Kotek wins Democratic nod in Oregon governor's race



Election 2022 Oregon Governor Kotek

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tina Kotek, left, and her wife Aimee Kotek Wilson smile while speaking to supporters before the results of Oregon's primary election are announced in Portland, Ore., Tuesday May 17, 2022. (AP Photo/Craig Mitchelldyer)
SARA CLINE
Mon, May 16, 2022, 10:37 PM·3 min read

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Former Oregon House Speaker Tina Kotek on Tuesday won the Democratic gubernatorial primary, beating state Treasurer Tobias Read in a victory for the party’s progressive wing.

With current Gov. Kate Brown, a progressive Democrat, term limited the state's highest seat is up for grabs in the fall. Kotek, and the Republican who wins the gubernatorial primary, will be in a three-way race in November with Betsy Johnson, a former longtime Democratic state senator who is running as an independent. As a nonaffiliated candidate, Johnson does not need to run a primary race to make the fall ballot.

“I think it’s important to remember that all the Democrats in this race share a similar vision for what we want the state to be,” Kotek said in her victory speech, addressing a crowd of supporters in Portland on Tuesday night. “We’re all going to work together to make sure we win. That a Democrat — that I win in November, because frankly there is just too much at stake.”

The Portland-based Kotek, who led by a comfortable margin Tuesday, has collected endorsements from a third of Oregon lawmakers, nationally elected leaders, unions and organizations. But as someone who held power during a tumultuous time in Oregon, Kotek must convince voters she can improve the state while avoiding blame for its problems.

Kotek’s biggest challenger was Read, who was a state representative in Oregon for 10 years before being elected as treasurer. He had hoped to capitalize on voter unrest.

Jessica LaVigne, a spokesperson for Read's campaign, said the treasurer called Kotek to concede Tuesday night.

Kotek said in her speech that while Tuesday's victory is a night of celebration, Democrats will “have to roll up our sleeve and work really really hard” to win in November.

Oregon hasn’t seen a GOP governor in 35 years. But political experts say Republicans have an opening for victory amid widespread discontent in the state and a possible split in votes among the majority parties as the unaffiliated Johnson makes a gubernatorial run in the fall.

“This will be a three-way race for the highest office in our state. And this will be an election unlike any of us have ever seen," Kotek said Tuesday night.

Kotek, who wielded the House speaker’s gavel for a record nine years as the Democratic Party increased its power and pushed ambitious progressive agendas, described the Republican gubernatorial nominee and unaffiliated candidate Johnson as “conservatives."

Following the primary results, Johnson took to social media describing Kotek as “more Kate Brown than Kate Brown," a common comparison by opponents of the Democrat in hopes of tainting her with the current governor’s historically low approval ratings. As a nonaffiliated candidate, Johnson does not need to run a primary race to make the fall ballot.

“The biggest change Oregon can make this year is putting the people back in charge with an independent governor loyal only to Oregonians, not the political extremes,” Johnson tweeted.

The third candidate — the Republican nominee — in November's gubernatorial race has yet to be determined. The GOP primary remained close Tuesday night with former House Minority Leader Christine Drazan holding onto a lead over former Oregon Republican Party Chair Bob Tiernan.

Christopher McKnight Nichols, an associate professor of history at Oregon State University, described the GOP's chances of winning in the fall as “the best shot” the party has had in a long time.

Determining the results in close races could be delayed due to a new Oregon law, which allows mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day to count if county elections offices receive them within a week of the election.

The change was made during Oregon’s 2021 Legislative Session. Under previous law, ballots were only counted if they were received by 8 p.m. on Election Day.

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Egypt: Mubarak son says family clear of corruption charges

Transparency International condemned the move, saying it would show corrupt leaders around the world that they can act with impunity.

Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, seated center left, and his two sons, Gamal Mubarak, left, and Alaa Mubarak attend a hearing in a courtroom in Cairo, Egypt on Sept. 14, 2013. Gamal Mubarak said Tuesday, May 17, 2022, that he and family members were innocent of corruption charges made in international courts after the country’s 2011 popular uprising. His statements came after years of attempts by the deposed president's family to rehabilitate its image as it faced litigation in Egypt and abroad. (AP Photo/Mohammed al-Law, File)

Tue, May 17, 2022, 


CAIRO (AP) — The son of Egypt's former president said Tuesday that he and family members were innocent of corruption charges made in international courts after the country’s 2011 popular uprising.

His statements came after years of attempts by the deposed president's family to rehabilitate its image as it faced litigation in Egypt and abroad.

In a video statement released online, Gamal Mubarak, the son of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, said that recent court decisions in the European Union and elsewhere demonstrate their innocence, but did not explain how the family had amassed its significant wealth.

In February, a massive leak of Credit Suisse clients' information showed Gamal Mubarak and his brother, Alaa, to have held at least $197.5 million in the bank at one point in time.

