Turkish police detain dozens in May Day demonstrations

Reuters
May 01, 2022


ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish riot police detained dozens of protesters trying to reach Istanbul's main Taksim Square for May Day demonstrations against economic hardship caused by raging inflation.

The Istanbul governor's office had allowed May Day celebrations to be held in another district and deemed gatherings in all other locations as unauthorised and illegal.

A Reuters journalist saw riot police brawling with and handcuffing protesters, images of which were shown on television by domestic broadcasters.

Police also detained 30 people in central Besiktas and 22 others in Sisli districts, the Demiroren News Agency reported.

A statement from the Istanbul governor's office on Sunday said that 164 protesters had been detained across the city for "attempting to hold illegal demonstrations".

Marches led by workers and unions are held on May 1 every year as part of International Labour Day celebrations in many countries.

Turkey's annual inflation rate is expected to rise to 68% in April, driven higher by the Russia-Ukraine conflict and rising commodity prices, receding only slightly by the end of the year, a Reuters poll showed on Thursday.

The soaring inflation and the economic hardship it causes were cited in May Day statements from several groups.

"Our main theme this year had to be cost of living," the head of the Confederation of Turkish Labor Unions (Turk-Is), Ergun Atalay, said as he placed a wreath in Taksim Square and demanded that minimum wages be adjusted monthly to reflect rising prices.

"Inflation is announced at the beginning of each month. The inflation rate should be added to wages every month," he said.

(Reporting by Murad Sezer; Writing by Ece Toksabay; Editing by David Goodman)

















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Democrats target oil giants for 'ripping off' motorists

AFP
April 28, 2022

Democrats say Big Oil is 'ripping off' US motorists, like these pictured during rush hour in Los Angeles


US Democrats announced legislation Thursday to punish fuel companies they accuse of unfairly raising prices at the pump, as record inflation threatens the party's prospects in November's midterm elections.

The reforms would allow regulators to impose heavy fines on companies exploiting the war in Ukraine and a pandemic-related surge in crude prices to cash in at the expense of American motorists.

"At this time of war -- at any time -- there is no excuse for Big Oil companies to profiteer, to price gouge or exploit families," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told a news conference.

"That is why Democrats are moving forward with forceful action that will stop, and hold accountable, oil and gas companies for profiteering and manipulating markets."

The push comes with gasoline prices skyrocketing from an average of $2.89 a gallon a year ago to $4.14, according to data published by AAA on Thursday.

The Democrats' proposals would give the Federal Trade Commission and individual states increased authority to go after businesses that manipulate prices in both wholesale and retail sales.

They are hoping to pass legislation before the end of May but would need support from Senate Republicans, who are pressing instead for hikes in domestic fossil fuel production.

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone said however that oil giants were "ripping off the American people" by suppressing production to maximize profits.

Maria Cantwell, Pallone's counterpart in the Senate, said elevated pump prices were driving inflation -- which is at a 40-year high -- and threatening the post-pandemic recovery.

'Political posturing'

"In the state of Washington, many of my constituents are paying $4.50 a gallon and that means that average Washington drivers will be forced to shell out $750 more to fill up this year than they did in 2021," she said.

The American Petroleum Institute suggested however that the Democrats' announcement amounted to "political posturing" rather than a genuine attempt to fix rising costs.

"This is an industry of price takers, not price makers, and repeated in-depth investigations by the FTC have shown that changes in gasoline prices are based on market factors and not due to illegal behavior," senior vice president of policy, economics and regulatory affairs Frank Macchiarola told AFP.

"The price at the pump that Americans are currently paying is a function of increased demand and lagging supply combined with geopolitical turmoil and policy uncertainty from Washington."

In March, President Joe Biden announced a record release from US strategic oil reserves of a million barrels per day for six months to "ease the pain" of soaring prices.

Some Democrats facing tough re-election fights in November have also floated a federal gas tax holiday that would save motorists around 18 cents a gallon, but Pelosi appeared to rule out the idea.

"There had been some interest in the holiday. The pros of it are that it's good PR," she said.

"The cons are that there's no guarantee that the saving... would be passed on to the consumer. We have no evidence to think that the oil companies would pass that on."

US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm argued at a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on Thursday that the Ukraine invasion underlined the need for Americans to stop relying on the volatile oil market.

"Ultimately, these crises tell us that global energy security, energy independence and energy affordability all depend on a shift toward American-made clean energy," she said.

THE HERESY OF PROTESTANTISM
Catholic League calls on Congress to sanction Marjorie Taylor Greene after she linked church leaders to Satan

Matthew Chapman
April 28, 2022

Marjorie Taylor Greene (Screen Grab)

On Thursday, the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights released a statement calling on Congress to sanction Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) for her recent statements attacking the Catholic Church.

"Greene has a history of offending African Americans and Jews, so bigotry is something that is apparently baked into her," wrote Catholic League President Bill Donohue in the letter to House Ethics Committee leaders Ted Deutch (D-FL) and Jackie Walorski (R-IN).

"The time has come for her to be either reprimanded or censured," Donohue added. "Her irresponsible behavior has already caused her to be removed from committee assignments. Accordingly, her burst of anti-Catholicism now demands stronger sanctions against her."

