FASCISM U$A

Former senator discusses the hushed efforts to change the US Constitution

"It's time to blow the whistle on it," says former Sen. Feingold.

By ABC NEWS
August 31, 2022,


Former senator warns far right groups poses threats to rewrite the Constitution
ABC News’ Kayna Whitworth spoke with former Sen. Russ Feingold about his new book “The Constitution in Jeopardy” on efforts to amend the Constitution through a new constitutional convention.

There is a new strategy that far-right activists are using to attempt to weaken the foundations of our democracy: something called the “convention provision” in the Constitution, according to a former senator.

Former Sen. Russ Feingold spoke with "ABC News Prime" about his new book “The Constitution in Jeopardy,” co-written with attorney Peter Prindiville, about what they see as a coordinated effort to amend the Constitution and making sweeping changes to our democracy using a specific provision in Article 5

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PRIME: Senator Feingold, thank you so much for taking the time to be with us tonight.

FEINGOLD: Thanks so much for having me on.

PRIME: Now, a central theme in your book here is focused on Article 5, which allows Congress to make amendments to the Constitution. But you make the case here that a growing group of far-right activists across the country want to essentially exploit another facet of Article Five, which is the convention provision. So tell us what this provision is and why you think it poses a threat.

FEINGOLD: Well, my co-author Peter Prindiville and I have been studying this very closely for a couple of years. Article Five of the Constitution says that if two thirds of both houses of the Congress propose a constitutional amendment and three fourths of the states ratify it, that can create a constitutional amendment. That's the only way it's ever been done.

But there's another provision there that allows two-thirds of the states to apply for a constitutional convention and if they do, Congress has to call it. And our concern is that the far-right groups realize that there would be no limitation on what could be discussed and considered at a convention like that. So they can really undo our Constitution and there's a growing movement to do it on the far-right, and it's time to blow the whistle on it and have people realize it.

Protesters take over the Inaugural stage during a protest calling for legislators to overturn the election results in President Donald Trump's favor at the Capitol, Jan. 6, 2021.
The Washington Post via Getty Images

PRIME: So on that note, you said in your book that this constitutional convention could, in fact, set in motion attempts to fundamentally alter our system of government. You went on to say, quote, every contentious political and social issue could be on the table. But, I mean, I have to ask, how realistic do you think that scenario is?

FEINGOLD: Unfortunately, it's very realistic. Peter and I have studied very closely the fact that they are actually doing model conventions now. They are preparing, they're identifying the people that would be the delegates, and they have an agenda that is pretty clear: they want to really gut the ability of the federal government potentially to protect the environment, to protect civil rights laws, to protect voting rights. They could ban abortion in the Constitution. Basically, they could do almost anything.

And by some counts, they're close to the 34 states. We think they're using phony numbers to come up with that, but a new Congress might decide we're just going to count it this way. So we think it's an imminent threat and it would be foolish for people who care about our Constitution to not realize that this is something that could really happen and could be worse than Jan. 6, worse than what's happened with the Supreme Court. It could be the worst thing yet.


PRIME: And while you call this a threat, the argument from these far-right groups, though, is that their proposals would limit the power and the jurisdiction of the federal government and that they would be putting forward procedural amendments, things that wouldn't really garner any headlines. But again, you say perhaps they have a more severe agenda and consequences?

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FEINGOLD: No, there's no doubt they have a more severe agenda. Rick Santorum, the former senator and presidential candidate, has said it's like having a live weapon and you just need to pull the pin on it. So their agenda is not something mild, they may put it in mild terms, but what they're trying to do is make it so. The federal government can't protect the environment, that the federal government can't stand up to protect reproductive rights of women, that the Voting Rights Act is gutted even further. And so it's in their writings, it's in their statements, it's very clear. In fact, they even want to make it, some of them, that if 30 states say they don't like an act of Congress, they can just override an act of Congress.

PRIME: Well, it has been, though, several decades since the last amendment to the Constitution. In fact, only 27 amendments out of the 11,000 proposals to Congress have even been ratified. And while this convention process would make that easier to do, have you found any potential benefits to pursuing amendments, especially in such a divided nation right now, where many states disagree with these with the federal government's decisions?

FEINGOLD: Yeah, we call this the Constitution in jeopardy for two reasons. One is this far-right movement to rewrite the Constitution and take us back to the 18th century. But the other is we do need amendments, but we need to amend it in a different way. We need to change Article Five so that the people, we the people by a majority vote or by majority votes in the States make the changes.

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PRIME: And so while you do support some change, are there any specific amendments that you think could actually garner the support needed and that would perhaps benefit our democracy?

FEINGOLD: Yeah, I mean, you know, Congress once almost passed an elimination of the Electoral College in the 1960s. I think that's a pretty popular thing. I think there'd be other things that would be popular, but that's not what's going to come out of this convention if these folks on the right have their way. What's going to come out of it is a gutting of the ability of this country to protect itself. And it's going to be a very hard result for the diverse people who live here in the 21st century. That can't be allowed.

PRIME: Okay, former Senator Russ Feingold, our thanks to you for taking the time to be with us tonight.

FEINGOLD: Thanks so much.

LGBTQ activists in Peru demand autopsy for death in Bali

LGBTQ rights activists in Peru have rallied outside the prosecutor’s office to demand an autopsy be performed on a Peruvian transgender man who died earlier this month after being detained on the Indonesian tourist island of Bali

ByMAURICIO MUÑOZ Associated Press

August 31, 2022, 

Demonstrators protest to demand justice for Rodrigo Ventosilla, a Peruvian transgender man who died in Indonesia, outside the special prosecutor's office in Lima, Peru, Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2022. (AP Photo/Cesar Campos)

The Associated Press

LIMA, Peru -- LGBTQ rights activists rallied outside the prosecutor’s office Wednesday to demand an autopsy be performed on a Peruvian transgender man who died earlier this month after being detained on the Indonesian tourist island of Bali.

