Norway detains former top Wagner Group member seeking asylum

Mon, January 23, 2023

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — A former high-ranking member of the Russian private military contractor Wagner Group seeking asylum in Norway is in custody on suspicion of entering the Scandinavian country illegally, authorities said Monday.

Russian Andrey Medvedev “has been arrested under the Immigration Act and it is being assessed whether he should be produced for detention,” Jon Andreas Johansen of Norwegian immigration police told The Associated Press. Norway's VG newspaper said detaining him isn't intended as a a punishment, but a security measure.

Medvedev, who says he fears for his life if he returns to Russia, is believed to have illegally entered Norway after crossing the country’s 198 kilometer-long (123-mile) border with Russia earlier this month.

Vladimir Osechkin of the Russian dissident group Gulagu.net, which helped Medvedev flee Russia, said he had been in protective custody in a safe house and was moved without explanation to a secured immigration facility.

Medvedev's Norwegian lawyer, Brynjulf Risnes, insisted on broadcaster NRK that his client is not suspected of any offense and that he's unaccustomed to Norway's new, stricter security measures for him.

“Significant security measures have been introduced. Medvedev has problems adapting to them,” Risnes told NRK.

In a video posted by Gulagu, Medvedev said he came under Russian gunfire before crossing into the Scandinavian country. Norwegian police said they were notified by Russian border guards about tracks in the snow indicating that someone may have crossed illegally.

Norway’s National Criminal Investigation Service, which takes part in the investigation of war crimes in Ukraine said it's questioning Medvedev who "has the status of a witness.” Osechkin said the former fighter spoke to investigators on Friday.

Medvedev, who has been on the run since he defected from the Wagner Group, has reportedly told Gulagu.net that he is ready to tell everything he knows about the shady paramilitary group and its owner Yevgeny Prigozhin, a millionaire with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Medvedev said he left the Wagner Group after his contract was extended beyond the July-November timeline without his consent. He said he's willing to testify about any war crimes he witnessed and denied participating in any.

The Wagner Group, which has spearheaded attacks against Ukrainian forces, includes a large number of convicts recruited from Russian prisons. The group has has become increasingly influential in Africa.

Russian Wagner boss acknowledges comparison with Rasputin


Wagner private military group centre opens in St Petersburg

Sun, January 22, 2023

(Reuters) - Russian mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin responded to comparisons between himself and the monk Rasputin who treated the son of the last tsar for haemophilia, saying on Sunday his job was not to staunch bleeding but to spill the blood of Russia's enemies.

The Financial Times newspaper said at the weekend that Prigozhin had growing influence on the Kremlin and likened him to Orthodox monk Grigory Rasputin, who had considerable influence on the wife of Russia's last tsar, Nikolai II.

Prigozhin acknowledged only last September that he had founded the Wagner group, which has played a major role in the Russian military's attempts to capture territory in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region.

"I am not very familiar with the history of Rasputin, but as far as I know, an important quality of Rasputin is that he staunched the blood flow of the young prince with incantations," Prigozhin's press service quoted him as saying, referring to the article.

"Unfortunately, I do not staunch blood flow. I bleed the enemies of our motherland. And not by incantations, but by direct contact with them."

Wagner has been deployed in a number of African countries, generally to combat insurgents. In recent months, Prigozhin has been seen in online videos trying to lure inmates from Russian prisons to join its ranks in Ukraine.

The Financial Times was not the first to compare his role to that of the monk in the Russian imperial court - a Russian journalist made the comparison last year.

The newspaper said that Prigozhin, like Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, another active supporter of Russia's war, "has positioned himself as a searing critic of military, bureaucratic and business elites who are supposedly failing Putin with their half-hearted, incompetent approach to the war".

Prigozhin said the comparisons were "absolutely clear" and he saw his role as bringing wayward Westerners back into line.

"When children engage in mischief, they try to draw the attention of their father with all sorts of unexpected tricks," he wrote. "All Americans have to do therefore is to come to dad, ask for forgiveness and continue to behave normally."

Rasputin was assassinated in 1916 by a group of Russian noblemen who feared his growing influence on the tsarist family.

(Reporting by Maria Starkova and Ron Popeski; Writing by Ron Popeski; Editing by Stephen Coates)

Offshore Oil And Gas Is Back, Baby



Editor OilPrice.com
Mon, January 23, 2023

At last week’s World Economic Forum gathering in Davos, several speakers had harsh words for the oil and gas industry, including UN head Antonio Guterres and the IEA’s chief Fatih Birol. Their message was clear: we need to stop producing oil and gas to solve the climate problem.

While this was happening, however, the world continued to need energy, and oil and gas continued to be the optimal form of energy for most of the things we need energy for. So, with demand forecast—including by the IEA—to surge this year above the growth rate of supply, new drilling is flourishing. Especially offshore.

In December last year, Oilprice reported that the stocks of offshore drilling contractors such as Transocean, Valaris, and Noble Corp were skyrocketing amid robust demand for their services, with day rates for drilling rigs surging as well.

Now, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that rates could top $500,000 per day, up from about $400,000 at the moment, with offshore drilling picking up everywhere as demand shows no signs it is about to start declining, no matter what apocalyptic visions climate speakers try to paint.

“Over the past year and a half, everyone started drilling again offshore, and they want to use the most efficient rigs and all of a sudden, bam!” Noble Corp chief executive Robert Eifler told the Wall Street Journal. “After eight years we basically have full utilization of the high-end drillship fleet.”

A roundup of the biggest deals signed in the offshore drilling industry last year reinforces the perception of a strong revival. The biggest deal was QatarEnergy’s contract with McDermott for expanding the production capacity at the North Field, which McDermott said is one of the largest single deals in its history.

