Monday, July 18, 2022

Cambodian diplomat’s concubines employed by UK soccer club shareholder

RFA reveals more evidence of Wang Yaohui's secretive stake in Birmingham City

By Jack Adamović Davies
2022.07.14

Between them Wang Qiong and Wang Jing had five children by Cambodian diplomat Wang Yaohui. Documents seen by RFA show that they were both employed in the accounting department of a company controlling a stake in Birmingham City Football Club. Documentary evidence and interviews suggest Yaohui is the shadow owner of that company.

Illustration by Amanda Weisbrod/RFA

There’s another plot twist in Chinese-businessman-turned-Cambodian diplomat Wang Yaohui’s secretive investment in a prominent English soccer club. RFA can reveal that two mothers of his children were employed by a company associated with Yaohui, Chigwell Holdings Ltd. The company acquired a sizeable stake in Birmingham City Football Club back in 2017.

Just weeks ago, the English Football League said it was looking into reporting by RFA that Yaohui and a man said by former associates to be a close relative and frequent proxy for Yaohui control a large stake in the club through a series of offshore shell companies.

Yaohui’s undeclared ties to Chigwell Holdings – yet another entity owning shares in the club – is likely to factor into that investigation. Under its rules, the league requires clubs to publicly disclose the identity of any person controlling more than 10 percent.

A complicated man

Yaohui was born in China but as RFA has reported, became a naturalized Cambodian citizen in 2014 after a checkered business career characterized by secretive dealings and bribery scandals in China and Africa where associates were convicted although Yaohui himself was not charged.

If his corporate interests have been complex, the same can be said of his personal life. Despite having spent the last 15 years or so living as man and wife with Chinese film star Tang Yuhong, Yaohui has had at least five children by two other women in that time.

The mothers, Wang Jing and Wang Qiong, were born seven years apart during the 1980s in Sichuan province, China. In 2015, both women approached Henley & Partners, a broker for citizenship-by-investment schemes, seeking to acquire Maltese passports for themselves and their children. Multiple documents obtained by RFA, including the children’s birth certificates, show that their children shared a common father, Yaohui.

Wang Qiong’s declaration to the Maltese authorities that while Wang Yaohui is the father of her children, they are “just friends, but not in spousal relationship.”

Those documents were part of a tranche of internal Henley & Partners data leaked to the Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation, forming the bedrock of the foundation’s “Passport Papers” investigative collaboration with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, which made the data available through its Aleph database in June this year.

A review of that data also revealed that from 2015 onwards, the women were both employed in the accounting department of Chigwell Holdings Ltd, a Hong Kong-based real estate holding firm connected to Yaohui, although the detailed biographies provided by both women as part of their Maltese citizenship applications indicated no educational background or employment history in finance or bookkeeping.

Regardless of their seeming lack of experience, they were handsomely compensated. HSBC bank statements for an account in Jing’s name show monthly deposits of HKD$36,500 ($4,650) from the company. Statements for Qiong’s account show her receiving the slightly higher HKD$44,500 ($5,670) each month.

A letter signed by Chigwell Holdings HR manager Helen Ho attesting to the company’s employment of Wang Qiong, mother of several of Wang Yaohui’s children.

Both women also provided letters signed and stamped by Helen Ho, human resources manager at Chigwell Holdings, attesting to their employment by the firm. Ho’s name and phone numbers both appear in Yaohui’s Hong Kong passport as his emergency contact person.

Hong Kong corporate records also show that in April 2017 the assets of Chigwell Holdings were used to secure a $40 million loan to Yaohui – suggesting that he has considerable influence over the company’s decision-making and the property under its management.

An extract from a Hong Kong corporate filing registering that Chigwell Holdings’ assets have been used as security against a $40 million loan to Wang Yaohui.

Buying into the game

When eight months later, on Dec. 14, 2017, Chigwell Holdings acquired 500 million shares in a company listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange, Yaohui’s name was nowhere on the associated disclosure.

Under Hong Kong law, companies owning significant stakes in companies listed on the stock exchange are required to disclose their stakes, as well as the identity of their beneficial owner.

The company Chigwell Holdings had bought the 500 million shares in was Birmingham Sports Holdings Ltd, which at the time owned 96.64 percent of Birmingham City Football Club.

At the time, Chigwell Holdings’ 500 million shares accounted for 5.97 percent of Birmingham Sports Holdings’ total stock, or 5.76 percent of the club.

On the same day, another company bought an even larger chunk of shares in Birmingham Sports Holdings. Registered in the British Virgin Islands, Dragon Villa Ltd also omitted to mention its ties to Yaohui when it acquired just over 714 million shares, equivalent to 8.23 percent of Birmingham City Football Club at the time. However, earlier this year, RFA reported on evidence it had seen strongly suggesting that Yaohui is in fact Dragon Villa’s owner. The key piece of evidence was an affidavit submitted to a Singapore court on behalf of Yaohui’s longtime right-hand woman, Taiwanese-American dual national Jenny Shao. In the affidavit, Shao claimed that Dragon Villa “is beneficially owned by Mr. Wang [Yaohui].” A beneficial owner is a person who enjoys the benefits of owning a company which is in someone else’s name. Her testimony was echoed by multiple former business associates of Yaohui whom RFA spoke with.

A wealthy wallflower

But why would Yaohui want to obscure his stake in an English football club, something normally considered a prestige purchase? And perhaps more perplexingly, if he does indeed control Chigwell Holdings and Dragon Villa, why go to the trouble of splitting the purchase of shares in Birmingham Sports Holdings between the two companies when they took place on the same day?

We may never know the true answer since representatives of both companies have not responded to repeated requests for comment in recent months.

The combined stakes of the two companies represent more than 10 percent of Birmingham City Football Club - therefore exceeding the threshold at which clubs are required to publicly disclose the identity of a stakeholder, under the rules of the English Football League, which administers and regulates the Championship League the club plays in.

A file photo of St Andrew's, the stadium of Birmingham City Football Club

The League told RFA last month that it was investigating whether its rules on those disclosures had been breached regarding Dragon Villa. Approached about Yaohui’s links to Chigwell Holdings, the League declined to comment further.