Greene, who has said she grew up Catholic but is now an evangelical Protestant, stirred controversy earlier this week when she claimed in an interview with Church Militant that the Catholic Church is "controlled by Satan," citing the work of Catholic charities that help immigrants in the United States, and the Church's history of covering up clergy who have committed sexual abuse of children.

"The Church is not doing its job, and it's not adhering to the teachings of Christ," she said in that interview.

The comments have drawn rebuke from other right-wing commentators, like Erick Erickson, who called Greene's attack on Catholics "inexcusable."

Greene, who has promoted QAnon conspiracy theories, was already stripped of her House committee assignments last year after the emergence of social media activity in which she appeared to endorse the killing of prominent Democratic politicians for treason.

SEE LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: HERESIOLOGY 

WAITING FOR HER $20 BILL

Harriet Tubman led military raids during the Civil War as well as her better-known slave rescues

The Conversation
April 28, 2022

Harriet Tubman statue in Harlem, New York 

stockelements / Shutterstock.com

Harriet Tubman was barely 5 feet tall and didn’t have a dime to her name.

What she did have was a deep faith and powerful passion for justice that was fueled by a network of Black and white abolitionists determined to end slavery in America.

“I had reasoned this out in my mind,” Tubman once told an interviewer. “There was one of two things I had a right to, liberty, or death. If I could not have one, I would have the other; for no man should take me alive.”

Though Tubman is most famous for her successes along the Underground Railroad, her activities as a Civil War spy are less well known.

As a biographer of Tubman, I think this is a shame. Her devotion to America and its promise of freedom endured despite suffering decades of enslavement and second class citizenship.

It is only in modern times that her life is receiving the renown it deserves, most notably her likeness appearing on a US$20 bill in 2030. The Harriet Tubman $20 bill will replace the current one featuring a portrait of U.S. President Andrew Jackson.
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In another recognition, Tubman was accepted in June 2021 to the United States Army Military Intelligence Corps Hall of Fame at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. She is one of 278 members, 17 of whom are women, honored for their special operations leadership and intelligence work.

Though traditional accolades escaped Tubman for most of her life, she did achieve an honor usually reserved for white officers on the Civil War battlefield.


After she led a successful raid of a Confederate outpost in South Carolina that saw 750 Black people rescued from slavery, a white commanding officer fetched a pitcher of water for Tubman as she remained seated at a table.
A different education

Believed to have been born in March 1822 in Dorchester County, Maryland, Tubman was named Araminta by her enslaved parents, Rit and Ben Ross.


“Minty” was the fifth of nine Ross children. She was frequently separated from her family by her white enslaver, Edward Brodess, who started leasing her to white neighbors when she was just 6 years old.

At their hands, she endured physical abuse, harsh labor, poor nutrition and intense loneliness.

As I learned during my research into Tubman’s life, her education did not happen in a traditional classroom, but instead was crafted from the dirt. She learned to read the natural world – forests and fields, rivers and marshes, the clouds and stars.


She learned to walk silently across fields and through the woods at night with no lights to guide her. She foraged for food and learned a botanist’s and chemist’s knowledge of edible and poisonous plants – and those most useful for ingredients in medical treatments.

She could not swim, and that forced her to learn the ways of rivers and streams – their depths, currents and traps.

She studied people, learned their habits, watched their movements – all without being noticed. Most important, she also figured out how to distinguish character. Her survival depended on her ability to remember every detail.


After a brain injury left her with recurring seizures, she was still able to work at jobs often reserved for men. She toiled on the shipping docks and learned the secret communication and transportation networks of Black mariners.

Known as Black Jacks, these men traveled throughout the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic seaboard. With them, she studied the night sky and the placement and movement of the constellations.

She used all those skills to navigate on the water and land.

“… and I prayed to God,” she told one friend, “to make me strong and able to fight, and that’s what I’ve always prayed for ever since.”

Tubman was clear on her mission. “I should fight for my liberty,” she told an admirer, “as long as my strength lasted.”

The Moses of the Underground Railroad

In the fall of 1849, when she was about to be sold away from her family and free husband John Tubman, she fled Maryland to freedom in Philadelphia.

Between 1850 and 1860, she returned to the Eastern Shore of Maryland about 13 times and successfully rescued nearly 70 friends and family members, all of whom were enslaved. It was an extraordinary feat given the perils of the 1850 Slave Fugitive Act, which enabled anyone to capture and return any Black man or woman, regardless of legal status, to slavery.

Those leadership qualities and survival skills earned her the nickname “Moses” because of her work on the Underground Railroad, the interracial network of abolitionists who enabled Black people to escape from slavery in the South to freedom in the North and Canada.


Harriet Tubman, far left, poses with her family, friends and neighbors near her barn in Auburn, N.Y., in the mid- to late 1880s. Bettmann/Getty Images

As a result, she attracted influential abolitionists and politicians who were struck by her courage and resolve – men like William Lloyd Garrison, John Brown and Frederick Douglass. Susan B. Anthony, one of the world’s leading activists for women’s equal rights, also knew of Tubman, as did abolitionist Lucretia Mott and women’s rights activist Amy Post.