Qatar was also involved in the second-largest offshore deal for 2022, with Italy’s Saipem, again for the North Field, which is understandable as the Qatari government plans to boost the country’s LNG production capacity from 77 million tons annually to 110 million tons. That means there will be a lot of work for offshore drilling contractors.

Adnoc is also boosting its production capacity with the help of Schlumberger and Halliburton, which got two contracts with the Emirati major last year worth some $4 billion. The same is true for Aramco, which has announced plans to increase its oil production capacity by 1 million barrels daily to a total of 13 million. According to Evercore, most of Saudi Arabia’s—and the UAE’s—new capacity will come from offshore developments.

Norway is also eyeing strong expansion of its oil and gas drilling, all of which takes place offshore, despite previous government pledges for a gradual reduction in oil and gas production and a shift towards renewable energy. Earlier this month, Norway’s petroleum ministry awarded 47 new exploration licenses to 25 companies.

Offshore drilling is booming in Brazil, Guyana, and Suriname as well, per the Wall Street Journal. Brazil’s Petrobras said it will boost spending between 2023 and 2027, with most of the money going into exploration and production. Guyana is enjoying the results of a string of offshore discoveries that have boosted the tiny nation’s oil exports by 164 percent in 2022, with revenues hitting $1.1 billion. Suriname is seemingly on Guyana’s path to oil riches, although it is meeting some challenges.

Analyst expectations about the offshore drilling market appear to be upbeat. Oil prices are higher than they were in 2019, oil demand is strong, and offshore drilling contractors are turning a nice profit. Deepwater drilling is particularly attractive since that’s where most of the world’s untapped oil resources are.

According to data from Westwood Global Energy Group, some 90 percent of the world’s offshore rigs were contracted to work or were already working as of last December. That’s up from about 60 percent five years earlier, the WSJ noted in its report.

This surge in demand for offshore drilling, especially in deep waters, has also revived demand for drillships that were put offline during the pandemic and the industry downturn it caused. Drillships cost about $100 million to put back online, and owners are demanding most of the money upfront.

And their clients are paying it: the WSJ notes a deal between Valaris and Equinor for a drillship that was sent to drill in the deep waters offshore Brazil. Of the total value of the deal—$327 million—$86 million was paid upfront, including for the reactivation of the vessel.

So, despite increasingly loud calls for what effectively amounts to shutting down the oil and gas industry, the real world is demanding more oil and gas, and the industry is delivering. From the shores of Brazil to the North Sea and the Persian Gulf, drilling contractors are putting up rigs to pump more oil and gas from underneath the seabed. Analysts are calling it a supercycle.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

Oil and gas companies moving into Permian Basin in $100M string of deals, as region expands

Adrian Hedden, Carlsbad Current-Argus
Tue, January 24, 2023

An oil and gas producer based on the Texas side of the Permian Basin looked to capitalize on growth in the New Mexico portion of the region, looking to buy lands in the southeast corner of the state.

Permian Resources Corporation announced an agreement that will see it purchase about 4,000 leasehold acres and 3,300 royalty acres, mostly in Lea County for $98 million.

The lands were estimated to produce about 1,100 barrels of oil equivalent per day, at 73 percent oil, according to a company announcement.

The price reflected about $8,000 per leasehold acre and $7,000 per royalty acre, the release read, including operated and non-operated assets the company said it could include in future trading.

James Walter, co-chief executive officer at Permian Resources said the move was part of a broader effort by the company to manage its portfolio and shift its footprint to areas of the basin expected to bring higher production and revenue returns.

He said the deal included 45 operated locations and was expected to generate about $100 million in net cash proceeds.

More:Pro-oil candidates lost out in New Mexico's 2022 election, as environment took center stage

The company also planned to divest in oil and gas properties on the Texas side of the basin in Reeves County, Texas, along the New Mexico border.

About 3,500 net leasehold acres were planned for sale for $60 million with about 1,800 barrels of oil equivalent per day at 44 percent oil, representing “the substantial majority,” the announcement read, of the company’s Texas assets.

Permian Resources also said it sold about 300 acres of non-operated leaseholds in Eddy County, at about $35,000 per acre and expected that deal to total about $10 million in proceeds.

More:Oil company goes to court with Intrepid Potash over freshwater sales in Permian Basin

“At Permian Resources, we believe our focus on portfolio management will continue to drive value for our shareholders,” Walter said in a statement.

International companies also showed interest recently in the Permian Basin, as Swiss international energy company Vitol’s U.S. upstream company VPX Energy Partners announced it plan to acquire Delaware Basin Resources (DBR), and its associated extraction and water infrastructure.

The sale included 35,000 net leasehold acres, and 46,000 surface acres in Reeves and Pecos counties in Texas within the Permian’s western Delaware sub-basin, with the company reporting production of about 40,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day.

More: Eddy County oil and gas collections near $10 million despite drop in oil prices

VPX CEO Gene Shepherd said the acquisition will allow the company to target the southern region of one of the most productive oil plays in the U.S.

“The opportunity to go back to work in the southern Delaware Basin, combined with the opportunity to do so with the DBR asset base and team is very exciting,” Sheperd said. “With Vitol’s unique market insights, expertise and funding capabilities, we expect this transaction will serve as the foundation for growing a highly profitable US lower 48 focused upstream business over the next decade.”

Ben Marshall, Vitol head of Americas said the deal would help position the company to take advantage of the U.S. and Permian Basin’s growing role in supply fossil fuels to the rest of the world.

More:Federal oil and gas reforms debated by New Mexico environmental, industry groups

“We are pleased to announce the addition of DBR and its related businesses to our US upstream portfolio,” he said. “As we have said before, we are eager to continue growing our position in the US Lower 48 as we anticipate US oil to remain an important source of supply to global energy balances.”

The region’s oil production was expected to see more growth in the next month, as the Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecast the Permian would produce about 5.65 barrels of oil a day (bpd)in February, growing by 30,000 bpd from January.

