California sues Amazon over anticompetitive pricing contracts


California filed an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon alleging the online retail giant forced merchants into anticompetitive pricing contracts. 

File photo by Friedemann Vogel/EPA-EFE

Sept. 14 (UPI) -- California has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon accusing the online retail giant of stifling competition by forcing inflated prices on other sites.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced the lawsuit Wednesday alleging Amazon violated California's Unfair Competition Law and Cartwright Act.

"For years, California consumers have paid more for their online purchases because of Amazon's anticompetitive contracting practices," Bonta said in a statement. "Amazon coerces merchants into agreements that keep prices artificially high, knowing full well that they can't afford to say no."

"With other e-commerce platforms unable to compete on price, consumers turn to Amazon as a one-stop shop for all their purchases," Bonta said.

California's lawsuit against Amazon comes after a similar complaint was filed in May 2021 by the District of Columbia. That suit was dismissed earlier this year and is under appeal.

The complaint filed Wednesday in San Francisco superior court targets the contractual language Amazon uses with third-party sellers.

"Merchants must agree not to offer lower prices elsewhere -- including competing sites like Walmart, Target, eBay and, in some cases, even on their own websites," Bonta said.

Merchants who violated the agreement allegedly faced fees or had their products removed from Amazon listings.

Amazon fired back and has called on the court to dismiss the lawsuit.

"The California Attorney General has it exactly backward. Sellers set their own prices for the products they offer in our store. Amazon takes pride in the fact that we offer low prices across the broadest selection, and like any store we reserve the right not to highlight offers to customers that are not priced competitively," Amazon said in a statement to CNN. "The relief the AG seeks would force Amazon to feature higher prices to customers, oddly going against core objectives of antitrust law."

Amazon accounts for about 38% of online sales in the United States, which is more than Walmart, eBay, Apple, Best Buy and Target combined, according to research firm Insider Intelligence. About 2 million sellers list their products on Amazon's third-party marketplace, which makes up 58% of the company's sales.

California's lawsuit seeks to ban Amazon from entering into anticompetitive contracts that hurt price competition. The suit also demands Amazon pay damages to compensate California consumers allegedly hurt by higher prices, as well as penalties to deter other companies from engaging in similar practices.

"With today's lawsuit, we're fighting back," Bonta said. "We won't allow Amazon to bend the market to its will at the expense of California consumers, small business owners, and a fair and competitive economy."

South Korea hits Meta, Google with record fines over privacy violations

Yang Cheong-sam, director of the Personal Information Protection Commission's investigation and coordination bureau, announces measures against Google and Meta on Wednesday for collecting personal information without users' consent. Photo by Yonhap

SEOUL, Sept. 14 (UPI) -- South Korea has fined U.S. tech giants Meta and Google a combined $71.8 million for collecting user information without consent and using it for customized advertisements, regulators announced Wednesday.

The country's Personal Information Protection Commission hit Google with a $49.7 million fine and Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, $22.1 million

The penalties are the highest ever by South Korea for violations of data protection laws, the regulatory watchdog said in a statement.

The commission said that Google and Meta did not clearly inform users or obtain their consent to collect and analyze personal online usage data, which was then utilized to create customized advertisements.

According to the watchdog, more than 82% of Google users and 98% of Meta users in South Korea have had their browsing and purchasing data from third-party sites harvested by the companies without their knowledge.

Yoon Jong-in, chairman of the PIPC, said that the accumulated data represents "a risk of serious infringement of individual privacy."

Customers are seen at Meta's first brick-and-mortar retail store in Burlingame, Calif., on May 9. The company owns Facebook and Instagram. 

File Photo by Terry Schmitt/UPI

The regulators also ordered Google and Meta to clearly inform users when their information is being collected and used and to obtain their consent in a way that enables them to maintain their right to privacy.

Both companies disagreed with Wednesday's ruling.

"While we respect the PIPC's decision, we are confident that we work with our clients in a legally compliant way that meets the processes required by local regulations," a Meta spokesman said in a statement emailed to UPI.

"As such, we do not agree with the PIPC's decision, and will be open to all options including seeking a ruling from the court."

Google expressed "deep regrets" after the announcement and said it would continue to communicate with the commission.

Wednesday's announcement is not the first time South Korean regulators have tangled with U.S. tech powerhouses. Last September, the country's antitrust watchdog fined Google nearly $180 million for abusing its dominance in the mobile operating systems and app markets.

South Korean legislators also passed a groundbreaking law last year that prevents Google and Apple from forcing mobile developers to use their proprietary payment channels for in-app purchases.

Provenance probe of Nazi era trove goes on display in Bern

09- 15- 2022 

A photograph taken on September 14, 2022, shows an employee walking past a work by Gustave Courbet titled “View of the Ridge Park under the snow, around 1874” ahead of the public opening of the exhibition “Taking Stock, Gurlitt in Review” showing some works of Cornelius Gurlitt’s estate that included works looted from Jews by the Nazis, at the Museum of Fine Arts in Bern. AFPPIX

BERN: When a Bern museum inherited a spectacular collection of some 1,600 artworks, including by masters like Monet, Gauguin and Picasso, it spent seven months mulling whether to accept the offer.

The collection left to the Kunstmuseum in 2014 by Cornelius Gurlitt, whose father Hildebrand Gurlitt had worked as an art dealer for the Nazis, included works looted from Jewish owners during World War II.

A new exhibit, “Taking stock. Gurlitt in Review”, explores the museum’s journey researching the pieces’ provenance and the challenges of determining its obligations in the face of the tumultuous Gurlitt legacy.

The exhibit, which will run from Friday through mid-January, comes after the museum last year agreed how to handle works whose provenance remained undetermined.

It gave up 38 works known or suspected to be looted by the Nazis, but decided to hold onto 1,091 pieces where provenance information was incomplete but gave no indication of looting.

Some slammed that decision as immoral, but the museum hit back, stressing the “big responsibility” it took on when it accepted the Gurlitt bequest.

“We developed categories to be able to make a reasonable decision” based on the provenance and any possible indications of looting, Marcel Brulhart, the museum board member and legal expert, said during a presentation of the exhibit.