“I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years,” Tubman once said. “and I can say what most conductors can’t say; I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.”
Battlefield soldier

When the Civil War started in the spring of 1861, Tubman put aside her fight against slavery to conduct combat as a soldier and spy for the United States Army. She offered her services to a powerful politician.

Known for his campaign to form the all-Black 54th and 55th regiments, Massachusetts Gov. John Andrew admired Tubman and thought she would be a great intelligence asset for the Union forces.

He arranged for her to go to Beaufort, South Carolina, to work with Army officers in charge of the recently captured Hilton Head District.

There, she provided nursing care to soldiers and hundreds of newly liberated people who crowded Union camps. Tubman’s skill curing soldiers stricken by a variety of diseases became legendary.

[Like what you’ve read? Want more? Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter.]

But it was her military service of spying and scouting behind Confederate lines that earned her the highest praise.

She recruited eight men and together they skillfully infiltrated enemy territory. Tubman made contact with local enslaved people who secretly shared their knowledge of Confederate movements and plans.

Wary of white Union soldiers, many local African Americans trusted and respected Tubman.

According to George Garrison, a second lieutenant with the 55th Massachusetts Regiment, Tubman secured “more intelligence from them than anybody else.”

In early June 1863, she became the first woman in U.S. history to command an armed military raid when she guided Col. James Montgomery and his 2nd South Carolina Colored Volunteers Regiment along the Combahee River.


The ruins of a slave cabin still remain in South Carolina where Harriet Tubman led a raid of Union troops during the Civil War that freed 700 enslaved people.

Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images

While there, they routed Confederate outposts, destroyed stores of cotton, food and weapons – and liberated over 750 enslaved people.

The Union victory was widely celebrated. Newspapers from Boston to Wisconsin reported on the river assault by Montgomery and his Black regiment, noting Tubman’s important role as the “Black she Moses … who led the raid, and under whose inspiration it was originated and conducted.”

Ten days after the successful attack, radical abolitionist and soldier Francis Jackson Merriam witnessed Maj. Gen. David Hunter, commander of the Hilton Head district, “go and fetch a pitcher of water and stand waiting with it in his hand while a black woman drank, as if he had been one of his own servants.”

In that letter to Gov. Andrew, Merriam added, “that woman was Harriet Tubman.”
Lifelong struggle

Despite earning commendations as a valuable scout and soldier, Tubman still faced the racism and sexism of America after the Civil War.


Harriet Tubman is seen in this 1890 portrait.

MPI/Getty Images

When she sought payment for her service as a spy, the U.S. Congress denied her claim. It paid the eight Black male scouts, but not her.

Unlike the Union officers who knew her, the congressmen did not believe – they could not imagine – that she had served her country like the men under her command, because she was a woman.

Gen. Rufus Saxton wrote that he bore “witness to the value of her services… She was employed in the Hospitals and as a spy [and] made many a raid inside the enemy’s lines displaying remarkable courage, zeal and fidelity.”

Thirty years later, in 1899, Congress awarded her a pension for her service as a Civil War nurse, but not as a soldier spy.

When she died from pneumonia on March 10, 1913, she was believed to have been 91 years old and had been fighting for gender equality and the right to vote as a free Black woman for more than 50 years after her work during the Civil War.

Surrounded by friends and family, the deeply religious Tubman showed one last sign of leadership, telling them: “I go to prepare a place for you.”

Kate Clifford Larson, Visiting Scholar Women's Studies Research Center, Brandeis University

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

RUSSIFICATION OF UKRAINE

Russia introduces the Ruble in the Kherson region of Ukraine

CULTURAL GENOCIDE

World » UKRAINE | April 28, 2022, Thursday 

@Pixabay

The ruble will be introduced in the Russian-controlled Kherson region of Ukraine on May 1, a spokesman for the region's pro-Russian military-civil administration said.

Kirill Stremousov, deputy head of Russia's military-civilian administration in the Kherson region, told the Novosti news agency that both the Russian ruble and the Ukrainian hryvnia will be used in the region over the next four months. He added that after the transition period, only the ruble will remain in circulation.

Stremousov rejected allegations by the Ukrainian side that a referendum on independence was being prepared in the region, stressing that the main task now was to restore the region's economy.

Yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened a "lightning response" in the event of foreign intervention in Ukraine.

"We have all the tools to do that. Tools that no one can brag about. We will not brag. We will use them if necessary. And I want everyone to know that."

Meanwhile, the Belgorod Oblast administration in Russia announced new explosions last night. Locals said on social media that the air defenses had been activated. So far no reports of casualties and destruction.

Do elites capture foreign aid?

Does foreign aid end up in the pockets of elites instead of contributing to inclusive economic development? A recently published journal article offers new evidence of elite capture of World Bank loans by analysing data on bank accounts and shell companies in offshore financial centers.

The effectiveness of foreign aid remains controversial. Some scholars assert that aid plays a pivotal role in promoting economic development in the poorest countries. Others are sceptical. Many studies emphasize that aid effectiveness depends crucially on the quality of institutions and policies in the receiving countries.

A specific concern often voiced by sceptics is that aid may be captured by economic and political elites. In our journal article, recently published in the Journal of Political Economy we study aid capture by combining data on aid disbursements from the World Bank (WB) and foreign deposits from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). The former covers all disbursements made by the WB to finance development projects and provide general budget support. The latter covers foreign-owned deposits in all major financial centres — including havens such as Switzerland, Cayman Islands, and Singapore, all known for financial secrecy.