Sources who have worked with Yaohui recalled him as almost pathologically shy of publicity, preferring to use proxies wherever possible rather than put his name on any corporate paperwork. Ten years ago, when he found himself accused (although never charged) of bribing a senior executive at a Chinese state-owned bank, the South China Morning Post described him as “low-profile but well connected.” Apparently not low-profile enough, though. Around that time, Yaohui’s name began to be removed from lists of shareholders and directors in mainland Chinese companies.

In more recent years, the complexity and secrecy of his dealings could reflect worries about drawing attention to his new benefactors. By December 2017, Yaohui had been the owner of a Cambodian diplomatic passport for more than two years. He was an advisor to Prime Minister Hun Sen and minister-counsellor to the Cambodian embassy in Singapore. The passport gave a new name for Yaohui, Wan Sokha.

Wang Yaohui’s first Cambodian diplomatic passport bearing his Khmer name Wan Sokha. The passport was granted to him in 2015 in recognition of his role as an advisor to Prime Minister Hun Sen.

That name appears in the lists of directors and shareholders for nine Cambodian companies. But in 2017, Wan stepped aside at many of those companies to be replaced by another Chinese-born Cambodian citizen, Vong Pech.

Prior to becoming a naturalized Cambodian, Vong’s name was Wang Dong. Multiple sources familiar with Yaohui’s business practices told RFA that Vong is a close relative of his and a frequent proxy for him in business. As with other sources in this story, they requested anonymity as a condition of disclosing the information.

The sum of their parts

Between them they have acquired a controlling stake in Birmingham City Football Club. Seventeen days before Dragon Villa and Chigwell Holdings snapped up their stakes in Birmingham Sports Holdings, another disclosure to the Hong Kong stock exchange described Vong as the ultimate controller of Ever Depot Ltd, which on Nov. 27, 2017, bought just over 2 billion shares in Birmingham Sports Holdings. At the time, those shares accounted for 24 percent of the club.

Curiously, Vong owned Ever Depot through a Cambodian company, Graticity Real Estate Development Co Ltd, where records show Yaohui’s Khmer alter-ego Wan Sokha having stepped down as the owner and director just six months earlier.

In October 2020, Ever Depot’s stake in the club shrank, but Vong’s increased. He had struck a deal with Birmingham Sports Holdings to buy 21.64 percent of the club directly from the company. As a result, all shareholders in Birmingham Sports Holdings but Vong now controlled a smaller slice of the club.

As of publication, Chigwell Holdings controls shares accounting for just under 2 percent of the club; Dragon Villa, 12.81 percent; Ever Depot, 17.64 percent; as well as Vong’s direct stake in 21.64 percent. Between them, that leaves Vong and Yaohui controlling 54 percent of the club.

After months of takeover rumors, Birmingham Sports Holdings announced on June 14 this year that two days earlier Vong had reached an agreement to sell the 21.64 percent stake to an unnamed third party. The announcement stressed, however, that “the Company has not entered into nor exchanged any agreement to dispose of its approximately 75% interest in'' the club. As such, even when Vong’s sale goes through, he and Yaohui will still constitute the largest single bloc of ownership at the club.

Two weeks later, Birmingham Sports Holdings announced that executive director Hsiao Charng Geng had resigned “to dedicate more time to his other business engagements.” Flight records obtained by RFA showed Hsiao flew on Yaohui’s Bombardier Global 6000 private jet three times between December 2017 and March 2018. Twice Yaohui was aboard and the third time Vong was.

Birmingham City has long denied Yaohui’s existence as a stakeholder in the club and a spokesman told RFA in late May that it was a longstanding position of the club not to comment on matters of ownership. However, as the evidence mounts linking him to three of the club’s top-four biggest shareholders, that line may be a difficult one to maintain.

Chinese researchers develop device they say can test loyalty of ruling party members

An artificial intelligence institute in Anhui says the device is based on facial scans and a polygraph.

By Qiao Long for RFA Mandarin
2022.07.04

Hefei Comprehensive National Science Center in eastern China's Anhui Province, displaying "artificial intelligence empowering party-building."

Hefei Comprehensive National Science Center

Researchers in the eastern Chinese province of Anhui say they have developed a device that can determine loyalty to the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) using facial scans.

A short video uploaded to the Weibo account of the Hefei Comprehensive National Science Center on June 30 said the project was an example of "artificial intelligence empowering party-building."

The Weibo post was later deleted, but a text summary of the video, produced in honor of the CCP's July 1 anniversary, remained available on the Internet Archive on Monday.

"Guaranteeing the quality of party-member activities is turning into a problem in need of coordination," the text said.

"This equipment is a kind of smart ideology, using AI technology to extract and integrate facial expressions, EEG readings and skin conductivity ... making it possible to ascertain the levels of concentration, recognition and mastery of ideological and political education so as to better understand its effectiveness," the description said.

"It can provide real data for organizers of ideological and political education, so they can keep improving their methods of education and enrich content," it said.

It said the device relies on "emotionally intelligent computing," among other methods, to measure to what extent subjects "feel grateful to the CCP, do as it tells them and follow its lead."

In the video, as reported by Hong Kong's Ming Pao newspaper, a researcher in white walks into a room and sits in front of a screen to take a test, before receiving a test score and analysis onscreen.

Big Brother

Before the post was deleted, some comments slammed the idea as "high-tech brainwashing," while others referenced George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984, saying that "Big Brother" would be watching them.

Anhui-based sociologist Song Da'an said the post had been removed due to its political sensitivity.

"Hefei Comprehensive National Science Center has been using biotechnology to measure the loyalty of party members and cadres," Song said. "This shows that the CCP is becoming more and more totalitarian."

"In the logic of a totalitarian society, more and more emphasis is placed on refining controllability, and party members are regarded as screws [that could come loose] and potentially cause damage; they are the enemy of the machine," he said.

Song said the technology was based on the polygraph, used by security services to detect lying, which was itself based on the word association experiments of Swiss psychiatrist C.G. Jung.

"They are using this technology to treat all party members as potential anti-CCP agents," he said. "The use of these technology on officials demonstrates the sorry state of affairs within party ranks."

A Jiangxi-based current affairs commentator surnamed Zhang agreed.

"They are consolidating their power to better hold onto it," Zhang said. "That's what these people want; to consolidate their position."