The basin was also expected to increase natural gas production next month, rising by 466 million cubic feet per day in February to a total of 21.7 billion cubic feet per day, making the region the second-largest gas-producing basin in the U.S., according to the EIA report.

Adrian Hedden can be reached at achedden@currentargus.com or @AdrianHedden on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on Carlsbad Current-Argus: Oil and gas companies moving into Permian Basin in $100M string of deals

HINDUTVA CENSORSHIP & REPRESSION 

Indian university warns students not to screen BBC documentary on Modi

PM Modi waves to his supporters as he arrives to cast his vote, in Ahmedabad

Tue, January 24, 2023

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - A top Indian university has threatened strict disciplinary action if its students' union carries out plans on Tuesday to screen a BBC documentary on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying the move might disturb peace and harmony on campus.

Modi's government has dismissed the documentary, which questioned his leadership during deadly riots in his home state of Gujarat in 2002, as "propaganda", blocked its airing and also barred sharing of any clips via social media in India.

Modi was chief minister of the western state during the violence that killed more than 2,000 people, most of them Muslims.

The students' union of New Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University, long seen as a bastion of left-wing politics, said on Twitter it would screen the documentary, "India: The Modi Question", at a cafeteria at 9 p.m. (1530 GMT).

On its website, the university administration said it had not given permission for the showing.

"This is to emphasise that such an unauthorised activity may disturb peace and harmony of the university campus," it added.

"The concerned students/individuals are firmly advised to cancel the proposed programme immediately, failing which a strict disciplinary action may be initiated as per the university rules."

On Twitter, the union president, Aishe Ghosh, had asked students to attend the screening of the documentary, describing it as having been "'banned' by an 'elected government' of the largest 'democracy'".

Asked by Reuters if the union planned to go ahead with the screening, Ghosh responded, "Yes, we are."

She declined to comment on the university's threat of disciplinary action, however.

Police are closely watching the situation, said a Delhi police officer monitoring the area around JNU. But police in the capital declined to make any official comment.

The documentary is also set to be screened at some campuses in the Communist-ruled southern state of Kerala.

India's home ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the government's plans if the film is shown at JNU and in Kerala.

The 2002 Gujarat violence erupted after a train carrying Hindu pilgrims caught fire, killing 59. Crowds later rampaged through Muslim neighbourhoods. In 2017, 11 men were jailed for life for setting the train ablaze.

Modi has denied accusations that he did not do enough to stop the riots and was exonerated in 2012 following an inquiry overseen by the Supreme Court. Another petition questioning his exoneration was dismissed last year.

Last week, the BBC said the documentary was "rigorously researched" and involved a "wide range" of voices and opinions, including responses from people in Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.

The BBC did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the threat of disciplinary action.

(Reporting by Sudipto Ganguly in Mumbai; Additional reporting by Shivam Patel and Rupam Jain; Editing by Robert Birsel and Clarence Fernandez)

Indian students fight to screen banned BBC Modi documentary as censorship row grows


Indian students fight to screen banned BBC Modi documentary as censorship row grows

Maroosha Muzaffar
Tue, January 24, 2023 at 6:06 AM MST·6 min read

Student groups across India are silently protesting the government ban on a two-part BBC documentary series that examines prime minister Narendra Modi’s relationship with Muslims, the country’s largest minority group.

Despite the threat of disciplinary action by varsity authorities, student bodies are readying to screen the documentary that was blocked and labelled a “propaganda piece” by the Indian government.

Students from the University of Hyderabad screened the first part of the documentary titled India: The Modi Question on Sunday inside its campus, leading to authorities launching a crackdown against them.

The series investigates Mr Modi’s role in the 2002 riots in Gujarat, his home state of which he was the chief minister at the time, which led to the death of more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims.


Authorities of the University of Hyderabad, also known as the Hyderabad Central University (HCU), have sought a report from the student group that screened the controversial documentary, allegedly without permission.

It was screened by a group of students under the banner “Fraternity Movement – HCU unit”.

After the BBC released the documentary in the UK, the Indian government was quick to use emergency powers to block its broadcast. The series was not aired in India but has been circulating on Twitter and YouTube and file-sharing websites.

The government issued orders to both platforms to block any content related to the BBC series using emergency powers under the country’s information and technology law.

India’s foreign ministry has alleged the documentary has “bias, [a] lack of objectivity, and frankly a continuing colonial mindset”.

Kanchan Gupta, an adviser to the government, said on his Twitter handle on Saturday: “Ministry of Information & Broadcasting has issued directions for blocking multiple @YouTube videos of the first episode of @BBCWorld ’s hateful propaganda ‘India: The Modi Question’. Orders were also issued to @Twitter for blocking over 50 tweets with links to these YT videos.”

HCU’s officials, meanwhile, claimed they had no knowledge of the screening. They came to know a student group screened the documentary only after members from the student wing of Mr Modi’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, called ABVP, complained.

A silent rebellion has emerged in many colleges and universities, whose students are angry at the government’s attempts to “block” the reach of the documentary, which features claims that Mr Modi was “directly responsible” for the 2002 Gujarat riots.

In the leftist stronghold of Kerala in southern India, it was reported that student and youth outfits decided to screen the series on campuses and public places.

The left-wing Students Federation of India said it would screen the documentary on college campuses. At the Kannur University campus, a screening was scheduled for Tuesday.

Another youth group, the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI), declared on Twitter that it would screen the documentary in the state as well. Local media reported that a screening would be organised at state capital Thiruvananthapuram by a local DYFI committee.

Shafi Parambil, a state lawmaker and member of the opposition Congress party as well as the president of its state student wing, said for Mr Modi, “historical facts are always on the enemy side. The days of genocide cannot be covered up using power”.


In national capital Delhi, the students union of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) released a poster announcing the screening of the documentary at its office.

