The Bethlehem of our Christmas story is very different in reality


Nasser Shiyoukhi/AP

Anne Woodhead
Thu, December 22, 2022 

There are two main times of the year that Christians especially think of the Holy Land of Palestine-Israel. Christmas, of course, is one of the main ones, with the focus being on the town of Bethlehem, primarily in a fairy-tale sort of way. I, however, tend to focus on the town as it is currently.

I have followed the situation in Palestine-Israel for some time and have made it a point to learn about it. Like many, I sympathized with Israel, seeing it as a victim-country related to my Christianity through Jesus. Now, however, through learning the history and the present situation, through reading and the Internet, especially daily social media, I see things in a much different light. Our mainstream media (MSM) tend to portray things as I first saw them. When they do have a story, which is not often, they tend not to give us the full context.

Now the town of Bethlehem is a Palestinian town located in what is known as the West Bank. Historically, it has been thought of as a Christian town. Yes, there are Christian Palestinians. They are Arabs like many Palestinians, but many have left because of the turmoil. There is now fear that the land of Jesus may eventually be bereft of its Christians.

Bethlehem is very close to Jerusalem and, traditionally, its folks traveled there for shopping and business, much like folks from Versailles and Frankfort come to Lexington. There is a big wall, an “Apartheid Wall,” surrounding Bethlehem and Bethlehemites, like all Palestinians, are restricted in their movement by Israel. Today, Mary and Joseph could not reach Bethlehem from Nazareth. Also, Palestinian Christians from elsewhere, like Gaza, are not able to travel to Bethlehem to the Church of the Nativity because of Israeli travel restrictions, as are Palestinian Christians not able to travel to Jerusalem to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Easter. Non-Palestinian Christians can do both.

I have told you of the town of Christmas, but this also has to do with us as well as those of Bethlehem and all Palestinians in their native land and in their diaspora. Palestinians have been deemed by human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, to be living under the system of apartheid, such as in South Africa, from studies these group have done. In Kentucky and the South when I grew up, we had the system of Jim-Crow segregation. Israel also appears to be ethnic cleansing Palestinianians to make the Land all “Jewish.” I will say that these are Zionist Jews who are not claimed by all Jews.

Now, I want to say that this commentary is not all about over there. It is also about over here. The United States government gives at least $3.8 billion to Israel every year, per a ten-year agreement, $10 million per day, of our tax money, in military aid to prop up this brutal, cruel, home-demolishing, land-theiving, arresting, imprisoning, and killing apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and on-going occupation. According to the United States Campaign for Palestinian Rights and its “U.S. Military Funding to Israel Map,” this money could have provided for 46,982 more elementary school teachers or 2,525,252 more people receiving food assistance in the U.S. With Kentucky”s contribution of $31,023,824, our Commonwealth could have 384 more elementary school teachers or 20,617 more people receiving food assistance. Lexington-Fayette County, with its contribution of $2,657,111, could provide for 33 more elementary school teachers or 1,766 more people receiving food assistance.

I, for one, have come to deplore what the State of Israel is doing to the Palestinian people and with our money, at the behest of our government. This needs to stop and that should help stop Israel’s shenanigans because money talks.

Israelis are doing to Palestinians what European-Americans did to the Native Americans. Such was wrong then and is wrong now. For me, what is known as the Holy Land is being defiled.

Anne G. Woodhead, formerly of Frankfort, resides in Lexington. She is associated with the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR), Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA), and CODEPINK: Women for Peace.

Identity is complex for Lebanon's Christian Palestinian camp

A girl waits to receive gifts during a gift distribution by the NGO Beit Atfal Assumoud at the only majority-Christian Palestinian refugee camp, in Dbayeh, north of Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, Dec. 23, 2022. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were forced from their homes during the 1948 Mideast war over Israel's creation. Today, several million Palestinian refugees and their descendants are scattered across Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, as well as the West Bank and Gaza, lands Israel captured in 1967. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)More

ABBY SEWELL
Fri, December 23, 2022 at 12:08 AM MST·6 min read


DBAYEH, Lebanon (AP) — Tucked away in the hills north of Beirut below a Maronite monastery, Lebanon’s only remaining Christian-majority Palestinian camp gives few outward clues to its identity. Unlike the country’s other Palestinian refugee camps, there are no flags or political slogans on display in Dbayeh camp.

Behind closed doors, it's a different story. At a recent community Christmas dinner for elderly residents, attendees wearing Santa hats danced the dabke to popular Palestinian songs like “Raise the Keffiyeh,” twirling the traditional Palestinian scarves, or using napkins to simulate them. A speaker who toasted his hope of celebrating next year’s Christmas in Jerusalem in a “free Palestine” prompted ululations.

The residents of the camp, founded in 1956 on land belonging to the monastery that overlooks it, have good reason to keep a low profile.

During Lebanon’s 15-year civil war, the area was a stronghold of Lebanese Christian militias that battled the Palestine Liberation Organization. The other two Palestinian camps in Christian areas — Jisr al-Basha and Tel al-Zaatar — were razed during the war by the militias, their inhabitants killed or scattered.


Dbayeh was invaded in 1973 by the Lebanese army and in 1976 by the Lebanese Phalangist militia. Many residents fled. Those who stayed found themselves on the opposite side of battle lines from fellow Palestinians, most of them Muslims.

In the decades after the war ended in 1990, Dbayeh was largely forgotten by the rest of Lebanon’s Palestinians.

“Because of the separation of territories…between Muslim quarters and the Christian quarters (in Lebanon), the minority that stayed in the (Dbayeh) camp was isolated completely from the other communities,” said Anis Mohsen, managing editor of the Institute for Palestine Studies' quarterly Arabic journal.

Dbayeh's story is an extreme example of the wider fragmentation of Palestinian communities.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were forced from their homes during the 1948 Mideast war over Israel’s creation. Today, several million Palestinian refugees and their descendants are scattered across Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, as well as the West Bank and Gaza, lands Israel captured in 1967.

Palestinians are separated by geographical and political barriers, but religious differences between Christians and Muslims are not generally a source of division.

“We are one people,” said Antoine Helou, a member of the Higher Presidential Committee of Churches' Affairs in Palestine and a former resident of Jisr al-Basha. “The misfortunes we have as Palestinians are bigger than thinking about this one is Muslim, this one is Christian.”

But the sectarian divisions in Lebanese society made their mark on the Palestinian community.

Eighty-four-year-old retired teacher Youssef Nahme of Dbayeh, originally from the now-destroyed village of al-Bassa in today's Israel, recalled that as a young man in Lebanon, he had friends from Muslim-majority camps.

But, he said, “after the Civil War, these connections were disturbed. Not because they don’t like to visit us or we don’t like to visit them, but because (of) Lebanese society.”

Eid Haddad, 58, fled Dbayeh with his family after his brother was killed by Phalangist fighters and after the 1976 invasion of the camp. He said it was difficult to fit in anywhere.

“In the Christian area we were rejected because we are Palestinians, and in...the Muslim area, we were rejected because we are Christians," he said.

Some of the Dbayeh residents who fled, like Nahme and his wife, returned after the fighting ended. Others, like Haddad, never came back. Today he lives in Denmark.

“I wish I could go back, but every time I think about it, all (the memories) come back,” he said.

Today, the camp is home to a population of about 2,000, a mix of Palestinians, Lebanese and Syrian refugees. Wissam Kassis, head of a civil committee that serves as a governing body of sorts, said of about 530 families living in the camp, some 230 are Palestinian.