Rodrigo Ventocilla, a 32-year-old graduate student at Harvard University, died Aug. 11 at a Bali hospital. He had been detained Aug. 6 after arriving at the island’s airport. His Peruvian husband, Sebastián Marallano, was also detained when he tried to help Ventocilla.

The couple, who married in Chile, went to Bali on their honeymoon.

Ventocilla’s body has been taken from Indonesia and is expected to arrive in Lima soon, and his relatives want officials in Peru to determine the cause of death, saying they suspect Indonesian authorities abused Ventocilla. Indonesian officials deny that.

“He was detained because of his gender identity. His identity document did not match his appearance. That made him a suspect for the Indonesian police. He was extorted, tortured and has died,” Luzmo Henríquez, a representative of the family of the deceased, told The Associated Press.

Indonesian authorities deny any act of violence and discrimination. “Everything went according to standard operation," Stefanus Satake Bayu Setianto, a Bali police spokesman, said Monday.

Officials in Indonesia said customs officers found a package of brownies with Ventocilla that they suspected might contain cannabis and turned him over to police. Officials said Ventocilla was taken to the hospital the morning of Aug. 9 after showing symptoms of depression and complaining of stomach pains. He died in the hospital Aug. 11.

LGBTQ activists protested in front of the Peruvian Foreign Ministry last week, complaining that Peruvian authorities did not independently investigate Ventocilla’s death and welcomed the Indonesian authorities’ version without any questions.

Why China’s Leaders Think Gorbachev Took Wrong Path
September 01, 2022
Cindy Sui

Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev leans out of the window of his limousine to shake the hand of a Chinese child on hand to greet him as he arrived at Shanghai Airport on May 19, 1989, in Shanghai, China.

HONG KONG —

The death of the Soviet Union’s last leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, whose reforms led to the disintegration of the former communist giant in 1991, is seen by many in China as a reminder to avoid the same fate as its neighbor.

Gorbachev, who died Tuesday at 91, is lauded in China for normalizing Sino-Soviet relations, paving the way for solid ties between the two countries in subsequent years. But Beijing also blames him for bringing about the dissolution of its ally, the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

While the West saw Gorbachev as a brave hero who brought much needed democratic reforms to his country and freed the Soviet satellite states to be independent, China sees him as a weak leader who failed his country.

Both countries were at a crossroad in the late 1980s. The Soviet Union’s economy was near collapse and changes were urgently needed; China’s people were yearning for political reforms after decades of poverty and political turmoil.

Whereas Gorbachev allowed political reforms, China’s then-paramount leader Deng Xiaoping crushed protesters and put reformist General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Zhao Ziyang under house arrest.

At that time and even now, China thinks it made the right decision.

“Back in the 1980s, Deng Xiaoping believed Mr. Gorbachev got the perestroika (restructuring) wrong,” said Victor Gao, a former interpreter for Deng. He is currently a professor at China’s Soochow University and vice president of the Center for China and Globalization. “Gorbachev was pushing political reform ahead of economic reform; China under Deng was promoting economic reform ahead of political reform.”

The Soviet flag frames the portrait of Mao Tse-tung in Beijing's Tiananmen Square as President Mikhail Gorbachev arrived in Beijing on May 15, 1989.

Gorbachev loosened control over not only the USSR’s state-controlled economy but also its political society, leading eventually to satellite states such as Latvia and Lithuania and later Eastern European countries splitting off and chaos in the Russian economy.

To Deng, this was not a smart move.

“Deng believed Gorbachev got the priorities and the sequence wrong. By the end of the day, what matters the most is whether you can bring bread and butter to the table for the people,” Gao said.

Stephen Nagy, senior associate professor of international relations at the International Christian University in Japan, said the Soviet Union’s collapse led China’s leadership to harden its commitment to socialism.

To make sure that socialist principles were sustainable, Deng opened up the Chinese economy, starting by setting up special economic zones to grow prosperity, Nagy said.

His successor, Jiang Zemin, allowed the country’s growing number of capitalists to join the Chinese Communist Party. Current leader Xi Jinping, meanwhile, has campaigned to root out corruption to maintain the legitimacy of the party.

Today, China is much wealthier than it was in the 1980s and is soon to become the world’s biggest economy, whereas Russia still suffers serious economic problems.

The two countries’ different fates also may be because of their “very different” political systems, Nagy said.

“Russia today is a kleptocracy, it’s very few men and it’s always men who run the economy, it’s like a mafia state. They don’t have centralized control and a centralized state. It’s very corrupt,” Nagy said.

In China, the Chinese Communist Party has been able to exert centralized control to govern effectively, he said.

“Whatever you can say about the CCP, in China, 800 million people have been pulled out of poverty, they have really good infrastructure, a lot of people are well off, and this is due to relatively good governance of the party,” Nagy said.

Critics argue that China risks eventual collapse, given problems such as an unhealthy property market, a slowing economy and disruptions from its zero-COVID policy that has led to major cities being locked down.

Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and his wife, Raisa, react as they tour China's Great Wall at Badaling, May 17, 1989, in Beijing.

However, a former Taiwanese official who has dealt with China believes that regardless of the challenges China may face, it is impossible for Chinese leaders to ever accept the disintegration of their country as Gorbachev did.

“Chinese people always have a sense that their country must be unified, it can’t be split for whatever reason. This mindset goes back to the first emperor who unified China. This feeling of unification is very strong among Chinese people,” he said. “The Soviet state on the other hand was made up of many countries. Their views of one nation are not so strong.

“China definitely wouldn’t let Tibet, Xinjiang and Taiwan split off,” added the former official, who requested anonymity to avoid problems ahead of upcoming local elections in Taiwan.

It is unclear whether China’s growing economy and attendant problems will ever lead to the kind of political reforms that Gorbachev fostered, he said.

Nagy also questions whether China will ever move toward the kind of political reforms initiated by Gorbachev.