This led to JNU authorities warning of “strict disciplinary action” in case the event was not cancelled.

Reuters quoted union president Aishe Ghosh as saying the screening would go ahead. Ms Ghosh, however, declined to comment on the threat of disciplinary action.


University authorities in an advisory on Monday alleged the student union did not take permission for the event and said a screening could “disturb peace and harmony”.

Police are reportedly monitoring the area around JNU, which has been in the spotlight over the past years for student clashes.

Mr Modi has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in the course of the religious riots, but many allegations have continued to follow him even after he became prime minister in 2014 and secured a landslide second term in 2019.

India’s Supreme Court also gave a clean chit to Mr Modi and 62 other senior government officials by dismissing a plea challenging the findings of a Special Investigation Team report on the riots.


Given the controversy over the documentary, the BBC defended its production, saying it was “committed to highlighting important issues from around the world” and that the Indian government was offered a right to reply but declined.

In a statement, the British broadcaster said the documentary “examines the tensions between India’s Hindu majority and Muslim minority and explores the politics of Mr Modi in relation to those tensions”.

It said the series was “rigorously researched” and “a wide range of voices, witnesses and experts were approached, and we have featured a range of opinions, including responses from people in the BJP.”


Asaduddin Owaisi, an MP from Hyderabad city and a vocal critic of the Modi government, attacked the latter’s decision to ban the two-part documentary.

He asked the government to instead ban an upcoming film titled Gandhi Godse: Ek Yudh, which is due to release on India’s Republic Day on 26 January. This film has come under fire from several quarters for glorifying Nathuram Godse, who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi.

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2023/01/india-blocks-youtube-videos-and-twitter.html

NON-STATE KILLERS OF PALESTINIANS

Extreme Israeli group takes root in US with fundraising bid



 Israeli Jewish extremist Amiram Ben-Uliel arrives in court in Lod, Israel, Monday, May 18, 2020, where he was convicted in a 2015 arson attack that killed a Palestinian toddler and his parents in the West Bank. An Israeli group raising funds for Jewish radicals convicted in some of the country’s most notorious hate crimes, Including Ben-Uliel, is collecting tax-exempt donations from Americans, according to an investigation by the AP and non-profit Israeli investigative platform Shomrim. That is a sign that Israel’s far right is gaining a new foothold in the United States.

 (Avshalom Sassoni/Pool Photo via AP, File)

URI BLAU of Shomrim and TIA GOLDENBERG of The Associated Press
Mon, January 23, 2023 

JERUSALEM (AP) — An Israeli group raising funds for Jewish extremists convicted in some of the country’s most notorious hate crimes is collecting tax-exempt donations from Americans, according to findings by The Associated Press and the Israeli investigative platform Shomrim.

The records in the case suggest that Israel’s far right is gaining a new foothold in the United States.

The amount of money raised through a U.S. nonprofit is not known. But the AP and Shomrim have documented the money trail from New Jersey to imprisoned Israeli radicals who include Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's assassin and people convicted in deadly attacks on Palestinians.

This overseas fundraising arrangement has made it easier for the Israeli group, Shlom Asiraich, to collect money from Americans, who can make their contributions through the U.S. nonprofit with a credit card and claim a tax deduction.

Many Israeli causes, from hospitals to universities to charities, raise money through U.S.-based arms. But having the strategy adopted by a group assisting Jewish radicals raises legal and moral questions.

It also comes against the backdrop of a new, far-right government in Israel led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, where ultranationalists and extremist lawmakers have gained unprecedented power.

According to Shlom Asiraich’s promotional pamphlets, its beneficiaries include Yigal Amir, who assassinated Rabin in 1995; Amiram Ben-Uliel, convicted in the 2015 murder of a Palestinian baby and his parents in an arson attack; and Yosef Chaim Ben David, convicted of abducting and killing a 16-year-old Palestinian boy in Jerusalem in 2014. The group also assists an extremist ultra-Orthodox man who fatally stabbed a 16-year-old Israeli girl at Jerusalem’s gay pride parade in 2015.

Shlom Asiraich, or “The Well-Being of Your Prisoners,” has been raising money in Israel since at least 2018, and officially registered as a nonprofit in 2020 by a group mostly consisting of Israelis from hard-line settlements in the West Bank. At least five of the group’s seven founders have themselves been questioned by Israeli authorities for crimes related to their activities against Palestinians. Some have been arrested and charged.

Recipients of its largesse have hailed the group for coming through in difficult times.

“You have no idea how much you help us,” the family of Ben-Uliel, who is serving three life sentences, wrote in a hand-written letter posted to the group’s Facebook page.

Being a relatively new organization, Shlom Asiraich’s official filing to Israel’s nonprofit registry provides little data and does not indicate how much money it has raised. But in its promotional flyers, recently broadcast by Israeli Channel 13 news, the organization indicated it has raised 150,000 shekels (about $43,000).

Israeli nonprofits have long sought funding abroad, with the U.S. a major source. According to figures published by Noga Zivan, a consultant for nonprofits in Israel, between 2018 to 2020 Jewish-American organizations alone donated $2 billion to Israel each year.

Israeli right-wing groups have long raised funds in the U.S. But Dvir Kariv, a former official in the department of Israel’s domestic security agency Shin Bet that deals with Jewish violence, said it is unusual for extremist Jews such as the ones who run Shlom Asiraich to do so.

He said the group appears to have taken a cue from other far-right Israeli groups, particularly Kach, an anti-Arab racist group that was once banned as a terror organization in the U.S. but which Kariv said was adept at raising money there decades ago.

Itamar Ben-Gvir, a senior Cabinet minister in Israel’s new far-right government, is a disciple of Kach's founder, Rabbi Meir Kahane, who was once barred from Israeli politics.

It is not clear when Shlom Asiraich began working with the New Jersey-based World of Tzedaka, a nonprofit that says it works “to enable any individual or organization to raise money for their specific cause.”