“I think we have found a fair solution.”

‘Illusion'

Living in a cluttered Munich apartment surrounded by paintings by the likes of Chagall and Matisse, Cornelius Gurlitt suddenly found himself in the spotlight after German tax authorities discovered part of his collection in 2012.

Before he died in 2014 at the age of 81, the man described by media as an eccentric recluse struck an agreement with the German government that any plundered works would be returned to their rightful owners.

The Bern museum, which he named as his sole heir, said it would honour that wish, and set about trying to determine each piece's provenance.

Some of the works were determined to have been seized from Jews by the Nazis and sold on, confiscated as “degenerate” works, or sold by their fleeing Jewish owners at a low price.

“It is an illusion to think that we will ever have full insight” into the artworks’ provenance, Brulhart told AFP.

“History moves forward, and many documents have been destroyed.”

He stressed that Hildebrand Gurlitt had collected art his entire life, but only worked for the Third Reich “for a very limited period”.

Brulhart said, in his opinion, the Gurlitt affair marked a real “turning point” by showing it is possible to find fair solutions even in cases where insight into a piece’s provenance is incomplete.

'Total transparency'

Museum director Nina Zimmer said they had aimed from the start for “total transparency” with the unique international provenance research project.

It had endeavoured to reevaluate prior expertise when new information surfaced and had sought fair solutions with any possible rights-holders, even in cases where the provenance was not fully established, she said.

So far, 11 works have been restituted, including a long-lost Matisse painting “Seated Woman”, which was returned to the family of the late art dealer Paul Rosenberg in 2015.

Nearly 30 works are still disputed, Brulhart said.

The current exhibit is the third at the Bern museum focused on the Gurlitt collection, after ones in 2017 and 2018.

It explores in detail the ethical guidelines, legal framework and results of the research project into the Gurlitt trove, curator Nikola Doll told AFP.

Through 14 individual thematic spaces, it presents around 350 pieces, including historical documents linked to the fraught bequest from national archives in Germany, France and Switzerland.

Artworks on display from the collection include those by masters like Cezanne, Kandinsky, Munch and Rodin. - AFP

Chinese Moves On Taiwan Rattle Remote Japanese Island

By Mathias CENA
09/14/22 

Map locating Japan's southwestern Nansei islands with the military bases.

Life may seem tranquil on Japan's remote Yonaguni island, where wild horses graze and tourists dive to spot hammerhead sharks, but China's recent huge military exercises have rattled residents.


The western island is just 110 kilometres (70 miles) from Taiwan, and a Chinese missile fired during the drills last month landed not far from Yonaguni's shores.

"Everyone is on edge," Shigenori Takenishi, head of the island's fishing association, told AFP.

"Even if we don't talk about it, we still have the memory of the fear we felt, of the shock."

He told fishing boats to stay in port during the drills that followed US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan in defiance of Beijing's warnings.

The incident was the latest reminder of how growing Chinese assertiveness has affected Yonaguni, shifting debate about a contentious military presence on the island.

People used to say Yonaguni was defended by two guns, one for each policeman stationed there.


But since 2016, the island has hosted a base for Japan's army, the Self-Defense Forces, which was established despite initial objections from residents.

The base for maritime and air surveillance is home to 170 soldiers, who with their families make up 15 percent of Yonaguni's population of 1,700.

An "electronic warfare" unit is also due to be installed there by March 2024.

"When we see Chinese military activity today, we tell ourselves that we got our base just in time," Yonaguni's mayor Kenichi Itokazu told AFP.

"We've succeeded in sending a message to China."

That view was not always held so widely on the island.

Yonaguni is part of Okinawa prefecture, where resentment against military presence traditionally runs high.

A quarter of the region's population perished in the World War II Battle of Okinawa in 1945, and it remained under US occupation until 1972.

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Today, Okinawa hosts most of the US bases in Japan.

Yonaguni is closer to Taiwan, Seoul and even Beijing than the Japanese capital Tokyo.

Conscious of its vulnerability, officials have built up a military presence on the Nansei island chain, which extends 1,200 kilometres from Japan's main islands to Yonaguni.

In addition to the security benefits, the government argued a base would bring economic windfalls to the 30-square-kilometre (11-square-mile) island.


Local officials once felt that Yonaguni's economic future lay with Taiwan and other nearby commercial hubs, even campaigning to become a "special zone for inter-regional exchange".

But the government rejected that and instead began in 2007 to pave the way for the base.

Support for the plan received a boost from a diplomatic crisis with Beijing in 2010, and by 2015, around 60 percent of Yonaguni's residents backed the base in a referendum.

Since then, Chinese sabre-rattling and a string of maritime incidents have helped solidify support.

"Almost no one is against the base now," said Shigeru Yonahara, 60, a resident who supported the base.

There are holdouts though, including some who fear the base will instead make Yonaguni a target, particularly if China seeks to forcibly bring Taiwan under its control.

"If there is a crisis, will they protect those living here? And can they really help us in the case of an invasion of Taiwan?" said Masakatsu Uehara, a 62-year-old fisherman.

Both backers and critics agree that the base has changed Yonaguni, including the radar facility's lights that compete with the starry sky over the island.

A long-awaited incinerator that started operating last year was financed almost entirely by the defence ministry, and rent from the base helps pay for free lunches at the island's schools.

Yonaguni has no high school and limited employment. It saw decades of decline after its thriving commercial links with Taiwan were severed following World War II.

Now, taxes paid by base residents account for a fifth of Yonaguni's revenue.

But not everyone sees the changes as positive, including municipal council member Chiyoki Tasato, who has long opposed the base.

He resents the fact that Japanese army families can influence policy by voting in local elections, and argues the base's economic impact makes it hard for residents to speak freely on the issue.

They "can't say openly that they are against the base, because the economic situation isn't good," Tasato told AFP.

"We prefer to think about what we're going to eat tomorrow."

For mayor Itokazu though, there is no arguing with the economic boost the base provides.

And he said the security situation makes its presence a clear necessity.

"As the saying goes, 'If you want peace, prepare yourself for war.' It's about deterrence."

