China-Africa relations present an opportunity for the continent to build capacities in winter sports and to learn from China.

Thus far, China-Africa relations have deepened, resulting in trade between China and Africa reaching an unprecedented high in 2021 of $254 billion. This is an estimated 35 percent increase from 2020, according to the most recent Chinese customs data.

Leveraging on this partnership, sports experts in Africa are confident that the continent is capable of spreading its wings outside of its traditional sports such as marathon and football.

There is no doubt that China has made world Olympic history as the first dual Olympic city, having already hosted the Summer Olympics in 2008. It is this level of excellence and consistency in global sports that Africa hopes to emulate.

The author is a Kenya-based journalist. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn

KOREA 

Yoon meets with ex-US Vice President Pence

By Yonhap
Published : Feb 13, 2022 


In this photo provided by the main opposition People Power Party (PPP), Yoon Suk-yeol (R), the presidential candidate of the conservative PPP and former US Vice President Mike Pence shake hands before a meeting in Seoul on Sunday. (PPP)

Main opposition presidential candidate Yoon Suk-yeol met with former US Vice President Mike Pence in Seoul on Sunday and discussed security cooperation between the two countries, including the denuclearization of North Korea.

"We discussed issues related to our security and Korea-US cooperation, including the denuclearization of North Korea," Yoon of the conservative People Power Party (PPP) told reporters after a 30-minute meeting with Pence.

Pence, who served under former US President Donald Trump, was in town to attend a peace forum.

Yoon said he and the former US vice president also shared some personal stories during the meeting, adding the latter's father, Edward Pence, served in the US Army during the 1950-53 Korean War and received the Bronze Star.

Pence expressed his concerns over North Korea's recent provocations, and Yoon pledged to make more efforts to strengthen the Seoul-Washington alliance if elected, according to PPP officials.

Yoon has taken a hard-line stance on the North, including suggesting the need for a preemptive strike on the country in the event of an imminent threat. (Yonhap)

Ahn Cheol-soo is only presidential contender with science literacy: adviser

By Kim Arin
Published : Feb 13, 2022 

Ahn Cheol-soo, People Party presidential candidate, volunteered to support COVID-19 response during South Korea’s initial wave that struck in early 2020. (Yonhap)

Ahn Cheol-soo, the presidential candidate for South Korea’s centrist People Party, will prioritize sound judgments based on science over populism as Korea seeks a safe exit from the pandemic, according to his COVID-19 adviser.

Dr. Park Jin-kyu, COVID-19 adviser to Ahn and the former Korea Medical Association vice president, told The Korea Herald that response has been swayed by political meddling.

Ahn -- the qualified medical doctor, software engineer and two-time presidential candidate -- is the “only one that has the guts to stick to what is most sound based on the emerging science, and not jeopardize people’s health and safety by letting popular opinions dictate the course of public health decisions,” he said.

Asked to describe his COVID-19 discussions with Ahn, Park, who has been leading People Party presidential election campaign’s COVID-19 response committee since December, said, “He gets it.”

“And it’s not just because he’s a doctor himself. He knows whom to go to for best advice, and always lets the experts in the room speak,” he said.

Too often, Koreans have witnessed COVID-19 communications “becoming muddled amid politicians pushing their own agenda and health authorities urging more prudence.”

Although it’s true Korea was more successful than most countries in handling the pandemic, especially in the early days, Park said, “Think about all the lives that could have been saved, all the digressions that could have been avoided, if our leaders listened.”

An ideal leader in such tumultuous times is one who knows how to concede their place in an area where they’re not an expert in, he said.

Ahn has proven himself to be capable of just that, according to Park.

He said that Ahn has been the “voice of reason” over the last two years while the two major parties -- the ruling Democratic Party of Korea and the main conservative People Power Party -- were bent on turning the crisis into a political contest.

Ahn’s criticisms on government pandemic response “have not come without a solution,” he said.

As early as May 2020, in the aftermath of the first wave that struck Daegu, Ahn had warned of a worldwide competition to get vaccines. Then the government and the ruling party were still busy celebrating their initial success.