"Would a regime that served the people be afraid of losing political power?"

'All-seeing eye'

A call to the Hefei Comprehensive National Science Center on Monday resulted in a recorded message saying "Sorry, the person you have called isn't authorized to take your call. Goodbye."

In 2018, authorities in Zhejiang province installed an "all-seeing eye" in a high-school classroom to spot students who weren't paying attention or who fell asleep in class, official media reported.

The new system at the Hangzhou No. 11 High School links up a surveillance camera to facial recognition software that tracks students' movements and facial expressions, according to the Zhejiang Daily newspaper.

The technology was part of a trial of software and surveillance systems that could be rolled out elsewhere as part of the development of "smart campuses," the paper said.

"The system ... can perform statistical analysis on students' behaviors and expressions in the classroom and provide timely feedback on abnormal behaviors," the report said.

Data collected by the system will be analyzed by the software, and overly inattentive or sleepy behavior will generate a prompt to the teacher to admonish the offender, it said.

The data could also be used to evaluate teachers' performance in the classroom, the report said.

Global heating, human development could drive future waves of disease in east Asia

Disturbance of ecosystems as humans interact with wild species make future outbreaks and pandemics more likely.

By Mai Xiaotian for RFA Mandarin
2022.07.17

A greater horseshoe bat pursues a moth.

Global heating is leading dozens of bat species to migrate to southern China and southeast Asian countries, amid growing concerns that the climate crisis could fuel more zoonotic disease and further deadly pandemics, experts told RFA.

A 2021 University of Cambridge study found that climate change may already have played a role in the emergence of the current pandemic, after researchers tracked large-scale changes in vegetation patterns across southwestern Yunnan province and neighboring Myanmar and Laos.

"Increases in temperature, sunlight, and atmospheric carbon dioxide - which affect the growth of plants and trees - have changed natural habitats from tropical shrubland to tropical savannah and deciduous woodland," the study said. "This created a suitable environment for many bat species that predominantly live in forests."

It said the number of coronaviruses in a given area is closely linked to the number of different bat species present, with an additional 40 bat species moving into Yunnan during the past 100 years, bringing with them around 100 new coronaviruses.

Genetic data suggests SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, may also have come from this region, according to study first author Robert Beyer, a researcher in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology.

"Climate change over the last century has made the habitat in the southern Chinese Yunnan province suitable for more bat species," Beyer said.

"As climate change altered habitats, species left some areas and moved into others - taking their viruses with them," he said.

"This ... most likely allowed for new interactions between animals and viruses, causing more harmful viruses to be transmitted or evolve," said Beyer.

The world’s bats carry around 3,000 different types of coronavirus, with each bat species harboring an average of 2.7 coronaviruses - most without showing symptoms.

While most coronaviruses carried by bats can't jump into humans, several coronaviruses known to infect humans are very likely to have originated in bats, the study said.

The area of Yunnan covered by the study is also home to pangolins, which are a likely intermediary host for SARS-CoV-2, experts said.

"The virus is likely to have jumped from bats to these animals, which were then sold at a wildlife market in Wuhan - where the initial human outbreak occurred," a press release accompanying the study said.

Another study published by researchers at Georgetown University in the journal Nature also warned that the climate crisis may increase the risk of cross-species transmission of viruses -- and could even trigger the next pandemic, citing bats as a likely source species.

Dobson's horseshoe bat. Credit: India Biodiversity Portal

Increased risk of disease

Chen Chen-chih, associate professor of wildlife conservation at Taiwan's Pingtung University of Science and Technology, said both studies showed similar findings, warning that migratory shifts could bring bats into closer contact with humans.

He cited an outbreak of Hendra virus in Australia in 1994, which caused deaths in humans and horses, and originated in fruit bats.

"When their habitats are destroyed or reduced, fruit bats will of course find another way to live," Chen told RFA. "There are parks in the city, so the likelihood of finding food is very high, added to the fact that people in Australia don't actively kill bats."

"So they find an urban environment that they can adapt to."

Li Lingling, professor of ecology and evolutionary Biology at National Taiwan University, said humans have already interfered with natural habitats.

"Bats are nocturnal and do not [normally] come into contact with humans," Li said. "When we increase opportunities for bats to come into contact with other animals, the risk of humans being exposed [viruses] also increases."

Chen agreed.

"Many studies have found that when habitat of wild animals is stable and undisturbed, the pathogens they carry are less likely to spread," he said.

"When protected animal habitats are well managed and biodiversity taken care of, a single highly lethal pathogen is less likely to emerge," he said.

According to the Georgetown study, there are at least 10,000 viruses currently existent in wild mammals that could be transmitted to humans.

Prediction models show that under different carbon emission scenarios, more than 300,000 first contacts between species will occur, some of them in the next 50 years, potentially resulting in more than 15,000 new cross-species virus transmissions.

"The vast majority of prediction models believe that the virus will spread across species, particular cross-species transmission from wild animals will become more and more serious under climate change," Chen said.

"These pathogens may jump the species barrier, infect livestock animals, and then infect humans from there, or even directly from wild animals to humans," he said.

"All of these routes are possible [but] whether transmission happens or not depends on the frequency of contact, or the immune status of the potential host," Chen said.

Li said the overall risk had definitely increased, however.

"There are some key factors in between, but the risk of disease is indeed increased," Li said.

A greater horseshoe bat. Credit: Marie Jullion/Wikimedia Commons

Managing biodiversity

Chen said the key lies in the management of biodiversity, particularly in tropical and subtropics regions of east and southeast Asia.

"The more species there are, the more potential virus species there are, but when wild animals live in a natural habitat, there are few opportunities for contact, and therefore everyone can coexist peacefully," he said.

Li said areas of high population density and ongoing development are most at risk.

"Humans invade nature, transform their environment, or make use of wild animals ... and then the risk of coming into contact with viruses carried by wild animals is relatively high," she said.

"Once an epidemic occurs in a densely populated place, then of course there's a much higher chance of it spreading," Li said.

Chen cited the hunting of wild animals for food, and the trading of different species in the same markets as high-risk behavior.

Wild animals that are trapped alive and held in cages in close proximity have weakened immune systems, making transmission more likely among them by the time they get to market.