Palestinian residents said they maintain good relations with their Lebanese neighbors. Many have intermarried and some have been granted Lebanese citizenship. But some Lebanese continue to blame the Palestinians for the country’s civil war. Palestinians in Lebanon are barred from owning property and from working in many professions.

“People say, ‘Go back to Palestine.’ I say, ‘Send us back,’” said Therese Semaan, who lives in the two-room house her family built, and then rebuilt in 1990, after it was bombed during fighting between rival Christian Lebanese factions.

Still, Semaan said, “We’re living better than the other camps.”

The camp receives limited services from the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, which was set up decades ago to assist Palestinian refugees. The agency runs a clinic and cleans the streets but does not operate a school in the camp. An UNRWA school in the nearby Beirut suburb of Bourj Hammoud was closed in 2013 due to low enrollment — a sore point among locals.

Until recently, the relationship with Palestinian officials was even more limited. It was only in 2016 that Dbayeh formed its own committee to serve as a go-between with the U.N. agency and the Palestinian embassy and political factions.

The factions themselves do not have an active presence in Dbayeh, Kassis said, and camp residents keep their political activities low-key.

“For example, if there is bombing (by Israeli forces) in Gaza, maximum we do a prayer vigil,” he said. “We don’t go out and protest in an aggressive way.”

Many Muslim Palestinians in Lebanon are either unaware of the camp or view its residents with suspicion, believing them to be aligned with the right-wing Christian Lebanese parties that took control of the area during the war. Kassis acknowledged that in some cases that is true, but said it is a small minority.

“There are people who love Palestine very much and there are people who don’t, but it’s a small percentage" of people who have aligned themselves with the other side, he said. “We are fighting to create more of a feeling of belonging.”

In one new initiative, youth athletes from Dbayeh play basketball and soccer alongside those from other Palestinian camps. The games have led to renewed ties, Kassis said.

Community groups from other camps have begun to come to Dbayeh, fixing streets and distributing aid and Christmas gifts.

Kholoud Hussein of the Najda Association NGO, from the Bourj al-Barajneh camp south of Beirut, coordinated a series of projects in Dbayeh this year. "A lot of people in other camps didn’t know about Dbayeh" she said, but now they are starting to.

The recognition goes both ways. Eighteen-year-old Rita al-Moussa of Dbayeh speaks with a Lebanese accent, studied in Lebanese schools and has Lebanese friends. Growing up, she felt little connection to her Palestinian roots, but now she plays soccer with a group of young women from Beirut's Shatila and Mar Elias camps.

As a result, she said, “we have become closer to the other Palestinian camps.”

EU graft scandal 'worthy of Narcos' TV series, says bloc's commissioner


 Italian court to decide whether to hand over EU-Qatar graft scandal suspect to Belgium, in Brescia

Fri, December 23, 2022

ROME (Reuters) - The corruption scandal rocking the European Parliament, in which suspects were found with suitcases full of cash, is like something out of crime drama television series "Narcos", EU Economy Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni said on Friday.

"What we saw were scenes worthy of Netflix, of Narcos," Gentiloni said in an interview with Italian RAI public radio, calling the so-called "Qatargate" involving corruption and money laundering as "shameful" and damaging to the reputation of EU institutions.

"We need to react, we need to let the Belgian judiciary do its work, and we need to react perhaps with even more effective rules of transparency, especially in the European Parliament," he said.

Earlier this month, Belgian authorities charged four people linked to the European Parliament on allegations that World Cup host Qatar lavished them with cash and gifts to influence decision-making.

Qatar has denied any wrongdoing.

The suspects are Pier Antonio Panzeri, a former Italian socialist EU lawmaker, Greek EU lawmaker Eva Kaili, Panzeri's former assistant and EU assembly staffer Francesco Giorgi and Italian NGO director Niccolo Figa-Talamanca.

Investigators searched 19 homes and the offices of the European Parliament in raids on Dec 9-12. A source close to the investigation said 1.5 million euros ($1.59 million) was seized in the raids.

This included 600,000 euros in cash at the home of a suspect, several hundred thousand euros in a suitcase in a Brussels hotel room and 150,000 euros in an apartment belonging to a European Parliament member.

($1 = 0.9430 euros)

(Reporting by Alvise Armellini, Editing by Arun Koyyur)

Real coffee, but a fake 'Starbucks' in piracy-ridden Iraq


A woman walks by an unlicensed Starbucks cafe in Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2022. Real Starbucks merchandise is imported from neighboring countries to stock the three cafes in the city, but all are unlicensed. Starbucks filed a lawsuit in an attempt to shut down the trademark violation but the case was shuttered after the owner allegedly threatened lawyers hired by the coffee house. 

(AP Photo/Ali Abdul Hassan)
3
SAMYA KULLAB and QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA
Wed, December 21, 2022 

BAGHDAD (AP) — Everything from the signboard outside down to the napkins bears the official emblem of the top international coffee chain. But in Baghdad, looks are deceiving: The “Starbucks” in the Iraqi capital is unlicensed.

Real Starbucks merchandise is imported from neighboring countries to stock the three cafes in the city, but all are operating illegally. Starbucks filed a lawsuit in an attempt to shut down the trademark violation, but the case was halted after the owner allegedly threatened lawyers hired by the coffee house.

Be careful, he told them — and boasted of ties to militias and powerful political figures, according to U.S. officials and Iraqi legal sources.

“I am a businessman,” Amin Makhsusi, the owner of the fake branches, said in a rare interview in September. He denied making the threats. “I had this ambition to open Starbucks in Iraq.”

After his requests to obtain a license from Starbucks' official agent in the Middle East were denied, “I decided to do it anyway, and bear the consequences.” In October, he said he sold the business; the cafes continued to operate.

Starbucks is “evaluating next steps,” a spokesman wrote Wednesday, in response to a request for comment by The Associated Press. “We have an obligation to protect our intellectual property from infringement to retain our exclusive rights to it.”

The Starbucks saga is just one example of what U.S. officials and companies believe is a growing problem. Iraq has emerged as a hub for trademark violation and piracy that cuts across sectors, from retail to broadcasting and pharmaceuticals. Regulation is weak, they say, while perpetrators of intellectual property violations can continue doing business largely because they enjoy cover by powerful groups.

Counterfeiting is compromising well-known brands, costing companies billions in lost revenue and even putting lives at risk, according to businesses affected by the violations and U.S. officials following their cases.

Qatari broadcaster beIN estimated it has lost $1.2 billion to piracy in the region, and said more than a third of all internet piracy of beIN channels originated from companies based in northern Iraq. The complaint was part of a a public submission this year to the U.S. Special 301 Report, which publicly lists countries that do not provide adequate IP rights.

Iraq is seeking foreign investment away from its oil-based economy, and intellectual property will likely take center stage in negotiations with companies. Yet working to enforce laws and clamp down on the vast web of violations has historically been derailed by more urgent developments in the crisis-hit country or thwarted by well-connected business people.

“As Iraq endeavors to diversify its economy beyond the energy sector and attract foreign investment in knowledge-based sectors, it is critical that companies know their patents and intellectual property will be respected and protected by the government,” said Steve Lutes, vice president of Middle East Affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Makhsusi insists he tried the legal route but was denied a license from Starbucks' regional agent based in Kuwait. He also said he attempted to reach Starbucks through contacts in the United States, but that these were also unsuccessful.

He depicts his decision to open a branch anyway as a triumph over adversity.