“Ahn has said consistently early on, that we need to start contacting companies, reach out for advance purchase deals now, when no one else in our leadership was paying any attention,” he said. “Korea was behind a lot of countries with similar economies in vaccinating its people because of this oversight.”

He said the key to Ahn’s plans for COVID-19 is about building resiliency to future public health threats.

“Resiliency sounds quite grand, but it comes from steps as simple as having fewer beds per room at hospitals,” he said. Single-bed rooms, even two-bed rooms are rare at Korean hospitals, which makes infection control more difficult.

As a long-term goal, Ahn has pledged to build a stable reservoir of public funding for research and development of vaccines and treatments, the kind of public funding that is not bound by short-term outcomes, he said.

He said Ahn also viewed compensation for vaccine-related injuries, especially life-threatening ones, to be “essential to people’s confidence in government vaccine campaigns.”

“A pandemic makes getting vaccinated kind of compulsory, and for healthy teens and children, getting the shot is more in the benefit for the community than themselves. So they should be compensated for bad outcomes following vaccination.”

As appealing as the promise is to lift social distancing restrictions, Park said that was one area that’s hard to predict at the moment.

“There may well be another troubling variant of concern that forces us to be careful again,” he said. “We have to be forthcoming about that possibility.”

But any round of restrictions must be accompanied by financial support for small businesses that will be suffering from curfews and the limit on how many people can gather.

Another campaign promise that Ahn is focusing on is mental health support for struggling Koreans.

“As serious as the pandemic is, suicide has claimed more lives than COVID-19 did,” he said. “Attempted suicide rates have risen amid the pandemic, especially among young women in their 20s.”

Ahn, together with his wife and daughter, spent the Seollal holiday volunteering at a Seoul COVID-19 testing center. Park said Ahn was there to “see what was going on on the front lines with his own eyes.”

“COVID-19 is probably not going to be the last pandemic of our lifetime. Trends in the last decade tell us infectious disease outbreaks are striking us with an interval of five to six years -- swine flu in 2009, MERS in 2015 and then COVID-19,” he said.

“To prepare for the next public health emergency we need to institute changes and build systems that last. It’s time Korea gets a president with science literacy.”

By Kim Arin (arin@heraldcorp.com)

Zara Mohammadi: The New Face of Kurdish Resistance in Iran

by Dana Taib Menmy | Feb 13, 2022

A Kurdish teacher and activist who defied the Iranian regime by teaching her mother tongue to children has been sentenced to five years imprisonment. Her incarceration has turned her into a symbol of national pride and resilience for Kurds in Iran.

Kurdish language teacher and social activist Zara Mohammadi was sentenced to five years in prison by the Islamic Republic judiciary. (Photo courtesy Rojikurd)

When the Iranian Islamic revolutionaries came to power, they repeatedly claimed that the Kurds were originally Iranian, along with other unrestrained declarations. Since 1979, clerics in Tehran have banned the Kurds from reading and writing in their mother tongue.

As a result, the overwhelming majority of Iranian Kurds cannot read and write in their native language. These cultural limitations resulted in the sentencing of Zara Mohammadi, a Kurdish language teacher, and civil society activist, to ten years in prison for simply trying to give her people access to a Kurdish education. While the sentence was reduced to five years, the incarceration is representative of Iran’s discriminatory policies towards its ethnic minorities including Ahwazi Arabs, Azerbaijani Turks, Baluchis, and Iranian Kurds.

The overwhelming majority of Iranian Kurds cannot read and write in their native language.

29 years-old Mohammadi was first arrested in her hometown of Sanandaj (also known as Sine), on May 23, 2019. She is the director of the Nojin Socio-Cultural Association, an organization tasked with teaching the Kurdish language and literature.

In November 2019, the Iranian Human Rights organization reported that Mohammadi was “charged with national security offenses in relation to her civil society work empowering marginalized members of Iran’s Kurdish minority.”

Mohammadi had been subject to extensive interrogations by Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence Agency and spent about six months in prison where she endured questioning and torture forcing her to make false confessions. On December 2, 2019, she was released on a 700 million Iranian tomans (approximately $27,000) bail.

She was also charged with forming a group and committee that threatens the system’s stability and security and sentenced to five years in prison by a Sanandaj appeals court in February 2021.