"We should pay attention to the problem of infectious diseases from an integrated perspective, and take better care of the natural environment and wild animals," Li said. "Only then can we get better protection for our livestock, our pets, and for human health."

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

How A Puppy Is Linked To Corruption In S.Korea's Government

In 2016, a former national fencer from South Korea grabbed the country’s attention with shocking details of a friendship gone wrong. His expose spelled the end for the most powerful woman in South Korea at the time, the nation’s first female president, Park Geun-hye.

WHICH REMINDED ME OF THIS:

Richard Nixon - "Checkers" Speech

You can view the full speech here: http://millercenter.org/scripps/archi... As a candidate for vice president, Richard Nixon gives a televised address to the public after being accused of accepting illegal gifts. Nixon provides a detailed account of his and his family's finances to remove any suspicion. The title of the speech refers to the Nixon's family dog, Checkers, who was a gift but one which Nixon declines to return.

U$A

The First Cyber Safety Review Board Report is Out

By Paul Rosenzweig Thursday, July 14, 2022,

Last year, President Biden created the Cyber Safety Review Board, with the intention that (akin to the National Transportation Safety Board) the new organization would review cyber incidents, examine root causes and, where necessary, make recommendations.

This is fundamentally a good thing. For too long, cyber incident response has been uncoordinated, with a lack of systematic review at the Federal level.

Earlier this month the CSRB released its first report, an account of the Log4J event. I will likely have more to say about the report in some detail later. For now, however, it is enough to welcome the initiative and call the report to the readers’ attention. Here’s a short taste from the Executive Summary:

“Generally, the Cyber Safety Review Board (CSRB, or the Board) found that organizations that responded most effectively to the Log4j event understood their use of Log4j and had technical resources and mature processes to manage assets, assess risk, and mobilize their organization and key partners to action. Most modern security frameworks call out these capabilities as best practices. However, few organizations were able to execute this kind of response, or the speed required during this incident, causing delays in both their assessment of the risk and in their management of it. When ASF made upgrades for Log4j available, deploying them was itself a risk decision, forcing a tradeoff between possible operational disruption and timeliness, completeness, and compensating controls.”

The entire report is worthy of your attention.

Meta’s Oversight Board Often Turns in Its Homework Late. Does it Matter?

By evelyn douek, Tia Sewell Friday, July 15, 2022

A sign outside of Meta headquarters in California.

On June 17, the Meta Oversight Board released its 25th decision. This decision, in the Knin Cartoon case, overturned Meta’s original decision to leave up an edited cartoon video that depicted ethnic Serbs as rats. According to the operating rules that Meta wrote when setting up the board, this decision was due for release to the public on June 13. That is, the board’s decision was four days overdue, according to its bylaws. This may seem like a pedantic nitpick. Four days? It seems unlikely anyone lost sleep over this small delay.

But the delay is worth paying attention to, precisely because it says something interesting about a deeper question that surrounds the board: What kind of institution is it, exactly?

This post sets out the board’s somewhat frequent record of releasing decisions late, in breach of its own constituent documents, before examining what it might suggest about the board more broadly.

A Record of Late Decisions

The board’s bylaws read:
Beginning when the selection of a case is published, the board has a timeframe of ninety (90) days to render a final decision with respect to any particular case. This period may be extended in exceptional circumstances or in the event of technical or operational incidents which impede the Board from publishing a final decision within this target timeframe. If the timeframe is extended, that extension will be notified to the posting person (as well as the reporting person, if different), Facebook and the public. The administration, on behalf of the board, will monitor each chosen case and ensure the board issues its decision within this timeframe. (Emphasis added.)

In the Knin Cartoon case, the Oversight Board announced that it would consider the case on March 15, along with two other cases, the Sudan Graphic Video case and the Reclaiming Arabic Words case. The board issued decisions for the latter two on the date they were due—that is, June 13, exactly 90 days after they were announced. But while handing down these rulings, the board made no mention of the Knin Cartoon case. Indeed, neither then nor later did the board issue a notice of an extension to the public.

And this was not the first time, by our count, that the Oversight Board missed a deadline: Back in February, the board published two decisions—its Advice on Pharmaceutical Drugs case and its Journalism on Sexual Violence case—a day late, according to the board’s bylaws. (The decisions were delivered on Feb. 1, 91 days past their announcement date of Nov. 2, 2021.)

When Lawfare asked the Oversight Board to comment on these delays, it responded:

The Board has, in exceptional instances, delayed the issuance of certain case decisions as permitted by the organization’s bylaws. Thoughtful processes and the incorporation of diverse perspectives are critical to effective recommendations and the Board’s ability to drive greater transparency and accountability at Meta. While the Board seeks to balance the swift delivery of case recommendations, it will not sacrifice rigor for the sake of expediency.

The board is right to note that the bylaws allow case decisions to be delayed in the event of “exceptional circumstances.” And we definitely don’t want to suggest we are asking it to “sacrifice rigor”! But the bylaws explicitly say that in such an event, the board should notify the public. The board is clearly aware of this requirement and sees its value. It has, in the past, provided such notification: For example, the board took 104 days to render its final decision in the Trump Suspension case—a delay in conformity with its bylaws, as the board invoked the “exceptional circumstances” clause and provided public notification on April 16, 2021, shortly before the original case deadline.

In other cases, the board has provided post hoc notification of delayed decisions. According to the board’s most recent transparency report, published in June, three additional decisions were overdue: The Wampum Belt and Ayahuasca Brew rulings were handed down 99 days after the beginning of the 90-day period (nine days late) and the Alleged Crimes in Raya Kobo ruling came 104 days after the period began (14 days late). In this report, footnotes explained that “[f]or this quarter, all three case decisions experienced delays resulting in decision publication and implementation going beyond the regular 90-day period. These delays were caused by availability issues both within Meta and the Oversight Board due to season holidays.” Further, the board added that “[t]here was an additional delay in the Ethiopia case due to translation issues.”

Lawfare’s online tracker had not caught these delays, as the board began its countdown when the cases were assigned to panel—a date that was not publicly available until the transparency report was released—rather than when the case was announced, which is the date that Lawfare has used to track deadlines. Surely such post hoc notification of delayed decisions violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the board’s rules.