Cups, stir sticks and other Starbucks merchandise are obtained in Turkey and Europe, using his contacts, he said. “The coffee, everything is authentic Starbucks,” Makhususi added.

Makhsusi said he “had a session” with a lawyer in Baghdad to come to an understanding with the coffee company, “but so far we have not reached a solution.”

The law firm recounts a different version of events.

Confidentiality agreements prevent the firm from divulging details of the case to third parties, but the AP spoke to three Iraqi legal sources close to the case. They spoke on condition of anonymity in order to provide details. They also asked the name of the firm not be mentioned for security reasons.

They said that in early 2020, the firm was hired by Starbucks and sent a cease-and-desist notice to Makhsusi. They said that the businessman then told one of the lawyers on the case that he ought to be careful, warning that he had backing from a prominent Iranian-backed armed group and support from Iraqi political parties.

“They decided it was too risky, and they stopped the case,” the Iraqi legal source said. Makhsusi denied that he threatened Starbucks' lawyers.

Makhsusi said doing business in Iraq requires good relations with armed groups, the bulk of whom are part of the official state security apparatus.

“I have friendly relations with everyone in Iraq, including the armed factions,” he said. “I am a working man, I need these relationships to avoid problems, especially given that the situation in Iraq is not stable for business.”

He did not name particular armed groups he was in contact with. The AP contacted two groups known to have business dealings in the areas where the cafes are located, and both said they had not worked with Makhsusi.

Counterfeiters and pirates have stepped up activity in Iraq in the past five years, particularly as Gulf countries have responded to U.S. pressure and become more stringent regulators, said a U.S. official in the State Department, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about the trends.

The broadcaster beIN has sent cease-and-desist letters to Earthlink, Iraq’s largest internet service provider. Earthlink offers subscribers a free streaming service, Shabakaty, which beIN alleges is composed almost entirely of pirated content. Iraq’s Communications Ministry, which partners with Earthlink, did not respond to a request for comment.

“It’s unheard of and completely outrageous,” said Cameron Andrews, director of beIN’s anti-piracy department. “It’s a huge market, so it’s a great deal of commercial loss.”

But the larger issue for beIN is the piracy that originates inside Iraq and bleeds into the rest of the region and the world, he said. After being copied by these companies, beIN’s channels are re-streamed on pirate IPTV services, and become accessible all over the region, according to beIN. The company’s investigation found that some Iraqi operators even distribute pirated content in the U.S.

At least two U.S. pharmaceutical companies have approached the U.S. Chamber of Commerce with complaints that their trademark was being used to sell counterfeit life-saving medication by Iraqi companies.

“I worry if regulatory lapses or infringements in IP protection are allowed, then U.S. companies will be deterred from doing business in Iraq and quality of care could be dangerously jeopardized for Iraqi patients,” said Lutes.

The companies did not accept to be named in this report or detail the types of medications.

Successive Iraqi governments promised to fight graft since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion reset Iraq’s political order, but none has taken serious steps to dismantle the vast internal machinery that enables state-sanctioned corruption.

Intellectual property has also historically been a low priority for Iraq. Limited bilateral talks with the U.S. over the issue have been on and off for the past five years.

The challenge is to find a “clear leader in the Iraqi government that is interested in IP issues as a way to attract foreign investment,” said a U.S. State Department official. “Until that person exists, it is difficult for us to engage.”

Ukraine's parallel war on corruption to unlock door to West

U.S. President Biden welcomes Ukraine's President Zelenskiy at the White House in Washington


Dan Peleschuk
Thu, December 22, 2022

KYIV (Reuters) -To an outsider, it may seem an unlikely time for Ukraine to double down on the battle against corruption, as missiles rain down on cities and citizens fight for their lives.

Nonetheless, anti-graft agencies have revived a years-old investigation into an official scheme they say led to electricity customers overpaying by more than $1 billion, plus a case that stalled in 2020 into the alleged theft of over $350 million in assets and funds from a state-controlled oil company.

They've launched new actions too, including this month the arrest in absentia of an ex-state bank boss over his suspected role in the embezzlement of $5 million. He denies wrongdoing.

"Every week, there are one or two big developments plus seven or eight smaller ones that are still important," said legal expert Vadym Valko, who monitors the work of anti-corruption authorities in Ukraine, which is fighting to rid itself of oligarchs and strengthen its vulnerable institutions.

The activity reflects a parallel war Kyiv is waging against high-level graft, according to Reuters interviews with half a dozen Ukrainian anti-corruption monitors and officials. The drive is deemed urgent enough for the government to devote resources to, even during Russia's invasion.

Indeed, anti-corruption agencies flag their work almost daily in a flurry of statements and social media posts. In November alone, they reported having launched investigations into 44 new criminal cases, issued 17 notices of suspicion to people being investigated and sent six indictments to court.

In 2022, prosecutors have filed at least 109 indictments in 42 cases, the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO) told Reuters, adding that 25 convictions had been handed down.

The work can't wait, according to the people interviewed, because curbing endemic corruption is key to reassuring Western partners preparing to send tens of billions of dollars of aid that will be needed to rebuild the country in coming years.

It would also be crucial, they say, to winning a status that guarantees Ukraine's long-term security from any future aggression: membership of the European Union, which says getting on top of graft is a must for candidacy talks to begin.

"It's extraordinarily important right now for Ukraine to demonstrate itself as a predictable partner," said Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, first deputy head of the parliamentary committee on anti-corruption policy, referring to Western donors.

"In reality there are two wars going on in Ukraine at once: an open one with Russia, and another with the post-Soviet corrupt past that's happening within."

ZELENSKIY ON BOARD

The anti-corruption drive is backed by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who vowed this month that Ukraine would fight both high-level corruption and Russia's invasion at the same time.

"The story of reform continues," the actor turned wartime leader, who was elected in 2019 on pledges to clean up Ukraine, said in his nightly address.

"It continues even during this kind of war."

Anti-corruption efforts, which continued after the Feb. 24 invasion, were stepped up over the summer under a new director of SAPO, according to the experts and officials.

Oleksandr Klymenko took the position in July after Zelenskiy publicly demanded that his appointment be confirmed because the committee that had selected him more than half a year earlier still hadn't formally signed off on the move.

"Without a full-fledged head of such an institution, its full-fledged functioning is impossible," Zelenskiy said at the time.

Klymenko has provided the administrative muscle to kickstart some cases that had been gathering dust, while also advancing new ones, the people said.

For example, SAPO announced in late September that Klymenko had reopened the case over the scheme that allegedly overcharged electricity consumers. It had been repeatedly opened and closed for two years due to procedural errors and shortcomings, SAPO prosecutors said at the time of the hold-ups.

In announcing its revival, Klymenko's office said the case files hadn't been reviewed by prosecutors thoroughly enough and assigned a new team to the investigation, which involves at least 15 suspects, mostly current and former officials.

In late October, anti-corruption officials announced they had issued new notices of suspicion in the case, when suspects are informed they are being investigated.

In the alleged plot to take more than $350 million from the oil company, prosecutors in early September issued eight people with notices of suspicion that had been awaiting approval from SAPO since early 2020.

New anti-corruption cases include a probe launched in October into a former tax chief suspected of taking more than $20 million in kickbacks. Reuters was unable to contact the ex-official for comment.

A SAPO spokesperson said Klymenko was not prepared to comment on his work. The agency did not comment on the individual cases and the recent flurry of activity, but said it was currently working on 693 cases with its sister agency, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU).

