Friday, January 06, 2023

Brazilian Amazon deforestation up 150% in Bolsonaro's last month

The Brazilian Amazon burns in southern Amazonas state in September 2022.

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon rose 150 percent in December from the previous year, according to government figures released Friday, a final bleak report for far-right ex-president Jair Bolsonaro in his last month in office.

Satellite monitoring detected 218.4 square kilometers (84.3 square miles) of forest cover destroyed in Brazil's share of the world's biggest rainforest last month, according to the national space agency's DETER surveillance program.

The area—nearly four times the size of Manhattan—was up more than 150 percent from the 87.2 square kilometers destroyed in December 2021, according to the agency, INPE.

Bolsonaro, who was replaced on January 1 by leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, triggered an international outcry during his four years in office for a surge of fires and clear-cutting in the Amazon, a key resource in the race to curb climate change.

Under Bolsonaro, an agribusiness ally, average annual deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon rose by 75.5 percent from the previous decade.

"Bolsonaro's government may be over, but his tragic environmental legacy will still be felt for a long time," Marcio Astrini, executive secretary of the Climate Observatory, a coalition of environmental groups, said in a statement.

It was the third-worst December on record for the eight-year-old DETER program, after 2017 and 2015.

Deforestation in 2022 was also at or near record highs during the crucial dry-season months of August, September and October, when clear-cutting and fires often surge because of drier weather.

Experts say the destruction is mainly driven by farms and land grabbers clearing the forest for cattle and crops.

Lula presided over a sharp drop in deforestation when he previously led Brazil from 2003 to 2010.

He has vowed to reboot Brazil's environmental protection programs, fight for zero deforestation and ensure the South American giant stops being a "pariah" on climate issues.

Amazon rainforest deforestation is influencing weather in Tibet

Amazon rainforest deforestation influencing weather in Tibet — *Schematic view of the tipping elements of the Earth climate system, their connectivity and*

An international team of climate scientists has found evidence suggesting that deforestation in the Amazon rainforest is influencing weather in Tibet, more than 15,000 kilometers away. In their paper published in the journal Nature Climate Change, the researchers describe possible long-range impacts of deforestation of the Amazon rainforest. Valerie Livina, with the U.K.'s National Physical Laboratory, has published a News & Views piece in the same journal issue outlining the Hopf bifurcation theory and how it relates to climate tipping points and the work done by the team on this new effort.

The Amazon rainforest is considered to represent one of the world's tipping points, where small, gradual changes can eventually lead to a large, sudden, permanent change. As deforestation progresses, it edges ever closer to this tipping point, at which point scientists believe the rainforest cannot be returned to its natural state, even if all of the cutting was stopped and the trees replanted.

In this new effort, the researchers note that cutting down the forest has been going on for decades, and climate data has been gathered during the same time period. They wondered what impact the slowly diminishing rainforest might have on distant regions around the globe. To that end, they obtained and analyzed global climate data covering the years 1979 to 2019, looking for associations.

They were surprised to find that due to tree loss, warmer temperatures in the Amazon correlated with rising temperatures in Tibet and the West Antarctic ice sheet. They also found that when it rained more in the Amazon, there tended to be less precipitation in both of the other two regions.

The researchers were able to trace the route of climate change as the size of the rain forest grew smaller. Its approximate path, they saw, could be charted first to southern Africa, and then on up to the Arabian Peninsula and finally over to Tibet. The trip was found to take just a little over two weeks.

This finding, the researchers note, suggests that if a tipping point is reached in the Amazon, it could create a tipping point in Tibet, where temperatures and rainfall would be permanently impacted. They note that prior research has already shown that warming is proceeding faster in Tibet and the Arctic than the global average.

More information: Teng Liu et al, Teleconnections among tipping elements in the Earth system, Nature Climate Change (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41558-022-01558-4

Valerie N. Livina, Connected climate tipping elements, Nature Climate Change (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41558-022-01573-5

Journal information: Nature Climate Chang

75% of Amazon rainforest shows signs of loss, a 'tipping point' of dieback, study shows

Italian pleads guilty to manuscript scam that shook literary world

Fri, January 6, 2023

An Italian man admitted Friday to stealing more than 1,000 unpublished manuscripts, including from distinguished authors, solving a mystery that had rocked the literary world for years.

Filippo Bernardini, 30, pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud, federal prosecutors in New York announced in a statement.

Bernardini, who worked in London for publisher Simon & Schuster, impersonated agents and publishers over email to obtain novels and other works from writers and their representatives.

The scam had been known in literary circles for several years with Margaret Atwood, Ian McEwan and Sally Rooney among the novelists reportedly targeted.

It became public knowledge in January last year when Bernardini was arrested by FBI agents at New York's JFK Airport.