Donors in the U.S. can enter the Shlom Asiraich site and click on a link that takes them to a donation page hosted by World of Tzedaka. They can also donate directly from World of Tzedaka’s site.

According to an instructional video on the World of Tzedaka site, fundraisers must list a rabbi as a reference and receive approval from a Lakewood religious committee. World of Tzedaka charges $28 a month and a 3% processing fee for transferring funds to an Israeli bank account, the site says.

World of Tzedaka supports other charitable ventures, most of them focused on assisting Jewish families in distress, according to its website.

Ellen Aprill, an expert on tax and charities at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, said convicted criminals and their families could be considered in need and qualify as a permissible charitable purpose.

While supporting someone convicted of acts of terrorism could be seen as encouraging criminal activity, that would need to be proven, she said.

Marcus Owens, a lawyer who ran the IRS’s nonprofit unit in the 1990s, took a tougher stance.

“The U.S. Department of Justice views assistance to the families of terrorists as a form of material support for terrorism,” he said.

In order to become a tax-exempt group recognized by the IRS, an organization must operate exclusively for charitable, religious or educational purposes.

Repeated attempts to reach representatives of Shlom Asiraich were unsuccessful. A person who answered the group’s phone number hung up on an AP reporter. Moshe Orbach, whose address in the hard-line West Bank settlement of Yitzhar is listed as the group’s headquarters, declined through a lawyer to be interviewed.

A World of Tzedaka representative hung up when asked for comment.

The IRS refused to answer questions about the group, saying “federal law prohibits the IRS from commenting.”

According to documents obtained by the AP, Shlom Asiraich was registered as a nonprofit with Israeli authorities by Chanamel Dorfman, an attorney and a top aide to Ben-Gvir, Israel’s new national security minister.

Dorfman is also listed as the group’s “lawyer/legal adviser” on Guidestar, the official nonprofit registry’s site.

In a text message, Dorfman denied ever having been the group’s legal adviser and did not respond to additional questions. Dorfman recently told the conservative daily Israel Hayom he was simply acting as a lawyer and that “if I knew that this is what this organization does, I wouldn’t have registered it.”

In October, on the eve of the Jewish New Year, Shlom Asiraich tweeted a photo of snacks it provided to Jewish suspects under house arrest, and to families of Israelis convicted or charged with crimes against Palestinians. A note accompanying the wine and other goods the nonprofit provided called the men “beloved heroes.”

“Stay strong and remain loyal to the people of Israel and to the holy Torah and don’t stop being happy!” the note read.

___

This article was published in partnership with Shomrim, The Center for Media and Democracy in Israel.

___

This story has been corrected to show the year of Rabin's assassination was 1995, not 2005.

Turkey condemns Quran protest in the Netherlands


Tue, January 24, 2023

ISTANBUL (AP) — Turkey’s foreign ministry said Tuesday it summoned the Dutch ambassador following a demonstration targeting Islam’s holy book, days after a similar protest in Sweden tensed relations.

Edwin Wagensveld, Dutch leader of the far-right Pegida movement in the Netherlands, on Sunday tore pages out of a copy of the Quran near the Dutch parliament and stomped on the pages. Police looked on but did not intervene.

“It is about freedom of expression and I think that should be possible in the Netherlands,” Wagensveld said in a video posted on the site of Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad.

The Turkish foreign ministry said in its statement that it condemned the “vile attack,” which it said was proof of Islamophobia, discrimination and xenophobia in Europe. The ministry told the Dutch ambassador they expected concrete precautions to prevent and not permit similar demonstrations in the future, and that authorities take action against Wagensveld.

“It is about freedom of expression and I think that should be possible in the Netherlands,” Wagensveld said in a video posted on the site of Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad.

Relations between Turkey and the Netherlands were shattered in 2017 when Dutch authorities barred Turkish officials from campaigning for a referendum among the Turkish diaspora there. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan upped the ante by comparing the Dutch to Nazis, and ambassadors were withdrawn.

On Saturday, a far-right anti-Islam activist burned the Quran outside the Turkish Embassy in Stockholm. Turkey strongly condemned the act and Sweden for allowing the demonstration, with Erdogan declaring Sweden shouldn’t expect Turkey’s support for its NATO bid.

RACIST HEALTHCARE U$A
A Deadly Epidural, Delivered by a Doctor With a History of Mistakes

Joseph Goldstein
Mon, January 23, 2023 

Juwan Lopez and his daughter Khloe, 2, at a mural memorializing Sha-Asia Semple, his partner and the girl's mother, in Brooklyn, Jan. 12, 2023. 

(Desiree Rios/The New York Times)

NEW YORK — Dr. Dmitry Shelchkov, an anesthesiologist at a public hospital in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Brooklyn, would later say that his job was “straightforward” with “not a lot required.”

But when it came time to give an epidural to Sha-Asia Semple, a pregnant 26-year-old woman in labor, at Woodhull Medical Center on July 3, 2020, Shelchkov botched the routine procedure. The catheter to deliver the anesthesia should have gone about 4 inches into her lower back. Instead, he kept inserting the line, threading it in and up more than 13 inches, a state medical review board later found.

Then Shelchkov administered a full dose of anesthesia, without waiting to see how Semple responded to a small test dose, according to the state board. The anesthesia landed in her cerebrospinal fluid and circulated around her central nervous system.

“I can’t breathe,” Semple said as her breathing grew labored, before stopping altogether. Another doctor rushed in to help.

“I can’t believe this is happening again,” the doctor screamed at Shelchkov, according to a federal hospital inspection report.

Her baby survived, but Semple did not. It was several weeks after George Floyd’s murder had set off a national reckoning on race, and Semple’s death sparked a demonstration outside the hospital and news coverage about how, in New York City, Black women like Semple are nine times more likely to die of pregnancy-related complications than white women, a much greater disparity than exists nationally.