In March 2021, the board had revised its bylaws to require that the 90-day timeframe begin “when the Board assigns a case to panel” as opposed to the date of “Facebook’s last decision on a case.” In November 2021, the board again changed its bylaws to initiate the 90-day clock “when we publish our selection of a case, rather than when it is assigned to panel.”

All of this is to say, six of the 25 case decisions the board has released so far have been late without comment provided prior to the deadline, as shown in Figure 1. That is, more than 20 percent of the board’s decisions are late, in breach of the board’s own bylaws.

A Flourish chart
Figure 1. Overview of Oversight Board case timelines, with cases ordered sequentially by decision date. Data sourced from Oversight Transparency reports through Q4 2021; Lawfare tracker for decisions thereafter. (*) Notification of delay provided to public in advance of decision.

Why Does This Matter?

The most obvious thing that this record of late decisions suggests is that the board is somewhat overwhelmed by its workload. Decisions are issued consistently right up against their deadline and—as Figure 1 suggests—this is happening more and more over time. If the board is struggling to keep up with its current caseload—a modest six cases have been announced in the past eight months—this suggests that the board’s current docket size is about its limit. With the board only ever being able to address a minuscule fraction of the content moderation issues that arise across Meta’s platforms, this could be a massive constraint on the board’s capacity to make an impact. (For context, more than 1.1 million cases were submitted to the board by users and Meta from October 2020 to December 2021. Also perhaps relevant context: Board members are reportedly earning six-figure salaries.)

This makes it all the more puzzling that the board has not increased its size in a meaningful way. According to the board’s charter and bylaws, it has an “ideal size” of 40 members when “fully staffed.” The board announced its first 20 members over two years ago, added (and lost) one member in 2021, and has most recently increased its size by announcing another three members in May of this year. The board has not explained why it has taken so long to ramp up its staffing (although presumably the pandemic played a role). But this is clearly something the board could have, and should have, more actively prioritized to maximize its potential—given what the delays suggest about the role of bandwidth in limiting the board’s output.

The board’s late decisions also highlight its weird institutional status. The board is a purely self-regulatory, private body, set up by then-Facebook, with no independent legal authority or particular source of constitutive legitimacy. Indeed, for exactly this reason many observers pronounced the board a distracting charade. Seemingly in order to counteract these perceptions, Facebook and the board dressed up the board in all the trappings of a court-like institution. It was established by a charter, and it has bylaws. Its decisions clearly imitate judicial opinions—citing legal authorities and precedents, and noting dissenting opinions among its members. The attempted message of all these features is clear: The board is a serious institution that you should take seriously. Just like judges wearing robes, the board is dressed up in official-looking clothing to attempt to manifest authority.

But if this legitimacy is to be sustained, the board needs to commit to the bit even when it’s inconvenient. And failing to comply with the undemanding requirement of providing public notice of late decisions does not inspire confidence about the board’s commitment to its other operating principles, many of which cannot be verified by external observers.

Again, we don’t want to overstate the importance of a couple of missed deadlines. Goodness knows we’ve missed a bunch of deadlines of our own. But if the board wants others to take its performance seriously, maybe it should lead by example and take its rules seriously itself.

evelyn douek is an Assistant Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and Senior Research Fellow at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. She holds a doctorate from Harvard Law School on the topic of private and public regulation of online speech. Prior to attending HLS, evelyn was an Associate (clerk) to the Honourable Chief Justice Susan Kiefel of the High Court of Australia. She received her LL.B. from UNSW Sydney, where she was Executive Editor of the UNSW Law Journal.

@evelyndouek

Tia Sewell is an associate editor of Lawfare. She is an undergraduate at Stanford University studying international relations and economics.

@tia_sewell

Want to Reduce the Deficit? Cut the Pentagon’s Wish Lists.

Defense Department—an agency that owns $3 trillion in assets and receives approximately 45 percent of federal discretionary dollars.

By Christian Bale Monday, July 18, 2022

Aerial view of the Pentagon, Arlington, Virginia.

President Biden recently announced that his administration oversaw a federal budget deficit reduction of $350 billion last year and is projecting a $1.7 trillion reduction by the end of the fiscal year. Now that the administration is winding down emergency coronavirus programs, it hopes that shrinking the federal deficit will help combat rising inflation.

A renewed focus on deficit reduction is a welcome development. Put simply, the federal deficit is the difference between what the government spends and how much it collects in taxes during a fiscal year. In contrast, the federal debt is the cumulation of all federal deficits. The government has been operating at a deficit since 2001, and since 2016, the combination of interest payments on the federal debt and increased spending on Social Security and health care have outstripped the growth of federal revenue. During the first quarter of 2022, the federal debt eclipsed $30 trillion for the first time.

One way the administration could bolster its deficit reduction efforts is by preventing military services from sending their “wish lists” to members of Congress. Like all executive branch agencies, the Department of Defense does not submit its annual budget request directly to Congress. Rather, since 1921, the Budget and Accounting Act has required agencies to submit their funding request to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

After months of analysis and meetings with the agencies, OMB transmits a presidential budget to Congress. In addition to reflecting the administration’s priorities, the president’s budget attempts to balance competing federal spending needs. Yet for decades, the highest ranking officers of the U.S. military services have sidestepped this process by sending their funding wish lists (proponents prefer the term “unfunded priorities”) to members of Congress without review from OMB or even the secretary of defense.

Lawmakers on the powerful defense appropriations committees of the House and Senate—many of whom represent districts where weapons systems are manufactured—encourage the wish lists and typically fund most of their requests in bipartisan fashion. For example, around this time last year, the Senate Armed Services Committee endorsed a $25 billion increase to President Biden’s military spending proposal with only Sen. Elizabeth Warren opposing the measure. The Senate bill supported a number of unfunded priorities, including six additional F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, even though the F-35 has not been operationally tested and will likely require significant future appropriations to retrofit the existing aircraft. For fiscal year 2023, military leaders have asked Congress for more than $21 billion in unfunded priorities.

Clamping down on tens of billions in unfunded priorities will not substantially abate a federal deficit on the scale of trillions of dollars ($2.8 trillion in fiscal year 2021), but it would boost the administration’s broader deficit reduction efforts, and it is a step the administration can take immediately.