“The facts have now been established, and the false allegations have been unequivocally rebutted. The historical record has thus been independently and judicially corrected,” he said in a video statement released on YouTube. He blamed Egyptian judicial authorities for taking the issue to international courts.

The 2011 protests were built on calls for an end to deep-rooted embezzlement and government corruption in Egypt, and growing concerns that Gamal Mubarak would be set up to succeed his father, who was in power for nearly 30 years. The international anti-corruption group Transparency International has estimated that as president, Mubarak stole some $70 billion in public funds. The former president died in 2020, aged 91.

In April, Swiss prosecutors decided not to file charges after concluding a decade-long investigation into alleged money laundering and organized crime linked to linked to Mubarak’s circles in Egypt. They also said they would release some 400 million Swiss francs - $430 million - frozen in Swiss banks.

The same month, the General Court of the European Union ruled that the rights of Mubarak's wife, two sons and their wives had not been respected during an local Egyptian investigation of his assets, on which the prosecution was depending. The ruling meant EU sanctions on the Mubaraks' accounts were deemed unlawful, and lifted. Gamal Mubarak said his family was being reimbursed for their legal costs related to the case.

Transparency International condemned the move, saying it would show corrupt leaders around the world that they can act with impunity.

The EU and Swiss investigations were part of a series of court proceedings against the Mubaraks in the wake of the mass protests. The father and the two sons were first detained in April 2011, two months after the uprising forced Mubarak to step down as part of the Arab Spring protest movement. A leading military council was established in his place, which then gave way to the divisive Islamist president Mohamed Morsy after elections in 2012. Morsy was later deposed by the military amid more popular protests.

Following a lengthy trial, Hosni Mubarak was acquitted of killing protesters during the 18-day uprising against his autocratic rule.

The two sons and their father were sentenced to three years in prison following their conviction of embezzling funds set aside for the restoration and maintenance of presidential palaces, using the money to upgrade their private residences. The sons were released in 2015 for time served, while Mubarak walked free in 2017. The trio paid back to the state the money they embezzled.

The sons were briefly detained in Sep. 2018 pending their trial on charges of stock market manipulation. But they were released a bail of 100,000 pounds ($5,600) each after an appeals court accepted a motion moved by their defense lawyers to remove the judge who ordered their detention, and in 2020 they were acquitted.

Watchdog: US troop pullout was key factor in Afghan collapse





Taliban fighters stand guard at a checkpoint near the U..S embassy that was previously manned by American troops, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 17, 2021. A new report says decisions by Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden to pull all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan were the key factors in the collapse of that nation's military, leading to the Taliban takeover last year.

LOLITA C. BALDOR
Tue, May 17, 2022, 9

WASHINGTON (AP) — A government watchdog says decisions by Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden to pull all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan were the key factors in the collapse of that nation's military.

The new report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, mirrors assertions made by senior Pentagon and military leaders in the aftermath of the U.S. troop withdrawal that ended last August in the chaotic evacuation of Americans and other civilians from the embattled country. Military leaders have made it clear that their recommendation was to leave about 2,500 U.S. troops in the country, but that plan was not approved.

In February 2020, the Trump administration signed an agreement with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, in which the U.S. promised to fully withdraw its troops by May 2021. The Taliban committed to several conditions, including stopping attacks on American and coalition forces. The stated objective was to promote a peace negotiation between the Taliban and the Afghan government, but that diplomatic effort never gained traction before Biden took office in January 2022.

Just a few months later, Biden announced he would complete the U.S. military withdrawal. The announcement fueled the Taliban's campaign to retake the country, aided by the Afghans' widespread distrust of their government and entrenched corruption that led to low pay, lack of food and poor living conditions among the Afghan troops.

“Many Afghans thought the U.S.-Taliban agreement was an act of bad faith and a signal that the U.S. was handing over Afghanistan to the enemy as it rushed to exit the country,” the interim report said. “Its immediate effect was a dramatic loss in (Afghan troops’) morale.”

U.S. officials have said they were surprised by the quick collapse of the military and the government, prompting sharp congressional criticism of the intelligence community for failing to foresee it.

At a congressional hearing last week, senators questioned whether there is a need to reform how intelligence agencies assess a foreign military's will to fight. Lawmakers pointed to two key examples: U.S. intelligence believed that the Kabul government would hold on for months against the Taliban, and more recently believed that Ukraine's forces would quickly fall to Russia's invasion. Both were wrong.

Military and defense leaders have said that the Afghanistan collapse was built on years of missteps, as the U.S. struggled to find a successful way to train and equip Afghan forces.

In a blunt assessment of the war, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress last fall that the result was years in the making.

“Outcomes in a war like this, an outcome that is a strategic failure — the enemy is in charge in Kabul, there’s no way else to describe that — that is a cumulative effect of 20 years,” Milley said, adding that lessons need to be learned, including whether the U.S. military made the Afghans overly dependent on American technology in a mistaken effort to make the Afghan army look like the American army.