Beginning in August 2016, and continuing up to his arrest, the Italian impersonated hundreds of real people in the world of publishing by sending emails from fake accounts.

The addresses resembled the domain names of legitimate publishers but with a letter changed here and there. Prosecutors say he registered more than 160 fraudulent domains.

"Filippo Bernardini used his insider knowledge of the publishing industry to create a scheme that stole precious works from authors and menaced the publishing industry," said Damian Williams, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY).

In 2019, Atwood's agent revealed that the manuscript for "The Testaments" had been targeted.

In 2021, New York Magazine reported that the Swedish editors of Stieg Larsson's "Millennium" series had been approached by a purported colleague in Italy who requested an advance copy so that it could be translated before release.

A New York Times investigation at the end of 2020 found that "Normal People" author Rooney, "Atonement" author McEwan, and actor Ethan Hawke had also been targeted.

Bernardini's motive has never been clear.

Alleged victims were baffled by the fact the thefts were never followed by demands for money, nor did the works ever seem to appear online or on the dark web.

Screenshots from Bernardini's LinkedIn profile shortly after his arrest described him as a "rights coordinator" at Simon & Schuster.

The publisher, which was not accused of wrongdoing, said at the time it had been "shocked and horrified to learn of the allegations."

Bernardini's profile also said he obtained a bachelors in Chinese Language in Milan and a masters in publishing from UCL in London owing to his "obsession for the written word and languages."

He initially pleaded not guilty. As part of his guilty plea, he agreed to pay restitution of $88,000, the SDNY said.

His crime carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. Bernardini will be sentenced in Manhattan federal court on April 5.

pdh/bgs

Dismay in French Caribbean as Paris court dismisses pesticide case

Fri, 6 January 2023

© Christophe Archambault, AFP

Nearly 20 years after Caribbean islanders sued to hold the French government criminally responsible for the banana industry’s extended use of a banned pesticide in Martinique and Guadeloupe, a panel of judges has dismissed their case, ruling that it’s too hard to determine who’s to blame for acts committed so long ago.

The judges in Paris described the use of chlordecone from 1973-1993 as a scandalous “environmental attack whose human, economic and social consequences affect and will affect for many years the daily life of the inhabitants” of the two French Caribbean islands. But they also asserted that even in the 1990s, scientists had not established links between chlordecone and illnesses in people.

“How dare they write such a historical and scientific untruth,” Christophe Lèguevaques, an attorney involved in the case, said in a statement issued Thursday.

Chlordecone, also known as kepone, was patented in the 1950s by scientists working for Allied Chemical, a U.S. company based in New Jersey now called Allied Corporation, and millions of pounds of the pesticide were produced, nearly all of it exported for use outside the United States.

The US government banned the pesticide in 1976, a year after the Virginia health department permanently shut down a Life Science Products chemical plant in Hopewell, Va., whose workers developed slurred speech and other neurological problems blamed on the pesticide.

Other plaintiffs in the 2006 case include the Paris-based environmental group Générations Futures, which also plans to appeal.

INTERVIEW

'I'VE NEVER BEEN LEGITIMATE, I'VE GOT PRINCIPLES!'

Unrepentant old school NJ Jewish mobster sings like a canary in Amazon documentary

At 84, second-generation gangster Myron Sugerman was king of illegal slots and helped fund Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. Now he tells all in the 2022 film ‘Last Man Standing’

By NADINE MATYAS

Myron Sugerman during the filming of 'Last Man Standing.' (Courtesy)

Jewish mobster Barney Sugerman in an undated photo. (Courtesy)

Myron Sugerman in a still from 'Last Man Standing.'(Courtesy)

At almost 85, Myron Sugerman says he is the last “real” Jewish gangster: a one-of-a-kind outlaw, a self-made “king” of illegal slot machines, and a globetrotting adventurer whose clandestine missions included strategic and financial support for Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal.

Still with his trademark aviators, he’s now the subject of the new Amazon Prime documentary “Last Man Standing: The Chronicles of Myron Sugerman.” The film tracks the life of Sugerman, who was born in 1938 in Newark, New Jersey, and almost immediately catapulted into a life of crime by his father Barney Sugerman, otherwise known as “Sugie” — a prominent gangster in the Roaring Twenties.

Sugie was a member of the New Jersey Jewish Mob along with such other infamous characters as Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Seigel, Charlie “Lucky” Luciano, Joe “Doc” Stacher, Abe Green and Abner “Longie” Zwillman, who was known as the Al Capone of New Jersey.

The younger Sugerman’s friends and associates were also all outlaws. “If somebody was ever to say to me, ‘Did you know anyone that was illegal?’ I never knew anybody that was legitimate,” Sugarman candidly says in the film. But, he adds, they were all solid guys who stood up to the violent antisemitism that was prevalent at the time.