PROSECUTORS: $2,500 A MONTH

The United States, which is supplying Ukraine with billions of dollars of weaponry to fight Russia, supports Kyiv's concurrent drive to root out corruption.

"We are actively engaged with the government of Ukraine to ensure accountability, even amidst the challenging conflict environment," a U.S. State Department spokesperson said.

There is the prospect of more money on the way as donors weigh the scale of their contributions to Ukraine's anticipated reconstruction, a project largely dependent on foreign aid.

Central Bank Governor Andriy Pyshnyi said this month he expected 18 billion euros ($19 billion) from the EU and $10 billion from Washington next year in immediate budgetary aid alone.

An EU Commission spokesperson said that financial, political and logistic support for Ukraine "will be linked to the accession agenda."

"Reform benchmarks will be key in this context," the spokesperson said. "These will initially be adapted and suited for war times, but should evolve towards strengthening in particular rule of law and anti-corruption."

Beating graft won't be easy in a country where experts say much of it is rooted in the chaos that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Despite the progress of recent years, Ukraine still ranks 122 out of 180 countries in Transparency International's latest Corruption Perceptions Index.

Andrii Borovyk, executive director of Transparency's Ukraine office, welcomed the current anti-corruption drive but said the true measures of success would be the number of convictions and the state's success in recovering proceeds from corruption as well as its enforcement of asset declarations.

"We'll need to see what the final output will be," he told Reuters.

The stakes have never been higher since Kyiv embarked on an anti-graft campaign after the 2014 "Maidan" revolution cemented Ukraine's pro-European course.

Both SAPO and NABU were established in 2015. SAPO oversees investigations launched by NABU and sends them to the anti-corruption court, which began its work in 2019.

Collectively, they comprise the core of Ukraine's anti-graft law enforcement infrastructure, a collection of professional outfits where employees are comparatively well-paid.

SAPO prosecutors, for instance, earn at least $2,500 per month, or six times more than the Ukrainian monthly average. Business is brisk; the agency is currently in the process of hiring eight new prosecutors.

NABU is also searching for a new director, which the EU has said is a key position to fill for Ukraine's anti-graft efforts.

THE PEOPLE ARE WATCHING

Even amid the turmoil of war, the agencies are now more productive than in previous years, according to Olena Shcherban, deputy executive director of the Anticorruption Action Centre in Kyiv, a nonprofit think-tank partly funded by Western nations that campaigns for reforms and tracks Ukraine's progress.

"NABU and SAPO are working more effectively now than in the last couple of years combined," she said.

Anti-corruption authorities in Kyiv are aware that the West is watching.

Kateryna Butko, a civic activist serving on the SAPO selection committee, acknowledged that Ukraine's fight against graft is often plodding. She added that foreign donors had a clear incentive to ensure it succeeds by continuing to provide strong policy guidance.

"The work of our anti-corruption institutions is a guarantee that Western money won't be stolen," she said.

Ordinary Ukrainians will also be watching, as Kyiv's recent battlefield victories have buoyed hopes that the country can prevail in the war and successfully rebuild.

An October survey by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found at least 88% of the country believes Ukraine will be a prosperous EU member within 10 years.

Kyiv resident Kateryna, who was visiting the capital's Christmas tree with a friend, said that securing a military victory was the top priority for Ukraine.

But the 27-year-old, who didn't give her surname, said it was also important to establish a fair society to live in, instilled with a clear sense that no-one was above the law.

"We don't have that kind of understanding here yet."

(Reporting by Dan Peleschuk; Additional reporting by Humeyra Pamuk and Andrea Shalal in Washington; Editing by Mike Collett-White and Pravin Char)

RIP

Henry Berg-Brousseau, Transgender Rights Activist, Has Died at 24

Alex Cooper
Wed, December 21, 2022 

Henry Berg-Brousseau

Trans rights activist Henry Berg-Brousseau, who worked to oppose anti-transgender legislation in his home state of Kentucky before going on to work with the Human Rights Campaign, died Friday at the age of 24.

His mother, Kentucky Democratic state Sen. Karen Berg, said Berg-Brousseau died by suicide.

In a statement posted on Twitter via Bluegrass Politics, Berg said that her son had spent his life “working to extend grace, compassion, and understanding to everyone, but especially to the vulnerable and marginalized.”

She added that “this grace, compassion, and understanding was not always returned to him” as a transgender man. The state senator called out the politicians who actively sought to marginalize her son because of who Berg-Brousseau was.

Berg said Berg-Brousseau had dealt with mental illness, “not because he was trans but born from his difficulty finding acceptance.”

He was born in Louisville, Ky., according to an obituary.

“While a student at Louisville Collegiate School, he advocated for the rights of transgender people by organizing a protest against gay conversion therapy, speaking to the Kentucky Senate Education Committee, and participating in other local and national causes. His speech to the committee was shared on John Oliver Tonight,” it said.

Berg-Brousseau went on to double major at George Washington University in political science and history and minored in Jewish studies.

In his work with the Human Rights Campaign, Berg said her son was acutely aware of the hateful rhetoric rising against transgender people in the country, adding that he saw that hate firsthand directed at his job. She said that in one of the final conversations she would have with her son he told her that he was concerned if he would be safe going out.

“The vitriol against trans people is not happening in a vacuum,” Berg wrote. “It is not just a way of scoring political points by exacerbating the culture wars. It has real-world implications for how transgender people view their place in the world and how they are treated as they just try to live their lives.”

Berg-Brousseau is survived by his mother, his father, and his sister, along with other family members.

“Losing Henry is an unfathomable loss to the Human Rights Campaign family. Henry was a light — deeply passionate, deeply engaged, and deeply caring. His colleagues will always remember his hunger for justice, his eagerness to pitch in, his bright presence, and his indelible sense of humor,” Kelley Robinson, the president of the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement.

Robinson noted his activist work as a teenager, having to fight for his own rights “far earlier than he should have had to.”

“He was brave,” she said.

She ended her statement by calling for justice for the transgender community.

“We must fight for our transgender family. We must celebrate his light, and honor him by continuing to fight for full equality for all,” Robinson said. “Our thoughts are with his parents, his sister, his entire family, and our whole community.”

If you are having thoughts of suicide or are concerned that someone you know may be, resources are available to help. The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 is for people of all ages and identities.

Trans Lifeline, designed for transgender or gender-nonconforming people, can be reached at (877) 565-8860. The lifeline also provides resources to help with other crises, such as domestic violence situations.

The Trevor Project Lifeline, for LGBTQ+ youth (ages 24 and younger), can be reached at (866) 488-7386. Users can also access chat services at TheTrevorProject.org/Help or text START to 678678.

Transgender advocacy group plans to sue state over contract cancellation



John Hult
Thu, December 22, 2022

A transgender advocacy organization plans to sue the state of South Dakota for civil rights violations over Gov. Kristi Noem’s abrupt cancellation of a health care facilitation contract with the group.

Brendan Johnson, a former U.S. district attorney who works for the law firm Robins Kaplan, told South Dakota Searchlight that his firm will represent The Transformation Project at no cost in a civil action against the state.

Johnson said he plans to send the state a litigation hold this week, which is a legal notice of pending action that orders the expected defendant to preserve all records and correspondence related to a legal claim.

The group’s claim originates with the contract cancellation, Johnson said, but “it’s not a contract dispute.”

“This is about violating federal law, equal protection,” Johnson said. “You cannot discriminate against people on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. We believe that’s in violation of agreements between the state of South Dakota and the federal government that provided these funds.”