China's huge military drills around Taiwan rattled the residents of Japan's remote Yonaguni island

Yonaguni's mayor Kenichi Itokazu says the Japanese military base on the island is necessary for security

Some Yonaguni residents fear the Japanese military base there makes the island a target

A Japan Coast Guard vessel patrols the waters off Yonaguni in August 2022

Angola's Lourenco to be sworn in after disputed win

Wed, September 14, 2022 


Angolan President Joao Lourenco is to be sworn in for a second term on Thursday amid tight security after a disputed electoral win last month.

The inauguration will be held on the historic palm tree-lined Praca da Republica square in the centre of the capital, Luanda.

Large numbers of police and military forces patrolled the streets ahead of the ceremony, AFP correspondents saw -- a presence the main opposition party said aimed at stifling dissent.

"This setup aims to intimidate citizens who want to demonstrate against the election results on the day of the inauguration of a president without legitimacy," the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) said in a statement.


Several heads of state and government, including Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, are expected to be in attendance.

Lourenco, 68, returned to power after the August 24 vote gave his Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) a thin majority, winning just 51.17 percent of the votes.

The vote was to choose members of parliament, where the largest party automatically selects the president.

It was the MPLA's poorest showing in the oil-rich African country it has controlled since independence from Portugal in 1975.

UNITA -- a former rebel movement which fought a bitter 27-year civil war against the MPLA government -- made significant gains, earning 43.95 percent of the vote, up from 26.67 percent in 2017.

Opposition parties and civic groups say the vote was marred by irregularities.

UNITA disputed the results in court but its appeal was tossed out.

"Tomorrow I will stay at home. There are too many police forces around town," Joao, a high school student who only gave his first name, said at a bus stop on the outskirts of Luanda.

- 'President for all' -

Under its charismatic leader Adalberto Costa Junior, 60, UNITA has proved popular in urban areas and among young voters clamouring for economic change.

It did particularly well in the capital, where it won a majority for the first time.

The MPLA instead lost its two-thirds parliamentary majority with its seats dropping to 124 from 150.

Lourenco struck a conciliatory tone after the vote, pledging to promote "dialogue" and be the "president of all Angolans".

But Costa Junior has said he will skip the inauguration and promised protests against the result of the vote, but has said his party will join the new parliament.

Foreign observers from other parts of Africa praised the peaceful conduct of the polls but raised concerns over press freedom and the accuracy of the electoral roll.

The former general first came to power in 2017 when he took over from long-time ruler Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who bequeathed a country deep in recession and riddled by corruption and nepotism.

Lourenco swiftly turned on his predecessor, launching an anti-graft campaign targeting his family and friends, which critics say was a political stunt.

He also embarked on an ambitious reform programme to lure foreign investors and diversify the economy.

But that has so far failed to brighten the prospects of many of Angola's 33 million people who are mired in poverty.

Dos Santos died in Spain in July. State funerals for the late strongman were held in August in the same square where Lourenco is to be sworn in.

bur-sn/ub/ri/ser

Joao Lourenco: Angola's reformist leader back in driving seat

Wed, September 14, 2022 


A general who became a graft buster and turned on his political patron, Angolan President Joao Lourenco will be sworn in for a second term on Thursday but faces dwindling popularity in a country struggling with problems.

Nicknamed JLo, the 68-year-old secured a new five-year tenure in the tightest-ever vote held in the oil-rich country.

Lourenco leads the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) party, which has ruled since independence from Portugal in 1975.

In the August 24 ballot, the MPLA suffered its worst performance while its long-term rival, UNITA, surged.

Lourenco's victory was declared just 24 hours after he buried his predecessor, long-time ruler Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who died in Spain in July.


Handpicked by dos Santos, Lourenco took the helm in 2017. That year his party won with a comfortable 61 percent of the vote. This time he notched up just 51 percent.

He had promised sweeping economic reforms and a drive against graft.

But the election outcome reflected fading support for the historic ruling party, especially among young people clamouring for jobs and a better life.
- Political purgatory -

Joao Manuel Goncalves Lourenco was born in Lobito in western Angola.

As a young man, he fought the colonial power Portugal and then after independence took part in the civil war that erupted between the MPLA government and UNITA rebels.


Lourenco studied in the former Soviet Union, which trained many rising young African nationalists during decolonisation.

He became political chief of the armed wing of the MPLA in the civil war -- a Cold War proxy conflict that drew in Cuban forces to fight alongside the MPLA, while CIA-backed militias did battle against them.

The ex-artillery general ascended through the MPLA hierarchy, leading the party in parliament before becoming deputy speaker.

Yet his ambition almost ended his career.

Unable to hide his angling for the top job, he was sidelined by dos Santos around the turn of the century.

In 2014, he was brought back from the cold -- he was appointed defence minister and three years later eased himself into the top job.

- Anti-graft drive -

After winning the 2017 elections, Lourenco quickly turned on his predecessor, starting an anti-corruption drive to recoup the billions allegedly embezzled by dos Santos' family.

Inheriting an economy deep in recession, he launched ambitious reforms to diversify government revenue and privatise state-owned firms.

Lourenco has trumpeted his successes, but many of Angola's 33 million people still wallow in poverty.

His anti-graft push has also been criticised as selective and politically motivated, fuelling divisions within the MPLA.

Dos Santos's death worsened his woes, triggering a public spat with the veteran revolutionary leader's children -- several of whom face graft investigations.

Even so, Lourenco's change in tack from the previous regime has won praise abroad.

He has become the go-to mediator in Africa -- dealing with the crisis in the Central Africa Republic or brokering talks between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda.

He is married to Ana Dias, a former planning minister who also represented Angola at the World Bank. They have six children.

bur-sn/ri/ser

Ford unveils newest Mustang, extending gasoline-powered life

John BIERS
Wed, September 14, 2022 


Ford unveiled Wednesday its seventh-generation Mustang in a brash and boisterous launch event in downtown Detroit that pointed to the staying power of gasoline-powered vehicles.

The big reveal had been teased for months by company officials and organized as a celebration of the 58-year-old model. The event, organized for Ford employees and Mustang mavens, featured pulsating music, slickly produced videos on wide screens and a light projection of the brand's horse logo onto a city building that loomed in the background.