Indeed, Sugerman’s first years coincided with the dramatic rise of the American Nazi movement, right on his doorstep. The German American Bund party was led by Fritz Kuhn, who proudly declared himself the “Hitler of the United States.” The group would meet in the local beer gardens and then, intoxicated, they would go into the old neighborhoods and beat up Jews.

Powerful archival footage of the infamous February 1939 Madison Square Garden Nazi rally in support of Nazism and fascism terrifyingly sets the scene of how European Jew-hatred was exported into the US.

Myron Sugerman poses in his Newark, New Jersey, home in this still from ‘Last Man Standing.’ (Courtesy)

The second-generation gangster recounts vividly how his father and other members of the Jewish mob responded to the surge in violence.

“There was always this question of Jewish pride,” Sugarman says in the film. “The Jewish gangster really had a psychological need to show that the Jews could be just as tough as any other ethnicity because they were going to break with the 2,000 years of our heads-down living in the ghetto, fearful. There was definitely no identity crisis.

These Jews were tough and were ready to prove it.”

This led to the Jewish Mob’s creation of The Newark Minute Men, based upon the “minutemen” of the American Revolution, who were ready at a minute’s notice to take on the Brown Shirts of Fritz Kuhn in Newark and the surrounding areas.

Sugerman recollects how Luciano, one of the prime members of the Italian Mob, had a close relationship with Lansky and offered to help thwart the attacks against the Jews. Lansky’s response was: “Charlie, thank you, I am grateful, appreciate it, this is a Jewish problem and this is going to be resolved with Jewish fists.”

An undated photo of Barney Sugerman, center, and the Newark Minute Men. (Courtesy)

Growing up in this climate had a profound effect on Sugerman. Speaking to The Times of Israel via Zoom from his home in Montclair, New Jersey, Sugerman says that he’s always seen a chilling reminder of life’s destiny in the famous black and white photo of a young boy during the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, his hands raised at gunpoint.

“By circumstances of birth that kid could have been born in America, and I could have been him,” Sugarman says.

This image, imprinted in Sugerman’s mind, became his raison d’etre to defend the Jewish people. The message was reinforced by his father who insisted that he and his brother take boxing lessons from a Jewish former professional, as was common at the time: “You are going to learn to defend yourself… you have that quiet weapon that nobody knows about.”

Myron Sugerman, center, with his parents at his bar mitzvah celebration. (Courtesy)
Fundraising for Wiesenthal

Jukeboxes, pinball, slot machines and other coin-operated amusements became his other calling when, fresh out of university, Sugerman joined forces with his father, Sugie. Not a violent gangster per se but rather an opportunist within a gang, Sugie started out in 1920 when the Prohibition Act took effect. He became known for bootlegging, racketeering, and the distribution of coin-operated machines within the US. His son, young, energetic and street-smart, traveled extensively across continents to become the largest supplier of illegal slot machines in the world.

The semi-retired outlaw chronicles his life frankly and with plenty of humor, even when describing the tough times. “What kind of life is it as an outlaw living outside the law?” he asks in the film. “It is extremely stressful. You don’t know where your enemy is going to come from — either from above, the law, or whether it’s going to be coming from other members of the organized crime-disorganized crime world. So you got to be on your toes at all times.”

The lure of financial success, however, did not deter the gangster from his other mission inspired by his father “to do more than just make money in life.” After the public trial of Adolf Eichmann in Israel in 1961, Sugerman felt impelled to take action.

On a business trip to Austria in 1965, the 27-year-old showed up at the office of famed Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. Their meeting, which took place against the backdrop of a world map highlighted with concentration camp locations, was the beginning of a firm friendship. He volunteered to help Wiesenthal raise funds for information, in particular in the hunt for the Angel of Death, Josef Mengele, who was living in Paraguay.

Myron Sugerman, right, speaks with Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal in Wiesenthal’s New York City office. (Courtesy)

Sugerman’s Hebrew name is Meyer and he authored “The Chronicles of the Last Jewish Gangster: From Meyer to Myron.” He finally got to meet his namesake Lansky on a trip to Israel in 1970. The infamous Jewish mobster gave him one piece of crucial advice: “Son, when you see your name start to appear in the front pages of newspapers, pick your tuchus up and run.”

Stints in the joint

There were times in Sugerman’s life when he knew his “destiny did not have a good future,” but he was too inextricably involved to pick himself up and run. In the 1980s he was charged with copyright infringement for selling knock-off Pac-Man boards, which saw him locked up until he reached a plea bargain. Then, in 1993 the US government launched a federal investigation that resulted in his being imprisoned for 19 months

Sugerman has few regrets about his unlawfulness, commenting wryly that “I never did anything legitimate — I had principles.”