Many factors contribute to that disparity, but Shelchkov’s career — he was stripped of his medical license in late 2021 — brings one of the factors into focus: large gaps in the quality of medical care at hospitals across the city.

Until now, the specific medical errors that caused Semple’s death have not been publicly reported in detail. Nor has it been reported that in the more than two years before her death, six other pregnant patients in labor at Woodhull “suffered adverse outcomes related to the administration of anesthesia,” according to the hospital inspection report.

In almost all those cases, Shelchkov was apparently involved, according to the report, which did not name him but described errors attributed to him in other documents.

In some instances, he pushed the epidural needle or the catheter that fits through it too far, which resulted in the anesthesia mixing with cerebrospinal fluid rather than remaining in a separate space near nerve roots, according to the report and the state medical review board’s findings.

Such mistakes, though rare, are usually caught quickly and corrected, but Shelchkov sometimes skipped a crucial safety measure — giving a small test dose and waiting to see the patient’s reaction before administering the full dose of anesthesia, a state medical review board found.

Despite the clear pattern, administrators and department heads at Woodhull did little to monitor him, federal hospital inspectors wrote in the report.

The document paints a disturbing picture of dysfunction at Woodhull, part of the city’s public hospital system. Nearly 1,500 women give birth there each year, about 85% of them Black or Hispanic. Under 10% are white. The majority of patients have Medicaid.

When rare complications from epidural anesthesia — which provides pain relief during childbirth — began occurring unusually often at Woodhull, the cases went unreported. Not until a patient died did hospital administrators even notice a pattern.

In a phone interview with The New York Times, Shelchkov said that when something went wrong, the anesthesiologist always made an easy target. “Everyone wanted to present themselves as the hero and that it wasn’t their fault,” he said. He said that Semple’s death and the trauma and exhaustion of working during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic had left him feeling “devastated.”

In a statement, the city’s public hospital system noted that it had a range of programs aimed at reducing severe maternal morbidity and closing racial disparities. These include extensive emergency simulation programs to train labor and delivery staff, as well as bigger roles for doulas and midwives than exist in many private hospitals. The rate of cesarean deliveries at the city’s public hospitals is lower than the statewide average, a promising indicator.

Each year in New York City, more than 20 women die of pregnancy-related causes, and about 3,000 women nearly die. In 2017 and 2018, most of the women who died were Black.

Experts point to a range of factors to explain this, including a prevalence of underlying medical conditions, a lack of access to prenatal care or good medical insurance, and racial biases. Some providers fail to take some patients’ medical complaints seriously.

But racial disparities in maternal deaths are also linked to the fact that Black women are often more likely than white women to deliver at hospitals with a lower quality of obstetric care, research suggests.

In the interview with the Times, Shelchkov expressed pride that he worked through the pandemic, sometimes clocking 85 hours a week at Woodhull.

Shelchkov, 62, said the pandemic took a toll, affecting his focus and leaving him exhausted. A state medical review board said that was no excuse for what happened next.

According to the federal report, Shelchkov was called in to give an epidural to a 31-year-old woman at 3 a.m. May 22, 2020. “Give me air,” she said, before becoming unresponsive. She was intubated, and her baby was delivered via C-section. The mother recovered.

A state medical committee later concluded that the episode appeared to be another case of Shelchkov’s placing the epidural catheter too deep, an error that might happen in 1 in 1,000 epidural attempts, according to an anesthesiologist the state hired as an expert.

By the time Shelchkov’s medical license was revoked in late 2021, he said he had been disabled by a severe COVID-19 infection. Unable to work or afford to live here, Shelchkov moved back to Russia last year, after 25 years of practicing medicine in the United States.

Shelchkov said Semple’s death was the only time someone in his care had died during his four decades of practicing medicine. “I was just devastated,” he said, and described feeling “close to suicide.”

“A baby grows up motherless,” he said.

That baby is now 2. She loves gymnastics class and Silly Putty and slime. Recently, she asked her dad a question that knocked him silent.

“Where’s my mommy?”

Her dad, Juwan Lopez, remembered how excited Semple had been all through her pregnancy. How many times after her death had he shown his daughter maternity photos and the video of the gender reveal, in which Semple let loose all those pink balloons? “Who’s that?,” Lopez would ask. “Mommy,” Khloe would answer.

After a few moments, Lopez, 26, told Khloe that Mommy was in the sky watching over her.

On the night of Khloe’s birth, Lopez was in the room as Semple was dying. No one told him what was happening. “I think they need to watch who they hire,” Lopez said, holding Khloe in his arms.

© 2023 The New York Times Company

Franklin Graham Defies Trump Warning, Says He Won't Endorse Him For GOP Primary

Ed Mazza

Tue, January 24, 2023

Evangelical leader Franklin Graham says he won’t endorse Donald Trump ― or anyone else ― for the 2024 Republican presidential primary.

“I’m going to stay out of it until after the primaries have finished,” Graham told CBS News, the latest in a string of evangelical leaders to announce that they’re not ready to support Trump’s campaign.

The former president isn’t happy with so many prominent onetime supporters taking a step back.

“That’s a sign of disloyalty,” Trump groused last week in an interview with the right-wing network Real America’s Voice. “There’s great disloyalty in the world of politics, and that’s a sign of disloyalty.”

If those comments were meant as a warning to evangelical leaders, they didn’t work on Graham.

“I’m just not going to get involved in supporting this one over that one,” Graham said. “Let’s just let the people decide. And when the dust is settled, I’ll make a decision on that point.”

Graham, son of famed evangelist Billy Graham, has been a vocal Trump supporter for years, even holding a special day of prayer for the then-president in 2019 and comparing Republican lawmakers who voted for Trump’s impeachment to Judas.