The 50-minute event culminated with the arrival of three sleek new sedans in different trims and, later, a fourth option, a racing vehicle called "Dark Horse" that was introduced dramatically by Ed Krenz, Ford's chief functional engineer for performance.

"Its name is indicative of its design and its aspirations," Krenz told a cheering crowd. "Its demeanor: absolutely sinister. Dark Horse is for the enthusiast who wants purebred force of nature."

Ford, which has dived into EV investment as much as any company in recent years, had refrained ahead of Wednesday from saying whether the new Mustang would be electric or gasoline-powered.

But the company made no apologies for its choice to go with the internal combustion engine (ICE).

"Investing in another generation of Mustang is a big statement at a time when many of our competitors are exiting the business of internal combustion vehicles," said Jim Farley, CEO of Ford Motor Company in a press release, adding that the company is "turbocharging" ICE growth even as it invests $50 billion in EV growth through 2026.


Mustang brand manager Jim Owens said some customers prefer the "visceral" feeling of an ICE vehicle, adding that the company has already released an EV version of the Mustang, the Mach-E sport utility vehicle.

"We know that there are customers out there in the sports car segment who still want the internal combustion engine," he told AFP in an interview before launch.

"There are a lot of late millennials and early Gen Zers who are into the sports car segment, and we think we have some wonderful things in here that are going to draw them in," he said.
- Rival muscle cars exit -

The latest Mustang -- once the inspiration for a Serge Gainsbourg song and seen in some 3,000 movies -- features a "fighter jet-inspired" interior and performance features that make it "the most exhilarating and fun-to-drive yet," Ford said.

The newest Mustang nods to earlier versions in its lighting and grille design, while also employing the latest in digital technology. This includes a key fob that lets drivers who love the sound of an engine revving satisfy their fix with the press of a button.

By extending the Mustang's run, Ford runs counter to some other brands such as Dodge, which in August said it was phasing out its gasoline-powered muscle car models, the Challenger and the Charger.

Ford's vehicle launch event also harked back to the spectacle of past car shows, even though the industry has been moving away from that marketing model in favor of online launches.

The Detroit Auto Show of yore was known for stunts such as the 1992 arrival of the Jeep Grand Cherokee, which announced itself by crashing through glass.

For Wednesday's Mustang launch, Ford organized a "Stampede" of earlier Mustangs that caravaned from around the country to Hart Plaza in downtown Detroit, creating an impressive row of Mustangs that went on for blocks.

Participants were encouraged to participate in a best-dressed contest of "attire inspired by their favorite period in Mustang history, from the 1960s through today," with the first-place prize a two-year car lease for a new Mustang.

The event also appeared to be intended as a morale boost for "Motor City," where the auto show has been revived for the first time since 2019 after pandemic cancellations. Presenters repeatedly acknowledged the contribution of local Ford employees, especially at the nearby Flat Rock Assembly Plant, where the Mustang is built.

TORTURE ROOMS
Syrian ex-prisoners haunted by horrors of 'salt rooms'

Author: AFP|Update: 15.09.2022 

Qais Murad, 36-year-old former inmate at Syria's Sednaya prison now living in Turkey, re-enacts an episode from his prison treatment / © AFP

When a Syrian prison guard tossed him into a dimly-lit room, the inmate Abdo was surprised to find himself standing ankle-deep in what appeared to be salt.

On that day in the winter of 2017, the terrified young man had already been locked up for two years in war-torn Syria's largest and most notorious prison, Sednaya.

Having been largely deprived of salt all that time in his meagre prison rations, he brought a handful of the coarse white crystals to his mouth with relish.


Moments later came the second, grisly, surprise: as a barefoot Abdo was treading gingerly across the room, he stumbled on a corpse, emaciated and half-buried in the salt.

Abdo soon found another two bodies, partially dehydrated by the mineral.

He had been thrown into what Syrian inmates call "salt rooms" -- primitive mortuaries designed to preserve bodies in the absence of refrigerated morgues.

Syrian ex-prisoners haunted by horrors of 'salt rooms' / © AFP

The corpses were being treated in a way already known to the embalmers of ancient Egypt, to keep up with the industrial-scale prison killings under President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

The salt rooms are described in detail for the first time in an upcoming report by the Association of Detainees and the Missing in Sednaya Prison, or ADMSP.

In additional research and interviews with former inmates, AFP found that at least two such salt rooms were created inside Sednaya.

Abdo, a man from Homs now aged 30 and living in eastern Lebanon, asked that his real name not be published for fear of reprisals against him and his family.

Diab Serriya, of the Association of Detainees and the Missing in Sednaya Prison, views a computer screen showing an image of the prison / © AFP

Speaking in his small rental flat in an unfinished building, he recounted the day he was thrown into the salt room, which served as his holding cell ahead of a military court hearing.

"My first thought was: may God have no mercy on them!" he said. "They have all this salt but don't put any in our food!

"Then I stepped on something cold. It was someone's leg."

- 'My heart died' -

Up to 100,000 people have died in Syrian regime prisons since 2011, a fifth of the war's entire death toll, according to Britain-based monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Moatassem Abdel Sater, a 42-year-old former inmate at Sednaya prison, with his wife Bara'ah and their children Othman, on the left, and Abdel Sattar / © AFP

Abdo, fortunate to have survived, described the salt room on the first floor of the red building as a rectangle of roughly six by eight metres (20 by 26 feet), with a rudimentary toilet in a corner.

"I thought this would be my fate: I would be executed and killed," he said, recalling how he curled up in a corner, crying and reciting verses from the Koran.

The guard eventually returned to escort him to the court, and Abdo lived to tell the tale.

On his way out of the room, he had noticed a pile of body bags near the door.

Like tens of thousands of others, he had been jailed on blanket terrorism charges. He was released in 2020 but says the experience scarred him for life.

"This was the hardest thing I ever experienced," he said. "My heart died in Sednaya. If someone announced the death of my brother right now, I wouldn't feel anything."

Around 30,000 people are thought to have been held at Sednaya alone since the start of the conflict. Only 6,000 were released.