Indeed, in the end, the new report said that the Afghans were still heavily dependent on U.S. air support for strikes and emergency evacuations, and also on U.S. contractors to maintain and repair aircraft and other systems.

But all agree that the Doha agreement was a lynchpin in the collapse.

“The signing of the Doha agreement had a really pernicious effect on the government of Afghanistan and on its military — psychological more than anything else, but we set a date-certain for when we were going to leave and when they could expect all assistance to end,” Gen. Frank McKenzie told Congress last year.

McKenzie, who was then the top U.S. general in the Middle East and has since retired, argued to keep 2,500 U.S. troops there, as did Milley.

The Doha agreement, said the SIGAR report, led the Afghan population and its military to feel abandoned. And the Trump administration's decision to limit U.S. airstrikes against the Taliban stopped any progress the Afghans were making, and left them unable and eventually unwilling to hold territory, it said.

According to the report, a former U.S. commander in Afghanistan said the U.S. built the Afghan army to rely on contractor support. “Without it, it can’t function. Game over,” the commander told SIGAR. "When the contractors pulled out, it was like we pulled all the sticks out of the Jenga pile and expected it to stay up.”

More broadly, the SIGAR report said that both the U.S. and Afghan governments “lacked the political will to dedicate the time and resources necessary to reconstruct an entire security sector in a war-torn and impoverished country.”

Neither side, it said, “appeared to have the political commitment to doing what it would take to address the challenges.” As a result, it said, the Afghan military couldn't operate independently and never really became a cohesive force.

Buffalo shooting leaves neighborhood without a grocery store

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People walk and drive by Twin City Market, four blocks east of Tops Friendly Market, on Tuesday, May 17, 2022, in Buffalo, N.Y.

 (AP Photo/Joshua Bessex)


PIA SARKAR and NOREEN NASIR
Tue, May 17, 2022, 10:35 PM·4 min read


BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — Tops Friendly Market was more than a place to buy groceries. As the only supermarket for miles, it became a sort of community hub on Buffalo's East Side — where you chatted with neighbors and caught up on people's lives.

“It’s where we go to buy bread and stay for 15, 20 minutes because ... you’re going to find four or five people you know and have a couple conversations before you leave," said Buffalo City Councilman Ulysees O. Wingo, who represents the struggling Black neighborhood, where he grew up. “You just feel good because this is your store."

Now residents are grieving the deaths of 10 Black people at the hands of an 18-year-old white man who drove three hours to carry out a racist, livestreamed shooting rampage in the crowded supermarket on Saturday.

They're also grappling with being targeted in a place that has been so vital to the community. Before Tops opened on the East Side in 2003, residents had to travel to other communities to buy nutritious food or settle for snacks and higher-priced staples like milk and eggs from corner stores and gas stations.

The fact that there are no other options lays bare the racial and economic divide that existed in Buffalo long before the shooting, residents say.

“It’s unconscionable to think that Tops is the only supermarket in that neighborhood, in my neighborhood,” said retired Buffalo educator Theresa Harris-Tigg, who knew two of those killed.

While Tops is temporarily closed during the investigation, the community is working to make sure residents don’t go without.

A makeshift food bank was set up not far from the supermarket. The Buffalo Community Fridge received enough monetary donations that it will distribute some funds to other local organizations. Tops also arranged for a bus to shuttle East Side residents to and from another of its Buffalo locations.

After decades of neglect and decline, only a handful of stores are along Jefferson Avenue, the East Side’s once-thriving main drag, among them a Family Dollar, a deli, a liquor store and a couple of convenience stores, as well as a library and Black-run businesses like Golden Cup Coffee, Zawadi Books and The Challenger News.

Jillian Hanesworth, 29, who was born and raised there, said construction of an expressway contributed to cutting off the neighborhood, with drivers passing underground without ever having to see it. At a recent rally, Hanesworth said she asked the crowd how many needed GPS to get there, and many of the white people raised their hands.

“A lot of people who talk about Buffalo don’t live here,” said Hanesworth, the city’s poet laureate and director of leadership development at Open Buffalo, a nonprofit focused on social justice and community development.

Like many residents, she pauses to think when asked where the next-closest major grocery is located: None is within walking distance, and it takes three different buses to get to the Price Rite.

Before Tops opened on the East Side, residents, lawmakers and other advocates pushed for years for a grocery store in what had become a “food desert” after groceries and other stores closed in the neighborhood's Central Park Plaza, Wingo said.

Yvette Mack, 62, remembers when the streets weren’t so empty. But when she was around 15 or 16, she noticed places going out of business.

“Everything started fading away as I got older,” she said.

Eventually she moved downtown but came back to the East Side in 2020, happy that a supermarket had returned. Mack says she shopped at Tops daily, sometimes three or four times, to buy pop, meat and to play her numbers. She was there Saturday before the shooting.