Some aid money gets diverted straight to offshore accounts

We study whether aid disbursements trigger money flows to bank accounts in havens focusing on the 22 most WB aid-dependent countries in the world. Our main finding that aid disbursements induce outflows to havens is illustrated in Figure 1. A country’s deposits in havens increase sharply in the same quarters that it receives an aid disbursement. The outflows are both statistically and economically significant: aid disbursements equivalent to 1% of GDP are associated with an increase in haven deposits of around 3.4%. The implied leakage rate is 7.5%. In other words, for each dollar of aid disbursed, haven deposits increase by 7.5 cents.

Figure 1. The relation between aid disbursements and outflows to tax havens (Source: Deposit data from the BIS locational banking statistics, disbursement data from World Bank).

While our analysis documents that aid disbursements are associated with wealth accumulation on offshore accounts, the macro nature of the deposit data represents an important limitation. We do not observe who stores wealth in havens and therefore cannot directly infer the economic mechanism. In any case, it is almost certain that the beneficiaries of the money flowing to havens at the time of aid disbursements belong to economic elites, as offshore bank accounts are overwhelmingly concentrated at the very top of the wealth distribution.

Several reasons to suspect elite capture in the most aid-dependent countries

A number of additional results suggest that the increase in haven deposits around aid disbursements reflect capture by ruling elites.

First, we find no similar increase in deposits in non-havens. While aid disbursements trigger money flows to places like Zurich, the global centre for banking secrecy and private wealth management, there are no analogous flows to other international banking centres such as New York, London, and Frankfurt. If the money derives from corruption and embezzlement, it is natural that it flows to banking centres with institutionalized financial secrecy.

Second, the estimated effect varies across countries and projects in ways that are consistent with elite capture. We find that aid disbursements cause more money flows to havens when countries are more corrupt and have less democratic checks and balances (according to standard measures) and when projects have unsatisfactory outcomes (according to the World Bank's ex post evaluation).

Third, analysing leaked data from corporate service providers and corporate registries in havens such as the British Virgin Islands, Panama, and the Bahamas, we find that aid disbursements cause an increase in the number of offshore corporations with links to the receiving country. These corporations typically have no substantial activities and are known to play a key role in facilitating illicit financial flows.

The estimated leakage rate of 7.5% most likely represents a lower bound since it only includes money diverted to foreign accounts and not money spent on real estate, luxury goods, and pet projects. It also does not include money diverted to the accounts of offshore corporations. In principle, it may also overstate true diversion to the extent that some of the funds appearing on haven accounts around aid disbursements reflect other mechanisms; e.g., local contractors receiving payments under WB-sponsored projects and funnelling the payment to haven accounts to evade taxes.

Finally, we find strong evidence that the leakage rate varies positively with aid-dependence. When we include a wider range of countries in the analysis, including countries that are less dependent on WB aid, the estimated leakage rate drops and becomes statistically insignificant.
A corruption conundrum

When we zoom in on a smaller set of countries that depend the most on WB aid, the estimated leakage rate surges. This pattern suggests that the average leakage rate across all aid-receiving countries is much smaller than in the main sample. Donors are therefore confronted with a corruption conundrum — aid is most likely to be diverted in countries that need it most.

Jørgen Juel Andersen is a Professor at the Norwegian Business School (BI).

Niels Johannesen is a Professor at the University of Copenhagen.

Bob Rijkers is Senior Economist at the World Bank.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Institute or the United Nations University, nor the programme/project donors.

Pakistan: new government must tackle police corruption and killings

Published: April 28, 2022 

THE CONVERSATION 

By the time Imran Khan’s government fell in late March 2022, it showed an an abysmal track record of unfulfilled promises, especially on badly needed reforms to address the problems of police corruption and extrajudicial killings.

Khan’s party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI), had a comprehensive agenda for changing the way the police operated, promising to eliminate “political influence on policing in all matters”, including recruitment and transferring officers for political gain.

Unfortunately Khan’s party appears to have performed no better than its predecessors on police reform. It’s now going to be a challenge that Pakistan’s new government, led by the prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, has to face.

With the change of government in Pakistan, political leaders must prioritise reforming the country’s police forces by taking localised approaches, curbing political interference and addressing the causes behind corruption and abuse.

Pakistani citizens often fear the police, and those without the right connections risk bribery and blackmail during interactions with officers, research has shown.

Despite Khan’s anti-corruption rhetoric, PTI did little to address police corruption. Even the police in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a province where police reforms are frequently hailed as a success story, reportedly came under investigation for embezzling funds. The officers were later acquitted. Meanwhile, in the city of Karachi alone, at least 27 people were killed in police “encounters” in the first four months of 2022.

A study from Lahore, Punjab, for the British Journal of Criminology, has found that corruption and lack of effectiveness undermines public trust in the police, as officers are seen to be “chronically corrupt, inefficient, ill equipped, and loyal to power elites of the society”. Although this work was carried out in 2014 the issues remain the same.

These institutional dynamics have also enabled routine occurrences of police abuse, including the notorious practice of “encounter killings” or extrajudicial killings that are staged to appear like shootouts between officers and criminals.