“In the Chinese context, I’m not sure a democratic system will be able to deal with all their challenges and manage the stable economic growth without the current control of the state,” he said. “Something more fractious like Taiwanese democracy could create problems in the internal stability in the Chinese context.

“I don’t think any political system can deal with the challenges in China today: demographics, environmental problems, productivity problems in economy, quality of economic growth, debt, water security, food security, selected diversification from Chinese supply chains.”

At the end of the day, Gao said, the Chinese leadership’s top priority is maintaining political stability.

“The collapse of the USSR under Mr. Gorbachev has been closely studied and analyzed by China. China has been successful in navigating through more than four decades of reform and opening to the outside world,” Gao said.

“However … maintaining political stability has always been a most important task. … China believes reform needs to be steady, but not hasty; gradual, but not in one stroke. Stability needs to be protected at all cost,” Gao said.

“China will continue to push for greater reform and opening to the outside world, in building a unique system of socialism with Chinese characteristics.”

In response to Gorbachev's death, China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said Wednesday: "Mr. Mikhail Gorbachev made positive contribution to the normalization of relations between China and the Soviet Union. We mourn his passing and extend our condolences to his family."

History’s bookends: Putin reversed many Gorbachev reforms

By ANDREW KATELL

yesterday

1 of 19

Russia's President Vladimir Putin, right, talks with former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev at the start of a news conference at the Castle of Gottorf in Schleswig, northern Germany, Tuesday, Dec. 21, 2004. One stood for freedom, openness, peace and closer ties with the outside world. The other is jailing critics, muzzling journalists, pushing his country deeper into isolation and waging Europe's bloodiest conflict since World War II. Such are history's bookends between Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, and Vladimir Putin, president of Russia. (Carsten Rehder/dpa via AP, File)

NEW YORK (AP) — One stood for freedom, openness, peace and closer ties with the outside world. The other is jailing critics, muzzling journalists, pushing his country deeper into isolation and waging Europe’s bloodiest conflict since World War II.

Such are history’s bookends between Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union’s last leader, and Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president.

In many ways, Gorbachev, who died Tuesday, unwittingly enabled Putin. The forces Gorbachev unleashed spun out of control, led to his downfall and the Soviet Union’s collapse.

Since coming to power in 1999, Putin has been taking a hard line that resulted in a near-complete reversal of Gorbachev’s reforms.

When Gorbachev came to power as Soviet leader in 1985, he was younger and more vibrant than his predecessors. He broke with the past by moving away from a police state, embracing freedom of the press, ending his country’s war in Afghanistan and letting go of Eastern European countries that had been locked in Moscow’s communist orbit. He ended the isolation that had gripped the USSR since its founding.

It was an exciting, hopeful time for Soviet citizens and the world. Gorbachev brought the promise of a brighter future.

He believed in integration with the West, multilateralism and globalism to solve the world’s problems, including ending armed conflicts and reducing the danger of nuclear weapons.

In marked contrast, Putin’s worldview holds that the West is an “empire of lies,” and democracy is chaotic, uncontrolled and dangerous. While mostly refraining from direct criticism, Putin implies that Gorbachev sold out to the West.

Returning to a communist-style mindset, Putin believes the West is imperialistic and arrogant, trying to impose its liberal values and policies on Russia and using the country as a scapegoat for its own problems.

He accuses Western leaders of trying to restart the Cold War and restrain Russia’s development. He seeks a world order with Russia on equal footing with the United States and other major powers, and in some respects is trying to rebuild an empire.

Gorbachev sometimes bowed to Western pressure. Two years after U.S. President Ronald Reagan implored him to “tear down this wall” in a speech at the Berlin Wall, Gorbachev did so, indirectly, by not intervening in populist anti-communist revolutions in Eastern Europe. The dropping of the Iron Curtain and end of the Cold War followed.

At home, Gorbachev introduced two sweeping and dramatic policies — “glasnost” or openness — and “perestroika,” a restructuring of Soviet society. Previously taboo subjects could now be discussed, in literature, the news media and society in general. He undertook economic reforms to allow private enterprise, moving away from a state-run economy.

He also loosened up on the dreaded police state, freed political prisoners such as Andrei Sakharov, and ended the Communist Party’s monopoly on political power. Freer foreign travel, emigration and religious observances were also part of the mix.

Putin has veered away from Gorbachev’s changes. He focused on restoring order and rebuilding the police state. An increasingly severe crackdown on dissent has involved jailing critics, branding them traitors and extremists, including for merely calling the “special military operation” in Ukraine a war. He sees some critics as foreign-funded collaborators of Russia’s enemies.

In his quest for control, he’s shut down independent news organizations and banned human rights and humanitarian organizations. He demands complete loyalty to the state and emphasizes traditional Russian family, religious and nationalistic values.

Gorbachev’s leadership was not without failures. His more liberal policies were uneven, such as a bloody 1991 Soviet crackdown on the independence movement in the Soviet Baltic republic of Lithuania and the attempted early coverup of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster.

By 1988, he realized that trying to hide bad events wasn’t working, so when a massive earthquake hit Armenia in December 1988, he opened the borders to emergency international help and allowed transparency about the destruction.

After nearly a decade of fighting in Afghanistan, Gorbachev ordered the withdrawal of Soviet troops in 1989, entered into multiple arms-control and disarmament agreements with the United States and other countries, and helped end the Cold War. For those efforts, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990.

But at home, Gorbachev’s economic reforms didn’t go well. Freeing industries from state control and allowing private enterprise too quickly and haphazardly created widespread shortages of food and consumer goods, worsened corruption and spawned a class of oligarchs.

The burgeoning independence movements in Soviet republics and other problems so angered Communist Party hard-liners that they attempted a coup against him in August 1991, further weakening his grip on power and leading to his resignation four months later.

In the end, many in Russia felt Gorbachev had left them with broken promises, dashed hopes and a weakened, humiliated country.