The Sioux Falls-based nonprofit was awarded about $136,000 in federal funds to hire and train a community health worker to help connect members of the LGBTQ community to physical and mental health care. The funds, dispensed by the state, were earmarked by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control for the hiring of community health workers to serve rural areas and marginalized communities.

For a story published on Friday, a conservative media outlet questioned Gov. Noem’s office about the contract. Through spokesman Ian Fury, Noem, a Republican, told the outlet that she does not support the group’s “radical ideology,” that she didn’t know about the contract, and that she would order a review of all state Department of Health contracts. More than 60 other community health worker contracts have been granted this year.

State Health Secretary Joan Adam announced her retirement through a governor’s office press release on Monday, three days after the news broke.

More:Transformation Project responds to South Dakota terminating contract for community health worker

The Freedom Caucus, a coalition of South Dakota lawmakers aligned with the Freedom Caucus of the U.S. House of Representatives, issued a statement Monday that praised Noem’s decision to cut the contract. It also called on the South Dakota attorney general to investigate The Transformation Project and Sanford Health, which is set to host a Gender Identity Summit next month, for “promoting child abuse.”

Johnson said his firm aims to show that the stated reasons for the contract cancellation do not align with the Noem administration’s actual motivations.

“The facts will show that The Transformation Project did not violate its contract with the state of South Dakota,” Johnson said. “This was a decision based on politics, not the law. We applaud the strength and dignity of the LGBTQ community, and we will aggressively defend their right to access health care and the vital services provided by The Transformation Project, including mental health and suicide prevention services.”

In the cancellation letter, Deputy Health Secretary Lynne Valenti said The Transformation Project had failed to hire a certified community health worker and had missed a required annual conference, among other violations. But The Transformation Project has said it hired a community health worker who is still employed by the group, and the required annual conference took place before the contract was awarded.

The group’s director, Susan Williams, said in an open letter that the group was in compliance with contract terms. It had received about $23,000 of contract funds before the Dec. 16 cancellation letter.

“We are also deeply concerned by the appearance that the termination of this contract stems not from our actions, but as a result of the population we serve,” Williams said.

Williams named the community health worker hired by the group to South Dakota Searchlight and noted that he’d completed his certification. On Tuesday evening, the group tweeted its congratulations to that employee along with a photo of staff and supporters. Two of the people were wearing hoodies from the Union Gospel Mission, a homeless shelter that had also been awarded funds for a community health worker, and whose director told South Dakota Searchlight this week that his “heart goes out” to the group over the dispute.

The Transformation Project also announced its intention to retain the employee despite the loss of funding. It has since set up a pledge website that asks the public to “raise $105,000 to cover the funding shortfall that was created.”

“These funds will help us to continue to develop a Community Health Worker program and allow our CHW to meet the needs of South Dakota members of the LGBTQ2S community across the state who experience disparate health outcomes,” the site said.

The group will not be charged legal fees for its action against the state, Johnson said, but taxpayers won’t avoid them.

More:Gov. Kristi Noem terminates contract for transgender advocacy group

“This is incredibly unfair to one of our most vulnerable populations in South Dakota,” Johnson said. “This will be a long and expensive fight. This is going to cost the state of South Dakota a great deal in legal fees.”

Fury, Noem’s spokesman, told South Dakota Searchlight on Tuesday that the state would be unable to comment on The Transformation Project situation because of the threat of litigation.

On Thursday morning, Fury reiterated that the state cannot comment for that reason.

On Monday, South Dakota Searchlight sent an email to Fury and Department of Health spokeswoman Kieran Tate, asking if three other community health worker contractors who’d inked deals around the same time as The Transformation Project had complied with each of the same contract requirements. Tate has not replied.

A spokesman for the South Dakota Attorney General’s Office, which typically serves as the state’s legal counsel in lawsuits against state agencies and officials, said the litigation hold had not been received as of Thursday morning.

This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: Transgender advocacy group plans to sue state over contract cancellation

WTF?!

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul Picks Conservative Anti-Abortion Judge for New York's Highest Court

Caitlin Cruz

JEZEBEL
Thu, December 22, 2022

Photo: Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket (Getty Images)

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Thursday nominated Hector D. LaSalle—a conservative jurist who has sided with crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs)—to lead the state’s highest court for a 14-year term. LaSalle’s history as a right-wing judicial activist is in direct contrast with the governor’s previous pledges to support abortion rights in New York.

LaSalle was one of seven candidates submitted to the governor by the State Commission on Judicial Nomination, but in a Monday letter, nearly 50 law professors urged Hochul to not pick LaSalle to be chief judge of the New York State Court of Appeals because of his “cavalier attitude towards reproductive rights, hostility to organized labor, and a worrying insensitivity to due process.”

While each of those is troubling, let’s focus on his “cavalier attitude” toward abortion rights. The New York law professors’ open letter explains the situation thusly

In 2010, the New York City Council held hearings into CPCs and determined that one of them, “Expectant Mother Care,” was practicing medicine without a license. On the basis of that finding, the New York Attorney General served it with a subpoena to learn more about its operations.

Justice LaSalle intervened to shield the CPC from the application of health care licensing laws. 

The court held across the board that the Attorney General could not see the documents before the court itself reviewed them. But for some documents it went even further. The opinion stated that the Attorney General could not get the “advertisements and promotional literature, brochures and pamphlets that the CPC provided or disseminated to the public in New York State,” or the list of the CPC’s funders, even after court review. The opinion Justice LaSalle joined concluded that that information was not important or relevant enough to the Attorney General’s investigation to require disclosure, even to the court.

They called his court’s finding “shocking” and said it “suggests to us that Justice LaSalle does not understand the severity of the threat to women’s rights posed by anti-abortion activists and their funders.”

While New York laws current uphold abortion rights, even the most pro-choice of laws can be undone by an activist judiciary. “It is imperative that New York’s judges appreciate the importance of the right to choose and the many different fraudulent subterfuges anti-choice activists deploy,” the letter continued.

Nominating someone who’s ruled in favor of anti-abortion plaintiffs flies in the face of Hochul’s previous actions and statements. In June, she signed a law that would study the impacts of CPCs for pregnant New Yorkers. That same month, after Roe v. Wade was overturned, Hochul said the state would be a “safe harbor” for abortion patients and created a $35 million fund for abortion clinics to help them handle the coming tide of out-of-state patients, like the Louisiana woman who was forced to travel 1,400 miles to New York for an abortion. Hochul called the overturning of Roe “repulsive at every level.”

This position would also have LaSalle overseeing the entire state judiciary, including “more than 3,000 state and local judges, 15,000 staff members, 300 sites and millions of cases,” according to the New York Times.

Peter Martin, director of Judicial Accountability at the Center for Community Alternatives, decried LaSalle’s nomination. “Justice LaSalle’s deeply conservative judicial record includes decisions that are anti-abortion, anti-union, and anti-due process,” Martin said in a written statement to the Associated Press. “His decisions make clear that his judicial philosophy is wrong for New York.”

New York state Sen. Brad Hoylman, a Democrat who chairs the Judiciary Committee, said LaSalle will get a “fair and thorough hearing.” “I look forward to meeting Justice LaSalle and thoroughly reviewing his qualifications and record,” Hoylman told the Times.

The state Senate has 30 days to vote on LaSalle’s nomination. The legislative session starts on January 4.