In the federal capital, Islamabad, the killing of a 21-year-old civilian Usama Satti by police officers from an anti-terrorism squad in 2021 appears to be another example of trigger-happy Pakistani police. Reports into the incident alleged police had intentionally killed the young man for failing to stop his car. Five officers were later arrested. They were removed from service and are now facing trial.
Policing influenced by the past

Many of these institutional and structural problems are rooted in Pakistan police’s colonial legacy and legal frameworks, such as the 1861 Police Act, which is still applied in the southern provinces of Sindh and Balochistan.

Even where this was replaced by new legislation, the Police Order 2002 (a much-touted outcome of reform efforts produced under the military regime of Pervez Musharraf (president 2001-2008), the framework is implemented through amendments in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa that have diluted the essence of the original order.

In doing so, the legislation’s calls to enhance public accountability and reduce political control over the police have gone largely unheeded due to a lack of political will.

Read more: Kashmir: what happens after Imran Khan’s downfall?

The politicisation of policing has typically referred to the influence of politicians and their elite allies on the internal affairs and workings of the police.

PTI’s inability to move away from such politicisation is shown most starkly by the fact that during its first three years in office, the provincial police chiefs in Punjab were changed by the government seven times.

The politics behind the shuffling of key bureaucrats became clear when, faced with a no-confidence motion, Khan sought to again change police administrators in Punjab after they allegedly refused to follow orders to unlawfully prevent opposition parties’ members from voting against Khan. This allegation was denied by members of the PTI.

But interference is not only allegedly initiated by political leaders, but also by Pakistan’s powerful military establishment. In 2020, the kidnapping of Sindh’s police chief by paramilitary and intelligence officers exposed the growing influence of the establishment in civilian police work.

It also highlighted the political role of the Sindh Rangers, a paramilitary force that has been posted in the province for three decades, providing policing which has been central to security operations against domestic terrorists.

My own research finds that such a dual policing mechanism creates competition and confrontation between the paramilitary and the police, potentially compromising the legitimacy of the latter.

Paramilitary group Sindh Rangers police an independence day rally in Karachi in 2021. AsiaNetPakistan/Alamy

Future governments should pay special attention to how such policing by military forces can create barriers to police reform. Pakistan’s new leadership needs to consider the contributions of prior reform efforts – including some of the original tenets of the 2002 order, such as establishing commissions to improve accountability by prioritising public oversight on police transfers and abuse.

Local approaches needed

But these efforts must also be localised. Pakistan is a multi-ethnic, multilingual society. Each policing jurisdiction, rural or urban, has different dynamics and demographics that influence local politics and social relations. Future reforms must take such diversity and differences into consideration and avoid a one-size-fits-all formula to ensure implementation and sustainability of reform efforts.

Reform efforts must also secure the buy-in from rank-and-file officers. Previous efforts have typically included senior and retired police officers and bureaucrats, who belong to an elite cadre of officers recruited federally, not the rank and file, who are locally and provincially recruited, trained and deployed. These junior officers create a body of knowledge on policing that is inadequately harnessed.

Lastly, while public safety is key for sustaining police legitimacy, the satisfaction and security of police officers should not be neglected. Key enhancements in police budget, equipment and salaries can improve officer output, safety and wellbeing as well as strengthening their financial security and reducing incentives for engaging in petty corruption and courting political patronage.

These institutional and structural improvements could enhance the effectiveness of community policing models of reform, which, according to recent research, have thus far failed to be delivered in Pakistan.

Author

Zoha Waseem
Assistant Professor in Criminology, Department of Sociology, University of Warwick

He's running to be Colombia's 1st left-wing president. Here's what he plans to do

By John Otis
Published April 28, 2022 

NPR

Colombian presidential candidate Gustavo Petro speaks during a campaign rally in Medellín, Colombia, on April 7. Petro is polling first ahead of the May 29 election.

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — Gustavo Petro, a former left-wing guerrilla and the front-runner in Colombia's presidential election next month, is promising to shake up Colombian society.

And to be sure, there's a lot that needs changing. About 40% of Colombians live below the poverty line and the country has one of the world's largest gaps between rich and poor, according to the World Bank.

"If we continue along this same path, the country will fall into the abyss," Petro said in a recent interview with NPR. "People are disillusioned, which is why I am at the top of the polls."

An opposition senator who is now in his third run for the presidency, Petro, 62, has spent his whole life challenging the status quo.
Entering politics from the left isn't easy

He grew up in Zipaquirá, a mining town just north of Bogotá, where he was dismayed by its poverty. But for decades, government repression as well as a power-sharing pact between traditional parties made it extremely difficult for leftists to break into politics.

That's why in 1978, Petro joined the April 19 Movement, or M-19, one of several Colombian rebel groups that formed in the wake of Fidel Castro's revolution in Cuba. His rebel nom de guerre, "Aureliano," was inspired by a fictional military officer constantly fighting losing battles in the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude by Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez.

The M-19 carried out kidnappings, bank robberies and a disastrous 1985 siege of the Supreme Court that led to more than 90 deaths. But initially, the M-19 cultivated a Robin Hood image by assaulting supermarket trucks and distributing stolen milk in city slums.