Most of the others are officially considered missing because death certificates rarely reach the families unless relatives pay an exorbitant bribe, in what has become a major racket.

Moatassem Abdel Sater, a 42-year-old former inmate at Sednaya prison, accompanied by his child Othman, gives an interview at his home in Turkey / © AFP

AFP interviewed another former inmate, Moatassem Abdel Sater, who recounted a similar experience in 2014, in a different first-floor cell of around four by five metres, with no toilet.

Speaking at his new home in the Turkish town of Reyhanli, the 42-year-old recounted finding himself standing on thick layer of the kind of salt used to de-ice roads in winter.

"I looked to my right and there were four or five bodies," he said.

"They looked a bit like me," Moatassem said, describing how their skeletal limbs and scabies-covered skin matched his own emaciated body. "They looked like they had been mummified."

He said he still wonders why he was taken to the makeshift mortuary, on the day of his release, May 27, 2014, but guessed that "it might have been just to scare us".

- Black hole -

The ADMSP, after extensive research on the infamous prison, dates the opening of the first salt room to 2013, one of the deadliest years in the conflict.


Moatassem Abdel Sater draws a rudimentary sketch of the prison plan / © AFP

"We found that there were at least two salt rooms used for the bodies of those who died under torture, from sickness or hunger," the group's co-founder Diab Serriya said during an interview in the Turkish city of Gaziantep.

It was not clear whether both rooms existed at the same time, nor whether they are still being used today.

Serriya explained that when a detainee died, his body would typically be left inside the cell with the inmates for two to five days before being taken to a salt room.

The corpses remained there until there were enough of them for a truckload.

The next stop was a military hospital where death certificates -- often declaring a "heart attack" as the cause of death -- were issued, before mass burials.

The salt rooms were meant to "preserve the bodies, contain the stench... and protect the guards and prison staff from bacteria and infections," Serriya explained.

US-based professor of anatomy Joy Balta, who has published extensively on human body preservation techniques, explained how salt could be used as a simple and cheap alternative to cold rooms.

"Salt has the ability to dehydrate any living tissue ... and can therefore be used to significantly slow down the decomposition process," he told AFP.

The salt rooms were "used for the bodies of those who died under torture, from sickness or hunger," the group's co-founder Diab Serriya said / © AFP

A body can remain in salt without decomposing longer than in a purpose-built refrigerated chamber, "although it will alter the surface anatomy", said Balta, who founded the Anatomy Learning Institute at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego.

The ancient Egyptians are known to have used the mummification process, which includes the immersion of the body in a salt solution called natron.

The tonnes of rock salt used in Sednaya are thought to have come from Sabkhat al-Jabul, Syria's largest salt flats, in Aleppo province.

The report by ADMSP is the most thorough study yet of the structure of Sednaya, which has manufactured death on a terrifying scale for years.

It provides detailed schematics of the facility and of how duties were split between various army units and wardens.

"The regime wants Sednaya to be a black hole, no-one is allowed to know anything about it," Serriya said. "Our report denies them that."

- 'Salt was a treasure' -

Qais Murad, 36-year-old former inmate of Syria's Sednaya prison, gives an interview at his house in Gaziantep, in southeastern Turkey / © AFP

The fighting in Syria's brutal war has ebbed over the past three years, but Assad and the prison that has become a monument to his bloody rule are still there.

New layers to the horror of the war are still being uncovered as survivors abroad share their stories, and investigations into regime crimes by foreign courts fuel a drive for accountability.

"If a political transition ever occurs in Syria," said Serriya, "we want Sednaya to be turned into a museum, like Auschwitz."

Prisoners recall that, aside from torture and disease, their biggest torment was hunger.

Moatassem said his weight more than halved, from 98 kilograms when he was jailed in 2011 to 42 kilograms when he got out.

The ex-inmates also see as a sickening irony the fact that the salt they craved so badly formed an integral part of the horrific death machine that was decimating them.

The wheat, rice and potatoes they were sometimes fed were always cooked without salt, or sodium chloride, a lack of which can have serious health impacts on the human body.

Low sodium levels in the blood can cause nausea, dizziness and muscle cramps and, if sustained, coma and death.

Detainees used to soak olive pits in their water to salt it, and would even spend hours sifting through laundry detergent to pick out tiny crystals which they treated like a delicacy.

Former inmate Qais Murad recounted how, on a summer day in 2013, he was called out of his cell to see his parents, but on his way to the visitation area was shoved into a room.

Inside, he stepped on something like grit on the floor. Kneeling with his bowed head against the wall, he caught a glimpse of guards dumping around 10 bodies behind him.

Qais Murad, 36-year-old former inmate at Sednaya prison, re-enacts an episode from his prison treatment / © AFP

When a cellmate returned from a visit later that day, his socks and pockets stuffed with salt, Murad understood what the substance was.

"From that day onwards, we always made sure to wear socks, and trousers with pockets, for visits in case we found salt," Murad told AFP, also in Gaziantep.

He remembered how the excited cellmates ate boiled potatoes with their first pinch of salt in years that day, oblivious to its provenance.

"All we cared about was the salt," Murad said. "Salt was a treasure."

Lost treasures Egyptians want back

Wed, September 14, 2022 


For decades, Egyptians have dreamed of bringing back some of the glories of their ancient civilisation scattered across museums and private collections across the world.

Now as Cairo gears up to open "the largest archaeological museum in the world" at the foot of the pyramids of Giza in November, Egypt's former antiquities minister Zahi Hawass told AFP that he will soon demand the return of three of its greatest lost treasures:

- Rosetta Stone -

The basalt slab dating from 196 BC was the key that helped French linguist Jean-Francois Champollion crack the code of Egypt's ancient hieroglyphs.

The stone was discovered by Napoleon Bonaparte's invading French army in 1799 while troops were repairing a fort near the Nile Delta port of Rashid (or Rosetta), close to the Mediterranean.

It bore extracts of a decree written in Ancient Greek, an ancient Egyptian vernacular script called Demotic and hieroglyphics.

Comparing the three scripts finally helped resolve a mystery which had bedevilled historians for centuries.