He was just responding to public demand, he says, noting that the goods and services he supplied were soon legalized by the government anyway.

“When they see something is profitable, they take it away from the mobsters and take it away for themselves… The big fish eat the little fish, and that is the way of the world,” Sugerman says.

Being locked up did not dampen his enthusiasm — on the contrary, he used the downtime to work on personal development.

“I got in good shape, read a book a night and became very knowledgeable,” he says. “If you approach life from a positive it is tremendous.”

An undated photo of a gala dinner for Jewish mobsters in Newark, New Jersey. (Courtesy)
His son, the rabbi

Over the years, Sugerman has become increasingly committed to his Judaism, observing that “you cannot have Jews without Judaism.” A proud Zionist, Sugerman has three sons, one of whom is a Modern Orthodox rabbi with eight children, living in Boca Raton, Florida.

“He could have been a gangster, but instead he is a rabbi,” Sugerman jokes. “I am not going to be perfect, my son will be.”

He could have been a gangster, but instead he is a rabbi

The film ends with Sugerman visiting the graves of Jewish mafia men Zwillman and Green. In the emotional scene, he contemplates sadly how decades after the deaths of these proud defenders of Judaism the resurgence of antisemitism is greater today than it was before the 1930s.

Jewish mobster Abner ‘Longie’ Zwillman in an undated photo. (Courtesy)

All too resonant today

Director Jonny Caplan was drawn to Sugerman’s story as it showcased one man’s fight against antisemitism in a time when Jew-hatred has become very prevalent.

Using art deco and archival footage from the Roaring Twenties to the present day, the film brings viewers back into the Prohibition era, and its catchy klezmer-like soundtrack provides an apt background for Sugerman’s voiceovers.

“I was sold the moment I learned of Myron and the Sugermans’ contribution to fight antisemitism in the Western world, and his personal journey until this very day to connect, unite and educate others,” Caplan says.

The true crime feature documentary is initially viewable on Amazon Prime and will roll out to more networks and streamers in 2023. Caplan’s company Impossible Media has also purchased the rights to Sugerman’s story and is developing a dramatized television series based on his life.

Myron Sugerman reminisces in his Newark, New Jersey, home in this still from ‘Last Man Standing.’ (Courtesy)

Caplan is especially grateful for the success of the movie given the challenges encountered in its making. It nearly didn’t see the light of day, as production coincided with the height of the coronavirus pandemic when travel was restricted and infections sky-high.

Sugerman himself was hit with COVID, pneumonia and vertigo but fought through them, leaving Caplan doubly impressed by his relentless determination.

“He is the original life-sized iconic gangster — the accent, the hat and glasses, his manner, it’s all just so priceless. What I most appreciated is his strong character and energy, which resonates when you meet him,” says Caplan. “I fell in love with Myron the first time we talked.”

Celine Dion Fans Protesting Rolling Stone's Best Singers List Was January 6 for French Canada

The legendary music magazine left Dion off its Greatest Singers of All Time list—and her fans are not having it.

EVEN I HAVE TO ASK; HOW COULD YOU

Rich Juzwiak

JEZEBEL

On Friday, fans of Celine Dion let Rolling Stone know in no uncertain terms that the publication had made a big mistake. A group of Dion devotees protested outside the mag’s New York office (on what just happened to be the second anniversary of the January 6 insurrection) over the singer’s exclusion from Rolling Stone’s 200 Greatest Singers of All Time list, which published January 1.

Rolling Stone

@RollingStone

"We are here to express ourselves in the name of Celine because obviously you made a big mistake forgetting her name on the big list you published last week" Celine Dion protesters pulled up to the Rolling Stone office

(1) Rolling Stone on Twitter: ""We are here to express ourselves in the name of Celine because obviously you made a big mistake forgetting her name on the big list you published last week" Celine Dion protesters pulled up to the Rolling Stone office 😳 https://t.co/d5AoI8gq7r" / Twitter

“We wanted to make sure you understand that you missed the best singer in the world on your list—should be at least in the 200 top or at least in the 500 top...at least the first name on your list!,” one of the protestors told a reporter from Rolling Stone. Variety reported that about 15 fans attended the protest, having driven south from Quebec. They reportedly chanted, “Justice for Celine,” blasted “That’s the Way It Is,” held signs (“Rolling Stone You’ve Hit an Iceberg,” read one, referencing Titanic, whose theme, “My Heart Will Go On,” is Dion’s signature English-language song), and, of course, sang:

(1) Andy Swift on Twitter: "Celine Dion fans protesting outside the Rolling Stone offices for leaving her off its 200 best singers list. Happy Friday! https://t.co/BQ5wNm8kuG" / Twitter

The protest was the culmination of the biggest story to come out of the publication of Rolling Stone’s list. Outlets including CBS and Glamour noted the loud backlash to the snub. It was, after all, needlessly out of step with Dion’s current cultural appraisal, and ’90s-era rockism seemed to underpin the omission.