“The five-year sentence by the appeal court without evidence, reason, and with no consideration to the truth is [a] total injustice,” Mohammadi shared on her Instagram on February 13, 2021.

Since Mohammadi’s incarceration, she has become a symbol of the resistance against Iran’s systematic cultural subjugation of Iranian Kurds and their national identity.

She has become a symbol of the resistance against Iran’s systematic cultural subjugation of Iranian Kurds

In a speech made in front of the court in Sanandaj, before turning herself to the Iranian authorities to serve her time, Mohammadi quoted the famous Kurdish poet, Qani, who is affectionately known as the poet of the oppressed. The line reads, “While in jail, my thinking on freedom will expand. Destruction is the fate of that enemy who has hope in prison.”

The Islamic Republic of Iran’s (IRI) constitution, written after the Islamic revolution of 1979 and amended in 1989, preserves the right of all nations and minorities to study and learn in their mother tongues. But in practice, that “right” is nothing more than worthless ink on lifeless paper. Mohammadi’s imprisonment is grave abuse of the IRI’s own constitution.

[Iranian Kurds Expect the Worst Under Ebrahim Raisi’s Presidency]

[The Free Press in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region is Under Threat]

“The official language and script of Iran, the lingua franca of its people, is Persian. Official documents, correspondence, and texts, as well as textbooks, must be in this language and script. However, the use of regional and tribal languages in the press and mass media, as well as for teaching of their literature in schools, is allowed in addition to Persian,” reads Article 15 of the Iranian Constitution.

Article 19 stipulates, “All people of Iran, whatever the ethnic group or tribe to which they belong, enjoy equal rights; and color, race, language, and the like, do not bestow any privilege.”

During former Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s race for the presidency in 2013, he pledged to officially authorize the teaching of Iranian mother tongues [Kurdish, Azeri, and Arabic] in public schools and universities. He won the election with the ethnic minority vote, including over 70 percent of the Iranian Kurdistan vote, but subsequently neglected his promises after being elected.

Persian is the only official language for education. Students have never been permitted to use their mother tongues.

Three years later, in 2016, university classes in Kurdish and the Azeri-Turkish languages were rumored to be offered for the first time in Iran. But a Kurdish student who recently obtained his master’s degree at Payame Noor University told Inside Arabia that Persian is the only official language for education. Students have never been permitted to use their mother tongues.

“When Zara Mohammadi wants to teach the Kurdish language to fellow kids of Sanandaj, the IRI sentences her with six years imprisonment. Why? Because Mohammadi’s deed is outside IRI’s political system,” Kamal Chomani, a Kurdish writer living in Germany and a nonresident fellow at The Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, wrote in a Facebook post.

“Education in the mother tongue is a global right… postcolonial intellectuals consider… education in the mother tongue as the most crucial mechanism for combating colonialism and amending cultural distortion and intellectual aggression,” Chomani added.

Decades-long annihilation policies by Iran against the Kurdish language and culture have made it very difficult for Iranian Kurds to read and write in their mother tongue. Gradually, the language and its dialects are under the imminent threat of extinction.

Hawrami is a dialect of the Kurdish language and is spoken by some 23,000 people in Iran’s Kurdistan, western Iran, and in Iraq’s Hawraman area. In 2010, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) categorized the dialect as “definitely endangered.”

One year after President Ibrahim Raisi entered office, Iranian Kurds continue to be prosecuted and have their cultural, political, and economic rights denied.

Although the IRI may think that it has silenced Mohammadi – at least for the next five years – it never imagined that terribly inhumane measures against a young female teacher would make her a historic symbol of bravery and resistance for Iranian Kurds.

In Shadow of War, Moscow Pushing for 'Spy' Swap

Kremlin media revives push for US release of arms dealer Viktor Bout, the infamous "merchant of death."

Olga Lautman

Over the past week, Russian state media has featured close to a dozen articles on the notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout, who’s currently serving a 25-year sentence in an Illinois federal prison known for holding inmates convicted on terrorism and other serious, related crimes. The Kremlin seems to be signaling a new effort to get him back, with a “hostage exchange” in mind. Its pawns: former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, currently serving a 16-year sentence for espionage and Trevor Reed, another former U.S. marine convicted on charges of resisting arrest after a drunk-driving stop in 2019. When President Biden met with Vladmir Putin in Geneva last June, he raised the cases of Reed, Whelan and Michael Calvey, an American businessman since released after being convicted and handed a suspended sentence on embezzlement charges.