Additionally, although perhaps less pressing than concerns about inflation, wish lists merit the administration’s attention because they raise significant constitutional concerns. By sidestepping the president and the secretary of defense—who presumptively declined to advocate for the contents of the wish lists—military officials erode the principle of civilian control of the military. Of course, Congress, which holds the purse strings, may disagree with executive branch leaders on spending priorities and appropriate funds for weapons systems that it feels are acutely needed.

Wish lists also implicate the Constitution’s Recommendations Clause, which empowers the president with the authority to propose legislation to Congress and, as a corollary, to refuse congressional demands to propose legislations. OMB has cited this provision as a basis to require executive branch agencies to first submit legislative proposals for review before transmitting them to Congress. If the current administration decides to take this path to further stem federal deficits, it can build on the work begun during the Obama administration. In 2009, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates (who also served as secretary during the George W. Bush administration) ordered the service chiefs to brief him on their unfunded priorities lists before sending them to Congress.

As a result, in the spring of 2009, the services asked Congress for less than $3.5 billion in unfunded priorities, a nearly 90 percent cut from 2008. In 2012, the chiefs of the Marine Corps, Navy, and Air Force did not even attempt to submit wish lists. Absent Secretary Gates’s leadership, the wish lists soon returned.

Beyond political pressure from individual members of Congress, a significant roadblock for the administration is that the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2017 and successive NDAAs have required the military chiefs to submit annual “report[s] on the unfunded priorities of the armed force or forces or combatant command under the jurisdiction or command of such office.”

But the administration has options. Invoking the Recommendations Clause, the administration could simply refuse to comply with the mandate. Past White Houses have taken this route when Congress has demanded legislative proposals. Or the president could urge Congress to repeal the unfunded priorities list requirement. Another route would be for Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, like Secretary Gates before him, to impose significant oversight over the development of the wish lists.

This last option offers the possibility of achieving substantial deficit reductions while still complying with the NDAA. All three options merit consideration though, because any significant deficit reduction not involving cuts to mandatory spending problems like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, will require taking a hard look at the Defense Department—an agency that owns $3 trillion in assets and receives approximately 45 percent of federal discretionary dollars.

SEE LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY

Christian I. Bale is a Delaware lawyer and part-time Ph.D. student at the University of Oxford. He is a former program examiner in the national security division of the White House Office of Management and Budget and former country director for Japan in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He holds a J.D. from Duke, where he served as editor-in-chief of the Duke Law Journal.

ChristianIBale

The History of Countering Violent Extremism Tends to Repeat. It Shouldn’t.
By Bennett Clifford, Seamus Hughes

Sunday, July 17, 2022

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and FBI Director Christopher Wray testify to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on Sept. 21, 2021.

Photo credit: DHS Photo by Zachary Hupp via Flickr.

Editor’s Note: Political leaders at times launch programs to counter violent extremism, but those programs rarely get off the ground. Bennett Clifford and Seamus Hughes of George Washington University’s Program on Extremism describe the rise and fall (and potential rise) of CVE efforts and argue that more limited, focused programs are more sustainable and more effective.

Daniel Byman

***

In the two decades after 9/11, the U.S. government made repeated attempts to create a nationwide countering violent extremism (CVE) policy, using the acronym to refer to any effort that attempts to reduce terrorism and violent extremism through means outside of arrests, prosecutions, and law enforcement investigations. These policy responses have followed a standard and well-worn path. First, sibylline warnings of growing radicalization problems, pursuant to a particular ideology or community, are issued by outside experts, sub-federal authorities, or local communities. These alerts pique the interest of policy officials, but before programs, strategies, and staff can be put into place, a major attack or event shocks both the public and policymakers, causing congressional overseers to demand immediate action.

This process—seen in the federal government’s response to post-9/11 events like the 2009 Fort Hood shooting, the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, and the unprecedented mobilizations of American Islamic State supporters to Syria and Iraq—then begins to hit several roadblocks. The initial strategic concepts put forward are broad based: They are characterized by “whole of society” approaches that involve as many implementing actors as possible, include long laundry lists of potential policies, and aim to reach as large a swathe of society as possible. In turn, various federal agencies are brought together in task forces and develop arsenals of CVE policies that range from community outreach, to one-on-one interventions for extremists, to attempting to build “resilience” to radicalization in local environments. However, because of their reach, use of controversial methods and tools such as the systems used to identify potential extremists, and fierce grassroots organizing against anything with a CVE label, the major strategic CVE initiatives quickly face political resistance. In the face of controversy, the responsible agencies whittle down their CVE workload to a bare minimum, invest the limited resources and staff power in a select number of policies, and change the names of terms and offices to avoid backlash. A skeleton crew of federal employees manage what’s left of “CVE” within their respective agencies, at least until the next major attack happens and the cycle starts anew.

It is said that history repeats or, at the very least, rhymes. This is particularly true in the U.S. policy world. There is something refreshing about the predictability of it all. However, when it comes to countering violent extremism programs, we should do our best not to repeat the mistakes of the past.

Despite decades of dedicated effort by several federal agencies and their earnest employees, the U.S. government and the public alike are left with relatively little to show for it. The vicious circle described above doomed the Obama administration’s first attempt at a national CVE strategy, described in the August 2011 White House document “Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism.” The strategy aimed to establish a framework for CVE policies focusing on building expertise in state and local law enforcement, engaging with communities, and countering extremist propaganda. In a 2020 article for Lawfare, we wrote that the first decade of the 2011 strategy was subject to “fits and starts … [the] programs have had many bosses, quite a few iterations and little coherency.” The reasons for its woes are manifold: divided agencies, limited resources and staff, unclear programmatic theories of change, a lack of a political constituency to defend it under pressure, and, perhaps most importantly, a near-singular focus on a particular form of violent extremism (jihadism) that limited its effectiveness and subjected the strategy to even more criticism from civil society and communities.