During that decade, Dion’s first in the American spotlight, the artist was largely regarded by the critical establishment as a schmaltzy facsimile of a soulful singer. The list’s introduction went out of its way to note that “this is the Greatest Singers list, not the Greatest Voices List. Talent is impressive; genius is transcendent. Sure, many of the people here were born with massive pipes, perfect pitch, and boundless range. Others have rougher, stranger, or more delicate instruments.” It further qualified: “In all cases, what mattered most to us was originality, influence, the depth of an artist’s catalog, and the breadth of their musical legacy.” The implication, then, was that what was more important than innate talent was what was done with it. Shady placements of powerhouses like Barbra Streisand (No. 147) and Christina Aguilera (No. 141) seemed to put this philosophy to practice.

Mariah Carey, however, placed at No. 5. She was regarded with much the same disdain by cool-fixated music writers in the ‘90s (“At full speed her range is so superhuman that each excessive note erodes the believability of the lyric she is singing,” reads part of Rob Tannenbaum’s review of 1991's Emotions), but has in the ensuing decades accrued a heap of critical good will. Certainly, Carey’s voice has undergone changes over the years, and I’d argue that her waning ability to stand onstage and simply open her lungs and unleash has made her singing more expressive and soulful. Dion’s voice, meanwhile, has stayed very much the same, as has the middle-of-the-road feel of her music, which means that those who have long dismissed her artistry may still be inclined to do so.

But Dion has undergone her own reappraisal, thanks in no small part to her larger-than-life persona. Her endless goofiness rounds out the gravity of her music nicely. The kinder way in which all forms of pop are regarded has been good to her adult-oriented catalog, which is full of bangers that themselves have the kind of exaggerated quality that only a voice a superhuman as Dion’s could serve adequately. Case in point: “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now.”

Céline Dion - It’s All Coming Back to Me Now (Official Extended Remastered HD Video)

And anyway, the sturdiness of a voice that has been blaring at such intensity for a good four decades in public should be proof enough of Dion’s bonafides to make such a list. Retaining the ability to sound like herself after years and years of serving the public is something that a good singer does. Dion’s voice has reached across generations and cultures. In his brilliant examination of the contrasts between the critical establishment’s regard of Dion’s work and the general public’s love of her, Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste, journalist Carl Wilson writes of “friends and acquaintances who’ve told me that in Kazakhstan, Japan, Argentina, wherever, when locals found out they were Canadian, they’d be me with, ‘Ah, Celine Dion!’” Her singing has effectively made her Canada’s premier cultural ambassador.

On top of all of that, the snub seems particularly cruel coming on the heels of Dion’s announcement that she has been diagnosed with stiff person syndrome. This is the kind of editorial error that will be swept under the rug when Dion is gone, and the fond remembrances flow. It’s far better to appreciate our greats while we have them.

As for Dion’s fans, they’ve taken the bait—these lists are compiled specifically to generate attention and outrage, which means making strange inclusions and key exclusions. That said, at least they got off their asses and really put some action behind their convictions. And they did it with the politeness we’ve come to expect from our neighbors up north.

Nate Thayer, rebel reporter who interviewed Pol Pot in the Cambodian jungle, has died

By Anthony Kuhn

Published January 6, 2023 at 3:40 PM EST

American journalist Nate Thayer sits bandaged in a hotel room on Oct. 15, 1989, in Aranyaprathet, Thailand, after he was injured in a land mine explosion. Thayer survived several brushes with death over decades covering conflict in Southeast Asia and was the last Western journalist to interview Pol Pot. He was found dead at his home in Falmouth, Mass., on Tuesday.

Nate Thayer, the last Western correspondent to interview the murderous Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot after tracking him in the jungles of Cambodia for nearly a decade, has died at his home in Falmouth, Mass. He was 62.

Thayer had multiple ailments and died of natural causes, according to his brother Rob, who last saw Nate on Sunday. His body was found on Tuesday.

"He was a rebel at the core," Rob Thayer says, and "had decided that he wasn't going to the hospital anymore."

A life of adventure in Asia

The intrepid investigative reporter's ties to Asia were lifelong and began with his father, a diplomat whose posts included China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. Nate Thayer spent five years of his childhood in Taiwan, his brother says.

He studied at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, but dropped out to return to Asia.

In the late 1980s, Thayer worked as a stringer on the Thai-Cambodian border, contributing freelance reports to the Associated Press, the Far Eastern Economic Review, The Phnom Penh Post, Agence France-Presse and Soldier of Fortune magazine, among others.