One who felt that way was Putin. For him, much of what Gorbachev did was a mistake. The biggest was the Soviet Union’s collapse, what Putin called “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”

The Soviet Union was disrespected, defeated and broken into pieces – 15 countries. For Putin, it was also personal, because as a KGB officer stationed in East Germany, he watched in horror as massive crowds staged the popular uprising that led to the removal of the Berlin Wall and Germany’s reunification, at one point besieging his KGB office in Dresden.

To this day, Putin’s perceptions about threats to his country and popular revolutions color his foreign policy and his deep mistrust of the West. They underpin his decision to invade Ukraine on Feb. 24.

As one justification for the war, he cites what he believes was a broken U.S. promise to Gorbachev – a supposed 1990 pledge that NATO would not expand into Eastern Europe. U.S. officials have denied making such a pledge, but Putin believes NATO’s expansion, and specifically the prospect of neighboring Ukraine joining the alliance, pose an existential threat to Russia.

Critics allege that Putin distorts the facts and ignores local sentiments to claim Ukrainians want to be liberated from the Kyiv government and align with Moscow.

He has embarked on a massive effort to modernize and expand Russia’s military might, moving away from arms-control accords that Gorbachev agreed to.

Putin’s war in Ukraine, alleged human rights violations and the 2014 annexation of Crimea have drawn massive international sanctions that are reversing the cultural and economic ties that Gorbachev fostered. But for a few allies, Russia is isolated.

While one might expect Gorbachev to have been more critical of Putin, he supported Russia’s annexation of Crimea, condemned NATO’s eastward expansion and said the West bungled the opportunities the Cold War’s end offered.

But in many other ways, the historic bookends between the two leaders are set far apart.

One observer who sees Gorbachev’s business as unfinished is Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a Russian tycoon who moved to London after spending a decade in a Russian prison on charges widely seen as political revenge for challenging Putin.

“Gorbachev gave freedom not only to Baltic and Eastern European states, he also gave freedom to the Russian nation,” Khodorkovsky said after Gorbachev’s passing. “It’s a different matter that we haven’t quite managed to make use of that freedom.”

___

Andrew Katell was an Associated Press correspondent based in Moscow who covered Gorbachev from 1988 to 1991. Now semi-retired, he has maintained a lifelong interest in Russian affairs and is a contributor to the AP’s coverage of Russia and Ukraine.

PRE-BOLLYWOOD

Satyajit Ray’s Agantuk to be showcased at Toronto film festival

World News

Published on Sep 01, 2022 

Part of the Cinametheque section, Agantuk will be screened as part of the 2022 edition of the 11-day Toronto International Film Festival, which commences on September 8

A still from Satyajit Ray’s final feature, Agantuk. TIFF will feature a world premiere of a digital restoration of the film this month. (Courtesy: TIFF

ByAnirudh Bhattacharyya

TORONTO: Less than a month after staging a retrospective of the legendary Indian filmmaker’s work, the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) will be showcasing Satyajit Ray’s final feature, Agantuk or The Stranger, at its main event.

Part of the Cinametheque section, Agantuk will be screened as part of the 2022 edition of the 11-day festival, which commences on September 8. The screening will also mark the world premiere of a 4K or high-quality digital restoration of the original movie, which was originally released in 1991. This version comes to TIFF courtesy the National Film Development Corporation of India and the National Film Archive of India.

“Agantuk is an important film in Ray’s oeuvre and one he was quite proud of. We hope it will appeal to audiences less familiar with Ray’s body of work and also be a treat for the many TIFF audiences who came out to enjoy the recent series,” Jessica Smith, Manager, TIFF Cinematheque, told the Hindustan Times via email.

The recent showcase, Satyajit Ray: His Contemporaries and Legacy, was featured in August and consisted of ten films, including four by Ray. It opened with Charulata, released in 1964. That was “timed to commemorate India’s 75th anniversary of Independence”, Smith said and this restoration wasn’t available for that film series.

Five classics are being featured at the TIFF Cinematheque component of the festival, including Agantuk. Also listed are Mary Harron’s I Shot Andy Warhol, Baz Luhrmann’s Strictly Ballroom, Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky’s Werckmeister Harmonies and Guy Maddin’s Tales from the Gimli Hospital Redux.

Agantuk was described by TIFF as a “remarkably personal final film”.

“The final film by Satyajit Ray has been cited as the auteur’s most philosophical, intellectual, and personal. Ray enthusiasts would probably infer that the views of the protagonist are in fact Ray speaking his mind. Ray’s deep study of human behaviour is reflected most prominently here,” it noted.

Ray, who made is debut with Pather Panchali in 1955, passed away in Kolkata in 1992, less than a month after receiving an Honorary Academy Award.

Oil firms seek U.S. mediation to defuse Iraq-Kurdistan tensions

Rowena Edwards
Thu, September 1, 2022 

A flame rises from a chimney at Taq Taq oilfield in Erbil

(Reuters) - Oil firms operating in Kurdistan have asked the United States to help defuse an upsurge in tension between Iraq's central government and the semi-autonomous region, according to a letter seen by Reuters and three sources.

They say intervention is needed to ensure oil continues to flow from the north of Iraq to Turkey to prevent Turkey having to increase oil shipments from Iran and Russia.

They also say the economy of the Kurdistan region (KRI) could be at risk of collapse if it loses oil revenues.

Relations soured in February when Iraq's federal court deemed an oil and gas law regulating the oil industry in Iraqi Kurdistan was unconstitutional.


Following the ruling, Iraq’s federal government, which has long opposed allowing the Kurdistan regional government (KRG) to independently export oil, has increased its efforts to control export revenues from Erbil, the capital of the KRI.

Before the ruling, Dallas-based HKN Energy wrote to U.S. ambassadors in Baghdad and Ankara in January seeking mediation in a separate case dating back to 2014 concerning the Iraq-Turkey pipeline (ITP), a copy of the letter seen by Reuters shows.