Due to these factors, there was little left of the Obama administration’s CVE strategy that withstood the tides and survived the change of presidential administrations in 2016. Fortunately, however, this has meant that most federal CVE efforts that remained during the past five years have been measurable and meaningful programs with limited theories of change that were implemented on a small-scale basis and focused on individuals rather than groups, communities, or societies. Programs like the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York’s Disruption and Early Engagement Project (DEEP) focused on individual cases of radicalization within the district and judged whether one-on-one interventions with “family members, mental health professionals, mentors, and state and local officials” were preferable to federal investigations and prosecutions. Downsized CVE programs like DEEP changed the outcomes of cases, avoided the political fracas, and could be applied to multiple forms of violent extremist radicalization.

The Biden administration, in its 2021 National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism, took an important course correction when it acknowledged that the domestic terrorism threat picture comprises an ever-increasing range of violent extremist ideologies. As a result, any solution will require expanding “violence prevention”—the new nomenclature for CVE—to a wider range of communities, ideologies, and contexts. Today, as a result of horrific white supremacist mass-casualty attacks in Poway, Pittsburgh, El Paso, and most recently in Buffalo, and the events of Jan. 6, 2021, there is a renewed governmental focus on addressing racially and ethnically motivated violent extremism and what the U.S. government terms anti-government and anti-authority violent extremism.

But so far, most of the proposed CVE measures do not seem to have successfully integrated lessons from the last spin of the CVE wheel of fortune. Expansive CVE measures, building on outcry about the recent uptick in domestic violent extremism, are back to the fore—threatening to restart the old cycle again. On the campaign trail, Vice President Kamala Harris called for a dramatic escalation in CVE funding focused on domestic terrorism, to the tune of billions of dollars. While the 2021 national strategy released by the administration did not put a price tag on its proposal, the fourth pillar of the strategy calls on policymakers to “[tackle] the long-term contributors” to domestic violent extremism by “addressing the sources of that mobilization to violence,” signaling that part of its CVE agenda will include society-wide measures to inoculate wide swathes of the U.S. public against violent extremism. Arguably, these efforts have already proved their futility in ill-fated efforts like the rollout of the Department of Homeland Security’s Disinformation Governance Board, which was shuttered in the third week of its existence after concerns about the scope of the program prompted sustained backlash.

Regardless of their efficacy, broad-based CVE programs focusing on domestic extremism in this political climate are likely to be doomed to the same fate as the Disinformation Governance Board and other efforts that preceded it. The same problems hampered Obama-era CVE efforts focusing on jihadists, which prompted criticism from liberals opposed to society- or community-wide programming as violative of civil rights and illegitimately targeting specific communities and from conservatives opposed on the grounds that it was “too soft” on violent extremism. These critiques are still present but have flipped across the political lines and intensified when it comes to non-jihadist domestic terrorism. The only difference is that there is no guarantee that small-scale programs like one-on-one interventions that could be effective while avoiding political outcry would survive an initial wave of backlash. A major congressional fight over CVE could be the poison pill for any type of terrorism prevention focusing on domestic extremism.

Rather than inviting another national debate that weakens CVE policy, the Biden administration should break the wheel of fortune for CVE programming in the United States by skipping the large-scale initiatives and limiting its efforts to agency-specific guidance focusing on one-on-one interventions. Proponents of multibillion-dollar, gargantuan CVE agendas will say that an expansive scope is necessary to match the level of radicalization present in the country today, exemplified by studies that show that millions of Americans believe in extremist conspiracy theories surrounding the 2020 presidential election or ideas similar to the “great replacement” theory. These statistics are certainly cause for concern, but tethering CVE policy to this notion is not the solution. A more manageable figure is 2,700, which is the number of domestic terrorism cases run by the FBI at any given time. From a public policy standpoint, a smaller, locally managed initiative that can take even a portion of those 2,700 cases off of the FBI’s caseload through interventions is infinitely preferable to a quickly conceived, politically controversial, and likely inefficiently managed large-scale CVE program that attempts to convince 20 million Americans to forego their conspiratorial viewpoints.

This is not to diminish the seriousness of the domestic terrorism threat environment in the United States, which by all accounts is at its most severe in decades. But from a policy standpoint, this is a triage situation, in which only programs that are manageable and measurable should be considered as the nation’s attention and political realities can sustain only that narrow scoping. There is a place for that larger responsibility of community-wide resilience in government, and more so civil society, but the departments of Justice and Homeland Security leading that effort is a recipe for failure. They are not equipped or well placed to run sprawling, impersonal outreach efforts, like the 2016 campaign that boiled down to messaging “don’t be an extremist”—messaging that is summarily dismissed by the very subsections of Americans they seek to influence.

New prevention programs focusing on domestic violent extremism, drawing from the Biden administration’s strategic guidelines, could be an important opportunity for the federal government to reset the course on CVE in the United States. The federal government should do its best not to repeat the mistakes of the past. It should avoid broad-based agendas with laundry lists of potential CVE-tangential policies and community-wide CVE programs, and instead focus on programs that center around one-on-one interventions of individuals already on the radar of law enforcement and primed for violence.

Bennett Clifford is a senior research fellow at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. He studies violent extremist movements and organizations in the United States, as well as in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and the Balkans.@_bCliff
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Seamus Hughes is the deputy director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University.@SeamusHughes
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Published by the Lawfare Institute

Taliban says to continue fighting US if not recognized

TEHRAN, Jul. 17 (MNA) – The Taliban's acting interior minister warned the United States that they fought for 20 years and if they are not recognized by the world they will continue to fight.

Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Taliban's acting interior minister said،” Taliban will continue to fight as long as the world refuses to recognize its government.”

During a speech in Khost province, Haqqani once again called on the world to recognize the Taliban’s interim government.

He also noted،” We will continue our efforts to resolve people's problems regardless of other countries’ refusal to recognize Taliban government”.

The Taliban high-ranking official added that Taliban administration is ready to establish diplomatic relations with all neighboring and international countries.

He further stressed that Afghanistan will not be a threat to any country and armed groups are also not allowed to operate in this country.

Sirajuddin Haqqani also called on the US to immediately release Afghanistan's Foreign exchange resources.

The Taliban minister noted that formation of an inclusive government requires time, and whenever the influence of the West is finished on Afghanistan, an inclusive government will be established.

Not a single country has yet recognized the Taliban after a year since their takeover of Afghanistan.