Champollion announced his discovery on September 27, 1822.

The stele has been housed in the British Museum since 1802, inscribed with the legend "Captured in Egypt by the British Army in 1801" on one side and "presented by King George III" to the museum on the other.

Egypt has been demanding its return for decades, with Egyptologist Heba Abdel Gawad saying the inscriptions alone were "an act of violence that no one talks about, and which the British Museum denies is destruction of an artefact."

The museum told AFP that the stone was "handed over to the British as a diplomatic gift."

- Nefertiti bust -

The bust of the wife of the Pharaoh Akhenaten, whose name meant "the beautiful one has come", was sculpted around 1340 BC but was carted off to Germany in controversial circumstances by a Prussian archaeologist after it was found at Amarna in 1912.

The depiction of one of the most famous women of the ancient world was later given to the Neues Museum in Berlin.

Cairo demanded its restitution as early as the 1930s, but Germany has long held that it was handed over in a colonial-era partage agreement, under which countries that funded archaeological digs could keep half of the finds.

But for Hawass it "was illegally taken".

Egyptologist Monica Hanna told AFP that Germany once agreed to give the bust back only for Adolf Hitler to block it after the Nazi leader fell under its spell.

No official requests for the treasures' return have been received "from the Egyptian government", according to the three European museums.

Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities did not respond to AFP's request for comment.

- Dendera Zodiac -

The celestial map was blasted out of the Hathor Temple in Qena in southern Egypt on the orders of French official Sebastien Louis Saulnier in 1820.

It has been suspended on a ceiling in the Louvre museum in Paris since 1922, while a plaster cast stands in its place in the temple.

The chart, regarded as "the only complete map that we have of an ancient sky", is thought to date from around 50 BC.

Tutankhamun: Egyptians bid to reclaim their history

Bahira AMIN
Wed, September 14, 2022



It's one of the 20th century's most iconic photos: British archaeologist Howard Carter inspecting the sarcophagus of Tutankhamun in 1922 as an Egyptian member of his team crouches nearby shrouded in shadow.

It is also an apt metaphor for two centuries of Egyptology, flush with tales of brilliant foreign explorers uncovering the secrets of the Pharaohs, with Egyptians relegated to the background.

"Egyptians have been written out of the historical narrative," leading archaeologist Monica Hanna told AFP.

Now with the 100th anniversary of Carter's earth-shattering discovery -- and the 200th of the deciphering of the Rosetta Stone which unlocked the ancient hieroglyphs -- they are demanding that their contributions be recognised.

Egyptians "did all the work" but "were forgotten", said chief excavator Abdel Hamid Daramalli, who was born "on top" of the tombs at Qurna near Luxor that he is now in charge of digging.

Even Egyptology's colonial-era birth -- set neatly at Frenchman Jean-François Champollion cracking the Rosetta Stone's code in 1822 -- "whitewashes history", according to specialist researcher Heba Abdel Gawad, "as if there were no attempts to understand Ancient Egypt until the Europeans came."

The "unnamed Egyptian" in the famous picture of Carter is "perhaps Hussein Abu Awad or Hussein Ahmed Said," according to art historian Christina Riggs, a Middle East specialist at Britain's Durham University.

The two men were the pillars, alongside Ahmed Gerigar and Gad Hassan, of Carter's digging team for nine seasons. But unlike foreign team members, experts cannot put names to the faces in the photos.

- 'Unnoticed and unnamed' -

"Egyptians remain unnoticed, unnamed, and virtually unseen in their history," Riggs insisted, arguing that Egyptology's "structural inequities" reverberate to this day.


But one Egyptian name did gain fame as the tomb's supposed accidental discoverer: Hussein Abdel Rasoul.

Despite not appearing in Carter's diaries and journals, the tale of the water boy is presented as "historical fact", said Riggs.

On November 4, 1922, a 12-year-old -– commonly believed to be Hussein -– found the top step down to the tomb, supposedly because he either tripped, his donkey stumbled or because his water jug washed away the sand.

The next day, Carter's team exposed the whole staircase and on November 26 he peered into a room filled with golden treasures through a small breach in the tomb door.

According to an oft-repeated story, a half century earlier two of Hussein's ancestors, brothers Ahmed and Mohamed Abdel Rasoul, found the Deir el-Bahari cache of more than 50 mummies, including Ramesses the Great, when their goat fell down a crevasse.

But Hussein's great-nephew Sayed Abdel Rasoul laughed at the idea that a goat or boy with a water jug were behind the breakthroughs.

Riggs echoed his scepticism, arguing that on the rare occasions that Egyptology credits Egyptians with great discoveries they are disproportionately either children, tomb robbers or "quadrupeds".

The problem is that others "kept a record, we didn't", Abdel Rasoul told AFP.

- 'They were wronged' -

Local farmers who knew the contours of the land could "tell from the layers of sediment whether there was something there," said Egyptologist Abdel Gawad, adding that "archaeology is mostly about geography".


Profound knowledge and skill at excavating had been passed down for generations in Qurna -- where the Abdel Rasouls remain -- and at Qift, a small town north of Luxor where English archaeologist William Flinders Petrie first trained locals in the 1880s.

Mostafa Abdo Sadek, a chief excavator of the Saqqara tombs near Giza, whose discoveries have been celebrated in the Netflix documentary series "Secrets of the Saqqara Tomb", is a descendant of those diggers at Qift.

His family moved 600 kilometres (370 miles) north at the turn of the 20th century to excavate the vast necropolis south of the Giza pyramids.

But his grandfathers and great-uncles "were wronged", he declared, holding up their photos.

Their contributions to a century of discoveries at Saqqara have gone largely undocumented.

- 'Children of Tutankhamun' -

Barred for decades from even studying Egyptology while the French controlled the country's antiquities service, Egyptians "were always serving foreigners", archaeologist and former antiquities minister Zahi Hawass told AFP.


Another Egyptologist, Fatma Keshk, said we have to remember "the historical and social context of the time, with Egypt under British occupation."

The struggle over the country's cultural heritage became increasingly political in the early 20th century as Egyptians demanded their freedom.