Baghdad claims that Turkey violated the ITP agreement by allowing KRG exports - it deems illegal – through the pipeline to the Turkish port of Ceyhan.

Turkey's energy ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

The final hearing from the case took place in Paris in July, and the International Chamber of Commerce will issue a final decision in the coming months, Iraq's oil ministry said.

Turkey's next steps remain unclear should the court rule in Iraq’s favour, an outcome considered likely, according to three sources directly involved.

At least one other oil firm has engaged at senior levels with four direct and indirect stakeholder governments to encourage engagement, a representative from the company told Reuters, on condition of anonymity.

Other operators in the KRI, Genel Energy and Chevron, declined to comment on the arbitration case, while DNO and Gulf Keystone did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

BARRELS AT RISK

Apart from requiring Turkey to get more crude from Iran and Russia, a cessation of oil flows through the ITP, would cause the KRI's economy to collapse, HKN's letter to U.S. representatives said.

Neither the KRG's ministry of natural resources nor the oil ministry in Baghdad responded to a request for comment.

Already Iraq is getting less than the full benefit of high oil prices, which leapt to 14-year-highs after major oil exporter Russia invaded Ukraine in February and they remain close to $100 a barrel.

The ITP has the capacity to pump up to 900,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude, roughly 1% of daily world oil demand, from state-owned oil marketer SOMO as well as the KRG.

For now it is pumping 500,000 bpd from northern Iraqi fields, which will struggle to boost production further without new investment.

Analysts have said companies will withdraw from the Kurdistan region unless the environment showed improves.

Already many foreign companies have lost interest.

They first came to Kurdistan in the era of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, when the region was considered more stable and secure than the rest of Iraq.

As security has deteriorated, the handful of mostly small and medium-sized firms left has also sought U.S. engagement to help deter attacks against energy infrastructure and improve security generally.

The firms gave their backing to letters written from U.S. congress members to Secretary of State Antony Blinken sent in August, according to sources directly involved in the matter. They asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.

The letters urged high-level engagement with Erbil and Baghdad to safeguard the stability of the KRI’s economy and to ensure Iraq is free from Iranian interference.

TEPID U.S. INTEREST

State Department spokesperson Ned Price said on Aug. 16 that disputes between Baghdad and Erbil were between the two sides, but the United States could encourage dialogue.

The State Department summoned U.S. law firm Vinson & Elkins, which is representing Iraq’s oil ministry in Baghdad, for a briefing in Washington on the ITP dispute in July.

A further two briefings are likely to take place in Baghdad and Washington, according to a source familiar with the matter.

"Baghdad would certainly welcome U.S. statements to the KRG leadership that it should follow the Iraqi constitutional arrangements for the oil industry in Iraq," partner at Vinson & Elkins James Loftis said.

The U.S. state department declined to comment but industry experts believe U.S. intervention is unlikely and in any case might not help.

"The U.S. has become disengaged from Iraq over the past decade. No pressure from Washington or other governments will resolve the issues between Baghdad and the Kurds," Raad Alkadiri, managing director for energy, climate, and sustainability at Eurasia Group.

A Kurdish official told Reuters in August the KRG had asked the United States to increase their defence capabilities, but said it was not hopeful as the United States' higher priority is reviving the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.

(Reporting by Rowena Edwards in London; additional reporting by Amina Ismail in Erbil, Simon Lewis in Washington, and Can Sezer in Istanbul; editing by Barbara Lewis)

Ivorian lawyers denounce "conspiracy" against activist


By Africanews

 Last updated: 01/09/22

IVORY COAST

Lawyers representing Ivorian activist Pulcherie Gbalet have denounced her latest detention as a plot to silence her.

The arrests follow a trip to Mali where 49 Ivorian soldiers have been detained since July 10th.

On Wednesday the Ivorian prosecution accused Gbalet of "colluding with foreign agents" with the aim of discrediting the state.

Pulcherie Gbalet's lawyer, Eric Saki, denounced the accusation.

"We find it curious that a deputy (MP Amara Fofana, ed.) from our republic goes out on social networks, and uses terms that can be interpreted as threats. And only a few hours later the Public Prosecutor initiates proceedings against her. We definitely believe this is a conspiracy", said Saki.

During her stay in Mali, Pulcherie Gbalet met with NGO leaders and people close to the military junta in power since August 2020 in that country, discussing with them the fate of the 49 Ivorian soldiers.

Considered as "mercenaries", these soldiers have been charged by the Malian justice system, notably for "attempting to undermine the external security of the state".

Abidjan asserts that they were on a mission for the UN and has demanded their release.

Pulchérie Gbalet, who is close to the opposition to President Alassane Ouattara, was imprisoned for eight months between August 2020 and April 2021 for demonstrating and calling for demonstrations against the head of state's candidacy for a new term in the October 2020 presidential election.

Lawyers representing Ivorian activist Pulcherie Gbalet -

Sorry Zuckerberg, the Metaverse Won't Replace Zoom

Thursday, 1 September, 2022 - 

Parmy Olson

“Welcome, welcome!” My guide, Philip, waves at me from his seat in a virtual conference room, where he’s wearing a green shirt and sitting at a desk. I’m at Facebook’s Reality Labs headquarters in Burlingame, California, wearing Meta Platform Inc.’s Quest 2 headset. Philip is in another room there as his cartoonish-looking avatar hops to another seat using a button on his virtual dashboard.

“You may have noticed when I changed seats that you heard me a little louder and a little closer in your left ear,” he says, noticeably more loudly and to-the-left-of-me than before. I jump to a different seat too.

“Right,” I say.

“You see!” says Philip. “Now you sound a little bit further away.”