Trump-era pardon recipients are increasingly back in legal jeopardy


Trump-era pardon recipients are increasingly back in legal jeopardy

LUCIEN BRUGGEMAN
Thu, December 22, 2022 at 3:13 AM MST·8 min read

In February, former newspaper executive Kenneth Kurson pleaded guilty to cyberstalking his ex-wife. Months later, rapper Kodak Black was arrested on felony drug charges in Florida before pleading not guilty. And in October, jurors found political operative Jesse Benton guilty of illegally funneling Russian money into a group aligned with former President Donald Trump.

The trio's circumstances may seem unrelated, but they share one notable link: All were previously granted clemency by Trump while he was in office.

And the list doesn't end there.

MORE: Trump issues flurry of pardons, commutations

An ABC News analysis of the 238 people who were pardoned or had their sentences commuted during the Trump administration found at least ten who have since faced legal scrutiny -- either because they are under investigation, are charged with a crime, or are already convicted.

Legal experts call this recurring theme unprecedented -- but not entirely unexpected, given the former president's unorthodox approach to the pardon process.

"President Trump bypassed the formal and orderly Justice Department process in favor of an informal and fairly chaotic White House operation, relying in some cases on his personal views and in others on recommendations from people he knew or who gained access to him in various ways," said Margaret Love, a lawyer who represents clients seeking pardons and a former U.S. Pardon Attorney, a Justice Department appointee who helps advise presidents on grants of clemency.

"So it might have been predicted," said Love, "that some who made it through that lax gauntlet were going to get in trouble again."

Friends and allies

Those pardoned by Trump during his term in office included dozens of friends and political allies. The list included celebrities, lawmakers and former aides who had been convicted of crimes ranging from fraud to murder -- including four private military contractors who were in prison for murdering 17 Iraqi citizens, including two children, in a 2007 attack in Baghdad.

An analysis by two Ivy League academics determined that just 25 of those 238 pardons went through the Office of the Pardon Attorney, a small enclave within the Justice Department that fields clemency applications and examines the merits of each case before deciding whether to recommend a convict for presidential action. The researchers said that figure represented "an historic low."

"The process is supposed to be fair, it's supposed to be careful, it's supposed to be accurate ... and it's also supposed to be a process that helps predict who is not going to recidivate," said Larry Kupers, who served as the U.S. Pardon Attorney for more than two years at the beginning of the Trump administration.

Recidivism rates from previous administrations' clemencies is opaque, as federal agencies don't keep tabs on clemency grantees after their release. But in one study reviewing former President Barack Obama's 2014 clemency initiative, which led to sentence commutations for nearly 1,700 federal drug offenders, the independent and bipartisan U.S. Sentencing Commission found only three who had been rearrested by the end of 2017. A Texas woman was rearrested on theft charges less than a year after earning an Obama commutation on her life sentence in 2016, and another Texan pleaded guilty to drug charges less than two years after earning a life sentence commutation under Obama's 2014 clemency initiative.

Based on news accounts and other available evidence, the number of clemency grantees who have gone on to commit additional crimes remains "incredibly low," Kupers said.

For Trump-era pardons, however, experts said the numbers seem disproportionately high.

Former White House senior strategist Stephen Bannon leaves the Federal District Court House after being found guilty of being in contempt of Congress, July 22, 2022 in Washington, DC.

 (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images, FILE)

Trump's inner circle

Chief among those pardoned is Steve Bannon, a former senior White House aide and one of Trump's highest-profile political allies.

Bannon was found guilty in July of contempt of Congress for his refusal to testify before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, and was sentenced to four months in prison. He also faces charges in New York State for allegedly defrauding donors to the "We Build the Wall" fundraising campaign -- the same allegations for which he faced federal charges before Trump intervened with a presidential pardon. Bannon has pleaded not guilty to the state charges.

Two other notable members of Trump's inner circle, veteran political operative Roger Stone and Trump's first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, are also involved in ongoing investigations. Both were prosecuted by former special counsel Robert Mueller -- Stone for lying to Congress, Flynn for lying to federal investigators -- and were later pardoned by Trump.

A federal appellate judge recently ordered that Flynn must provide testimony to an Atlanta-area district attorney who called Flynn a "necessary and material witness" to Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and Justice Department prosecutors investigating the events of Jan. 6 are reportedly examining Stone's alleged ties to violent extremists who attacked the Capitol.

MORE: Trump pardons Bannon, other allies on final night in office

Mark Osler, a professor at St. Thomas University Law School and an expert on presidential clemency, said many of the Trump-era clemency recipients -- particularly those who were prosecuted for crimes they committed while working for Trump, like Stone, Bannon, and Flynn -- "were people who thought they were above the law already."

"And Trump, by giving them a pardon after they'd been charged or convicted of a crime, only enhanced that sense of entitlement," Osler said.

U.S. presidents have, in the past, go to lengths to avoid the appearance of political patronage tainting the clemency process. George W. Bush went so far as to revoke a pardon one day after granting it, after it came to light that the grantee's father had donated almost $30,000 to the Republican Party just months earlier.

Some experts ABC News spoke with noted the irony of Trump's clemency practices, considering his repeated claims to support law and order. "If the Democratic Party wants to stand with anarchists, agitators, rioters, looters, and flag-burners, that is up to them, but I, as your president, will not be a part of it," Trump told attendees at the 2020 Republic National Convention. "We must always have law and order."

Trump has also suggested that he would look "favorably" at pardons for those convicted for their participation in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, if reelected to the White House in 2024.

'A slapdash approach'

Another notable Trump-era clemency recipient who has since fallen back into legal jeopardy is former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, whose fraud sentence was cut 20 years short by a commutation -- but who reportedly remains under federal investigation for unpaid restitution tied to the public corruption charges that in 2013 landed him in prison. A lawyer who has represented Kilpatrick said that outstanding restitution payments for ex-convicts are common, but acknowledged that failure to repay them could leave Kilpatrick in legal jeopardy.

And Jonathan Braun, whose ten-year drug smuggling sentence was cut nine years short by a Trump commutation, is facing lawsuits from the Federal Trade Commission and the New York attorney general's office for allegedly running a predatory loan scheme targeting small businesses.

Braun "harassed, insulted, swore at, and threatened" his debtors, according to a June 2020 petition filed by the New York attorney general. He allegedly told one small business owner, "I will take your daughters from you," and told another: "I am going to make you bleed." In court, Braun has denied these claims and requested a trial.

The lawsuits predate Braun's sentence commutation, but that he still managed to secure a commutation from Trump in spite of the active suits "shows what happens when you ignore the formal process in favor of a slapdash approach," said Osler, the presidential clemency expert.

"A trained staff of analysts who specialize in sniffing out facts like this was sidelined, with predictable results," Osler said.

Some who have faced legal scrutiny since securing clemency have accused prosecutors of pursuing vendettas against Trump. After learning of the charges filed against him by New York state prosecutors, Bannon said, "This is nothing more than a partisan political weaponization of the criminal justice system."

MORE: Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Charles Kushner among those pardoned by Trump

And in August, after federal prosecutors suggested they would seek to re-try Philip Esformes, a Florida-based nursing home business owner, on six hung counts from his 2019 trial after his 20-year fraud sentence was commuted by Trump, a member of Esformes' legal team said the Justice Department's "flagrant disregard of President Trump's clemency order is motivated by acrimony towards him."