Now, she's not sure she can go back once the store reopens, but hopes community conversations lead to more businesses on the East Side. Harris-Tigg, the retired educator, also hopes the shooting brings the city together to talk about disparities.

“It’s time to do more. It’s time for white folk to talk to white folk and really have honest conversations,” she said.

Pastor James Giles, coordinator of the anti-violence group Buffalo Peacemakers, thinks that is happening. He juggled calls offering help from area churches and businesses, the Buffalo Bills, competing grocery stores and even the utility company after the shooting.

“I want us to be the City of Good Neighbors. And I do hope that we aspire to live up to that nickname,” Giles said. “But I feel like we can’t get there until and unless we tell the truth about the white supremacy and racism that is already present in our town.”

___

Sarkar and Nasir are members of AP’s Race and Ethnicity team. AP writers John Wawrow in Buffalo, New York, and Tammy Webber in Fenton, Michigan, contributed to this story.

Iran state TV says 2 French nationals arrested over protests

There have been teachers' strikes over the past weeks in cities across Iran. Teachers have walked out of their classes to press for better pay and working conditions.

Mon, May 16, 2022,

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran’s state TV on Tuesday confirmed the arrest of two French citizens, saying they met with protesting teachers and took part in an anti-government rally.

The report identified the two as Cecile Kohler, 37, and Chuck Paris, 69, and said they were not on a tourist visit to Iran. France had earlier identified the two as a teachers’ union official and her partner on vacation in Iran.

The Intelligence Ministry in Tehran last week only said that it had detained two Europeans.

The TV broadcast footage of the arrival of the two, saying they landed from Turkey at Tehran airport on April 28. It also broadcast footage of their meetings with Iranian teachers and other activists, as well as their presence at a protest gathering, and also aired a video purported to show the two being arrested while on their way to the Tehran airport to leave the country on May 7.

The report said the two French citizens were “organizing a protest" with the purpose of creating “unrest" in Iran.

Last Thursday, France condemned the “groundless arrest" of the two and called for their immediate release. France’s Foreign Ministry said its ambassador in Tehran has already attempted to obtain consular access to the couple and that the charge d’affaires at Iran’s Embassy in Paris has been summoned for explanations.

Another French citizen, Benjamin Briere, was sentenced in January by Iran to over eight years in prison for espionage, for photographing “prohibited areas” with a drone in 2020 during what he said was a tourist visit in the north of the country.

Briere’s lawyer had claimed his client was being used as a “bargaining chip” in diplomatic negotiations at the time between Iran and Western countries over Tehran's tattered nuclear deal with world powers.

Also in January, Iranian justice ordered the re-imprisonment of Franco-Iranian academic Fariba Adelkhah, arrested in 2019, who had for a time been allowed to serve a five-year prison sentence under house arrest. She had been accused of “propaganda against the Islamic Republic’s political system” and “collusion to undermine national security.”

There have been teachers' strikes over the past weeks in cities across Iran. Teachers have walked out of their classes to press for better pay and working conditions.

‘People should be more aware’: the business dynasties who benefited from Nazis

In his new book Nazi Billionaires, David de Jong explores the damning history of companies who have refused to examine their murky history with Hitler

Adolf Hitler admires a model of the Volkswagen car. He is with the designer Ferdinand Porsche, left, and to various Nazi officials. Photograph: Heinrich Hoffmann/Getty Images


David Smith in Washington
@smithinamericaWed 18 May 2022 


Colonial and Confederate statues toppled. Looted objects returned by contrite museums. Tainted family names such as Sackler expunged from buildings. A worldwide reckoning with the past crimes of great powers is under way. But is there a glaring omission?

A new book, Nazi Billionaires, investigates how Germany’s richest business dynasties made fortunes by aiding and abetting Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. It also examines how, eight decades later, they still escape close scrutiny and a nation that has done so much to confront its catastrophic past still suffers a very particular blind spot.



Top 10 novels about postwar Germany

“What struck me was this is a country that’s so cognisant of its history in many ways but seemingly the most economically powerful actors do not engage with that,” says author David de Jong, a 35-year-old Dutchman. “That was the reason why I wrote the book. It’s an argument in favour of historical transparency.”

The former reporter for Bloomberg News examines German companies that own beer brewers and wine producers as well as famous US brands such as Krispy Kreme and Pret A Manger. But he casts an especially harsh light on car makers led by household names such as BMW and Porsche, which powered the postwar economic miracle and contribute about a 10th of the nation’s gross domestic product.

De Jong tells how the rise of the Nazis was initially met with scepticism and contempt by many business leaders but some discovered it could be very profitable.

Ferdinand Porsche convinced Hitler to put the Volkswagen Beetle into production. The company thrived under his son, Ferry Porsche, who volunteered for the SS, became an officer and lied about it for the rest of his days. Ferry Porsche designed the first Porsche sports car and surrounded himself with former SS members in the 50s and 60s.