Petro's main job was to stockpile stolen weapons and in 1985 was briefly imprisoned and tortured by the army. After his release, he also helped organize guerrilla cells in the cities and the impoverished countryside.

M-19 rebels carry the coffin of Mayor Afranio Parra, days after he was killed by police on April 7, 1989, in Colombia's Santo Domingo mountains before a burial ceremony. M-19 was one of several Colombian leftist guerrilla groups.

"I slept in the homes of poor farmers," he said in the interview, speaking via Zoom. "I hiked across mountains and Indigenous reserves. I was in daily contact with poor people."

Petro believes such close contact with average Colombians eventually made him a better politician. "I think a president should have these types of experiences," he said.
He led the capital through ups and downs

He would soon focus on electoral politics. Disillusioned with the war, Petro took part in peace talks that paved the way for the M-19 to disarm and form a left-wing political party in 1990.

However, running for office remained risky. Carlos Pizarro, who had been the M-19's top commander, ran for president in 1990 but was shot dead by an anti-communist gunman weeks before the vote. A month earlier, another leftist presidential candidate, Bernardo Jaramillo, was assassinated.

Petro surrounded himself with body guards and made his way into politics. He served nearly two decades in Colombia's Congress, where he earned praise for denouncing close ties between politicians and right-wing death squads. He finished fourth in the 2010 presidential election, then was elected mayor of the capital, Bogotá, in 2011.

It was a chaotic four years in charge of the capital. Although crime and poverty fell, Petro went through nine chiefs of staff and, at one point, trash piled high in the streets during his bungled attempt to reform the city's garbage pickup.

In 2018, Petro again ran for president, losing to conservative Iván Duque. But under President Duque, drug-related violence has increased in rural areas, a national strike shut down major cities last year, and poverty has swelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. (The Colombian Constitution bars the president from seeking a second consecutive term.)

"The government's lack of capacity to deal with a national emergency just left a lot of people angry and upset. And I think that's what gives Gustavo Petro a real chance," says Sergio Guzmán, director of the consulting firm Colombia Risk Analysis.

Another factor opening the door for Petro is a more recent peace agreement, signed in 2016, that disarmed Colombia's largest rebel group known as the FARC. As the country's guerrilla conflicts have faded, Guzmán says, voters have become more willing to support leftist politicians who were previously viewed by some as rebels in disguise.

Should Petro win, he would become Colombia's first-ever left-wing president.
He wants to take on poverty and the environment

Many of his proposals have alarmed the country's business class.

Petro talks of raising taxes on the rich — and printing money — to pay for anti-poverty programs. To move toward a greener economy, he promises to stop all new oil exploration and to cut back on coal production, even though these are Colombia's two top exports.

"The fiscal accounts of Colombia depend on oil. It's as simple as that," Alberto Bernal, a Colombian economist, said on a video panel this month sponsored by the Council of the Americas think tank in New York. "What is Colombia going to do if you can't take oil out?"

Petro has outlined a 12-year transition period and says the country could replace the lost income from fossil fuels with a major boost to tourism, and improvements in agriculture and industry.

"I am proposing a path that is much better for Colombia," Petro told NPR, adding that his plan adheres to guidelines from last year's United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow.

Anti-narcotics police walk through a coca field in La Hormiga, Putumayo, Colombia, on April 9. The country's efforts in the U.S.-led war on drugs have played a key role in Colombia's close relationship with Washington.

He is a critic of the U.S.-led drug war

He also spoke in the interview of forging a new relationship with Washington. Petro is a strong critic of the U.S.-led war on illegal drugs in the Andean region — though he provided no specific alternatives — and he wants to renegotiate a 2006 bilateral trade deal that he claims has hurt Colombian farmers and manufacturers. He also wants more help from the U.S. to protect the Amazon rainforest, part of which lies in Colombia.

Since giving up on guerrilla warfare more than three decades ago, Petro has followed the democratic rules yet critics continue to question his commitment to liberal democracy. For example, Petro commented on the campaign trail that his first act as president would be to declare a state of economic emergency, allowing him to bypass Congress and enact laws by decree to tackle hunger and poverty.
Critics try to peg him as a Colombian Hugo Chávez

Petro has also insulted journalists and recently called a Colombian TV commentator who questioned his plans a "neo-Nazi."

Federico Gutiérrez, a conservative former Medellín mayor who is Petro's main rival in the presidential race, did some name-calling of his own. In a March TV debate, he compared Petro to socialist leaders who have brought authoritarian rule and economic ruin to neighboring Venezuela.

Federico Gutiérrez, a candidate with the Team for Colombia coalition, touches the shoulder of Gustavo Petro, candidate with the Historic Pact coalition, during a debate in Bogotá, Colombia, Jan. 25.

"Petro: You are Chávez and Maduro," Gutiérrez said, referring to the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and his successor, Nicolás Maduro. He also said a Petro administration would expropriate private businesses, a claim Petro denied.

An April 21 poll gave Petro 38% of the vote — well ahead of the seven other candidates competing in the May 29 election. But that's below the 50% plus one vote he would need to avoid a June runoff between the two top vote-getters from the first round.
His running mate would be the first Black vice president

Arlene Tickner, a professor of international relations at Rosario University in Bogotá, chalks up some of the criticism of Petro to a Colombian upper class that's running scared.