This is while Sirajuddin Haqqani had told CNN that they want friendly relations with the United States as per the diplomatic norms and values being practiced by the international community.

"We, as a nation, consider ourselves a part of the international community and want cordial relations with all the countries, including the US." The Taliban official said.

AY/FNA14010426000369

Ukraine still holds Luhansk villages as concerns over Russian filtration camps raised
By Adam Schrader

Locals at the scene of a crater caused by the downing of a Russian missile by Ukrainian defenders in downtown Kramatorsk in the Donetsk area of Ukraine on Friday.

Photo by George Ivanchenko/EPA-EFE

July 17 (UPI) -- Ukrainian officials said Sunday that its forces still hold two villages in the Luhansk province as a new report raised concerns about human rights abuses in Russia's so-called filtration camps.

Sergiy Haidai, the head of the Luhansk region's military administration, said Sunday that one of the villages has already been captured by Russian forces several times

"But each time our troops pushed the enemy back to their previous positions. However, the enemy does not stop. He returns and suffers another loss," Haidai said in a statement to Telegram.

Haidai said that Russian troops tried to advance toward Verkhnokamianka on Saturday but "received decent resistance, retreated and then lost their personnel."

"There are settlements from which the Russians have already been knocked out several times. They do not stop and suffer losses," Haidai said.

The Donbas region, which comprises the provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk, has been largely held by pro-Russian separatists since Crimea was annexed by Russia in 2014. Russian President Vladimir Putin recognized Luhansk and Donetsk as independent republics before the start of the invasion on Feb. 24.

Experts have said Putin will try to annex the Donbas region into Russia in the coming months.

Earlier this month, Russian forces captured Lysychansk, the last major city in the Luhansk province that had been under Ukrainian control, but Haidai's comments Sunday indicate that Ukrainian forces may be able to hold Russia back from controlling the entire province.

The news came as the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, an international security organization with observer status at the United Nations, released a report Thursday on its ongoing investigation into alleged human rights violations in Ukraine carried out by Russian forces.

The new report found two new "alarming phenomena" in Ukraine including the establishment and use of so-called filtration camps and the tendency of Russian troops to hand over detained people to Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas region, who then impose the death penalty after illegal trials.

The officials found that Russian troops were transporting tens of thousands of civilians to the filtration camps in Russian-held areas of the Donbas region before deporting them to Russia, though could not determine the precise number of people who had been forcibly deported through such camps

"Mass forcible transfers of civilians during a conflict to the territory of the occupying party are prohibited under the 1949 Geneva Conventions," the report noted. "The practice is considered a war crime."

The officials found that around 20 such filtration camps have been established in schools, sports facilities and other locations in eastern Ukraine where they are interrogated and undergo "humiliating body searches" as their personal data is recorded.

Russia also appears to be relying heavily on forced military conscripts from the Donbas region, abducting local men "from the streets, their homes, and their workplaces" to fight against Ukrainian forces, according to the report.

The Institute for the Study of War, a think tank based in Washington, D.C., said in an analysis Saturday that Russia is also stepping up its military recruitment in Russia, which could come at a steep cost to the country well into the future.

The OSCE report, following on the heels of a previous report, also largely confirmed previous findings that large swaths of civilians had been abducted, tortured and killed - including local mayors, journalists and human rights defenders.

The British Defense Ministry, which has been providing intelligence updates since the war broke out, said Sunday that Russia is reinforcing its defensive position in the cities it occupies in southern Ukraine including Mariupol, Zaporizhia, Melitipol and Kherson

"Ukrainian forces have been applying pressure on the Russian defensive line in Kherson Oblast for over a month now," the British Defense Ministry said.

"Recent political statements from both [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky and the deputy prime minister have warned of forthcoming offense operations to force Russia out."

A Ukrainian cargo plane crashed in northern Greece late Saturday while carrying "dangerous cargo" from Serbia bound for Bangladesh. Eight people on board were killed.

The Antonov AN-12 plane took off from an airport in Niš and was transporting Serbian-made defense products to the Bangladesh Defense Ministry, the customer, when it crashed near Eleftheroupoli in the Kavala region of Greece, Serbian Defense Minister Nebojša Stefanović said in a statement.

The crash in Greece came around the eighth anniversary of the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 and the discovery of the wreckage.

Russia: Attack on Crimea will ignite 'Judgement Day' response

In the event of an attack on Crimea, former president Dmitry Medvedev said in his comments, "Judgment Day will come very fast and hard. It will be very difficult to hide." Medvedev did not elaborate but has previously warned the United States of the dangers of attempting to punish a nuclear power such as Russia over its actions in Ukraine.

Reuters WORLD
Published July 17,2022

The refusal of Ukraine and Western powers to recognise Moscow's control of Crimea poses a "systemic threat" for Russia and any outside attack on the region will prompt a "Judgment Day" response, former president Dmitry Medvedev said on Sunday.

Russia annexed the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 after a pro-Moscow president in Kyiv was toppled amid mass street protests. Moscow then also backed pro-Russian armed separatists in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.

In the event of an attack on Crimea, Medvedev was quoted by TASS news agency as saying, "Judgment Day will come very fast and hard. It will be very difficult to hide."

Medvedev did not elaborate but has previously warned the United States of the dangers of attempting to punish a nuclear power such as Russia over its actions in Ukraine, saying this could endanger humanity.

His comments were aired a day after a Ukrainian official suggested that Crimea, which most of the world still recognises as part of Ukraine, could be a target for U.S.-made HIMARS missiles, recently deployed by Kyiv as it battles Russian forces.

Earlier on Sunday, Interfax news agency quoted Medvedev as telling World War Two veterans: "If any other state, be it Ukraine or NATO countries, believes that Crimea is not Russian, then this is a systemic threat for us."

"This is a direct and an explicit threat, especially given what had happened to Crimea. Crimea returned to Russia," said Medvedev, who now serves as deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council.

Vadym Skibitskyi, an official at Ukrainian military intelligence, was asked on Saturday in a televised interview if HIMARS could be used on targets in Crimea.

He said Russia had carried out strikes on Ukrainian territory from Crimea and the Black Sea and so these were also justified targets.

Crimea is of particular strategic importance to Russia as it includes the headquarters of its Black Sea fleet at Sevastopol.