The steel, coal and arms magnate Friedrich Flick was convicted at Nuremberg of using forced and slave labour, bankrolling the SS and looting a steel factory. But he was released in 1960 and eventually became controlling shareholder of Daimler-Benz, then Germany’s biggest car manufacturer. Deutsche Bank bought the Flick conglomerate in 1985, turning his descendants into billionaires.

Perhaps no one better encapsulates de Jong’s argument than Günther Quandt and his son Herbert Quandt, members of the Nazi party and patriarchs of the family that now dominates the BMW Group.

Volkswagens are parked at Bonneberg near Kerford, in 1945.

 Photograph: Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone/Getty Images

Herbert Quandt had responsibility over battery factories in Berlin where thousands of forced and enslaved labourers toiled, including hundreds of women from concentration camps. He acquired companies stolen from Jews in France and used prisoners of war and forced labourers on his own private estate. He even built a concentration subcamp in Nazi-occupied Poland.

When Günther Quandt was 37 and widowed, he met and married a 17-year-old called Magda Friedländer and had one child with her. After their divorce, Magda married the Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, with whom she murdered their six children before both killed themselves in 1945.

After the war, Günther Quandt was arrested for suspected collaboration with the Nazis, only to be acquitted after falsely claiming that he had been forced to join the party by Goebbels.

“Günther Quandt becomes one of Nazi Germany’s most most successful industrialists,” de Jong, who has been reporting on the families for a decade, said in a phone interview from Palm Springs, California. “He was already immensely wealthy before Hitler seized power. He uses it at the end of the war as a way of saying, ‘I was a victim of persecution. I was persecuted by Joseph Goebbels and by my ex-wife.’”

Herbert Quandt inherited vast wealth from his father and saved BMW from bankruptcy, becoming the company’s biggest shareholder. Two of his children, Stefan Quandt and Susanne Klatten, are now Germany’s wealthiest family, with close to majority control of the BMW Group, large holdings in the chemical and technology industries and a net worth of about $38bn.

They and other dynasties are celebrated for turning Germany into an economic powerhouse, with buildings, foundations and prizes bearing their names. The skeletons in their cupboards are not a secret – but nor are they well known or accounted for. Acknowledgment remains an afterthought despite Germany’s much-vaunted remembrance culture.

Some have taken baby steps towards transparency. The Quandts commissioned a study in 2011 to look into their shameful past. Changes have been made to corporate websites but only, de Jong charges, grudgingly and incrementally, with important details omitted. Stefan Quandt still gives out an annual media prize named after his father and works from headquarters named after his grandfather.

De Jong, who found family members unwilling to be interviewed other than one London-based heir, says: “You have BMW and Porsche, particularly the families that control them, conduct this whitewashing or leaving out of history where they celebrate the business successes of their founders or saviours but leave out the fact that these men committed war crimes.

“I never got an answer whether it’s because they are afraid it would hurt the bottom line or share prices of the companies to be fully transparent about the history, or whether it’s just because they derive their entire identity from the successes that their fathers and grandfathers had and, by being transparent about them, it’s kind of disavowing their own identity. It’s probably a combination of both.”

BMW headquarters in Munich. 

Photograph: Christof Stache/AFP/Getty Images

The families tend to lean on Germany’s notion of collective guilt, de Jong continues. “But it’s very perverse, where you now have the BMW Foundation Herbert Quandt, which has a model to inspire responsible leadership in the name of a man who, yes, saved BMW from bankruptcy in 1959, but also designed and built and dismantled a concentration subcamp in Nazi-occupied Poland. At a bare minimum what we can expect from these companies and families is historical transparency.”

In his book, de Jong notes that an international drive for such transparency, and its attendant reckonings, have brought down statues of Confederate generals, slave traders and Christopher Columbus and heralded the rechristening of colleges named after racist presidents.

“Yet this movement toward facing the past is somehow bypassing many of Germany’s legendary businessmen,” he writes. “Their dark legacy remains hidden in plain sight. This book, in some small way, tries to right that wrong.”

The author, now based in Tel Aviv, Israel, adds: “I hope people will become more aware on a consumer level that the money they spend on these products might end up as dividends for these families and might go towards the maintaining of foundations, corporate headquarters and media properties in the name of Nazi war criminals.

“I think people should be more aware of these histories and of history in general, particularly when it comes to consumption and the continuing whitewashing of history by these consumer brands and families that control them.”

Nazi Billionaires is out now

Gyanvapi masjid: India dispute could become a religious flashpoint


Soutik Biswas - India correspondent
Wed, May 18, 2022,

In Varanasi, one of the world's oldest living cities, Hindus and Muslims have prayed close to each other in a temple and a mosque that sit cheek by jowl.