"We are the children of Tutankhamun," the diva Mounira al-Mahdiyya sang in 1922, the year the boy pharaoh's intact tomb was found.

The same year Britain was forced to grant Egypt independence, and the hated partage system that gave foreign missions half the finds in exchange for funding excavations was ended.

But just as Egyptians' "sense of ownership" of their heritage grew, ancient Egypt was appropriated as "world civilisation" with little to do with the modern country, argued Abdel Gawad.

"Unfortunately that world seems to be the West. It's their civilisation, not ours."

While the contents of Tutankhamun's tomb stayed in Cairo, Egypt lost Carter's archives, which were considered his private property.

The records, key to academic research, were donated by his niece to the Griffith Institute for Egyptology at Britain's Oxford University.

"They were still colonising us. They left the objects, but they took our ability to produce research," Hanna added.

This year, the institute and Oxford's Bodleian Library are staging an exhibition, "Tutankhamun: Excavating the Archive", which they say sheds light on the "often overlooked Egyptian members of the archaeological team."

- Excavators' village razed –

In Qurna, 73-year-old Ahmed Abdel Rady still remembers finding a mummy's head in a cavern of his family's mud-brick house that was built into a tomb.

His mother stored her onions and garlic in a red granite sarcophagus, but she burst into tears at the sight of the head, berating him that "this was a queen" who deserved respect.

For centuries, the people of Qurna lived among and excavated the ancient necropolis of Thebes, one of the pharaohs' former capitals that dates back to 3100 BC.

Today, Abdel Rady's village is no more than rubble between the tombs and temples, the twin Colossi of Memnon -- built nearly 3,400 years ago -- standing vigil over the living and the dead.

Four Qurnawis were shot dead in 1998 trying to stop the authorities bulldozing their homes in a relocation scheme.

Some 10,000 people were eventually moved when almost an entire hillside of mud-brick homes was demolished despite protests from UNESCO.

In the now deserted moonscape, Ragab Tolba, 55, one of the last remaining residents, told AFP how his relatives and neighbours were moved to "inadequate" homes "in the desert".

The Qurnawis' dogged resistance was fired by their deep connection to the place and their ancestors, said the Qurna-born excavator Daramalli.

But the controversial celebrity archaeologist Hawass, then head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, said "it had to be done" to preserve the tombs.

Egyptologist Hanna, however, said the authorities were bent on turning Luxor into a sanitised "open-air museum... a Disneyfication of heritage", and used old tropes about the Qurnawis being tomb raiders against them.

Sayed Abdel Rasoul's nephew, Ahmed, hit back at what he called a double standard.

"The French and the English were all stealing," he told AFP.

"Who told the people of Qurna they could make money off of artefacts in the first place?"

- 'Spoils of war' –

Over the centuries, countless antiquities made their way out of Egypt.

Some, like the Luxor Obelisk in Paris and the Temple of Debod in Madrid, were gifts from the Egyptian government.

Others were lost to European museums through the colonial-era partage system.

But hundreds of thousands more were smuggled out of the country into "private collections all over the world," according to Abdel Gawad.

Former antiquities minister Hawass is now spearheading a crusade to repatriate three of the great "stolen" treasures -- the Rosetta Stone, the bust of queen Nefertiti and the Dendera Zodiac.

He told AFP he plans to file a petition in October demanding their return.

The Rosetta Stone has been housed in the British Museum since 1802, "handed over to the British as a diplomatic gift", the museum told AFP.

But for Abdel Gawad, "it's a spoil of war".

Nefertiti's 3,340-year-old bust went to Berlin's Neues Museum a century later through the partage system, but Hawass insisted it "was illegally taken, as I have proved time and again."

The Frenchman Sebastien Louis Saulnier meanwhile had the Dendera Zodiac blasted out of the Hathor Temple in Qena in 1820.

The celestial map has hung from a ceiling in the Louvre in Paris since 1922, with a plaster cast left in its place in the southern Egyptian temple.

"That's a crime the French committed in Egypt," Hanna said, behaviour no longer "compatible with 21st century ethics."

bha/sbh/jkb/fg/qan

SUFISM

Bangladeshi mystic fights demons with psychiatry


Shafiqul ALAM
Wed, September 14, 2022 


Evil spirits bedevil the families that seek blessings from an elderly Bangladeshi mystic -- but he knows his prayers alone are not enough to soothe their troubled minds.

Syed Emdadul Hoque conducts exorcisms but at the same time is helping to bust taboos around mental health treatment in the South Asian nation, where disorders of the mind are often rationalised as cases of otherworldly possession.

Hundreds of people visit the respected cleric each week to conquer their demons, and after receiving Hoque's blessing a team of experts will gently assess if they need medical care.

Mohammad Rakib, 22, was brought to the shrine after complaining of "possession by a genie" that brought alarming changes to his behaviour.

"When I regain consciousness, I feel okay," he tells Hoque. But his uncle explains that the student has suffered alarming dissociative spells, attacking and scolding his relatives while speaking in an unrecognisable language.

"Don't worry, you will be fine," Hoque says reassuringly, reciting prayers that he says will rid Rakib of the spirit and to help him concentrate on his studies.

Rakib is then led into a room by the cleric's son Irfanul, where volunteers note down his symptoms and medical history.

"We think he is suffering from mental problems," Irfanul tells AFP.

"Once we've taken his details, we will send him to a psychiatrist to prescribe medicines."

- Sufi mystics -

Hoque, 85, and his son are members of the Sufi tradition, a branch of Islam that emphasises mysticism and the spiritual dimensions of the faith.

They are descended from one of the country's most respected Sufi leaders, from whom Hoque has inherited the esteemed title of "Pir", denoting him as a spiritual mentor.


Their hometown of Maizbhandar is one of the country's most popular pilgrimage sites, with huge crowds each year visiting shrines dedicated to the Hoque family's late ancestors to seek their blessings.

Their faith occupies an ambiguous place in Bangladesh, where they are regularly denounced as heretics and deviants by hardliners from the Sunni Muslim majority.

But Sufi mystics have a deeply rooted role in rural society as healers, and Irfanul says his father gives his visitors the opportunity to unburden themselves.