In 2021, however, he knocked Trump’s age, health and diet as roadblocks to another presidential run, calling it “a very tough thing to do.”

Other leading conservative Christians have been even blunter.

“If he‘s our nominee in 2024, we will get destroyed,” Washington Times columnist Everett Piper, another evangelical who had previously endorsed Trump, wrote in November.

Evangelical activist Bob Vander Plaats, who supported Trump in 2016, told Vanity Fair last month that others feel the same way, but aren’t ready to say it publicly.

“You can see that it’s almost a silent majority right now,” he said.

Trump has been lashing out in response. Along with attacking evangelical leaders for “disloyalty,” he’s also gone after evangelical voters, blaming them for the GOP’s disappointing midterms.

“I thought they could’ve fought much harder during the election,” he told Real America’s Voice.

Most observers believe the real reason the GOP failed to take the Senate and underperformed in the House elections is Trump’s weak slate of hand-picked candidates chosen for their fealty to him rather than electability with the general public.

How an anti-Semitic ‘fake news’ conspiracy drove mass murder in Franco’s Spain

Patrick Bishop
Tue, January 24, 2023

People fleeing during the Spanish coup of July 1936 - Photo12/Universal Images Group via Getty

The horrors of the Second World War have tended to overshadow the awfulness of the conflicts that preceded it in Abyssinia, China and Spain. No one knows for sure how many died in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939, but half a million is a reasonable estimate.

What is clear is that much of the killing was done off the battlefield. Franco’s rebels executed at least 130,000 opponents, the Republicans maybe 50,000. Most historians have tended to characterise the government forces’ atrocities as largely unofficial and spontaneous, while the Nationalists were following a systematic extermination programme to “cleanse” Spain of its internal enemies as a necessary prelude to an era of regeneration.

To prepare the ground the rebel leaders had to persuade their followers – and themselves – of the malignity of their opponents. Instead of being fellow Spaniards with a different political outlook, they were demonised as the foot soldiers of evil conspiratorial forces who wanted to abolish their religion, steal their property and destroy their culture and traditions. The conspirators were the usual early 20th-century suspects: a diabolical alliance of freemasons, Jews and bolsheviks.

Paul Preston has spent a lifetime studying the war, and in this deeply researched and revealing book he turns his attention to six men who propagated the ideas powering the Francoists’ annihilationist tendencies. His dirty half-dozen includes big names like General Emilio Mola, who directed the anti-government plot and who set the tone for what followed by officially sanctioning terror tactics to “eliminate without scruples everyone who does not think as we do”.

Preston also introduces us to some less well-known and extraordinarily unpleasant characters, among them Gonzalo de Aguilera, an erudite, aristocratic landowner and cavalry officer who worked as a liaison officer with foreign media during the war. Aguilera was educated in England by Jesuits, passing through, I was startled to learn, my old school Wimbledon College before going on to Stonyhurst.

Spanish Fascist rebels pictured during the Civil War - one wearing an old German helmet - Daily Herald Archive/National Science & Media Museum/SSPL via Getty

He was regarded by some of his charges as a bit of a character, given to regaling them in the bar with his hair-raising views. A pet theory was that Spain’s problems were all due to the foolish extension of mains drainage to the working classes. “Sewers caused all our troubles,” he told one correspondent. “Had we no sewers in Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao, all these Red leaders would have died in their infancy.” Proper drains should have been “reserved for those who deserve them, the leaders of Spain, not the slave stock.”

The more perceptive hacks, such as Martha Gellhorn, understood that this wasn’t just provocation. Many Spanish landowners indeed regarded their peasantry as slaves and treated them with sadistic harshness. The rising assertiveness of the masses, peaking with the advent of the Republic, astonished and alarmed them. Who had put them them up to it? The answer was the “contubernio judeo-masónico-bolchevique” which Preston translates as “the filthy Jewish-masonic-Bolshevik concubinage”.

At first sight, this was going to be a hard message to sell. In 1936 there were barely 6,000 Jews in Spain and the Communist party was tiny. There were masons in high places, but their code of secrecy meant that no one knew who and how many. Franco’s propagandists had a natural ally in the Catholic church, which had waged a centuries-old war on freemasonry and linked Jews to Christ’s crucifixion.

One of the most effective purveyors of what Preston casts as an early example of “fake news” was a villainous priest, Juan Tusquets. He popularised the idea that the rebels were engaged in a crusade against a Republic which was, in fact, the enemy of Christian civilization, and, to cement the argument, he brought out his own edition of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

A Spanish Fascist poster with the slogan 'Por la patria el pan y justicia' (For country, bread and justice) - Photo12/Universal Images Group via Getty

Despite having been exposed as a forgery by the London Times in 1921 and the Frankfurter Zeitung three years later, that tract was swallowed whole by many on the rebel side, including Franco. As with fans of the Protocols everywhere, newspaper revelations did nothing to shake their faith, being taken instead as confirmation of the conspirators’ power and reach. The truth didn’t matter much matter anyway. Like Josef Goebbels, Tusquets believed in the power of the big lie, accusing the moderate, piously Catholic President of the Republic, Niceto Alcalá-Zamora, of being both a freemason and a Jew.

The narrative spun by the nationalist theorists provided a justification for the rebels’ real concerns. These were summed up by John Whitaker of the Chicago Daily News as “simple in the extreme. They were outnumbered by the masses. They feared the masses and they proposed to thin down the numbers of the masses.”

Nonetheless the hatred felt towards the phantom “contubernio” was real and the venom spread by the propagandists lingered in the national bloodstream. Franco’s victory in 1939 was followed not by reconciliation but by an orgy of vengeance in which tens of thousands of freemasons and leftists were judicially murdered. Newspapers and books peddled anti-Semitic themes right until Franco’s death in 1975 and post-war Spain was a safe haven for the likes of the Belgian fascist leader and SS officer Léon Degrelle.