"They stand to lose some of their privileges, as should be in a genuine democracy that values equality and participation," Tickner says. "Remember that Colombia is one of most unequal countries in Latin America and in the world and it's shameful that we have not yet had a more progressive president."

A large image of Francia Márquez is projected on a screen as she and presidential candidate Gustavo Petro stand on stage during a campaign event, March 23. Petro's running mate Márquez would be the first Afro-Colombian vice president if they win.

Rather than threatening Colombia's democracy, Petro says he would open it up to new voices. His running mate, Francia Márquez, is an Afro-Colombian human rights activist who, if elected, would make history by becoming the country's first-ever Black vice president.

Indeed, Petro's political movement is called the Historic Pact — which Guzmán, the consultant, calls "a brilliant bit of political communication, because: Who campaigns against history?"

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Emergency contraception marks a new battle line in Texas

Kaiser Health News
April 28, 2022

Young woman patient lying at hospital bed feeling sad (Shutterstock)

COLLEGE STATION, Texas — “Mysterious Dolphin” needed an emergency contraception pill dropped off on a porch outside of town.

Allison Medulan, a sophomore at Texas A&M University who had just come from biology class, saw the request on her cellphone via an anonymous text hotline. She gathered a box of the one-dose contraceptive, a pregnancy test, and a few condoms from her apartment and headed over. Inside a bewildering development of modest townhomes, Medulan tucked the plastic delivery bag next to the doormat.

Closing the car door, she stared ahead and took a breath. Medulan, 20, didn’t know the woman’s real name. It had been converted into a moniker by another volunteer operating the hotline.

“I’ve done what I can,” she said.

In this college town in farm country about two hours north of Houston, Medulan and other volunteers for Jane’s Due Process, an Austin-based nonprofit, are trusted allies for panicked young women scrambling for a solution after contraceptive failure or unprotected sex.

Sexual health advocates have long sought to expand access to emergency contraception — over-the-counter medications that prevent fertilization if taken within days of sexual intercourse — with the aim of preventing unplanned pregnancies that can derail educational and professional goals for women and teenagers. A bill that recently passed the Illinois General Assembly would require public universities to offer emergency contraception in vending machines, and volunteer distribution networks exist in numerous states, including Pennsylvania, Alabama, and Georgia.

But in Texas, these grassroots efforts in College Station, Lubbock, Austin, and the Rio Grande Valley have taken on heightened urgency after state lawmakers banned nearly all abortions after around six weeks of pregnancy. Demand for emergency contraception has skyrocketed. Nurx, an online prescription company, registered a 173% increase in orders from Texas in September 2021, the month the law took effect, compared with the previous month. Every Body Texas, an Austin-based group that awards federal birth control funding, received more than 200 requests for emergency contraception the first week its website began taking orders.

“There is anxiety around these laws and feeling like you’re going to be punished for having sex and pregnancy is that punishment,” said Graci D’Amore, 33, program and operations manager at Jane’s Due Process.

Jane’s Due Process reaches out to teens on Instagram and Facebook with digital ads that clear up fallacies about who can buy emergency contraception and where. Minors in Texas and nearly two dozen other states, including teen mothers already raising a child, must have their parents’ consent to get a prescription for hormonal birth control.

Emergency contraception, which is available without a prescription, is exempted from those restrictions. But the medication can be difficult to find in rural areas of Texas. And many pharmacies that do carry it keep it in locked cases or behind the pharmacy counter, requiring purchasers to ask for access. At a cost of $35 to $50 a pill, the medication is unaffordable for some young people.

The Jane’s Due Process “repro kits,” delivered free to those who request a pill via text message or phone call, include a booklet that lists the nearest abortion clinic, often hours away for Texans outside the state’s metropolitan areas.

“It is a Texas teen’s right to buy emergency contraception, pregnancy tests, and condoms,” said D’Amore. “Not only are we trying to provide access but also education.”

In many ways, these groups operate in an educational desert when it comes to abortion, contraception, and even sex. In Texas, many Planned Parenthood and other sexual health clinics that helped an earlier generation of women are long gone, replaced by hundreds of crisis pregnancy centers that counsel women against abortion and do not offer contraception.

As Texas swerved sharply to the right in recent decades, anti-abortion politicians vowed to run Planned Parenthood out of the state, enacting a cascade of restrictions. In 2011, Republican lawmakers slashed funding for the state family planning program by 66%, and more than 80 family planning clinics closed.

The impact was swift. Researchers found that from 2011 to 2014 the number of women using the most effective forms of birth control — IUDs, implants, and injections — declined by a third in the counties that had been serviced by a Planned Parenthood affiliate, while births by poor women on Medicaid increased 27% in those counties. The state partially restored funding in recent years, but many clinics never reopened.

To fill that gap, enter a network of volunteer groups, nearly all made up of women — young and old. With the politics of abortion and contraception converging, they know they are the next target. Many of the people seeking to ban abortion entirely in Texas also want to ban emergency contraception. They contend that life begins at fertilization and that any medication that interrupts that process violates their religious beliefs.