The heavily-guarded complex points to its uneasy history. The Gyanvapi mosque is built on the ruins of the Vishwanath temple, a grand 16th Century Hindu shrine. The temple was partially destroyed in 1669 on the orders of Aurangzeb, the sixth Mughal emperor.

Now the place is in the throes of a dispute which could stoke fresh tensions in Hindu-majority India, where Muslims are the largest religious minority.

A bunch of Hindu petitioners have gone to a local court asking for access to pray at a shrine behind the mosque and other places within the complex. A controversial court order which allowed video-recorded survey of the mosque is said to have revealed a stone shaft that is the symbol of the Hindu deity Shiva, a claim that has been disputed by the mosque authorities.

After this, a part of the mosque has been sealed by the court without giving the mosque authorities a chance to present their case. The dispute has now reached the Supreme Court, which said on Tuesday that the complex would be protected, and prayers will continue in the mosque.

This has triggered fears of a re-run of a decades-long dispute involving the Babri Masjid, a 16th-Century mosque which was razed to the ground by Hindu mobs in the holy city of Ayodhya in 1992.

The Babri dispute reached a flashpoint in 1992 when a Hindu mob destroyed a mosque at the site

The demolition of the mosque climaxed a six-year-long campaign by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) - then in opposition - and sparked riots that killed nearly 2,000 people. In 2019, the Supreme Court ruled that the disputed site in Ayodhya should be given to Hindus who are now building a temple there. Muslims were given another plot to construct a mosque.

A 1991 law called the Places of Worship Act disallows conversion of a place of worship and maintains its religious character as "it existed" on 15 August 1947, India's Independence Day. Critics of the dispute in Varanasi say this is a defiance of the law. Asaduddin Owaisi, a prominent Muslim leader, says the "mosque exists and it will exist".

A leader of the ruling BJP in Uttar Pradesh state, where Varanasi is located, believes nothing is set in stone. "The truth has come to light... We will welcome and follow orders of the court in the matter," Keshav Prasad Maurya, the deputy chief minister, says.

It is not entirely clear what truth has to be uncovered.

For one, it is widely accepted that a temple existed at the site. The shrine was "grand in scale and execution, consisting of a central sanctum and surrounded by eight pavilions", according to Diana L Eck, a professor of comparative religion and Indian studies at Harvard University.

It is also established that in less than a century, the temple was "torn down at the command of Aurangzeb", Prof Eck says. "Half-dismantled, it became the foundation of the present Gyanvapi mosque".

It is also accepted that the mosque is built on the ruins of the temple. In Prof Eck's description "one wall of the old temple is still standing, set like a Hindu ornament in the matrix of the mosque".

"When viewed from the rear of the mosque, the dramatic contrast of the two traditions is evident: the ornate stone wall of the old temple, magnificent even in its ruined condition, topped by the simple white stucco dome of today's mosque".

The fact that a part of the ruined temple's wall was incorporated into the building "may have been a religiously clothed statement about the dire consequences of opposing Mughal authority", according to Audrey Truschke, author of Aurangzeb: The Man and the Myth.

Historians believe one reason why the temple was attacked by Aurangzeb was that its patrons were believed to have facilitated the escape from prison of Shivaji, a Hindu king who was a prominent enemy of the Mughals.

"Temples patronised by persons who had submitted to state authority but who subsequently became state enemies were often targeted by Mughal rulers," says Richard M Eaton, who teaches South Asian history at the University of Arizona.

Varanasi is one of the world's oldest living cities

At least 14 temples were "certainly demolished" by Mughal officers during Aurangzeb's 49-year rule, according to Prof Eaton, who has recorded 80 examples of desecration of temples in India between the 12th and 18th Century.

"We shall never know the precise number of temples desecrated in Indian history," he says. However, what historians do know as fact is far from the exaggerated claims by the right-wing that up to 60,000 temples were demolished under Muslim rule.

In desecrating temples, Mughal rulers were following ancient Indian precedent, Prof Eaton says.

He adds that Muslim kings since the late 12th Century, and Hindu kings since at least the 7th Century "looted, redefined, or destroyed temples, patronised by enemy kings or state rebels as the normal means of detaching defeated rulers from the most prominent manifestations of their former sovereign authority, thereby rendering them politically impotent."

This is not exceptional, say historians. European history had its share of religious conflict and desecration of churches. Northern Europe, for example, saw many Catholic structures demolished or desecrated during the Protestant revolt in the 18th Century. Such examples include the desecration of Utrecht Cathedral in 1566, or the near-complete demolition of St Andrews Cathedral in Scotland in 1559.

But as Pratap Bhanu Mehta, a prominent commentator, observes: "Secularism will be deepened if it lets history be history, not make history the foundations of a secular ethic." And that the ongoing dispute in Varanasi can only end up opening "another communal front".