Thayer was an imposing presence: tall and muscular, with a shaven head and often with a wad of chewing tobacco in his mouth. He ripped the filters off the Marlboro Reds he smoked. On the surface, it could be hard to tell him apart from the soldiers of fortune he reported on.

"If you were going to have a bar brawl, you would want him on your side," recalls Francis Moriarty, a former Hong Kong-based foreign correspondent and fellow Massachusetts resident who was close to Thayer in his final years.

Thayer was hospitalized numerous times for malaria, and narrowly survived hitting a land mine while riding in a Cambodian guerrilla truck in 1989, leaving him with shrapnel damage. He was hard of hearing as a result of frequent exposure to explosions and gunfire.

Behind the bravado, an inquisitive and analytical mind

But while Thayer relished the role of raconteur of a life lived dangerously, this masked his investigative and analytical skills, and deep expertise in his field, says Nayan Chanda, longtime editor of the now-defunct Far Eastern Economic Review and an associate professor at Ashoka University in India.

If you were going to have a bar brawl, you would want him on your side

Behind the swashbuckling, cowboy image, was "this very inquisitive mind," Chanda says. And even in those earliest years, he says, it was clear how "completely committed" Thayer was to finding Pol Pot, who led the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia's brutal Communist regime from 1975 to 1979.

In the name of establishing an agrarian utopia, Pol Pot's genocidal revolution sent between 1 to 3 million Cambodians to their deaths in the notorious "killing fields" — one of the greatest crimes of the 20th century.

Thayer shrewdly assessed the struggle within the Khmer Rouge, Chanda says, "who's gunning for whom, and how he could perhaps use this ... in getting access to the area."

Dogged persistence pays off

After years of reporting and cultivating sources, Thayer's big break came in 1997, when an internal Khmer Rouge power struggle ended in Pol Pot being ousted and put on a show trial.

Thayer and Asiaworks Television cameraman David McKaige were allowed into the Khmer Rouge jungle stronghold of Anlong Veng near the Thai border to cover the spectacle.

Later that year, Chanda received a phone call from a man with a message for Nate Thayer: "They said that 'the uncle' will see him," a signal from the Khmer Rouge that Pol Pot agreed to be interviewed by Thayer.

The Khmer Rouge's top leader was never turned over to the international tribunal that tried his subordinates and comrades (and eventually convicted three of them). And he had not been interviewed in nearly two decades, giving Thayer a rare opportunity to question the man about his reign of terror.

"What we wanted to know was whether, one, he acknowledged what he did was wrong," Thayer told NPR's Linda Wertheimer in 1997 on All Things Considered, "and two, whether he felt sorry for it, whether he would apologize to so many people who didn't deserve it, who suffered so terribly. And he refused to."

''I came to carry out the struggle, not to kill people,'' the infirm, 72-year-old Pol Pot argued to Thayer. ''Even now, and you can look at me: Am I a savage person?" he asked, adding: "My conscience is clear.''

In this 1990 photo taken by Thayer, a Khmer Rouge guerrilla with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher strapped to his back and Buddhist amulets on his neck passes by villagers on his way to the front in Banteay Meanchey province, Cambodia.

Pol Pot admitted to making mistakes and ordering the killings of political rivals, but also blamed many of the deaths in his country on Vietnamese agents who wanted to subjugate Cambodia.

In 1998, Thayer returned to Anlong Veng and was among the first to confirm Pol Pot's death.

The heralded scoop won Thayer a plethora of awards. It also led to a long and bitter feud with ABC journalist Ted Koppel and the show Nightline, whom he claimed violated the terms of their agreement to use his material. As a result, Thayer declined a prestigious Peabody Award.

"Thayer went from being the first journalist to meet up with Pol Pot in nearly twenty years to being the first to turn down a Peabody," Philip Gourevitch wrote in The New Yorker at the time.

He also reported on Thailand, North Korea and Iraq, among other countries.

To the end, 'a believer in principle'

In time, Thayer returned to the U.S. and bought a Maryland farmhouse in 2000, because "he wanted a breather in life," says his brother. Later, he moved to Cape Cod with his trusty canine companion – his "best pal" Lamont – by his side.

Thayer continued to write for Vice and other outlets about far-right extremist movements, including the Ku Klux Klan and the Oath Keepers.

Nate did not condone the groups or their cause, Rob Thayer says. "He wanted to get inside the heads of these people and understand them. And it was the same way that he operated with the Khmer Rouge," and managed to gain the trust of his interviewees.

Toward the end of Thayer's life, as he struggled with a variety of health issues, friends launched a GoFundMe campaign to help him pay his bills.