Preston’s study is based on profound knowledge but also shrewd human understanding. As well as exposing the pyschic underpinnings of the Spanish warm it also helps us see the world war that followed for what it was: the continuation and culmination of long-brewing political and cultural pathologies.

Architects of Terror: Paranoia, Conspiracy and Anti-Semitism in Franco’s Spain is published by HarperCollins at £30. 

Patrick Bishop’s new book Paris ’44 will be published by Penguin next year

Federal study calls for rooftop solar panels to meet Puerto Rican renewable energy goals



Zack Budryk
Mon, January 23, 2023 

Puerto Rico should install rooftop solar panels in locations such as airports and industrial areas to reach national renewable energy goals, a federal office said in a study published Monday.

Puerto Rico passed legislation in 2019 requiring the island to redesign its electric grid after it was devastated by Hurricane Maria, including a requirement to transition to 100 percent renewables by 2050.

More than $12 billion in disaster funds were announced in early 2022 for recovery and the redesign. In December, Congress appropriated another $1 billion for the grid, less than both the $3 billion requested by President Biden and the $5 billion for solar panels a coalition of House Democrats said was needed.

The two-year study from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimated that there is not sufficient land available on the island for enough wind-power infrastructure to meet the goal and Puerto Rico should instead install solar infrastructure on sites such as brownfields, industrial areas and airports.

The study estimated that Puerto Rico’s transmission system can bear the projected renewables growth over the next five to 15 years but that further grid upgrades will be necessary in the longer term, particularly for wind power.

The island is currently heavily dependent on fossil fuels for electricity production, with petroleum products in particular accounting for about 60 percent of energy consumption, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA).

Puerto Rico has higher electricity costs than any U.S. state except Hawaii, which the EIA attributes to its reliance on fossil fuels. The preliminary report estimated installing new renewables would be more cost-effective than maintaining the existing system and in terms of operating costs is already on track to be more cost-effective by 2025.

Researchers ran simulations of future hurricanes and found that it was easier to restore power when using infrastructure that is spread out more broadly rather than with a handful of larger, centralized hubs.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is set to publish the final version of the study in the year ahead.

Analysis-Mexico City metro exposes "Achilles heel" of mayor's presidential dreams




Mon, January 23, 2023 
By Cassandra Garrison and Dave Graham

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The second major accident in the Mexico City metro in as many years and a series of recent mishaps in the transport system have piled pressure on Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, one of the favorites to become the country's next president.

The Jan. 7 train collision that killed one person and injured 57 and other glitches have shone a harsh light on Sheinbaum's administration just as she bids for the candidacy of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) for the 2024 presidential elections.

Reports of cut cables, objects thrown onto tracks and other damage prompted MORENA's secretary general to call out "sabotage", and Sheinbaum called in 6,000 National Guard members to police metro stations, saying they will guarantee security after "intentional incidents" that are under investigation.

Critics, however, have questioned that move as a bid to distract from a lack of investment and maintenance in the network that carries millions of people daily.

"The metro is possibly the Achilles heel of Claudia Sheinbaum's presidential aspirations," said Jorge Bravo, a political scientist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), explaining that the network is regarded as a vital test of her ability to govern.

There are signs it may already be hurting her.

A January poll by newspaper El Financiero, conducted partly on the day of the fatal accident, showed support for Sheinbaum falling from December by five percentage points to 41%.

Behind her, backing for her closest rival, Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, rose to 38% from 36%.

Sheinbaum's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Meanwhile, a war of words has broken out between MORENA and the metro workers' union, which operates the network and whose leadership has been in place since the 1970s.

Some MORENA lawmakers blame the union for the metro's woes, accusing it of trying to hurt Sheinbaum. The union has dismissed the accusations, arguing problems arose because her government - and its predecessors - did not invest enough in the metro.

Sheinbaum has publicly vowed to spend more on the metro, but government data analyzed by think tank Mexico Evalua shows maintenance dipped during the pandemic. The metro's budget did increase by more than 3 billion pesos in 2022, a nearly 25% boost. Funds, however, were likely prioritized for problem areas, Mexico Evalua said, including Line 12 which suffered a fatal accident in May 2021 that killed 26 people.

Calling in the National Guard risks backfiring if the city prioritizes its deployment over maintenance or replacement of old parts, said Eduardo Miranda, a structural engineering professor at Stanford University.

"If accidents continue, like a cable or the signal system breaks, the National Guard is not going to detect that or make a difference," Miranda said.

Governments have been hesitant to invest more in the metro's maintenance because repairs are less visible than other projects, and also to raise its five peso ($0.26) fare to avoid upsetting the public, argued Mariana Campos at Mexico Evalua.

"They haven't given it the importance it deserves and they've taken too many risks," Campos said.

The metro problems come as Sheinbaum is still under scrutiny for her response to the 2021 fatal overpass collapse, said a Mexican government official, who nevertheless argued the union was trying to undermine her.

The city commissioned Norwegian firm DNV to investigate the incident, which identified maintenance as one of the causes. But Sheinbaum rejected the findings before they were public, and threatened to sue DNV. Her attempt to suppress the report undermined her credibility, the official said.

To be sure, Sheinbaum has navigated pitfalls in the past. A school collapse that killed 19 children in a 2017 earthquake happened on her watch as a district mayor of Mexico City.

She filed a criminal complaint accusing two prior attorneys for the district of failing to enforce the law after discovering illegal construction, and became Mexico City Mayor in 2018.

Now, Lopez Obrador has backed her decision to use the National Guard, in a clear sign of support for her.

Yet that could lead to more criticism from opponents that she struggles to manage crises, said Bravo at UNAM.

"Claudia is showing that she cannot do it alone," he said.

($1 = 18.9849 Mexican pesos)

(Reporting by Cassandra Garrison, Dave Graham and Daina Beth Solomon; Editing by Alistair Bell)