Such concerns are premature, says Swapan Dasgupta, a right-leaning columnist. "There is, as yet, no demand for the removal of the mosque and the restoration of the previously existing state of affairs… Also the law does not allow any scope for the present religious character of a shrine to be modified," he wrote. "To that extent, the present tussle in Varanasi is aimed at securing greater elbow room for worshippers."

Such assurances do not find many takers. Last year the Supreme Court accepted a petition challenging the Places of Worship law, which by itself could open a fresh fault line.

"This campaign [in Varanasi] is just the beginning of a series of demands in respect to other places of worship on which there are [Hindu] claims," says Madan Lokur, a retired justice of India's Supreme Court.

This could easily lead to a lifetime of strife.

UN envoy warns that Iraq's `streets are about to boil over'


EDITH M. LEDERER
Tue, May 17, 2022

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. special envoy for Iraq warned its political leaders Tuesday that “the streets are about to boil over” because of their deadlock and failure to address a host of issues, including the suffering of ordinary people and armed groups firing rockets with impunity.

Jeannine Hennis-Plasschaert told several reporters after briefing the U.N. Security Council that Iraq and the region cannot afford to go back to October 2019.

That is when young men and women fed up with an Iraqi political elite they blamed for many grievances launched mass demonstrations that were met with bullets, water cannons and tear gas that plunged the country into renewed instability just as it was starting to emerge from war against the Islamic State extremist group.

In her briefing to the council, Hennis-Plasschaert warned that “notorious aspects of Iraqi political life are repeating themselves in a seemingly incessant loop of zero-sum politics.”

More than seven months after parliamentary elections, she said, “multiple deadlines for the formation of a government have been missed.”

In late March, powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose political bloc won the most seats, announced he was stepping back for 40 days to give his Iran-backed rivals a chance to form the next government. But there is still no agreement on a government.

Hennis-Plasschaert warned Iraq’s political leaders not to hide behind the argument that a government hasn’t been formed, which she said “distracts from what is at stake.”

It not only excuses a political deadlock while armed groups “fire rockets with apparent freedom and impunity” and ordinary people suffer, she said, but “it excuses a political impasse while simmering public anger can boil over at any moment.”

Hennis-Plasschaert said political leaders support dialogue or another round of negotiations. “But the willingness to compromise? It is painfully absent,” she said.

“Visit any market and Iraqis will tell you: the national interest is, yet again, taking a back seat to short-sighted considerations of control over resources and power play,” she said.

Hennis-Plasschaert said it is time to return the spotlight to the Iraqi people who are demanding adequate services for all people.

They also want, she said, “an end to pervasive corruption, factionalism and the pillaging of state institutions,” a diversification of the economy, an end to impunity, the reining in of armed groups and “predictable governance instead of constant crisis management.”

She was sharply critical of “the sorry pattern of ad-hoc negotiations” between the central government and the semi-autonomous Kurdish region, saying an institutionalized “mechanism” is critically needed to solve all outstanding issues, including the recent Iraqi Federal Supreme Court ruling that the Kurdistan region’s 2007 oil and gas law on production, revenues and exports is unconstitutional.

“Having engaged with both sides on this matter, I am convinced that there is a way out,” she said.

Hennis-Plasschaert called incoming missiles and rockets “disturbing, disruptive and dangerous,” pointing to Turkish and Iranian shelling activities in northern Iran and armed groups outside government control recklessly firing rockets, including at an oil refinery in Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan region, some two weeks ago.

Discussing Sinjar, the region where U.N. investigators say Islamic State extremists committed genocide against the Yazidi minority in 2014, Hennis-Plasschaert said the area “has increasingly turned into an arena for external and domestic spoilers”

Clashes in recent weeks have made Sinjar families again pack their belongings and go back to Kurdistan to seek shelter, she said.

Legal advocates sue US over Iranian-born scholar's treatment


MARK PRATT
Tue, May 17, 2022, 

BOSTON (AP) — A Canadian diabetes researcher scheduled to start a two-year fellowship at Harvard Medical School was wrongfully denied entry to the U.S. and discriminated against based on her Iranian heritage, according to legal filings.

Harvard Law School’s Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program said Tuesday that it has filed a lawsuit against the federal government as well as a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security's civil rights office on behalf of the researcher, identified in court papers as Maryam Shamloo.

The civil rights complaint alleges that Customs and Border Protection officers denied Shamloo and her husband entry to the U.S. based on their Iranian birth and violated procedures by demanding DNA samples. They and their two children are Canadian citizens.

The lawsuit asks the federal government to issue Shamloo a visa as soon as possible so she can begin the fellowship by June 6, more than a year after it was supposed to start.

“I worked very hard for the last five years in order to be able to get this prestigious dream fellowship,” Shamloo said in a statement. “My hope was to go to Harvard and develop my knowledge of therapies in response to unmet needs in the field of diabetes.”

Shamloo and her minor children are listed as the plaintiffs in the suit. Her husband is not.