Prosecutors in Manhattan also attempted to target former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort on state mortgage fraud charges after he was convicted in 2019 on similar federal charges -- a move widely seen as a means to ensure Manafort would face justice even in the event that Trump pardoned him for the federal offenses. Manafort was indeed pardoned by Trump in December 2020 -- and in 2021 a New York appeals court ruled that the state charges should be tossed, citing the state's double jeopardy rule.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Pardon Attorney's office says more than 17,000 applicants for clemency remain pending. And while experts agree that the clemency process is in desperate need of an overhaul -- many suggest removing it from the Justice Department's bureaucracy and into its own office -- there remains widespread support for the institution and its principles.

Osler said he's concerned that Trump's approach to clemency and the subsequent legal travails for some beneficiaries could cause lasting harm to the process.

"It could sour clemency for people who really, deeply, richly deserve it," Osler said.

Trump-era pardon recipients are increasingly back in legal jeopardy originally appeared on abcnews.go.com

CRIMINAL CRYPTO CAPITALI$M

Celebs like Floyd Mayweather and Kim Kardashian are hyping up risky investments amid the crypto debacle — here's why more young fans could be 'left holding the bag'


Serah Louis
Thu, December 22, 2022

 Floyd Mayweather

From Kim K to the Paul brothers, influencers are shelling out investing advice and touting risky tokens over social media and it’s often their young followers who are left paying the price if the market plunges.

Bitcoin's track record serves as an example of just how volatile that market can be.

There’s been a big shift toward younger people entering the financial markets over the past decade, notes Taylor Lorenz, a technology and internet culture reporter for The Washington Post.

And over a quarter of Gen Zers receive their financial advice from social media, according to the National Association of Personal Finance Advisors.

“Young teenagers are purchasing things like NFTs and other speculative investments, and often participating in online communities that pump the prices of these things,” says Lorenz.

“So it's kind of ‘Lord of the Flies’ out there right now in our financial system.”
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Teens are getting into investing

It’s not just older Gen Zers who have interest in the stock market — a 2022 study from Fidelity found that 1-in-5 teens have started investing, while two-thirds plan to start investing before graduating college or earlier.

Teenagers can get their parents to sign them up for stock trading accounts. And there’s technically no legal age limit when it comes to owning crypto — although some exchanges may restrict people under 18 from signing up.

Even TikTok star Charli D’Amelio received Bitcoin for her 17th birthday from cryptocurrency app Gemini last year, despite not being old enough to trade on the platform. The family posted a picture on Instagram to their large following, thanking Gemini for the gift.

But 2022 has not been kind to the world's leading digital currency.

After hitting an all-time peak of around $69,000 per unit on November 10, 2021, Bitcoin has since erased roughly 75% of its value, sitting at $16,600 as of the end of the trading day on Dec. 19.
Celebs are promoting financial products to their fans

Celebrities and Youtube and TikTok influencers often generate income from sponsored posts and paid partnerships on their social media platforms.

Kim Kardashian made headlines recently when she was fined $1 million by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for not disclosing that she was paid $250,000 to promote a crypto asset. She’s also agreed to not promote any crypto assets for three years.

She’s not the only celeb who’s endorsed cryptocurrency over the past couple years — the market has since crashed hard over the last year — but she is one of the few to encounter legal trouble in the aftermath.

Read more: 4 easy alternatives to grow your hard-earned cash without the shaky stock market

Under the current federal securities laws, anyone who promotes crypto assets “must disclose the nature, source, and amount of compensation they received in exchange for the promotion," said Gurbir S. Grewal, director of the SEC’s division of enforcement, in a press release detailing the charges against Kim Kardashian earlier this month.

But it’s hard to regulate how content creators advertise, and the ones who have smaller audiences may not think they’ll face repercussions, says Lorenz.

“It's unclear when things are even an ad, it's really tough to police.”

She adds that making an example of Kardashian is useful, but many online influencers may continue to endorse risky assets for an easy buck until more is done by regulators. And there are still issues even when influencers are upfront about being paid to endorse an asset.

“People have such intense parasocial bonds with the influencers that they follow that — even with that disclosure — I don't think it matters significantly because people will still just trust anything that they say.”

The problem with crypto endorsements

Giving out financial advice or promoting products is just another way for content creators to monetize their audiences, says Lorenz. While many promotions are above board, less scrupulous influencers can intentionally or unintentionally cross the line.

“They partner with financial crypto firms, or they release their own tokens in ‘pump and dump’ schemes,” she explains. “But all of these things are definitely a problem on the internet.”

Pump and dump schemes involve spreading misleading or overly positive information to inflate the price of a stock or security and then selling your shares at the higher price. The stock price typically drops afterwards and other investors may experience major losses.

The FTC found that 1-in-4 people who reported losing money to fraud last year said it started on social media, amounting to about $770 million in losses. People aged 18 to 39 were also more than twice as likely as older adults to report losing money to these scams.

And crypto fraud losses from January 2021 through March 2022 totalled over $1 billion.

Even when popular personalities aren’t intentionally participating in fraud, endorsing dubious assets over social media can still pose a risk.

Several traders accused Kardashian, Floyd Mayweather and basketball player Paul Pierce of participating in a pump and dump scheme with EthereumMax — however all three have filed motions to be removed from the lawsuit and EthereumMax has denied the allegations as well.

YouTuber Logan Paul also found himself in hot water last year after promoting a meme token called Dink Doink. The coin reportedly shot up in value by 40,000% after a tweet from Paul, and then plummeted by over 90% over the following two weeks. The New York Times reported that he failed to mention both financial and personal ties to the asset in his endorsements and later expressed regret for getting involved.

Lorenz believes there needs to be more guardrails in place to protect not just teens, but people of all ages from falling prey to online scams or dubious financial investments.

“The celebrities fundamentally don't seem to care,” says Lorenz. “The problem is it's their followers who are left holding the bag.”

In Peru, Kichwa tribe wants compensation for carbon credits












1 / 13
Residents of the Puerto Franco community walk near the limit of Cordillera Azul National Park in Peru's Amazon, Monday, Oct. 3, 2022. Residents in Kichwa Indigenous villages in Peru say they fell into poverty after the government turned their ancestral forest into a national park, restricted hunting and sold forest carbon credits to oil companies. 

(AP Photo/Martin Mejia)

ED DAVEY
Thu, December 22, 2022 

SAN MARTIN, Peru (AP) — Rolando Zumba, a gentle 59-year-old, wept, though the moment he described took place many years ago. Nothing has been the same since that day, when a park ranger took away his hunting rifles. Now where there was once self-sufficiency, hunger has stalked his village.

Zumba’s story has its roots in the 2001 creation of Peru’s Cordillera Azul National Park, a stretch of Peruvian Amazon rainforest in the foothills of the Andes where clouds cling to the treetops and morning mists settle over powerful rivers. His story is linked to faraway oil giants Shell and TotalEnergies, who bought carbon credits from the park.

One day while hunting in the forest that is now within the park, Zumba said his rifles were seized by armed guards who worked for CIMA, the Spanish acronym for the non-profit set up to protect the national park. When the park was established, Kichwa tribe members like Zumba lost unfettered access to what an Associated Press investigation has found was almost certainly their ancestral land.

In 2013, Zumba's livelihood would then take another hit: a pestilence decimated his small cacao plantation and to this day he doesn't have the $1,500 necessary to replant. Meanwhile, just 1.5 miles (2.4 kilometers) away, many millions of dollars in oil money began flowing into former tribal territory. Over the last eight years, the park’s management has arranged to sell some 28 million carbon credits, bringing in tens of millions of dollars, revenues that Kichwa say they have not benefited from.