This neat trick of spatial-audio technology is part of the pitch that Facebook and its parent, Meta Platforms Inc., are making to employers to gain a foothold in the metaverse, the virtual world that Mark Zuckerberg says is the next chapter of the internet. Though this world will almost certainly be a part of our future, it probably won’t be a place for work meetings.

In Horizon Workrooms, where our avatars are engaging, I can “write” on a virtual white board, and Philip can share his screen to show a PowerPoint presentation. I can even change our environment to a lakeside cabin, and there’s a blank space on the wall where I can put a company logo. I can get out of my seat and “stand” by the whiteboard.

That’s important, says Philip, because if I’m standing at the front, then everyone else feels like they’re in an audience. “It really helps with immersion,” he says.

This abstract notion of immersion is a key selling point. “How do we help businesses create an immersive presence, regardless of where you are?” asked Ade Ajayi, who recently started heading up efforts to sell the virtual conference room tech to employers. He used the word “immersive” another eight times in our 30-minute conversation.

When I asked if his own team uses Workrooms, Ajayi said they hopped on it every so often. It’s more effective than Zoom because creating and viewing documents in virtual reality “creates a more immersive and engaging experience,” he said, without elaborating.

After the demo and conversation with Ajayi, I struggled to see how being immersed with my colleagues would be more worthwhile than a normal video call. For a start, the headset was heavy, and zooming around made my stomach lurch a little. One Facebook representative said they took the headsets off every 30 minutes in their weekly meetings to give their eyes and heads a break. Immersion has its limits.

In fact, numerous VR companies don’t even meet in virtual reality for work meetings, says Marshall Mosher, CEO of virtual-reality startup Vestigo. They prefer Zoom, or even old-fashioned phone calls. It seems that VR’s real value for employers is using it to forge stronger relationships through fun and games, or training.

Facebook’s representatives wouldn’t tell me which companies were currently using Horizon Workrooms, but they did mention Accenture Plc, the consulting firm, and the drugmaker AstraZeneca Plc in examples about how VR meetings could work.

Accenture told me it had bought 60,000 Quest 2 headsets last year, but that it wasn’t using Horizon Workrooms for meetings. Instead, new employees used an app from Microsoft Corp. called AltSpace VR, where they go into virtual buildings for new-hire orientation and training. AstraZeneca declined to comment.

Bank of America Corp., which recently bought 4,000 alternative virtual-reality headsets, uses them for staff training. The bank is looking at ways it could use VR for meetings, but said it also had to consider issues like network security and user experience. “We don’t want to do it simply because we can,” according to BoA innovation executive Mike Wynn.

Often, companies that buy VR headsets for meetings typically realize they’re more useful for internal events or training, according to Mosher.

Facebook is tackling an increasingly sensitive relationship between employer and employee, one made all the more tense by the rise of remote working. Employers are desperate to better manage remote staff who may be feeling lonely and isolated. While this problem presents itself as an opportunity, Facebook faces a unique challenge in targeting the enterprise.

Already, since 2016, Facebook has been selling Workplace, an enterprise version of the Facebook app that rivals Microsoft’s Teams and Slack. Employees at Starbucks Corp., Walmart Inc. and the government of Singapore use it for group chats, video conferencing and sharing news links. But in six years, Workplace has amassed just 7 million paid users. That’s still well below the 270 million people using Microsoft Teams every month, or the 20 million people using Slack, according to an estimate from the Business of Apps, an app news site. All three services are subscription based.

Ultimately, cloning a conference room in VR isn’t going to make collaboration more effective, and replicating the sensation of being in a room with your colleagues is a superficial answer to staff isolation. For that, companies with remote workers are better off holding quarterly offsite meetings, where their staff can meet face-to-face over the course of a few days for fun and real-world collaboration. They can even have a fun VR adventure together, like climbing Mt. Everest.

Finally, there’s the big elephant in the room: Facebook’s sketchy reputation on privacy and social harm. According to a TechCrunch report in January, “Workplace from Meta” had recently nabbed a large restaurant chain as a client but was asked not to announce the deal because they were concerned about “reputation issues.”

That may be hampering Facebook’s enterprise efforts in VR too. Some employers don’t want to force their employees to use or open up a Facebook account, which they need to use the Oculus, says Mosher, citing previous conversations with clients who said they also weren’t comfortable with their corporate data flowing through Facebook.

“I know Facebook has assured everyone who works with them that the privacy is super solid,” he said. “But people don’t think that way when it comes to Facebook’s brand.” Shaking off that notoriety may be even harder than getting employers to swap their Zooms for VR, no matter how immersive.

 

George Yeo on Southeast Asia's Chinese diaspora, regional anti-Chinese sentiment, and Lee Kuan Yew's US-China calculations

AUGUST 31, 2022ByGEORGE YEO

George Yeo, former foreign minister of Singapore.

South China Morning Post

For half a year, Singapore's former foreign minister George Yeo met and mused over a wide range of topics with writer Woon Tai Ho and research assistant Keith Yap, in weekly interview sessions which lasted two to three hours each time.

The result of the interviews is a series of three books. In the first book, George Yeo: Musings, the 67-year-old offers his views on India, China, Asean, Europe, the US and other parts of the world, and how Singapore's history and destiny are connected to all of them.

In this excerpt, Yeo addresses Singapore's strong diasporic links with China, its relationship with the mainland and regional suspicions about these ties.

How will Singapore's connection with China affect its ties with other countries?

As China moves to centre stage in global politics and economics, the relationship between China and the Chinese diaspora will naturally grow stronger.

Chinese communities which lost their connection to China (like the Peranakans of Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore) are finding renewed interest in Chinese heritage and language.

For generations, the Peranakans of Singapore and Malaya developed their own subculture.

They were self-consciously Chinese but looked down on new Chinese migrants, whom they called the sinkeh.

Peranakan food is a favourite cuisine among Singaporeans and Malaysians. The fastidiousness of their womenfolk is expressed not only in their food and dressing but also, and especially, in their jewellery.