A spokesperson for the Department of Justice said in an email that the agency had no comment. An email requesting comment was left with the Department of Homeland Security.

“We call on the State Department to issue Maryam’s visa as soon as possible so that she may proceed with her fellowship and continue to use her exceptional talents to better our society,” said Sabrineh Ardalan, director of the Immigration and Refugee Clinical Program. “We also hope that the Department of Homeland Security will investigate this incident and hold Customs and Border Protection accountable in order to ensure that immigrants of Iranian descent do not continue to face discrimination when entering the U.S.”

According to the suit, Shamloo was recruited to join a team of researchers at Harvard and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center developing gene therapy-based approaches to treating Type I autoimmune diabetes.

The family attempted to cross into the U.S. at the Pembina-Emerson port of entry at the North Dakota-Manitoba border on April 2, 2021.

There they “faced unjust scrutiny” due to their country of origin. Border agents interrogated her husband about his mandatory military service while in Iran and his political opinions before denying them entry, the Harvard law clinic said.

When Shamloo tried take a plane from Toronto to Boston without her family on April 18, 2021, she was again denied entry to the U.S., and told by Customs and Border Protection officers that she is “Iranian and there is a travel ban,” even though she is Canadian and the travel ban had been revoked, according to the suit.

As a result of her treatment, she “cried for several days, had trouble sleeping, and was prescribed anti-anxiety and anti-depression medication by her physician,” according to the suit.

As instructed, she applied for a J-1 visa, even though as a Canadian citizen she is not required to have one to enter the U.S., the suit said. That application remains pending.

Iran and the U.S. have not had formal diplomatic relations since April 1980, several months after the takeover of the American Embassy in Tehran, according to the State Department.

Human Rights Activists ask top court to void Marcos Jr's presidential win


JIM GOMEZ
Tue, May 17, 2022

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Human rights activists have asked the Philippine Supreme Court to block Congress from proclaiming Ferdinand Marcos Jr. as the next president, alleging that he lied when he said he had not been convicted of any crime.

The Commission on Election twice dismissed their petition and six other similar complaints to cancel Marcos Jr.'s candidacy papers ahead of the May 9 vote. The petitioners elevated the case to the highest court on Monday, saying Marcos Jr. was convicted in 1995 of tax evasion with a jail term, which should have permanently barred him from seeking public office.

A 1997 Court of Appeals ruling upheld Marcos Jr.'s conviction for failing to file income tax returns from 1982 to 1985 and ordered him to settle his unpaid taxes and fines, but did not mention any imprisonment.

Most of the petitioners are leaders of groups representing survivors of martial law in the 1970s under late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, the father of the presumptive next president. They want the court to temporarily block the Senate and the House of Representatives from undertaking an official canvassing of votes starting next week that would eventually proclaim Marcos Jr. as the winner.

“Our petition notes that a candidate’s imminent victory cannot cure his ineligibility,” said Fides Lim, spokesperson of one of the human rights groups.
“If the Supreme Court were to allow such a brazen lie to trump the rule of law, all substantive eligibility requirements in all future elections can be circumvented by ineligible candidates who happen to secure a victory,” she said.

Marcos Jr. had more than 31 million votes in an unofficial count in what’s projected to be one of the strongest mandates for a Philippine president in decades. Sara Duterte, his vice-presidential running mate and daughter of the outgoing populist president, appears to have also won with a large margin.

His electoral triumph is a striking reversal of the “People Power” revolt in 1986 that forced his father out of office following years of human rights violations and plunder that Marcos Jr. has never acknowledged.

Unofficial counts also show that allies of Marcos Jr. and Sara Duterte are set to capture most of the 300 seats in the House of Representatives and half of the 24-seat Senate that was up for election, and likely the chambers' top leaderships.

The 12 winning senators, including lone opposition Sen. Risa Hontiveros, who ran for reelection, are to be proclaimed Wednesday by the Commission on Elections.

All key challengers of Marcos Jr., including current Vice President Leni Robredo, a human rights lawyer, and former boxing star Manny Pacquiao, have conceded defeat.

U.S. President Joe Biden, Chinese President Xi Jinping and other world leaders have congratulated Marcos Jr. and Duterte on their victory and the relatively smooth conduct of the elections. The separately elected president and vice president are to take office on June 30 for a single six-year term after Congress confirms the results.

Marcos Jr. and Duterte have defended the legacies of their fathers.

Court cases and legal issues still hound the late dictator’s family, including payment of a huge estate tax, a 2018 corruption conviction of his widow, Imelda Marcos, which is on appeal, and compensation of thousands of victims of torture, detentions, disappearances and other abuses committed during the martial-law era when he was in power.

A brutal anti-drug crackdown launched by outgoing President Rodrigo Duterte which killed thousands of mostly petty drug suspects has sparked an investigation by the International Criminal Court as a potential crime against humanity. The outgoing leader has said he will likely face more criminal complaints when he steps down on June 30.