"He was impoverished, in certain ways, on principle," says Francis Moriarty, Thayer's friend. "He was just a believer in principle, and he was dogged and unyielding."

NPR international correspondent Anthony Kuhn is currently based in Seoul. Before joining NPR, he was the Beijing correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review from 2003 to 2004. NPR's Maureen Pao, who worked at the Review from 1998 to 2001, contributed to this report.

LAWYERS, GUNS & MONEY

MCCARTHY WILL PROBABLY GRIND THIS OUT TO PRESIDE OVER EFFORTS TO TANK THE WORLD’S ECONOMY

BY SCOTT LEMIEUX

ON JANUARY 6, 2023

McCarthy failed on the 13th vote, but at this point with the failure to even pretend to have an alternative candidate and things trending in his direction he’ll probably get the Speakership, although the 1/6 caucus may still carry him for another round or three:

Representative Kevin McCarthy of California won over a bloc of right-wing holdouts in his quest to become speaker on Friday, finally gaining momentum on 12th and 13th votes but still falling short of winning the post.
With 15 Republicans who had previously voted against him swinging their support following a broad series of concessions, the movement was what Mr. McCarthy had forecast and needed to deliver to show enough strength to remain in the race. The floor fight has dragged on for four humiliating days and more than a dozen defeats for Mr. McCarthy, putting Republican divisions on vivid display and foreshadowing how difficult it will be to govern with a narrow and unruly hard-right faction bent on slashing spending and disrupting business in Washington.

Given the (predictable) concessions McCarthy had to make, we should also be clear that while Republicans are the prime villains in the coming attempt to use blackmail to gut Social Security, Manchin, Sinema, and every other current or recent Democratic legislator who thought it was appropriate to leave the debt ceiling lying around like a loaded weapon for Republicans to use are accessories before the fact.

Too Far Afield?

University of Houston pushes its dean of social work back down to the faculty. He says some professors objected to his views on racial justice and police abolition.

Colleen Flaherty
Inside Higher Ed.
January 6, 2023

Alan Dettlaff
(Alan Dettlaff/Twitter)

The University of Houston suddenly removed its dean of social work last month. The university has said it did so to better align the Graduate College of Social Work with broader institutional priorities. The former dean, Alan Dettlaff—who is returning to the social work faculty, for now—says his views on racial justice got him fired.

“I’ve said many times, one of the things I’m most proud as dean is that we were focused as a school on racial justice before summer 2020, when a lot of people started to come on board and develop programming and messaging around that—we’ve been focused on that for a long time,” Dettlaff told Inside Higher Ed of the college’s orientation during his seven-year tenure.

Dettlaff did start to focus more on abolition—of the police and of the child welfare system—more in 2020, after the murder of George Floyd, however. This, he said, became controversial among the school’s senior faculty, eventually leading to his ouster by an interim provost.

Robert H. McPherson, the interim provost, said in a college memo that “Dettlaff is returning to faculty to continue his own important scholarly work, which focuses on racial disparities, improving outcomes for LGBTQ youth and addressing the unique needs of immigrant families.”

Calling Dettlaff a “well-respected thought leader in his field,” McPherson wrote that he’d initiated the change in leadership to “better align the college with the university’s academic priorities, which include growing research expenditures and elevating the learning experience for all students as we work to realize our vision of becoming a Top 50 public university.”

According to information from the university, Graduate College of Social Work enrollment grew from 405 in 2015 to 544 in 2022. Dettlaff said that research expenditures also grew under his leadership, meaning that other issues are at play—namely his stance on abolition.

In 2020, for instance, in response to conversations about the role of social work in and around traditional policing, Dettlaff co-wrote an open letter to the profession warning against framing social work as a panacea to structural problems within policing systems and society. Criticizing Angelo McClain, CEO of the National Association of Social Workers—who previously told The Wall Street Journal that “social workers will play a vital role in helping law enforcement better serve their communities”—Dettlaff said in his open letter that there “appears to be a rush to ally ourselves with a criminal justice system that is known to perpetuate destructive violence and oppression against Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities.” (McClain did not respond to an interview request.)
Not a Panacea

Social workers “absolutely cannot situate ourselves as the magic ingredient to eradicating racism in law enforcement—an institution directly tied to the legacy of American slavery—if we cannot dismantle racism within our own systems of care,” Dettlaff wrote in the letter, which was signed by more than 1,100 social workers. “Moreover, we have yet to see our social work leaders take a bold stance on police divestment.”

Dettlaff underscored this point in an interview: “I don’t think social workers should be collaborating with police, and I’ve been really vocal about that.”