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When in mourning, the women wear only silver jewellery as gold is reserved for celebrations.

In 1993, Edmond Chin put together a delightful exhibition called Gilding the Phoenix at the old Tao Nan School, which became a part of the Asian Civilisations Museum.

Many of Singapore's first generation of leaders including Lee Kuan Yew, Goh Keng Swee and Lim Kim San were Peranakans.

With the rise of China, Peranakans are reconnecting to their mother culture. This creates new tensions.

In the US today, American-Chinese working in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (Stem) have suddenly found themselves under surveillance or suspicion by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) because of worsening relations between the US and China.

In 2018, the director of the FBI, Christopher Wray, said the US was concerned with "the China threat as not just a whole-of-government threat, but a whole-of-society threat on their end", which required "a whole-of-society response by us".

In a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in January 2022, Wray stressed again, "I want to focus on it here tonight because it's reached a new level – more brazen, more damaging, than ever before, and it's vital, vital that all of us focus on that threat together".

In Southeast Asia, ethnic Chinese have gone through difficult periods in the past. After South Vietnam fell to the North in 1975, the first waves of boatpeople were mostly Chinese.

Under Suharto, Indonesia banned Chinese language and literature, probably the only country in the world to do such a thing.

I remember reading with disgust customs forms which stated that, along with drugs and firearms, Chinese-language material was also considered contraband.

In Thailand, those of Chinese descent were not allowed to join the army (although many still did).

Anti-Chinese sentiment

The main cause of anti-Chinese sentiment in Southeast Asia is the disproportionate role ethnic Chinese play in business.

Among the very wealthy, many are ethnic Chinese. Some are known for their philanthropic work like Lee Kong Chian's family, but a few behave badly and live ostentatiously.

Thailand's King Rama VI criticised the ethnic Chinese as the Jews of the East even though his own ancestor, Rama I, had Chinese blood.

They are also seen as being disloyal or not loyal enough. Overseas Chinese supported China's resistance against increasing Japanese encroachment into the Chinese mainland from the early 1930s.

Tan Kah Kee organised the Nanyang Federation of China Relief Fund Technicians.

From 1939 to 1942, over 3,000 overseas Chinese volunteered as truck drivers and mechanics in China along the Rangoon-Yunnan Road. About 1,800 technicians died from bombing, disease and exhaustion.

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His nephew, Tan Keong Choon, raised money to build a memorial by Dian Lake near Kunming to remember their sacrifice.

At the Ee Hoe Hean Club in Singapore, there is an interesting memorial hall to Tan Kah Kee and other Singapore-Chinese leaders.

Japan viewed overseas Chinese communities in Southeast Asia as extensions of China.

Japan's invasion of Southeast Asia was carefully planned for years before it was executed in December 1941. Plans for the Malayan Campaign were made in Taiwan (which Japan took from Qing China in 1895).

In his book, The Killer They Called a God, Ian Ward writes about how Lieutenant Colonel Masanobu Tsuji drew up a detailed plan to eliminate many overseas Chinese once the Japanese army had occupied Singapore.

Post-war sources revealed that the order was to kill 50,000. The Japanese referred to the Sook Ching as the Kakyō Shukusei, meaning purging of overseas Chinese. Sook Ching was second only to Nanjing in the cruelty inflicted on a civilian population.

During the Japanese occupation of Malaya, the Malayan Peoples' Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA), led by the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM), fought a guerilla war against the Japanese in the jungle. They were mostly Chinese.

Between the Japanese surrender on Aug 15, 1945, and the return of British forces in September that year, the MPAJA took action against Japanese collaborators, many of whom were Malay.

Ultimately, the failure of the CPM struggle in Malaya was due to their inability to win over the Malays, who expressed their nationalism through the United Malays National Organisation (Umno).

Photojournalist and artist Sim Chi Yin at her exhibition on the Malayan Emergency in Jan 2018. She was inspired by her late grandfather’s experience to look into the large-scale deportation of ethnic Chinese Malayans by the British from 1948 to 1960.
PHOTO: South China Morning Post

The Malayan Emergency will eventually be seen in the historical context as a nationalist struggle which failed because of racial division which the British exploited.

Many young men lost their lives in pursuit of a righteous cause. Robert Kuok burns a joss stick every day for his second brother, who was killed by the British during the Emergency and whom he admired for his good-heartedness, brilliance and eloquence.

The Straits Times had a photographer, Sim Chi Yin, who accompanied me on a number of overseas trips when I was a minister.

On one such trip to Hong Kong, I bumped into her in Stanley one evening. She told me that she had an exhibition on the Emergency.

When I asked her about the reason for her interest, she said that it was the story of her grandfather, who had been banished to China during the Emergency and killed by the Kuomintang (KMT).

The exhibition was titled One Day We'll Understand.

In both Malaya and Singapore, the British were determined to hand power over to credible nationalist groups who were less unfriendly to them.

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In Malaya, the proposal for a Malayan Union was changed to one for the Malayan Federation, enshrining the position of the sultans and Malay rights.

In Singapore, the British favoured Lee Kuan Yew and his faction in the People's Action Party (PAP). Both direct and indirect British interventions at critical moments were decisive.

The British did not want an independent Singapore because it could become a satellite of China. They manoeuvred for Singapore to gain independence through the merger with Malaysia.

Lee Kuan Yew later said that Sarawak and Sabah were the dowry the British gave to [Malaysia's independence leader] Tunku Abdul Rahman to admit Singapore into Malaysia.

When the Tunku agreed two years later that Singapore could go free, Lee Kuan Yew wrote that he kept it a closely-guarded secret from the British until it was irreversible because they would have thwarted it.

Although many ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia threw themselves into nationalist struggles against the colonial enemy, like the Philippines' Jose Rizal, as a group they were sometimes seen to be less supportive, as in Indonesia, or too aligned with China-backed communist movements, as in Thailand and Malaya.