Viktor Bout was arrested in a US sting in Thailand in 2008 (DEA)

If the Kremlin is angling for a swap, it would hardly be the first time Russia and the United States have jockeyed to exchange valuable prisoners, the most famous episode being the swap of U-2 spy plane pilot Gary Francis Powers for Soviet “illegal”agent Rudolph Abel on a German bridge between East and West 60 years ago this past week. It’s said Abel never “broke” under U.S. interrogation.

Bout, 55, a former Soviet military officer and polyglot immortalized as “the merchant of death” in books and movies, was arrested in Thailand in 2008 after U.S. operatives, posing as representatives of FARC, the Colombian revolutionary group, engaged him in a weapons deal. Extradited to New York, Bout was convicted on multiple terrorism-related charges, but given only a minimum 25-year sentence because "there was no evidence that Bout would have committed the crimes for which he was convicted had it not been for the sting operation,” the judge in the case said. Ever since, the Russians have been trying to get him back.

Whelan, meanwhile, has always maintained he was framed as an American spy by a “friend” who turned out to be an FSB agent. "It was really a farce,” he told a BBC reporter in December 2020. “You hear about these things during the Soviet era, when people would then be taken out and shot. It's the same thing."

Calvey, the businessman, said he was arrested because he was suing, and winning, a case against a powerful oligarch. His jailing for a year provoked ourtage from the international business community.

"I view the verdict as unfortunate and deeply unfair," Calvey, 53, told reporters, according the AFP. "Compared to most cases, receiving a suspended sentence is already almost a victory. But on the other hand, it is simply outrageous to be convicted of a crime that never happened."

Retired former CIA officer Christopher Burgess says he always believed that “Whelan's ambush and subsequent 16 years sentence were all designed to get a prisoner exchange for Bout.” The same could be said for Reed, and perhaps Calvey. Asked what made Bout so important, Burgess noted that “Bout successfully smuggled arms for years, a skillset that the Russian special services like to have in their pocket.”

Russian state news outlets began raising the volume on Bout last week, with 11 articles on his case in a two-day flurry alone. The campaign began on RIA Novosti, which featured statements made by Bout’s American lawyer, Steve Zissou, over the possibility of shortening Bout’s 25-year prison sentence. "We continue to build arguments that should be the basis for his release,” Zissou said, “for each of the possible options, such as transfer to Russia under a convention on the transfer of prisoners, an exchange of prisoners, a compassionate release.”

In a separate RIA Novosti piece, Zissou added that if all efforts failed, Bout could still be released four years ahead of schedule, in 2033.

“At this point, it is already quite clear that the U.S. government has no interest in the prisoner exchange. All we hear from the American side is non-stop nonsense about Americans in Russian prisons who are allegedly hostages, while Russians are in American prisons,” Zissou said. He added, "Of course, this will undermine to some extent our efforts” at an early release.

The State Department, deeply engaged on the Ukraine issue, could not be immediately reached for comment about Bout on the weekend.

In yet another piece last week, RIA Novosti trumpeted Zissou’s proposal for the families of Russians and Americans with loved ones in prison to work together on getting them released.

“My opinion is this: it's time for the families of Russians imprisoned in American prisons and Americans serving prison terms in Russia to come together and join forces for the common goal of repatriating their loved ones,” he said.

That was followed by a pair of articles with complaints from Bout’s wife, Alla. In the first piece, she said she hadn’t been able to communicate with her husband for over a week. In the next, she alleged his requests for a doctor to treat a skin infection had been denied.

The two-day publicity frenzy ended with a reminder to Russian readers that Bout’s drawings and paintings are currently on exhibit in Moscow.

Negotiation Item?

Yuri Felshtinsky, a prominent Russian-American historian and political commentator, found the placement of articles in RIA Novosti particularly interesting.