In addition to speaking out, Dettlaff organized a speaker series and study groups on abolition within his college. In May, the college also adopted seven racial justice principles to guide its work, including that that racial justice is a journey that requires intentionally centering the experiences of people of color, and that “structural, systemic, interpersonal, and internalized racism, colonization and white supremacy create and sustain harm.”

Perhaps most significantly, from a policy perspective, the college stopped placing student interns in law enforcement organizations. Dettlaff said that these types of placements numbered about five out of hundreds at any given time, but that the change was nevertheless significant—and contentious among a small group of professors.

“As a college were trying to work on that, because I really did think it was a misunderstanding of what abolition is about. And I’ve told my faculty on many occasions, ‘You don’t have to be an abolitionist to work here. But I hope that you will try to understand what that is. Because the reality now is we have students that come from across the country to this college of social work specifically because of our focus on abolition,’” he recalled. “Students told me that all the time. So I wanted our faculty to be prepared to have those conversations in class and felt that through more education through conversations, some of the resistance to the topic would go away.”

Yet, in the end, Dettlaff said, “As I understand it, four of my senior faculty members went to the provost with concerns that my abolitionist views were harming the college, harming our relationships in the community.”

None of the college’s four full professors responded to interview requests.

Asked how many of the college’s graduates work in the child welfare system, Dettlaff said the share is relatively low, at about 4 percent in 2021.
Abolition and Social Work

Dettlaff said there’s a consensus within social work that racial disparities exist in the child welfare system and that family separations for poverty-related issues of neglect—which, unlike instances of physical or sexual abuse, make up the majority of system cases—harm children. There’s division, however, as to whether the child welfare system can be reformed or if it needs to be rebuilt into something new and better. Dettlaff, as a child welfare abolitionist, falls into the latter camp. And while abolishing the child welfare system may be more palatable to some than abolishing the police, Dettlaff said that he can’t separate these ideas.

“Nearly 70 percent of children in foster care are in foster care because of poverty-related concerns. Abolition looks like responding to those situations by meeting the direct material needs of families, rather than inflicting an intervention on them that is separation and foster parents,” he said, adding that the state of Texas pays foster parents hundreds of dollars per month to take care of a child.

He continued, “We often talk about carceral logic that undergirds all of these systems, this idea that the system is focused on individual problematized individuals, rather than focused on … these broader societal structures.”

Dettlaff said that he continues to believe that abolition is “something that’s misunderstood by a lot of people, even in social work. There’s not a universal agreement that social workers should be abolitionists, or that social workers should remove ourselves from policing. But I felt that as dean, particularly at a college that was focused on racial justice, that we should really lean into understanding what abolition means, what it looks like, particularly the idea that it’s much more about building new systems and structures to meet people’s needs than it is about the tearing down of existing systems.”

He also said he thought worried that his ouster as a dean would put a chill on racial justice and abolitionist work within academe.

Laura Abrams, professor and director of social welfare at the Luskin School of Public Affairs at the University of California, Los Angeles, with whom Dettlaff co-wrote his 2020 open letter, told Inside Higher Ed that abolition “is a stream of thought and praxis in social work that challenges the status quo of our current array of government-funded social services, often those that partner with carceral systems and the police state.” While abolition is not new to organizing or academe, she said, “it is newer to social work as a growing movement,” and Dettlaff is a “leader in thinking through what abolition means for social work and a new way of envisioning how we want to embody our values of social justice and antiracism.”

Regarding their 2020 letter, Abrams said that both she and Dettlaff believed that social work needed to support the Black Lives Matter movement, “which was calling for defunding the police. With this stance, we raised awareness of calls for abolition within the profession, and we also caused some controversy. I see those debates and discussions as healthy for our field to better understand how we want to situate ourselves in this moment.”

Somewhat similarly, Abrams said the “backlash against child welfare abolition is strong, in part because social workers are highly invested child welfare as a domain of our profession,” and it’s hard for many to “envision a world without government child protection.”

“The arguments are complex,” Abrams said, “but again, I see these as discussions that need to be had in our field.”

While Dettlaff’s removal has come as a “shock” to colleagues, Abrams said, “I don’t think this move will deter people from abolition work. There are numerous new scholars who are abolitionist thinkers, theorists and organizers who are finding their platforms.”

Colleen Flaherty, Reporter, covers faculty issues for Inside Higher Ed. Prior to joining the publication in 2012, Colleen was military editor at the Killeen Daily Herald, outside Fort Hood, Texas. Before that, she covered government and land use issues for the Greenwich Time and Hersam Acorn Newspapers in her home state of Connecticut. After graduating from McGill University in Montreal in 2005 with a degree in English literature, Colleen taught English and English as a second language in public schools in the Bronx, N.Y. She earned her M.S.Ed. from City University of New York Lehman College in 2008 as part of the New York City Teaching Fellows program.

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