When, for whatever reason, countries in Southeast Asia are unhappy with their indigenous Chinese populations, they project their unhappiness on Singapore as a headquarters for Southeast Asian Chinese.

Regional suspicions about Singapore

Whatever we say or do, the fact is that many countries factor Singapore's Chinese-ness into their planning and calculations. For this reason, Lee Kuan Yew held back diplomatic relations with China until Indonesia had done so.

To some extent, we have succeeded in convincing other countries that while Singapore has close cultural ties to China; on political matters, we calculate in our own self-interest.

One day in the mid-1990s, Singapore's relations with China went through a bad patch.

Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas expressed his concern about the state of Singapore-China relations to me, and indirectly offered his assistance.

I was pleasantly surprised that here was Indonesia worried that we were having bad relations with China.

For a period, Vietnam viewed us with suspicion, too.

After Vietnamese divisions moved into Cambodia in 1978, Singapore, together with other Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) countries, worked with China to support anti-Vietnam forces in Cambodia. (Unlike China and Thailand, Singapore kept a distance from the Khmer Rouge but supported all other factions.)

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At the UN and other international gatherings, we combined efforts to deny legitimacy to the government in Phnom Penh installed by Vietnam.

After 10 years, Vietnam withdrew from Cambodia. They then decided to follow China in gradually opening up its economy.

Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet visited Singapore in 1991. At the end of a dinner hosted by Lee Kuan Yew at the Istana, Kiet asked Lee Kuan Yew to be an adviser to Vietnam.

Although he was taken aback and promised to visit Vietnam regularly, he did not agree to become an adviser.

I accompanied Lee Kuan Yew on his first three trips to Vietnam.

Relations steadily improved. The first Vietnam Singapore Industrial Project (VSIP), was a mini-Suzhou, established near Ho Chi Minh City in 1996. (Since then many VSIPs have sprouted across the length of Vietnam.)

When I was Minister for Trade and Industry, I co-chaired a bilateral commission with the Vietnam Minister for Planning as my counterpart.

Whenever meetings were held in Hanoi, I called on PM Phan Van Khai. He was always polite but somewhat formal until, one year, he spoke to me as if I was his minister and started giving me "homework".

Something had happened. My belief was that Vietnam had come to the conclusion that Singapore was not an agent of China and could become a strategic partner.

On Khai's next visit to Singapore in 2004, the two countries launched the Connectivity Initiative, which I helped put together for Goh Chok Tong.

Will the suspicions ebb eventually?

I doubt so. Chinese-ness is an inseparable part of Singapore. Others believe and expect that so long as Singapore's core interests are not affected, Chinese-Singaporeans are likely to view China with greater sympathy.

Some of my Chinese Singaporean friends who are critical of China nonetheless get upset when they see Western countries finding fault with China.

Singapore's one-China policy is not merely a decision. The position that Taiwan is part of China and only separated because of Japan up to 1945 and the US after that is widely held by older Chinese-Singaporeans.

A Singapore government that departs from this policy is likely to face strong opposition from the majority of older Chinese-Singaporeans.

In 1989, I was asked by Lee Kuan Yew to announce in Parliament that Singapore would allow US military forces in the Pacific to use our base facilities after the closure of Clark Air Base and Subic Bay.

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Without the US, Singapore could not be sure that the Straits of Malacca and Singapore Strait, which are our lifelines, would always be kept open.

Lee Kuan Yew was, however, very clear that should there be conflict between the US and China over Taiwan, Singapore would not be involved. I don't believe that position has changed despite close defence links between Singapore and the US.

Chinese communities everywhere in Southeast Asia are conscious of their "Jewish" status. Anti-Chinese sentiments have generally subsided but they are still there in the soil.

In countries where bad experiences are more recent, a certain sense of insecurity is pervasive, like background music.

Singapore is a safe harbour they know they can turn to in a crisis. In Singapore, they can celebrate their Chinese-ness without worrying that some may take offence.

However, there are a few who worry that if Singapore emphasises its Chinese-ness too much, they might be negatively affected. In my years as minister, I was conscious of this dynamic.

During my time at the Ministry of Information and the Arts, one of my missions was to promote Singapore's diverse heritage, including our Chinese heritage.

Vice-Prime Minister of The People’s Republic of China Zhu Rongji (right) during a meeting with Indonesian President Suharto (left) in May 1996 while in Jakarta to attend the Indonesia Summit Economic Conference.
PHOTO: Reuters

An Indonesian scholar of Chinese descent whom I know well whispered to a Singaporean friend of mine that he was uncomfortable with what I was doing.

That was during the Suharto years when Chinese language and culture were suppressed in Indonesia.

At the launch of the Chinese Heritage Centre in 1995, Mochtar Riady, an Indonesian-Chinese tycoon and a member of the Advisory Board, came for the first meeting chaired by Wee Cho Yaw.

He told the meeting that he received a phone call the day before from the Indonesian Home Minister asking him why he was going to Singapore for the meeting. It was a hint which he happily brushed aside.

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In 1998, Indonesia was shaken to its core by the Asian financial crisis. Shadowy figures orchestrated racist attacks on Chinese-Indonesians.

Many fled to Singapore and stayed here for months. I used to go running along East Coast Park and I remember seeing many of them taking evening strolls – women with their children and helpers in tow looking out to the sea.

Two years later, at a Ministry of Trade and Industry event, we invited the Indonesian scholar who had been uncomfortable with my promotion of Chinese heritage to give an in-house talk on the Indonesian economy.

Before he began, he expressed his gratitude to Singapore for our assistance to Indonesian Chinese in their darkest hour of need, choking on his tears.

Who we are is not only who we think we are, but also how others see us. We have to be aware of the games which big powers play, whether to influence us or to sow seeds of suspicion here.

George Yeo: Musings is available at all major bookstores in Singapore and Hong Kong from Sept 2022.

This article was first published in South China Morning Post.