“The news agency’s close relations with top Russian diplomats, politicians, and Kremlin officials is well established,” he said, suggesting that the timing of articles may have to do with the ongoing struggle between Washington and Moscow over Russia’s mass buildup on Ukraine’s border. “The Kremlin might be trying to add a prisoner exchange into the negotiations mix,” he mused, no matter how tiny an issue in the larger scheme of things during the Ukraine crisis. Then again, Kremlin officials raised Bout’s case last year during U.S.-Russian arms negotiations, and Putin renewed his offer to swap prisoners ahead of his video summit with Joe Biden last summer, even as he was beginning to mass troops and military equipment on Ukraine’s border.

“All that signals that Viktor Bout was a highly regarded Russian intelligence operative, possibly working for GRU, during his arms-dealing days,” says Felshtinsky. And the Kremlin also wants it known that it will reward its captured agents for not cooperating with Western interrogators.

“No known businessman that sells weapons can do this without the support and approval of FSB or GRU,” said Felshtinsky, who was a close associate of the late Alexander Litvinenko, an FSB operative who defected to the West in 2000 and was fatally poisoned in London six years later by a Kremlin agent who slipped Polonium-210 into his tea. “His family is in Russia and safe and that suggests that Bout refused to provide information to Americans,” Felshtinsky told SpyTalk.

Global Crime Nexus

But Bout’s ties may go beyond the Russian intelligence services. The Insider, a Russian independent media outlet, obtained a video recording of a 2003 interview Litvinenko gave to freelance Australian journalist Nick Lazaredes, in which he discussed how he met Bout at the infamous Lubyanka prison, during which time Bout disclosed that he was collaborating with retired Maj. Gen. Yevgeny Khokholkov in illegal arms sales to Africa and the Middle East. According to The Insider, Khokholkov was rumored to have close dealings with the infamous Solntsevo organized crime syndicate in Moscow. In post-Soviet Russia that would hardly be unusual: It’s long been known that Russian intelligence, Kremlin officials, oligarchs, and organized crime figures are intertwined and occasionally work together on specific operations, both domestically and abroad.

Litvinenko also claimed to Lazaredes that Bout’s connections didn’t stop with his associates inside Russia. The former FSB agent allegedly confided that he was “told by an employee of the Internal Security Directorate with whom I met: ‘Sasha, you know, they sell tanks. They sell heavy arms to Africa; they go to the Middle East.’” Litvinenko said his suspicions were bolstered when he later saw Bout in Khokholkov’s office.

Bout was also “associated with Ukrainian criminal groups,” Litvinenko claimed, via Andrii Derkach, a Ukrainian businessman and politician and son of a top security official in the notoriously corrupt regime of Leonid Kuchma, the authoritarian president of Ukraine in the 1990s and early 2000s. In 2003, a corruption fighting Russian website implicated both Andrii and Leonid Derkach in illegal weapons transfers to the Balkans, Asia and Africa, including to Islamist terror groups al-Qaeda and al-Shabaab.

In Dec. 2019, Derkach, regarded by U.S. intelligence as a Russian agent, met in Kyiv with President Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani to concoct a corruption case against Joe Biden's son Hunter. In 2020, the Treasury Department sanctioned Derkach for his activities as a Russian agent, including interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Last year, Giuliani’s New York State law license was suspended over false statements about Biden stealing the election. He’s been subpoenaed by the Jan. 6 House committee to testify on election irregularities.

Viktor Bout has allegedly remained loyal and silent for over a decade, in hopes of one day being returned back to Russia through an exchange—and allowed to live. Given his immersion in high level collusion between the intelligence agencies and state sanctioned corruption, it’s no wonder Moscow would want him back. In 2019, Bout’s wife said Moscow had offered to swap as many as 15 imprisoned U.S. citizens for him.

What it would do with him if and when he ever got there, is another question altogether.

Olga Lautman is an analyst and researcher focused on the Kremlin, Eastern Europe, organized crime and intelligence. She is a senior fellow at the Washington, DC-based Center for European Policy Analysis and co-host of the Kremlin File podcast.

Writes Olga’s Newsletter- From Russia with Spies · 

SpyTalk editor Jeff Stein contributed to this story.