Religious activists in Texas have been out front in this effort, harnessing the state and local governments in their mission. Texas is the only state that does not pay for any form of emergency contraception for low-income women and girls in its state family planning program. Local councils in at least 40 Texas towns have adopted an ordinance that declares them “sanctuary cities for the unborn.” The movement, which began in Waskom, Texas, along the Louisiana border, criminalizes abortion and bans emergency contraception.

Other states are making similar moves.

In Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Mississippi, and South Dakota, pharmacists can refuse to dispense emergency contraception if it conflicts with their religious beliefs, and Arkansas and North Carolina exclude the medication from mandatory contraceptive coverage, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights. Alabama lawmakers have introduced legislation that would prohibit the state health department from using state funds to pay for emergency contraception.

Many conservative Catholics and evangelical Protestants contend that the pills — marketed under the brand names Plan B and Ella — and intrauterine devices are forms of abortion. But emergency contraception is entirely different from the medications prescribed to induce abortions.

Plan B is a hormonal medication that prevents pregnancy by delaying the release of an egg from the ovary or preventing fertilization. It does not harm an existing pregnancy. IUDs generally work by preventing sperm from reaching an egg, and some forms make the uterus lining inhospitable to attachment of a fertilized egg.

For Nimisha Srikanth, a public health major at Texas A&M in College Station, pushing back against that conservative tide has become an ethical crusade. “People have sex because they feel good, not because they want a kid,” she said, sitting at the kitchen table in her tidy off-campus apartment. “Taking that away from them is morally incorrect.”

A petite 21-year-old with hip-length black hair, Srikanth keeps boxes of donated Plan B, condoms, and pregnancy tests tucked under her bed. As president of Feminists for Reproductive Equity and Education, known as FREE Aggies, she operates an emergency contraception text hotline and delivers free pills to any A&M student who contacts her, usually meeting them at the student center and handing over a brown paper bag.

Since she began running FREE Aggies, she has rooted out spies from campus anti-abortion groups who crashed online meetings and switched to the private chat platform Discord. “If A&M requests our correspondence, Discord can’t give it to them,” she said.

The emergency contraception deliveries by volunteers with FREE Aggies and Jane’s Due Process are legal, but their clandestine nature fuels the stigma that young people caring for their sexual health is shameful, said Holly Musick, who attended Texas A&M in the late 1970s, a few years after abortion became legal nationwide.

“It was a much more liberal time,” she told Medulan when they met recently at the student center. “There was a Planned Parenthood on the north side of town, and students could walk to get birth control pills.”

Now, Musick, 64, volunteers for the Jane’s Due Process hotline, dropping off pills around town. The precariousness of women’s access to sexual health care scares her. She signed up for a delivery that had been requested during a narrow window of time at a specific place. “It got canceled right before I left my house, and I’m thinking, ‘This poor girl.’”

Medulan brims with anger. She was raised to think she could be anything in life but sees how abortion politics in Texas have circumscribed her world. Her boyfriend often accompanies her to make deliveries. He worries an anti-abortion radical will try to kill her. She’s been asked to leave the pills under a car, under a doormat, in a fake plant outside a house.

“It shouldn’t be shameful,” she said. “It shouldn’t be something you have to hide in a bush and make sure no one sees you grab this unmarked bag.”

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

Warren introducing legislation to address civilian harm from military operations

BY JORDAN WILLIAMS - 04/28/22 


Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is leading a new push to overhaul how the United States military investigates and mitigates civilian harm caused by its operations.

Warren plans to introduce two bills that would expand current civilian harm reporting and public transparency requirements, as well as moving investigations on civilian harm outside of the chain of command of the unit responsible for the strike.

Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) are joining Warren in the Senate effort.

Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Jason Crow (D-Colo.), Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.), and Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.) will lead the effort in the House.

Warren, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has been outspoken about how military strikes harm civilians. She has said she plans to prioritize the issue for the fiscal year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

The issue of civilian harm from military operations was thrusted into the spotlight last year when a U.S. drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan on Aug. 29, 2021 killed ten civilians.

The Pentagon initially said that it struck a vehicle in Kabul that posed an “urgent ISIS-K” threat, but it later admitted that the driver of the vehicle was a worker for a U.S.-based aid group.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in January ordered his agency to develop a “Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan” to improve how it prevents civilian deaths and responds to claims of civilians harmed by military operations.

Warren’s Department of Defense Civilian Harm Transparency Act aims to strengthen the annual reporting requirements that were first passed in the fiscal year 2018 NDAA. Under that legislation, the Pentagon is required to submit to Congress an annual report on the civilian casualties that occurred during the prior year.Pelosi after Zelensky meeting: ‘Do not be bullied by bullies’Ex-NATO commander: Loss of top Russian officers amid invasion unprecedented in modern history

The bill would specify that the report should include explanations on why the strike occurred and how the Pentagon determined whether its targets were civilians participating in hostilities, among other requirements. Crow will lead the introduction of this legislation in the House.

Warren also plans to reintroduce the Protection of Civilians in Military Operations Act with Khanna. The pair first introduced the legislation in 2020, and it would require that investigations into civilian harm be conducted outside of the immediate chain of command on the unit responsible for the attack.

The bill would also establish a Center of Excellence for The Protection of Civilians within the Office of the Secretary of Defense that would advise the federal government on mitigating civilian harm.