"Those who open up their stresses and problems to us, it becomes easier for us to help," he says. "My father does his part by blessing him and then the medical healing starts."

Hoque is helped by Taslima Chowdhury, a psychiatrist who worked at the shrine for nearly two years, travelling from her own home an hour's drive away in the bustling port city of Chittagong.

"Had he not sent the patients to me, they might never visit a trained psychiatrist in their life," she tells AFP.

"Thanks to him, a lot of mental patients get early treatment and many get cured quickly."

- Veil of silence -

Despite Bangladesh's rapid economic growth over the past decade, treatment options for panic attacks, anxiety and other symptoms of mental disorder remain limited.

A brutal 1971 independence war and the floods, cyclones and other disasters that regularly buffet the climate-vulnerable country have left widespread and lingering trauma, according to a British Journal of Psychology study published last year.

Bangladesh has fewer than 300 psychiatrists servicing a population of 170 million people, the same publication says, while a stigma around mental illness prevents those afflicted from seeking help.

A 2018 survey conducted by local health authorities found nearly one in five adults met the criteria for a mental disorder, more than 90 percent of whom did not receive professional treatment.

But experts say Hoque's referral programme could offer a revolutionary means of lifting the veil of silence around mental health and encourage more people to seek medical intervention.

"It is remarkable given that in Bangladesh, mental problems are considered taboo," says Kamal Uddin Chowdhury, a professor of Clinical Psychology at the elite Dhaka University.

The country's top mental hospital is now engaged in a project to train other religious leaders in rural towns to follow Hoque's approach, he tells AFP.

"They are the first responders," he adds.

"If they spread out the message that mental diseases are curable and that being 'possessed by a genie' is a kind of mental disease, it can make a big difference in treatment."

sa/gle/skc/dhc

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: My Favorite Muslim 

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The myth of ‘work-life balance’ is a generational illusion

Chris DeSantis - Yesterday

The term work-life balance didn’t come into popular use until 1986. While still in use, it no longer fits today’s circumstances. But before we redefine it, we first need to examine the evolution of work and working.


 ANGELA WEISS - AFP - Getty Images

The rise and fall of the company man

Following World War II, soldiers came home to a “revitalized” United States. For the next 30 years, the United States enjoyed economic expansion. This period was named the Great Compression: economic expansion coupled with social welfare initiatives, and strong, healthy unions flattened wage differentials, pulling everyone towards the middle.

When a young person entered the workplace, they became a “Company Man,” whose career culminated in a pension after many years of service. It was an unwritten covenant between employer and employee.

You were unlikely to broach the notion of work-life balance. It would have been seen as an indication you were not serious about your job and not committed to the organization.

Gen X and the beginning of the transactional workplace

Things started to change in the mid 70s. It was the beginning of the end of the covenant. As children, Gen Xers witnessed the downsizing and euphemistic “right-sizing” that their parents endured.

Many took the lesson to heart and, as adults, knew that they couldn’t rely on a single company to take care of them. Rather than selling their skills to legacy companies, they used their expertise to establish their own companies, which gave birth to the dot-com boom.

The dot-com workplaces were typically less formal, more egalitarian, and experimental in nature. Clever young people worked out new ways to leverage technology to reimagine how work–and the workplace–should look. Demands for more work-life balance that workers had not been able to make under the covenant were first implemented by Gen X entrepreneurs.

Millennials move the needle

Gen Xers recognized the difficulty in balancing work with a personal life, while still expecting to succeed professionally. Work still had to come first. The best they could hope to do was build a workplace that had enough flexibility to allow for shifting priorities and needs in one’s personal life.

The Millennial mindset is different. It can be described as work-life integration. This, too, should not be mistaken for balance. Millennials are not doing a better job of balancing their personal lives with work than Gen Xers have. Rather, they have worked to integrate work into their personal lives, breaking down the walls between professional and personal.

Many Millennials are crafting careers in the gig economy and pursuing part time or flexible work arrangements. This is sometimes out of necessity, but for others, it is an elective lifestyle choice. Moreover, they are taking on multiple roles to explore different paths in pursuit of finding their purpose.

Millennial knowledge workers have even more portable skill sets than their Gen X predecessors. They have more leverage in the transactional labor market than any previous generation. They are, in a sense, transactional “natives,” whereas those who came before were transactional “immigrants” who had to adapt to the new labor market.

Gen Z and the coming work-life options

While the Gen Z identity is still developing, there seems to be continuity of many of the trends observed with Millennials. Like the Millennials, they never knew the unbroken covenant and have never expected employers to take care of them for life. However, they also understand that societal safety nets are in a precarious state. Not only can Gen Zers not expect a pension, but they also can’t be certain that Medicare and Social Security will be there when they retire.

This reserved and practical outlook colors how Gen Zers fit work into their lives. They are moving beyond work-life integration and pursuing what I would call work-life options. They appear to strongly value employment stability, and like the Millennial cohort, they are very interested in establishing a career with firms that offer professional growth and development.

They use their free time to pursue interests that might someday become careers. Gen Z, unlike Millennials, aren’t pursuing multiple jobs in order to engage their passions or find their purpose. They are pursuing stable careers while cultivating side projects that could one day become revenue streams. These are often described as “side hustles.” Their aspirations veer toward the practical.

A myth retired

So, will the notion of work-life balance continue to evolve? Probably. Unless workers receive what they really wanted all along: autonomy and control over their lives so they can make meaningful decisions about the work they do, how it is done, and how to achieve the mastery to do it well.

If companies fulfill these requests and understand and respect employees’ motivations, work-life balance will no longer be a battle between work and the rest of life. It never really was. Workers just want to best accommodate, integrate, balance—whatever word you want to use—work into their lives.

The work-life dichotomy was always misleading. We need to move beyond the notion that work is simply the thing we do for a paycheck, and “life” merely the momentary reprieves between showing up at the office. Work, when it engages us, is life-affirming

Chris DeSantis is an independent organizational behavior practitioner, speaker, podcaster, and the author of Why I Find You Irritating: Navigating Generational Friction at Work.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.