“Look at the conditions we live in,” said Zumba’s neighbor Segundo Panduro, 77, chicks charging around his feet on the mud floor of his cabin. The authorities “just bring words,” he said. “You can’t live off words.”

COMMUNITY MEMORY

It’s common now for major climate polluters to pay tropical countries to keep rainforests standing. The trees absorb carbon out of the atmosphere as they grow. In return the companies get carbon credits to ostensibly cancel out their emissions, helping them comply with climate commitments. But industry guidelines require carbon credit projects to have the consent of local communities, who are also supposed to benefit.

An International Labour Organization (ILO) convention Peru signed in 1994 also says that lands traditionally used for sustenance or customs by Indigenous people belong to them, and they must consent to economic activities and receive compensation.

The Peruvian government and CIMA argue consent wasn’t required here because the park was never Kichwa land, a contention local Indigenous people flatly reject. To evaluate Kichwa claims of ownership, an AP team traveled some 300 miles over muddy roads and by river boat to seven Kichwa villages on the park’s borders.

The investigation found evidence that the villages existed in their current locations outside what is now the park long before it was delineated, and that people lived by hunting and planting inside the park. In Puerto Franco, a faded sign announced the village and a date — August 1970. A document from 1996 shows a teacher was sent to Puerto Franco that year. At the border of the park, an elder recognized fragments of old pottery on the ground as the kind his grandparents used to make.

Several villages kept logs of community activities going back decades, windows into life in the area long before the park was created. A record of community meetings in 1991 in Callanayacu village, where Zumba lives, details concern over young troublemakers and a lost pig. An entry in the diaries of Chambira community described 1996 as the “year of 6,000 tourists.” Satellite images from before the park was created show rainforest clearings for all the villages in almost identical shapes as today.

In each village visited, people older than 40 easily shared memories of hunting and gathering food in what became the park in 2001.

As monsoon rains hammered down on the village of Mushuk Llacta, Peregrina Cenepo, 79, showed off the blowpipe she said her late husband used for hunting. Nowadays that requires a permit, and strict limits effectively mean gathering meat only for festivals. Just 300 hunting or fishing visits, Kichwa or non-Kichwa, are allowed during an average year.

In a voice that rang joyful at the memories, Cenepo, a mother of 14, described how when she was newly married, she collected palm fur for brooms in the lost forests, and curassow feathers to make fans. She and her husband would go on hunting trips for weeks at a time.

Many Kichwa interviewed retained detailed knowledge of the park’s geography, animals and medicinal plants they said are found only there. They described waterfalls, hot springs and ravines, and mountains shaped like a lion’s back or a razor.

Several said they resented the name “Lagoon of the Lost World,” which was given by outsiders to a lake long known to them by a different name. Some described spectacled bears, jaguars and pumas, virtually unknown here outside the park boundaries. Others recalled their elders planting orange, avocado and mango trees in their part of the forest.

FOREST OUT OF BOUNDS

All the Kichwa interviewed were adamant they had not been consulted about the formation of the park or what would come next, an arrangement to mint and sell carbon credits. The chief of Chambira village, Nixon Vasquez, said they initially thought the carbon project was a coal mine. In Spanish the word carbón means coal.

And in the insect-eaten records of Allima Sachayuc village, an entry from 2005, signed by a CIMA employee, recounted how a delegation visited to “let them know the history of the creation” of the park.

In response, Peru’s national parks authority said by email that two anthropologists helped establish the park, and a Kichwa community group was present at one meeting in the nearest city, Tarapoto, to discuss it in 2001, but no concerns were raised.

Gonzalo Varillas, executive director of CIMA, said by email that the park complied with national and international human rights law in its formation. There's no overlapping of rights between the park and the Kichwa villages, he said.

Varillas said concrete benefits have gone to six Kichwa communities. Sustainable enterprises were funded in four, while schools were improved in two. Kichwa from three villages were employed to monitor the park, Varillas said.

“The management of the park has worked with more than 130 communities around the park,” he said, “among which are Kichwa communities, all of which existed outside the park.”

Shell and TotalEnergies both have Indigenous policies which recognize the principle of informed consent.

A TotalEnergies spokesperson said by email there was “ongoing constructive dialogue” between the Kichwa and the Peruvian authorities. “TotalEnergies always strictly respects human rights, a core value of the company,” the spokesperson said.

EcoSphere+, which originally sold the carbon credits to Shell, said in a statement that communities have received improved sanitation, healthcare and a cacao harvest center as a result of the carbon credit income, with some 665 jobs being created.

By email, a Shell spokesperson said responsibility for the project lay with CIMA, but the Kichwa had benefitted through sustainable livelihood activities. The Cordillera Azul project was independently verified to ensure it delivered environmental and community benefits, they said.

Shell and EcoSphere+ would not elaborate on the number of jobs created nor say how many of the 29 Kichwa villages affected had benefited.

One person interviewed said her family had been evicted from their home, which was inside the park area at the time it came into being.

The park ranger “uprooted everything. The plantains, the cassava, everything,” said Maria Leona Pizango, adding her uncle was also evicted from his home within the park boundaries.

Quefer Mosquena Perez, a Kichwa and former worker for the local government who helped relocate Pizango, corroborated her account, correctly spelling the names of people from both households allegedly evicted.

Satvinder Juss, a professor of human rights law at King’s College London, reviewed summaries of interviews with Kichwas and evidence of their presence. He said by email that the Peruvian Government was in “fundamental violation” of the ILO Convention, as it was “clearly the case” that the Kichwa used the land for sustenance.

Claims the park doesn’t overlap with native communities are “in defiance of the facts on the ground,” he said, adding that he believed Peru also broke the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and should take urgent action to remedy the situation.

PROXIMITY TO THE PARK

Visiting the Kichwa villages near Cordillera Azul, the closer one gets to the park boundary, the more residents describe having relied on the forests - and the worse the poverty seems today.

In the village of Ricardo Palma, Flor de Maria Panaifo, a mother of 10 said, “In the old times, my husband would hunt animals and we would sell that to pay for our children’s education.”

Now they can’t afford to school their children.

In nearby Canayo, Luz Mercedes Mori switched between Spanish and Kichwa as she voiced despair over the same issue. But it was the plosive consonants of her own language that best gave shape to her anger.

“We live like dogs,” she said, explaining that poor nutrition had harmed her son’s vision.

FOREST PROTECTORS

In recent times, Kichwa people have been organizing among themselves and getting help from groups like the Forest Peoples Programme, a European-based organization that advocates for Indigenous land rights. Kichwa leaders have gone to court to find out how much money was raised by the carbon credits program. And at meetings with CIMA, they have demanded compensation or land restitution. But CIMA remains resolute, saying the park land never belonged to them.

Many Kichwa people interviewed rejected the idea that the carbon credits sold to energy companies have protected the park. They said they believed people were illegally cutting trees inside it.

Marisol García, a Kichwa activist, argues the forests still exist “because the Indigenous communities have always known how to take care of them.”

“Our ancestors invented solutions based on nature,” she said, explaining that they would clear a small patch of rainforest to grow crops before letting vegetation and trees reclaim it, in an ancient system of crop rotation.

Today, she said Kichwa carry out barefoot patrols in the forest to confront illegal ranchers and coca growers. Yet when they report illegal tree clearing, the authorities respond that it’s none of their business.

“Nobody thinks about defending the defenders of the forest,” she said.

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